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December 14, 2006

38th Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2006-Dec-14 (PDF)

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L'ONTARIO

Thursday 14 December 2006 Jeudi 14 décembre 2006

PRIVATE MEMBERS'

PUBLIC BUSINESS

CO-OPERATIVES

WEARING OF HELMETS

CO-OPERATIVES

WEARING OF HELMETS

CO-OPERATIVES

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CONTAMINATED PROPERTY

EVENTS IN NORTH BAY

MINISTRY SPENDING

ONTARIO ARTISTS

MARILYN ALEX

REMOVAL OF CHRISTMAS TREE

DURHAM COMMUNITY

STRATEGIC PLAN

COMMUNITY GRANTS

WORLD LEADERSHIP AWARD

REPORT OF CHIEF ELECTION OFFICER

NOTICE OF REASONED AMENDMENT

VISITORS

MOTIONS

COMMITTEE SITTINGS

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY AND RESPONSES

ENDANGERED SPECIES

FALLS PREVENTION

ENDANGERED SPECIES

FALLS PREVENTION

ENDANGERED SPECIES

FALLS PREVENTION

VISITORS

ORAL QUESTIONS

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

MEMBERS' COMPENSATION

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING

NUCLEAR ENERGY

ONTARIO ARTISTS

LANDFILL

ONTARIO ARTISTS

ACCESSIBILITÉ POUR LES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES /

FISH AND WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

EDUCATION LEGISLATION

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

PETITIONS

SCHOOL FACILITIES

CHILD PROTECTION

IDENTITY THEFT

LAND TITLES

PEACE OFFICERS' MEMORIAL DAY

GASOLINE PRICES

MACULAR DEGENERATION

EDUCATION FUNDING

PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

ONTARIO PHARMACISTS

FREDERICK BANTING HOMESTEAD

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

ORDERS OF THE DAY

ELECTORAL SYSTEM

REFERENDUM ACT, 2006 /

LOI DE 2006 SUR LE RÉFÉRENDUM

RELATIF AU SYSTÈME ÉLECTORAL

The House met at 1000.

Prayers.

PRIVATE MEMBERS'

PUBLIC BUSINESS

CO-OPERATIVES

Mr. Ted McMeekin (Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot): I move that, in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should commit to the promotion, development and support of the

co-operative model of business as one that should be replicated to provide stronger communities, increased social responsibility and continued economic growth, and that the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade commit to investigating the

establishment of a co-operative secretariat to support the co-operative model of business.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Mr. McMeekin has moved private member's notice of motion number 33.

Pursuant to standing order 96, Mr. McMeekin, you have up to 10 minutes.

Mr. McMeekin: I want to begin by sharing a bit of how I came to this place and this resolution today. I grew up on Hamilton Mountain, and not a lot of farming occurred in the area of West 16th

Street. When my wife set up a medical practice out in Flamborough, I of course went with her and, as fate would have it, became the mayor of the good town of Flamborough and was introduced to a whole new way of life, largely agricultural.

I once offered one of my new-found friends in Flamborough some time to help him bring in his crop, and he, knowing my experience and expertise, was wise enough to say, "No, thanks." In any event, I discovered

quickly that if one owes constituents nothing else, you certainly owe them the requirement that you listen, learn and then act, based on what you have heard and learned. I can attest that there's much in the agricultural, rural community that

people who are involved in agricultural industries for a living can teach, and certainly much that this representative has learned and continues to need to learn. Farmers are wonderful mentors and instructors, not only about their industry but

about life and about how to make your way through the world.

I discovered fairly quickly that we have much in common: a belief in hard work and in fairness, a passion for community and the need to celebrate our successes while we share one another's burdens. I discovered,

too, the importance of agricultural education. In fact, I carry around in the trunk of my car the curriculum developed by the OMAFRA group, and any time I get a chance to visit a school, I try to inflict the curriculum material on those who have a

responsibility to educate our young people.

I discovered that farmers not only feed cities, they nurture minds with their creative, entrepreneurial ways. I have also discovered from experience that innovative ideas and innovative agricultural industries

don't just happen; they require careful thought and can be best tackled together.

I want to quote from a letter from the local federation of agriculture in Hamilton-Wentworth. This was addressed to me: "Local farmers are looking to our political leaders to work together with us to develop

conditions that will attract investment and create a favourable economic setting in rural Ontario. In order to sustain vibrant communities and a vibrant agricultural industry, we want and need you to consider the benefits and the damage that your

decisions can create for the Ontario farmer and rural communities when setting policies, developing programs and making decisions."

Today more than ever, those who are going to succeed in our rapidly changing global economy are those who are prepared to ask three questions: "Why?" "What if?" and "Why not?" No approach, from my experience, is

more helpful in this regard than the co-operative association model of economic development.

Co-operatives are characterized by voluntary and open membership; democratic member control; member participation, both financially and in terms of time commitment; autonomy and independence; an orientation

toward education, training and information-sharing; a willingness to co-operate and to network in the interest of the common good; and, of course, most importantly, a real concern for community.

In Ontario, co-operatives are everywhere. They're in the agri-food sector, the finance sector, health care sector, housing, elder care, energy -- like Positive Power, a local award-winning co-operative in my

beloved Flamborough with which I have some connection; child care and elsewhere.

The co-op sector itself is enormous. There are some 2.3 million Ontarians who are members of a co-operative. There are some 1,900 co-operatives in Ontario, second only to Quebec, and these co-operatives control

over $19 billion in assets in Ontario and over $100 billion nationwide. In Ontario, there are over 9,000 persons who are employed directly through co-operatives.

Examples of successful co-ops include the CUMIS Group, insurance; the Co-operators Group, the largest Canadian-owned multi-product insurance company, with assets in excess of $6 billion; Gay Lea Foods, a leader

in the dairy industry in Ontario and Canada; GROWMARK Inc.; the co-operative housing federation of Canada -- and the list goes on and on.

Ontario farmers are and have always been at the forefront of the "new generation" co-operative movement. The goal is simple, as espoused quite articulately by the Christian Farmers and others, and that is to

find ways to attempt to retain ownership and control of their products beyond the farm gate and to invest in ventures that bring added value to those products. The model offers farmers the opportunity to join together to move up the value chain

and to capture additional value-added profits from the processing, packaging, marketing and shipping of their agricultural products.

Ethanol is a good example -- some of the ethanol co-operatives that have evolved. I've discovered recently from doing some research that there's actually a fuel out there called E-85 that burns 85% ethanol and

only 15% gas. Can you imagine a day not too far away when we'll be growing all of our fuel? That's an exciting prospect. It occurs to me that with the hybrid cars and the flex-fuel vehicles that will be needed for this E-85 gas, the co-operative

secretariat that I'm proposing today could very well, in the context of policy initiatives, look at perhaps granting tax credits to those who want to invest in building E-85 stations as well as direct tax incentives for those who purchase and use

E-85 gas.

But enough asides. I've lost one of my speakers, so I may have a couple of extra minutes, and I thought I'd ramble a bit and give a specific example. Enough background and statistical bafflegab. What is this

really all about? I want to get into that.

While Ontario co-operatives have a proud past and a very bright and promising future, this will only happen if the sector and governments are able to find ways to take collaborative action together. This is

something that was clearly outlined in the Ontario Co-operative Association's recent white paper entitled Capturing Co-Operative Opportunities.

I believe there's a need to encourage an economic secretariat to focus on the affirmation, encouragement and nurturing of the co-operative approach to economic development, supported with information, research

and the sharing of expertise. I believe that through a dedicated and integrated structure, supported by government, we can provide both a better focus and a more cohesive voice within government with respect to this important area. I have had

conversations with the Minister of Economic Development and Trade. She's quite keen to explore this, so that's helpful to know.

The federal government already has a co-operative secretariat -- it was started in 1987 -- which is really doing some really important things. I'll take a couple of minutes a bit later, but I just want to take a

second to acknowledge Teena Shah, who is with us. Maybe Teena could stand up. Teena is a graduate student from Wilfrid Laurier who has been doing some research. And there are special guests here today from the Ontario Co-operative Association:

Denyse Guy, Martin von Wuthenau, Jennifer Heneberry, Harvey Cooper, Elizabeth Record, Carolyn Lemon, Cathy Lang, Cynthia Stuart, Melinda Zytaruk and Joseph Zebrowski. I want to welcome them this morning as well. Thank you.

The Deputy Speaker: Further debate?

Mr. Ted Chudleigh (Halton): This is an interesting motion. It talks about the co-operative movement, which, I guess, has a somewhat checkered history. You can look at the agricultural sector and

can see a large number of co-ops that have developed over the years. Personally, I'm a member of one of them, so guess I can't be too hard on co-ops. Some of them have grown to be extremely large. Gay Lea Foods, for instance, as the member

mentioned, is a large and very successful co-op owned by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario. I think that part of the success of Gay Lea Foods must lie in the fact that they have a very good management structure.

Obviously, when you're a member of a co-op, you take great interest in it and perhaps you might even want to get somewhat involved in the running of the plant. You can imagine that a general manager or a

president of Gay Lea Foods answering to a large number of dairy farmers who have their own particular way of thinking would be a very untenable situation. I think we can all imagine that that situation wouldn't last very long and that either the

management structure would have to be set up and changed or the company would no longer exist. Given that Gay Lea Foods has a long and proud history in the dairy industry in Ontario, and having branched out somewhat from the dairy industry as

well, they obviously have a management system that allows for the independence of management to conduct their business on a very businesslike schedule.

I don't think it really matters very much how the ownership of the company is structured. I think what matters is that the company has good management, that it's well motivated, that it understands its

marketplace and that it conducts itself on a very businesslike basis. The success of Gay Lea Foods and other co-ops would be based on the fact that they run their businesses extremely well, not on the fact that they are a co-operative. Being a

co-operative is incidental to their success, I would suggest.

One of the other large co-ops in the food business in Ontario is the BC Tree Fruits co-operative, which markets most of the BC apples that are grown in the Okanagan Valley, mostly around Kelowna and Penticton.

We see those apples in the chain stores -- mostly Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and Spartan apples; I think those are three principal varieties that they market here, although they do grow many other varieties in BC. But watching that

marketplace grow up, rise and fall has impacted the management of BC Tree Fruits over time.

I remember, probably back in the 1970s, I think the chap's name was Ian Greenwood, who was the general manager of BC Tree Fruits. One year they had a bad crop, and another year, Washington state, which grows

about 10 or 15 times as many apples as BC, had a bumper crop and BC had a minor crop, and of course the marketplace was poor that year, to say the least. They weren't getting the return from their fruit because Washington state was in surplus and

that was driving the prices down. Poor Ian Greenwood suffered the fate of a poor marketplace and was let go, through no fault of his own.

I always felt that Ian was one of the best marketers in the area. I know that several packing houses in Ontario tried to hire him as soon as word got out that he was dismissed, but he decided not to move to

Ontario. He loved the Okanagan -- having visited the Okanagan, I can understand that love -- and he got another job in a related field out there. But it was because he worked for a co-operative and a lot of people were dissatisfied with the

marketplace and perhaps didn't have the intimate knowledge of what that marketplace was doing and how it got in the situation it was in that was the reason for his demise, which was too bad.

BC Tree Fruits also expanded, as a co-operative, into the processing business, and owns Sunripe Foods. Sunripe Foods started out processing apple juice and has now gone into a broad range of foods -- primarily

juices, but other foods as well -- and marketed those very successfully. I think that part of the success of Sunripe Foods is that it is once removed from the co-op. It is an independent business, run on a very professional basis. It has a sales

force across Canada and in export around the world. It's a very successful organization, but its structure is once removed from the co-op that manages BC Tree Fruits, and I think that has a lot to do with its success. The quality of people who are

involved in running any business is what contributes to its success, not necessarily the structure in which it organizes.

Another chap I remember from BC Tree Fruits, one of their marketing specialists -- I guess he was a broker in Toronto -- was Dave Austin, who marketed BC Tree Fruits in the 1960s and 1970s and, I think, even

back in the 1950s. Again, he was a very, very high-quality food broker in Toronto. I don't think Dave is with us anymore; he was old when I knew him. But he was a wonderful, high-quality person who represented a very high-quality product, and I

think sometimes those two things do go hand in hand.

The United Co-operatives of Ontario operated in the farming community in Ontario, and I think they did fairly well over a long period of time. I'm not sure when they started. I think they started somewhere in

the 1940s, but through the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and into the 1970s they expanded and did very well. It was a place where farmers, particularly grain farmers, could buy their seed in the spring and deliver their crops in the fall. They could buy

their fertilizers. Any profit that accrued to the individual co-op they were doing business with was split between the farmers on a proportionate basis if they were members.

It grew and expanded and did very well, until they got into some problems of expanding into areas that they perhaps were not as aware of, that they didn't have the basis of knowledge in. They did some of the

things that many companies do; they didn't keep their costs under control and eventually declared bankruptcy, went into receivership. That was a huge blow to a lot of farmers around Ontario, and it happened in the late 1970s, early 1980s, I

believe. But I don't think their demise was because they were a co-operative; I think their demise was because of the situation that they found themselves in and because the business environment that they were in just wasn't a very healthy one,

and they weren't very well prepared to withstand the particular situation that they found themselves in. That could have happened to a business structured on a share basis, an independent proprietorship, a partnership or a co-operative. It didn't

really matter that it was structured as a co-op.

Federated Co-ops is a co-op that operates in the three Prairie provinces, and it's interesting that they developed and have great success on the Prairies, because the Prairies are a unique part of Canada. We

talk about small-town Ontario; small-town Canada exists on the Prairies. Those are very small towns, and they don't have the infrastructure and they don't have the size, I guess, to warrant many of the services that might otherwise be provided in

a larger place, so the co-ops came along. In a very small town in Saskatchewan, you might find a co-op store where you could buy food, for instance, a grocery store; you could buy all the materials that you might need for your farm -- fertilizers,

tools and equipment; you could bring your crop into the co-op when you harvested it. There was a travel agency corner in some of those stores, and if you wanted to book a trip somewhere, they would supply you with that service. There were

insurance facilities where you could buy your insurance. But it was a co-operative that was based on the fact that these very, very small towns couldn't have the services that people would need, and they would have to drive great distances to get

some of them. Again, that was very successful.

I used to sell to Federated Co-ops when I was a salesman in a different life, and they were always very aggressive salesmen and always very good, very fair, but they wanted the best price. They were very

aggressive in that way, and I think that's just a trait of a successful company. So dealing with Federated Co-ops or dealing with Safeway, which is another large chain that operates in the Prairies, in the larger centres, there was very little

difference between the two. Safeway was one of the best-run chain stores in Canada at that time, and the co-ops were also extremely good and very, very competitive.

So it wasn't the fact that they were structured as a co-op. They could have been structured as a small business; they could have been structured as a partnership or a single proprietorship. The co-op nature of

the business didn't give them any advantage, so I'm not sure how this resolution is going to improve the lot of Ontarians.

Another example of a co-op is the TREC WindShare co-op. Most of us in this place are familiar with the wind turbine that generates electricity that's located on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition,

the CNE, down by the lake. That's a turbine that generates electricity. I think it generates about 750 kilowatts per hour when it runs, and it runs sporadically. It only runs when the Ontario power generators are buying electricity at high prices,

because I think they can only afford to run that windmill when prices are above 11 cents a kilowatt hour or somewhere in that ballpark. They can only afford to run it when prices are above that rate, which only happens during peak periods, and

only happens during those peak periods when there's peak demand. We're having a warm fall, a warm December. There isn't a huge demand for electricity, either for heating or cooling, and I've noticed in the last several weeks that that wind turbine

has been turning very sporadically; in fact, it has hardly been turning at all.

One of the things that this resolution is trying to develop -- it wants a co-operative secretariat or it's suggesting that the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade advise the government on whether or not

we should have a co-operative secretariat very similar to what the federal government has. In reading how this Co-operatives Secretariat works, what its premise is and what its job is -- for instance, it says, "Ensure that the needs of the

co-operative sector are taken into account by the federal government, especially in the development of policies and programs."

It sounds to me as though this secretariat is an inside lobbyist. When the government brings in bills that are going to affect the private sector, private sector associations or private sector companies go and

talk to the government and indicate to them how this is going to impact their business, whether it's going to be good or whether it's going to be bad, whether it's going to be more costly or whether it's going to save them money. They bring that

knowledge to the government, and people refer to that as lobbying tactics.

In the case of co-operatives, the federal government has its own in-house lobbyist in the Co-operatives Secretariat. I really don't understand why, as a member of the public, I should pay taxes to supply the

federal government with an in-house lobbyist when the private sector does it out of its pockets. The co-operative sector, at least federally -- this motion is to encourage the provincial government to do it provincially, to have an in-house

lobbyist that I pay for out of my pocket with my tax dollars. For that reason, I question whether this is a bill that we should be supporting in this House.

Mr. Tony Ruprecht (Davenport): I'm delighted to join in this debate and support our colleague Mr. Ted McMeekin in his resolution. What does Mr. McMeekin actually want? He says that, in the

opinion of this House, the government of Ontario should commit to promote, basically, the co-operative model of business. It's simply to promote. It doesn't say we're going to pass anything into law; it simply says to promote this type of

co-operative model of business in Ontario. Then he goes on to say, "That the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade commit to investigating the establishment of a co-operative secretariat."

I know this will be unanimously voted on today, because it is a step in the right direction. The co-op movement in Canada has a long history, as all of us know, especially those in the gallery today who are

supporting this bill and who are really in support of the co-op movement.

Most people who are in the big cities may not understand the full impact of what a co-operative actually is. I know that when I go to Sutton, Ontario, I see the co-op sign. In Toronto I don't see very many co-op

signs, but since I have an understanding from Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC and Quebec in a different life that I had previously -- if I had enough time to discuss this -- I am somewhat familiar with the co-op movement. But for most of us in the

cities, these signs simply indicate it's a different kind of business. Well, this business was established as a co-op movement, as the member from Halton so eloquently indicated, as a self-help organization, mostly and ubiquitously established in

the Prairies.

When I got my honours BA from Laurentian University, I had the pleasure to go out and work every summer at a different place in Canada. So the first time I really came in contact with this co-op movement was in

a one-grain-elevator town in Saskatchewan: population, seven farms; nearest post office, 25 miles away on a dusty road -- Stoughton, Saskatchewan. Did they have a co-op? They did. As was indicated previously, this co-op in Stoughton, Saskatchewan,

had everything in it. But, my friends, I tell you this: It wasn't just Estevan and Stoughton or a town just south of Regina near the US border where one of the famous politicians of Canada comes from, and I know the member from the NDP will know

where he came from. Where did he actually come from?

Mr. Gilles Bisson (Timmins-James Bay): Who?

Mr. Ruprecht: Well, who is your most important --

Mr. Bisson: Tommy.

Mr. Ruprecht: That's right: Mr. Douglas. Where did he come from?

Mr. Bisson: Weyburn.

Mr. Ruprecht: Weyburn, Saskatchewan. Did Weyburn have a co-op? Of course Weyburn had a co-op. Every small town in Saskatchewan and almost every small town in Alberta has a co-op. Whether you go

to Fort Assiniboine, Alberta, near the Athabasca River, very far away from Edmonton, north of Edmonton, every small town has a co-op. That was the only way they could help each other, whether they started an insurance business or whether they

started a business that had to do with finances, like a credit union.

Not to get off my topic, I had the pleasure, by the way, two days ago to speak at the newly founded -- actually, I should say the newly established -- offices of the Portuguese credit union in Toronto. They were

already 40 years old when 24 Portuguese people came together and said, "We're going to start this credit union because we have to help each other in Canada. We don't speak the language. We have a few dollars. We want to have credit, we go to the

banks, and guess what?" The banks would not give new immigrants any credit in 1966 when they first began this co-op movement in terms of the financial sector. So they had to get together. In a way they were forced to get together -- and I'm glad

Peter just arrived, because he was there too. We were looking at the walls of this credit union, and guess what we saw on the walls at the credit union. We saw Vasco da Gama, the great explorer, and Cabrillo, the other great explorer, taking these

small ships all over the world. For them, my friends, that was very fitting, because these photos and these paintings indicated that they too were on a journey, but this journey was in Canada, a new country. This journey was to establish a new

financial sector. That was also not a sure thing, just like Cabrillo and Vasco da Gama when they crossed the seas to find new countries and new places and new continents. They too were finding a new beginning in Canada, a new financial

establishment. They weren't sure what was happening here. They were just taking baby steps to begin, to start, as all immigrants had to do. But they had the wisdom in 1966 to say, "Let's get together, because we can't buy a new house, we can't get

a mortgage, we can't get insurance."

So I was really surprised when the member from Halton indicated how great the co-op movement was and how it should be supported by all of us, but then he said he wasn't sure because he thought the co-op

secretariat would be an in-house -- what did he call it?

Mr. Ted McMeekin (Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot): Lobbyist.

Mr. Ruprecht: An in-house lobbyist. Let's get one thing straight. That is, first, the federal government does have a secretariat that helps the co-op movement throughout many industries. That's

very important, obviously. I'm not sure that I would go as far as to say that this is nothing else but a glorified lobby group. The co-op movement, by its very design, by its very foundation, is organized to help its members. Consequently, it has

policy implications that go much beyond the bottom line of looking at the dollars. So while most businesses are interested and while most businesses are looking at the bottom line -- that's the most important aspect in the end -- there are policy

implications for co-ops that are much more important and go beyond the bottom line, because they are social implications. If Portuguese seniors and Portuguese explorers in the beginning, coming into Canada, were looking only at the bottom line

alone, they would not get out and try to help each other. The whole co-op movement is organized to help each other. In Toronto, we have co-ops in housing too. We have housing co-ops here, and that is very important.

I could go on, and I have a much greater say in all of this because I have some experience in all of these other provinces where this co-op movement was established, really, and where it flourishes. But today

I'm supporting Mr. Ted McMeekin in his desire to explore the possibility of establishing the secretariat, because it is very important for the future of the co-op movement.

Mr. Bisson: Good day, everybody. Good morning. How are we all doing?

Why did I start the debate with "Good day"? I've never done that before.

I just want to say that obviously the New Democratic Party caucus will be supporting this motion. This is something that's very in keeping with what a lot of people in society, let alone New Democrats, think is

important in regard to giving an alternate way of doing things on the economic front in our local communities. In some communities, this is a good option and in fact I think would be a good option in all communities, depending on how we go at

it.

I want to say -- and I hate to use the members' time to criticize this government, but I have to, because this motion speaks directly to the problem that we're having in many places across Ontario, but

specifically where I come from, Timmins-James Bay. It has always been that people, especially in northern Ontario -- I always relate northern Ontario to sort of like the Saskatchewan of Ontario, in the sense that people there understand that

government, at the end of the day, could be part of the solution. People in northern Ontario look at government differently than they do in other parts of the province, understanding that if the government is not at the able working with them in

order to find solutions to their problems -- either economic problems or infrastructure problems or whatever they are -- it's just not going to happen. I think this particular motion speaks to that, and I just want to go down that road for a

bit.

We have been undergoing -- and members will not be surprised that I'll talk about forestry yet again. We have had this mixed blessing in northern Ontario. In the community I come from, Timmins, and Sudbury and

others, we have a boom in mining. Gold prices are up; base metal prices are up; the mining sector is very active. The first diamond project to be going into production is in my riding, in Attawapiskat, and it's going to spend over $1 billion to

develop that project. There are literally hundreds of people working on that directly in the mining site. Many First Nations people have got work through that and many people in Timmins and the area communities are feeding the work that is going

on up in James Bay. At the same time, mining projects all across the north are basically a great place right now to be looking for work because the mining sector is doing quite well.

However, as we know, things are not always well. In this particular case, the forestry sector has basically fallen flat. There are a whole bunch of problems, and I will argue that some of them are in our control

and some are not. But the ones that are in our control, the issues that we could do in order to assist the forestry sector to restructure, are not being done by this government. The government has taken the position that they are going to pursue a

laissez-faire economic strategy, and whatever happens at the end, when it comes to the forestry sector and how things shake down, is just naturally the way things have to go.

This motion basically contradicts that, and that's why I want to support this as a second point. I truly believe, because it's been done before, that many of the mill closures that we've seen in northern

Ontario, in places like Opasatika, Smooth Rock Falls, Timmins, Thunder Bay -- and the list goes on -- could have been averted and completely stopped if the government had chosen to be a little bit more co-operative in its work with those northern

communities to find solutions.

Are there tough challenges? The answer is yes. There's no question there are things happening in the industry that make it very challenging for the industry to stay viable. But are there things that we can do

provincially to help overcome those difficulties? The answer to that is yes. That is why many people in northern Ontario are as mad as heck at the McGuinty government, and specifically Mr. Ramsay, for not rising to the challenge of working with

communities.

I want to use a couple of examples. The first one is Opasatika. Opasatika had a sawmill that was owned by Tembec, which operated with about 100 people all told, management and staff. In a small community of 900

people, when the only employer in town shuts down, it's a pretty tough thing to take. Here's the irony. This particular sawmill was making money, but from a corporate perspective, the company that owns it, Tembec, said -- and I'll just make up a

number -- "We have 10 sawmills. If we can make the same amount or more by operating with eight or seven sawmills, our shareholders will get more money."

I understand why Frank Dottori and the board of Tembec made the decision to shut down Kirkland Lake, Chapleau and Opasatika. I don't support it, but I understand it. From a business perspective, they said, "If

the government is willing to allow us to take the timber that is normally allocated to these mills, move it somewhere else and have larger supermills, we can make more money, and we will do that." The government was complicit in that decision.

If the government of the day, in this case the McGuinty government and the Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Ramsay, had only said, "Tembec, we understand you're having a tough time. You want to close down

Kirkland Lake, Chapleau and Opasatika, fine. That's a corporate decision that you have to make. We're telling you two things: We're prepared to work with you to keep them open, but if you ultimately decide to close them, by the way, the rights on

the wood are not going to get transferred. It belongs to the community." That's a co-operative model that we should be following. If the government, Mr. Ramsay and Mr. McGuinty, had done that, I guarantee you that Opasatika, Kirkland Lake and

Chapleau would not have shut down, because they were profitable mills. It was a question of how much profit and how much money the corporation wants to make -- which speaks to this motion.

We understand. I'm not going to stand here as a New Democrat and say, "Oh, the private sector is bad, and these corporations are evil." That's not the point. They march to a different drummer. They march to the

instructions of their shareholders, the people on the board. They're there to maximize return on investment. That's what drives them. But that may not necessarily be good for the people who live in our communities, especially in small-town

Ontario.

When you have large, multinational companies or, in some cases, large Canadian companies that are making decisions that are going to affect the wherewithal when it comes to the economics of a community in a

negative way, as we did with Opasatika, I argue that it is the responsibility of the government of Ontario to step in and say, "That's fine. You want to make a corporate decision to close down, that's your decision. We can't stop you. But there

are some things we're going to do, and one of them is" -- in that case, the government should have said, "We will not allow you to take the wood from the Opasatika mill, the Chapleau mill and the Kirkland Lake mill and transfer it to other mills

within your operation so you can maximize return." I will tell you, if we had done that, they would never have shut those mills down, or they would have sold them off and we would have been able to spin them off into a new company, and those

people would still be working.

This motion speaks to that to a degree, because what you're saying in your motion is what we've been calling for for a long time for northern Ontario -- not just Gilles Bisson and Howard Hampton as New

Democrats but community leaders, Liberals and Conservatives alike, who say, "We need to have the government be there as a player when these decisions are made by corporations that are going to impact negatively on our communities, to have the

wherewithal within the government to do the things that have to be done to save them."

Another example is the community of Smooth Rock Falls. I've got to say, it's heart-wrenching. We've had an employer in that town -- originally it was Abitibi that was there for years. It's a kraft mill, about

700 tonnes a day, employees, with staff, about 300-odd people, and ancillary jobs, probably 400. The only employer in town -- gone, closed. Again, it's a question of the company saying, "We can't make enough money." In the case of Smooth Rock

Falls, depending on who you talk to, some corporate people would say, "Oh, we're losing money," but then when you talk to them privately it was, "Well, we're not making cash. We're not losing money, but we're not making as much money as we need,

and we need cash to pay off our debts. We see this as a drain because we have to make investments in that mill, and we're not going to use the cash to invest in that mill to keep it going."

If the government of the day -- in this case Mr. Ramsay and Mr. McGuinty -- had rolled up their sleeves and done what this member calls for, which is to have a co-operative approach to how we deal with that

for Smooth Rock Falls, the mayor -- at that time it was Réjeanne Demeules -- and her council, the local union, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, the community economic development people and others could have sat down with

Tembec to figure out how we rise to the challenge of keeping that mill open.

But at the end of the day, if Tembec still made the decision that, "We're going to close," as they did, the government had to be in a position to say, "All right, you've made a corporate decision. We need to

make a public decision, and that decision is, all of the wood allocations to that mill are going nowhere else but to that mill. We're going to make it known that if anyone wants to buy this mill, the chips that are allocated to that mill from

trees that are cut in different forests, which are allocated by minister's directive, will still be available to that mill. We are not going to allow you to spin off the hydroelectric dam on that river."

Imagine if Tembec decides to spin off the dam or go into the energy business themselves. They will be effectively taking one of the natural resources of that community, which is cheap electrical power, away

from the possibility of keeping that mill open. We all know what electricity costs in the province. There's a dam sitting there that has specifically been built in order to furnish electricity to that mill, and if the government allows Tembec --

and my suspicion is that they will, in the end -- to either keep selling electricity into the grid at a premium, because the price of electricity is high, or to spin it off in some way, you're effectively closing the door on the possibility of

that mill reopening.

I'm saying this publicly, and I know Tembec will read this and they'll get mad at me, but I'm here to represent the people who live in my community. I say it here: If, at the end of the day, we were to go to

Tembec and say, "There are environmental considerations to the decommissioning of that mill. We are going to go through it with a fine-toothed comb and, Tembec, if you want to close down, there's going to be a cost of closure," it would set the

conditions such that the company would have to make a decision. They would have to be much more co-operative in their approach to the community, the workers and the province, and say, "Okay, we're going to close down because we don't have any

money, but we're not going to stand in the way of transferring this mill over to somebody else and allowing somebody else to buy it."

Is it possible? You're tootin' right it's possible. We did it before. I remember Kapuskasing, just up the highway, an hour's drive from Smooth Rock Falls, in 1992. The owner of that mill at that date was

making a similar decision. He was going to idle two of the paper machines on that mill and bring it down to what they called the Darwin plan. It would have put hundreds of people out of work. It would have decimated the community of Kapuskasing.

But at the end of the day, the community, the union and the government of the day -- the New Democrats, in that case -- positioned the company in such a way that they had to sell the mill at a reasonable rate to the workers. The workers

effectively took control of that mill. As it turned out, Tembec ended up becoming the newly created company as a result of those actions.

But it was because the government was prepared to be a player. It was because, when the community came to the government and said, "We don't accept the mill closure in our community; it is our only employer in

town" -- it would be like walking into Oshawa and saying, "All of the car plants are closing down," and the government saying, "Oh well, that's laissez-faire economics. Whatever happens, happens." We didn't accept that, and as a result we

restructured it, the employees took it over, they ran the company and for 10 years were quite successful and are still making money today. We did it in Atikokan; we did it in Thunder Bay; we did it in Sault Ste. Marie on two occasions -- at Algoma

Steel and at St. Marys Paper; and with the Algoma Central Railway we did a different thing. It wasn't worker ownership, but that a different issue.

My point is, the member is right. We can use the office of government -- or the instrument of government, I should say -- in a way that is positive for the people we represent. And government, at the end of

the day, must always do what is right, not only for the shareholders of the company, because we have to be mindful of that, but ultimately for the people who live in the community. When the shareholders' principles and values get in the way and

hurt a community and its members, that's where government has to stand and say, "Enough of that game."

I want to just digress a little bit to the other part of this, which is economic development, because that's really what this is all about. I was absolutely shocked when I set up a meeting with a company in

Hearst called LacWood. LacWood has a state-of-the-art plant where they make furniture for Ikea. They make shelving units for Ikea, and that's their customer.

We had a meeting with Ikea where they were asking, "What kinds of things can the government do to help us expand and look at new markets, all of that kind of stuff?" I said, "Let's set up a meeting with

economic development and trade." I was astounded, when we sat down with economic development and trade, to see that they didn't have programs to support employers like that to be able to expand their markets. There was nobody within the ministry

to look at what markets are out there and what is possible as far as value-added products in northern Ontario. They just didn't do it. Their strategy, they told us, was the big automakers. That was their whole strategy. I say, that's great for the

auto sector; that's wonderful. I think the auto sector should get all the support it wants. But darn it, there are a hell of a lot more people in this economy than just the auto sector. Forestry is one of the most important industries in Ontario,

not just northern Ontario. It's one of the largest exporters. As far as our GDP, it's one of the biggest players in our economy. So I was shocked to see that the ministry did not have people working there who are at the disposal of entrepreneurs

wanting to do value-added projects in northern Ontario and helping them identify where the markets are.

Clearly, part of the problem we have with value-added, amongst others, is that somebody is going to have a great idea to transform a piece of wood or a rock or whatever into some value-added product, somebody

who knows how do it well and is probably very good at managing their business, but what they don't have many times is the ability to identify where they're going to sell their product. It seems to me that this motion would, to a certain extent,

advance that, that at least we could put people in place at economic development and trade to say, "Hang on, LacWood. We're going to work with you and see where there are other markets that you can sell your product so that you can grow and expand

or so that maybe somebody else can get into the business." That's how you grow an economy.

The one thing I want to end on is that what really disappoints me with this government, above all, is their approach to how they've dealt with economic development and forestry in northern Ontario. The Premier

has said it. Basically, the long and the short of his debate, if you close your eyes and listen carefully -- he sounds like Mike Harris -- he's saying, "It's laissez-faire economics. At the end of the day, what happens is going to happen." For us

in northern Ontario, that's a non-starter.

So I will support this, along with other New Democrats. We think it's a step in the right direction. I'm glad we at least convinced somebody to do the right thing. He has convinced himself; I won't take the

credit for that, because obviously this is something he cares about. But when a member of the government is prepared to stand up and say, "We're going to do something positive," I think it's incumbent upon us in the opposition to support it and

give it our wholehearted support.

Mr. Jeff Leal (Peterborough): It's a pleasure for me to take a few minutes to get on the record and support the resolution this morning from my colleague the member from

Ancaster-Dundas-Flamborough-Aldershot.

Mr. McMeekin is a man who certainly employs the spirit of co-operation in his role as an MPP. I had the opportunity to be in his riding a few short weeks ago, an opportunity to discuss another issue related to

source water protection. What struck me that morning, being with Mr. McMeekin and his friends, was the co-operation, bringing together people to deal with an issue, to discuss an issue and, ultimately, to come up with some ideas that might make

the topic we were discussing that day -- source water protection -- more effective, more meaningful and more practical for a group that would be dealing with that issue. That's the co-operative spirit that Mr. McMeekin brings as an MPP in

representing his riding so very well.

I just want to have an opportunity to reflect on some of the comments in this very fine document. It's a white paper on co-operative development in Ontario. The second paragraph down says, "While it is a

highly effective type of business enterprise, a co-operative is different from other business models. Formed by its members to meet their specific needs, a co-operative, by its very structure, has social and public policy goals in addition to

financial goals. For a co-op, there is always more than one bottom line." I think that's a very important philosophical underpinning for co-ops in Ontario.

On page 2 it says, "Public/co-operative partnerships can be an effective alternative social services delivery model, helping government to maximize returns on precious taxpayer dollars" -- and I know the

member is always concerned about getting a return from our precious taxpayer dollars. "In health and housing, for instance, studies show that co-operatives can deliver services at a lower cost than the private sector. Ontario co-operatives are

also active in a number of other areas that are ripe for public partnership, including home care, child care, elder care, education, renewable energy, aboriginal business, rural development and sustainability, community economic development, and

financial services in small communities."

I'll just talk for a moment about a real-life example from my community in Peterborough. In 1960 there were 4,800 employees at Canadian General Electric in Peterborough. Many of them, just post-war, were young

families wanting to build new homes, wanting to renovate existing homes, perhaps take out a loan to buy that first new car. At that time, they looked at the chartered banks that were charging interest rates which for some of them were difficult to

meet. So they formed a credit union in Peterborough called Cangeco, which, when you look at that, is the short form of Canadian General Electric Co. They put together this Cangeco Credit Union in 1960. It was an opportunity for just ordinary

workers to sit on the board. It was an opportunity for just ordinary workers to learn about board governance. It was about opportunities for ordinary workers to develop operating policies. Those skills that were learned in those early days in the

1960s -- learning about how to operate on a board, how to establish operating policies, how to market a product to employees -- were really a learning experience for those individuals, who took those skills back into the General Electric plant and

used them to further advance their career at GE. They also took those skills and were able to apply them to organizations outside the working environment, those organizations in a community where those skills to sit on volunteer boards are really

required.

Under that, Cangeco existed until the 1980s, when it went larger than just serving Canadian General Electric employees and went to the broader public. It developed into what it is today, Kawartha Credit Union,

with several branches throughout east-central Ontario. I know there's one in Lindsay, and there are several other branches serving east-central Ontario. It's certainly an opportunity to provide loans and other services that have that individual

kind of personal service that people sometimes don't get in the large multinational corporations and the large banks.

There's also a personal connection to this. My wife's grandfather, Emmett McGerrity, worked for the United Co-operatives of Ontario for many years. I'm sorry my friend from Durham isn't here this morning. My

wife's grandfather actually set up the United Co-operative in Ontario, which indeed is in the riding of my friend from Durham.

Another local example I'd like to talk about was the Greenhill co-op, which established itself in Peterborough right after the Second World War. It was an opportunity for a group of citizens to come forward

where they would make a pledge: after they had spent their daytime hours working in various manufacturers in Peterborough, they would sign on to build homes. So every evening, after they finished their day's work, they would spend many hours

building homes, and again on the weekends. The Greenhill co-op was a subdivision of about 30 homes. It took about five or six years to completely build that subdivision, but it was done on the co-operative basis, and after six years, 25 to 30

families indeed had their homes.

So this is a motion that needs our support. I commend the member for bringing it forward today.

The Deputy Speaker: Mr. McMeekin, you have up to two minutes to respond.

Mr. McMeekin: I want to thank the members from Halton, Peterborough, Davenport and Timmins-James Bay for their assistance this morning.

The whole co-operative economic movement is a community-based movement that calls for the investment of time and energy and resources, where people literally attempt to achieve together what they are unlikely,

perhaps, to be able to achieve apart. It's my sense, as a government and as a member of this people's place, that we ought to be unabashed partisans of that kind of entrepreneurial pioneer spirit. When communities want to come together to achieve

what they can't achieve apart, I think we need to celebrate that. We need to find whatever ways we can to help them pool their expertise, to acquire the added value that so often can be clearly shown to come in the whole fair trade movement, in

some of the eco-friendly, cutting-edge technologies, and to stand with our First Nations in our isolated rural communities, as the member from Timmins-James Bay alluded to. I think that's really important work. We need to find creative ways to do

that. To be useful at all on a good day, the government has to find ways to do that. We ought not to be in any way ashamed of that.

I'm proud of the folks who are involved in the Ontario Co-operative Association, who every day get up and work hard at building stronger, healthier, more caring and compassionate communities, and of the

students who come and do work at my office to help us pull this together. We need this. We need ways to stickhandle important issues between ministries. The minister is onside. I say, let's get on with it.

WEARING OF HELMETS

Mr. John Milloy (Kitchener Centre): I move that, in the opinion of this House, the government of Ontario:

Recognize the safety benefits of wearing an approved helmet by those using bicycles, in-line skates, skateboards, scooters and similar devices;

Acknowledge that the original intent of legislative changes made by this Legislature to Ontario's Highway Traffic Act in 1993 was that all cyclists should wear an approved helmet regardless of age;

Make helmet use mandatory for all cyclists in Ontario by repealing the regulation which exempts cyclists over the age of 18 from these legislative changes;

Explore legislative measures to make helmet use mandatory for those using other muscular-powered devices such as in-line skates, skateboards and scooters;

Take into account those who cannot wear a helmet because to do so would interfere with his or her religious beliefs or practices;

Instruct the Ministry of Health Promotion, in conjunction with the Ministry of Transportation and other relevant ministries and stakeholders, to develop a comprehensive education and safety campaign aimed at

encouraging helmet use by those using bicycles, in-line skates, skateboards, scooters and similar devices; and

Ensure that any safety campaign also address broader safety issues related to bicycles, in-line skates, skateboards, scooters and similar devices, including the role and responsibility of communities in

ensuring the safety of all those using such devices, as well as the special responsibility of motorists to ensure the safety of cyclists and others on our roadways.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Mr. Milloy has moved private member's notice of motion number 24. Pursuant to standing order 96, Mr. Milloy, you have up to 10 minutes. The floor is

yours.

Mr. Milloy: I acknowledge from the outset the length of my motion that's presented here today. What I'd like to do is maybe boil it down to one sentence, and that is asking this House, through

this motion, to acknowledge the fact that wearing a properly worn helmet that meets safety requirements can reduce injuries and even save lives in Ontario.

I think this a proposition that most of us in the House understand. There has been extensive scientific research done by leading experts in the field. At the same time, I think all of us would acknowledge that

sometimes what speaks louder than data is the experience of individuals, of people who have been involved in serious accidents and, because they were wearing a helmet, were able to avoid death or avoid an injury that might have been much more

serious.

Today I'm very honoured to have a number of proponents here at Queen's Park who represent both of these propositions: those who have done data and research studies as well as those who have experienced tragic

falls.

As you can see, I have a great group here on both sides of the House. So with time limitations, I'd just like to acknowledge a handful: first of all, Dr. Charles Tator, head of ThinkFirst Foundation of Canada

and one of Canada's leading neurosurgeons, who spoke eloquently this morning about the scientific and medical reasons for wearing helmets; also Dr. Alison Macpherson, a researcher at York University who has written extensively on this topic.

I'd also like to acknowledge a number of survivors who this morning shared their stories with great courage: April Ferguson, a young woman who experienced an accident several years ago; Barrie Faulkner, a

gentleman who experienced an accident just over a year ago; and Shelley Gauthier, who was involved in an accident in 2001 -- all of them bicycling accidents. The fact that they were wearing helmets, all of them stated very clearly today, is the

reason they're alive.

The data are clear. Studies have shown that wearing a helmet can lessen the likelihood of a head injury by 85% and a brain injury by up to 88%. Although in a sense we're here today to talk about helmets, I'd

also argue that we're here today to talk about human nature, that unfortunate belief we all have that we're somehow a little immortal, that all of us are a little too lucky or too smart or too fortunate to be involved in an accident. Yet we all

know that isn't the case. The simple fact is that it could happen to any of us, and the results could be disastrous.

This Legislature, as the motion points out, made a very important first step in 1993. It passed a motion that was put forward by former MPP Dianne Cunningham from the London area. What that bill said was that

everyone in Ontario who's riding a bicycle should have to wear a helmet. One of the strange twists of fate: The government brought forward regulations to enforce the provisions of that bill, and in those regulations exempted everyone over the age

of 18. So in effect, the law as it stands in Ontario only deals with children and youth.

Don't get me wrong: This was an important first step, and studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of this law in reducing brain injuries and head injuries for children. But at the same time, studies have

shown that it hasn't had a similar effect on adults, who don't have to wear helmets. In fact, a recent study by Dr. Macpherson, whom I just mentioned, showed that the rate of adults who are going to our emergency departments with head injuries as

a result of cycling accidents is in fact on the increase. So only half of our work is done, and I think there's an obligation on this Legislature and on this government to continue it by making sure that all cyclists in the province have to wear

helmets. Accidents don't discriminate on the basis of age. I'm not sure why our laws should.

There's something more than just the safety of adults. There's the fact that adults serve as examples to children, especially their own children. There's also the simple fact of stating the values of our

society. If we believe that safety is important, if we believe that all of us have an obligation to take reasonable measures to ensure our safety, then enshrining that in law is a statement of our values and helps when we're educating all people,

especially young people.

Mr. Speaker, as you may be aware -- I believe you were in the chair -- a little over two years ago I brought forward a private member's bill, Bill 129, which asked the government to enshrine obligatory helmet

use, for cyclists and also for in-line skates and skateboards, in law. That bill passed second reading and languished on the order paper, as so many do. But at the same time, there were some technical problems that were brought to my attention

about its relationship to the Highway Traffic Act and scope and so forth. So what I've decided to do today is bring forward a motion as opposed to a bill. What this motion would do is address these issues in a broader way and put the onus on the

government, in a sense, to deal with some of the technical matters.

First, I'm calling upon the government to remove this exemption that exists in regulation and make it mandatory for all cyclists to wear helmets.

Second, I'm asking them to explore the possibility of legislating mandatory helmet use for other, similar devices such as skateboards, rollerblades and scooters. Here again, the statistics bear out the need

for this sort of legislation. I checked in a recent year, I think it was a year or two ago, and there were 8,000 young people brought to Ontario's emergency departments with emergencies from this type of activity, and of those, over 1,000 had head

injuries -- certainly a call for some action in this area.

The final part of the motion that I presented today deals with the whole issue of education. One thing I've discovered over the last two years in my discussions with various groups and organizations that have

supported this bill and been involved in cycling is that helmet use has to be seen as part of a larger picture. The simple fact is that we all have to ensure that we have safety on our roadways, that we have safety when we're cycling, when we're

rollerblading, when we're skateboarding. That involves helmets, but it also involves making motorists aware of their obligations, making everyone aware of their obligations to follow the laws of the land when it comes to the Highway Traffic Act

and other provisions and bylaws. So what the final part of my motion does is call on the government to educate people, first about the important need for helmets when you are involved in these activities, but second of all, about their obligations

and responsibilities to move forward.

Specifically, I have asked that the Ministry of Health Promotion, which has a great interest in accident prevention, take leadership on this, along with the Ministry of Transportation. I believe that for a law

to be effective, individuals have to understand the reasoning behind it. At the same time, I believe that for an education campaign to be important, it has to have a bit of teeth that the type of legal imperative we're calling for today would give

it.

I think the combination of legislation and education will go a long way to creating the type of society where none of us will get on a bicycle or put on a pair of rollerblades or a skateboard without wearing a

helmet automatically. All of us know about the experience of seat belts. I'm old enough, unfortunately, to remember a time when seat belts weren't mandatory in the province and certainly not many people wore them. Now we drive 20 feet in a parking

lot and it's automatic. So the hope of this motion is to create this sort of culture of safety, because at the end, it's about the individual.

It's about people like April Ferguson, who spoke today in very courageous terms about how she was setting out a few weeks before her wedding and was involved in a serious accident, but because she wore a

helmet, she was here today to tell the story. It's about Barrie Faulkner, a gentleman who was riding on a very quiet road in his community, one where he said there's hardly any traffic, and due to a mishap, he was involved in a crash involving his

head. He was thought for the first few minutes to be dead. In fact, he survived and is making tremendous progress. As he spoke this morning at the press conference, it was because he was wearing a helmet. It's people like Shelley Gauthier, who was

also here with us today at Queen's Park, who was involved in an accident on a bike trail and, again, because she was wearing a helmet, she's here today to share her story with us.

That's what it's about: It's about the personal stories, as well as the survivors and the people I've brought forward today. I also have representatives of numerous groups who work with people who have had

brain injuries -- safety advocates -- and they can tell you of countless situations and countless instances where people have been spared tragedy because they've been wearing a helmet; and unfortunately the inverse, where tragedy has struck

families, has struck individuals because people weren't wearing a helmet.

I was at a recent conference and, at the end of the day, someone stood up and very passionately spoke out saying, "It's only a helmet." And it is only a helmet. It's a small thing to ask to make people safe,

to make sure that our province moves forward as a place where safety is paramount.

Interruption.

The Deputy Speaker: I would ask our guests to remain quiet but enjoy the proceedings. Further debate?

Ms. Laurie Scott (Haliburton-Victoria-Brock): I certainly do appreciate the opportunity to contribute to the debate brought forward this morning, to speak to the motion from the member for

Kitchener Centre which focuses on the importance of the issue of approved safety helmets for cyclists, in-line skaters, skateboarders, scooters and similar devices. We support the intent of the resolution brought forward by my colleague from

Kitchener Centre and especially the development of this comprehensive education and safety campaign aspect of the resolution.

I welcome the members from the gallery, too. Your enthusiasm is great. We just have some rules in here where you can't applaud, but we appreciate your enthusiasm and all the contributions you've certainly made

to the development of this resolution. Especially, a thank you to the survivors, who experienced it first-hand and saw something they could do so it didn't happen to other people. So I appreciate the contributions and the time you have given the

member for Kitchener Centre.

As it currently exists, people 18 and under are required to wear safety helmets and adults are encouraged to consider wearing helmets, so the education aspect of this resolution is very important. With the

younger generation, with my nieces, when we go horseback riding, sometimes I don't necessarily reach for my helmet first thing. Theirs are on, and they tell me that I can't go out unless I put my helmet on. So the younger generation is getting

some form of education and they share it with the older group -- as I say, myself.

It has been mentioned, and I also want to mention, that the PC member of provincial Parliament Dianne Cunningham should be recognized and credited for bringing in the Ontario helmets law through her private

member's bill many years ago when she was a member of the third party of this Legislature. I want to thank her for her past work. It makes good sense. I recognize the member for putting forward that we should be enhancing this, especially the

education aspect.

Head injury does not discriminate on the basis of age. When see the police reports we get on our computers and if there's been a cyclist accident with a van or some accident, it's usually people over 18 who

have been involved in those accidents, whether cycling to work or not.

The member mentioned the need to work with different ministries, the Ministry of Health Promotion "in conjunction with the Ministry of Transportation and other ministries and stakeholders to develop a

comprehensive education and safety campaign aimed at encouraging helmet use by those using bicycles, in-line skates, skateboarders, scooters and similar devices."

British Columbia, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island have legislation requiring all cyclists to wear helmets. There is some research here that says a properly fitted helmet helps protect the

head by absorbing the force from a crash or a fall and decreases the risk of serious head injury by as much as 85% and brain injury by as much as 88%. Brain injury is the most common cause of death among cyclists, skateboarders etc. Approximately

50% of cycling injuries involve adults. Only 42% of cyclists in Toronto wear a helmet. That's surprising to me, but that's educating us as we discuss this private member's resolution this morning. A survey in 2002 by Safe Kids Canada found that

79% of Canadian parents support helmet legislation for both adults and children.

In my other profession, before I entered the Legislature, I spent over 20 years being a registered nurse in various settings, but a good portion was in intensive care in Lindsay at Ross Memorial Hospital. In

the riding of Haliburton-Victoria-Brock, in all its aspects, more and more cyclists are seen up there as more people are encouraged and as more trails are developed. I've seen countless people come in with head injuries from their different sports

-- just an accident that happened. You don't plan for accidents, but it's the type of thing where you should plan for the worst and hope for the best. It's a sad thing that these patients suffered injuries that could have been prevented if they

had been wearing a safety helmet.

It mentions the seat belt law when it first came in, the restrictions and the pushback on that, and now it's such a reflex, as the member mentioned. You put it on in the parking lot before you leave to go onto

the road. That type of education campaign is what we need. I just got a police report in from Durham about an accident that happened yesterday with a cyclist and a van and the injuries that occurred.

It's also important to note that in many cases where injuries occur it's not because of anything wrong, where the victim wasn't paying attention. It happens: busy lives, we're in our cars, things happen.

It's interesting and somewhat ironic how often I see in-line skaters, cyclists and skateboarders wearing all the protective gear besides the helmets: the elbow pads, the kneepads and wrist protectors.

Sometimes you see all the gear on the lower parts of the body and they miss the helmet. Sometimes they're not thinking. That is going back to the education component.

Every jurisdiction where this type of legislation exists has shown a reduction in serious head injuries in children, young people and adults. Anything we can do to keep Ontarians safer, we need to consider in

this Legislature and to educate as many people as we can. It's important that we strike the proper balance that ensures safety but also limits the level of government intrusion in people's lives. You do hear of some pushback.

We got an e-mail from a gentleman in British Columbia, where the law is in but is enforced arbitrarily. He's saying that it depends where you are. In Victoria, it's enforced. The cruisers were pulling him

over. He didn't know why the cruisers were pulling him over. It was because he wasn't wearing a helmet. In Vancouver, it's not enforced as strictly. A key

part is how we're going to enforce it. Will it be enforced equally across the province? All

these things need to be considered.

We're hoping this moves forward. I know it was brought forward before. What's the next stage? Let's get it to committee. Let's get some feedback. How can we equally enforce it across the province? As I said,

some examples have come in. Member from Kitchener Centre, we're getting examples from British Columbia, so people are paying attention all across Canada to your resolution here this morning. When you said "a culture of safety," it's an appropriate

phrase to use. The how-to is always a hard question, but we can all work together on it, and I'm sure we will.

I appreciate the opportunity of speaking to this bill this morning. Another of my colleagues would like to speak to it later too. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Mr. Tony Ruprecht (Davenport): I appreciate the opportunity to support our colleague from Kitchener Centre in terms of the helmet law. The member's motion, while significant and long,

essentially boils down to the fact that we should make helmet use mandatory for all cyclists in Ontario. I know that probably most of us will support this legislation and this motion.

How many bicycle-related injuries are there in Ontario? I was astonished when I looked at the specifics of how many injuries there are and how many times our emergency department has to respond to these

injuries. In Ontario alone in the past three years -- get this -- there have been 27,898 emergency department visits. Wow, imagine that: 27,898. That's a massive amount, massive numbers of people who have to go to the emergency department and be

treated because of accidents.

Do these injuries impact our community? Mr. Milloy gave us a very interesting fact sheet from which I shall read. According to ThinkFirst Canada, he says, each catastrophic head and spinal cord injury costs

approximately $4 million to $8 million for health care, rehabilitation and lost earnings over a lifetime. Wow. Again, these are massive numbers: $4 million to $8 million for health care, rehabilitation and lost earnings for each case.

In my riding of Davenport, on Springhurst Avenue -- I live on Springhurst Avenue -- there is a group home. I've lived there for over 35 years. I've walked and cycled many times on Springhurst Avenue, and I see

the results of these kinds of accidents. It is sometimes tragic to see people in wheelchairs and people who are trying to walk with a cane and with other equipment. Sometimes I even see people with two others trying to help them to take the first

steps out of the home. When you see this kind of image in front of you, then you know something should be done, not just to protect and interfere with people's lives but to protect our citizens. So this helmet law, this regulation, must be changed

and must be supported.

On a personal note, I want to tell you what happened to me. I was having my bike out with my girlfriend a few years ago and we rode down to Lakeshore. My house is very close to Lakeshore Boulevard. While I was

looking to the left, I saw a car on the corner trying to make a right-hand turn. Because the traffic comes this way, the car driver was not interested in who was on his right. There were two bicycles almost parked next to the car: mine and my

girlfriend's. While he was interested in looking to the left because of the traffic coming this way, he was not looking to the bicycles at all. He had no interest in looking to the right, where I and my girlfriend were standing. Consequently, as

soon as he had a chance, he pulled the car over and turned right without looking, and he drove over -- I just had a chance to pull my bicycle back. My girlfriend was to my left, and unfortunately she was caught. The tire of the car drove over her

front tire and she was smashed, along with her bicycle, to the ground. Luckily, she wore a helmet, and hit her helmet against my pedal bar that was pulled back.

If she had not worn a helmet, we don't know what would have happened. The bicycle, of course, had to be replaced, and she had a few scratches. She came away with a fear of riding a bike again. But this, to me,

showed that it is obvious what we have to do: We have to wear helmets.

I was the first one, being right in front of this kind of an accident, who from then on always wore a helmet. It is very clear that it is very important that this helmet law be passed.

There are other jurisdictions that have helmet laws in place. There is British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the fines are not very high, apparently, if you're caught without

a helmet. The fine in British Columbia is only $29; in Nova Scotia, $25. PEI has the highest fine, between $50 and $100. I would say that these other jurisdictions also have had experience and also know about some of these very tragic

incidents.

I'm therefore delighted to lend my support to this most important motion by my colleague from Kitchener Centre.

Mr. Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): First of all, I want to say I'm happy to rise and speak in favour of the resolution from the member for Kitchener Centre. But I want to tell the audience who are

listening -- first of all, I want to say, even though the Speaker doesn't want the audience to applaud, I appreciate the fact that from time to time there is somebody in the audience willing to applaud. So we very much appreciate that.

The Deputy Speaker: It's not the Speaker. I enjoy their presence. It's the standing orders, you know.

Mr. Hardeman: I'm sure the only person really interested in seeing those enforced is the Speaker. But we do appreciate them being here.

I do want to say, as my presentation goes forward, that even though I support the resolution, I do have some concerns, not so much with the resolution as with the process.

Safe Kids Canada reports that a properly fitted helmet can reduce the risk of serious head injury by as much as 85% and brain injury by 88%. Obviously, anything we do that would reduce the negative impact of

misfortune is a good thing. As a parent, I know the fear and concern you feel when you watch your child going where they could get hurt or hurt themselves. That feeling is there as a parent, but it doesn't disappear because the child gets to be

18. In fact, we still want our children protected even after they have children of their own. I was pleased to reach that point this past year where my children have children of their own.

At the same time, I think we need to be cautious how this process would be implemented. There was a reason why the bill that was introduced and passed on behalf of Dianne Cunningham, one of my colleagues a

number of years ago, stopped at the age of 18 as opposed to being for everyone who was on a bicycle: Those who were most vulnerable, those who needed protecting the most, were the ones who might not be aware of the risk they were taking. That's

why I think it was important that there was legislation put in place that forced them or imposed upon them that they had to wear a helmet.

Having this law in place encouraged kids to do the right thing and protect themselves. It also helped parents get their kids to wear their helmets. Obviously, it's very easy for a parent to say, "You must put

your helmet on," but unless there's some mandated reason, they might not do it. It gave the police the right to step in when they thought a child was being reckless by not wearing a helmet. At the same time, limiting the helmet law to those under

18 meant that it restricted the law from being something that could be implemented and enforced. When you look beyond the age of 18, it's going to be much more difficult for the police. It's a greater group of people who are also more difficult to

look after.

One of the dangers of making the law too broad is that it becomes too difficult to enforce. Our police forces are dedicated and work incredibly hard, but we all have to admit that they have limited resources.

We also need to be cautious as to whether the government is over-legislating or over-regulating. That is always a concern of the general population.

Perhaps it makes sense that adult cyclists in downtown Toronto should be wearing a helmet during rush hour, as the risk obviously increases with the amount of traffic. But does it also make sense to force an

adult cyclist on a quiet, smooth -- and I use the word "smooth" lightly -- road in Oxford county to also wear a helmet? On a Sunday afternoon, cycling down McBeth Road where I live, it's quite possible you could go cycling for an hour and not see

another vehicle in that whole time. So does it make sense, on a hot Sunday afternoon, that we have a law that says they can't do that unless they have their helmet on?

In fact, it's not just my opinion. I did receive an e-mail yesterday on this resolution suggesting that -- it came from Woodstock. I just want to quote from it: "As the vast majority of head injuries happen to

other groups of people such as motorists and pedestrians, it's hypocritical of Mr. Milloy, not to mention discriminatory, not to include all groups of people in his helmet bill who could possibly suffer head injuries."

I'm not suggesting that that is the be-all and end-all, but there is a risk of head injury regardless of where you are. In a head-on collision in a car, we're obviously going to have a lot of head injuries.

Does that mean we should all be wearing a helmet and a faceguard and force people to do that because we want to totally eliminate that risk? We need to ensure that we are striking a balance between protecting people and protecting their rights and

freedoms.

In addition to expanding the helmet law for cyclists, this resolution also calls on the government to recognize the safety benefits of wearing helmets for those using in-line skates, skateboards, scooters and

similar devices. Again, I support that approach. I also support the approach of having more education and training for people in those categories.

I want to say that I did visit one of our local schools, and one of the questions from a grade 5 student was, "How do we go about getting the government not to force us to wear helmets?" So it isn't

necessarily everybody who supports putting such restrictions in place.

Lastly, I just want to very quickly cover the process that we find ourselves in here. I recognize the challenges the member introducing this bill faces, having introduced a bill prior to this that went to

committee and was then never called out of committee. It becomes very easy here in private members' business for everyone to stand up and speak in favour of something and then see it go to committee and never called back because it's just private

members' business. So I think I recognize the need to put forward a resolution to try and direct the government to get on with doing something about this issue, but the present government -- maybe it's other governments as well -- hasn't been very

active in taking up direction from resolutions passed by this House and getting on with doing them. I had one passed in this Legislature a number of months ago asking the government to do something; in fact, it was supported by a majority in this

Legislature. So far, absolutely nothing has been done to deal with that subject.

So I hope that as this resolution -- and I hope it will pass -- proceeds through the process, the government will have a look at this and start dealing with the issue, particularly with the education part of

it, to make sure that our people are protected as well as they can be on our roads, highways and byways, and that we can leave this place and say that we did everything we could to prevent further injury.

Mr. Michael Prue (Beaches-East York): Two years ago, when Mr. Milloy last brought this topic up in private members' business, I stood in this House and I made probably what I consider to be

the most difficult speech I have ever made in my entire life. I'm going to try today not to make it quite so difficult.

This is a bill, or actually a motion, that needs to pass. The difference between the motion today and the bill the last time -- just to underline it for members of the House -- is that this is a motion of the

House requesting the cabinet and the minister to use the privileges that they have to simply change a regulation. It is not a bill. It's a very simple thing that is being asked here today and what I hope the minister and the cabinet will take to

heart. It will not require hearings; it will not require committees; it will not require people to go out of their way within the government; it will simply take the will of the minister to go forward and do what is right.

I said it was a very difficult speech at that time, and it was. But I am also mindful that on that day two years ago, the last time this topic was broached, every single member from every single party in this

House supported it. We all understand the necessity of having people wear helmets.

I, too, after the last speech, got phone calls. I, too, got e-mails and faxes of people who don't want to wear helmets. Some of them were quite abusive to me. I was really quite surprised, given the

circumstances under which I spoke and the personal tragedy of my own family, that they would behave in that fashion. But I will tell you and I will tell them that there's no sense in sending me these e-mails and faxes and abusive phone calls. What

is being proposed here must happen. It must happen if we are to save lives, and it must happen so that other families and other people do not have or meet the same end and the tragedy that befell us.

I am very saddened that nothing has happened over these last two years. I am very saddened, given the process, that Mr. Milloy has to come here again today and put this back before this House. He has explained

to me, in only minor detail, because he obviously is a man of great integrity, the member from Kitchener. He is a man of great integrity and won't tell me what transpired in his caucus or what transpired with the minister after this happened. But

I'm given to understand through snippets that there is some problem and there was some problem in letting it go forward.

Now he's trying a new approach and, I believe, ultimately a much more successful approach. All this is going to do is take away the exemption that adults have not to wear a helmet. Right now, today, in the

province, everyone has to wear a helmet, save and except an adult. That means every kid has to wear a helmet. But once you turn 18, somehow you're exempt from that. You're exempt from that, I guess, because you have, as the member from Oxford

said, this sense that you have a freedom and you have your own responsibility, you can take charge of your own life, which you could not do a few months before, when you were only 17.

Well, here comes the difficult part. This is what happened to my family, to my brother. My brother was a very law-abiding man. I don't believe he was ever charged with any offence, even driving too fast. He

did everything that the law required of him. When the law required that his children wear a helmet, his children wore a helmet. When he went out on the bicycle with them, they had a helmet and he did not -- and he was an athletic guy. One day he

hopped on a bicycle -- it was the end of the summer, Labour Day weekend -- and he did what he was supposed to do. He lived in the town of Brampton; his family still does. He didn't want to get in the car to go to the corner store because in

Brampton, the corner store isn't on the corner; the corner store is literally miles away. He got on a bicycle and did not go on the road -- I want the member from Oxford to understand this -- he went on a bicycle path. The bicycle path was a

couple of kilometres to the nearest store. He went on that bicycle path to pick up something and, en route -- nobody knows what happened -- on the bicycle path, not on the road, he fell off his bicycle. He was not wearing a helmet. He hit his

head. Five days later, my sister-in-law made a very courageous decision and turned off life support. Five days after the accident, he died.

I believe with all my heart that, had he worn a helmet, he would be alive today. I believe with all my heart that the statistics that have been cited, 85% reduction in head injuries and 88% reduction in brain

injuries, would have been enough to maintain his life. You see, when he died, he had no other injuries. He didn't have any other broken bones; no car hit him. All that happened was that he fell off the bicycle and hit his head, and he fell off the

bicycle and hit his head without a helmet on.

I want to make sure that what happened to him does not happen to anyone else. I want to make sure that his death was not in vain and that perhaps by my telling this story here today, people will know how

important it is.

I see adults every day on the streets of this city, I see adults every day when I'm outside of the city, sometimes on little country roads, riding along without a helmet on. In every case I want to stop my

car, if I'm in a car, or just to stop them -- I don't do it, mind you, but I want to -- and tell them the story of my brother. I want to tell them how wrong they are to do what they are doing without taking proper precautions. It did not take very

much for this to happen. It did not take any horrific event. I am sure it was simply an accident.

The members have cited some statistics that I believe were provided by Mr. Milloy, and I believe them as well: 5,078 people in the last three years, the majority of those since the last time we debated this

bill, have been treated for head injuries as a result of bicycle accidents. Almost all of them were adults.

I think it is the responsibility of all of us as Legislators to learn from what has happened before. Clearly, a generation ago there was a debate in this House about wearing seat belts. I remember that debate,

although I was not a member of the Legislature, and people talking about their personal freedoms and how they didn't need to wear seat belts; that it was their right not to wear a seat belt, but if the law required for them to buckle up their

children, they would buckle up their children, but, "I'm an adult and I don't need to do that." This Legislature wisely, at that time, rejected that notion. We said that all persons must wear a seat belt. I remember that in the months and years

that followed, there was a whole hue and cry. I remember seeing bumper stickers and hearing people saying, "You can't legislate my safety." I remember seeing all of that stuff. Wisely, the government, the police and the courts rejected all of

those statements. Wisely, today you can look at the statistics of automobile accidents and the number of people who die from not wearing seat belts. You will see that the number has gone way down because we enforce people to do it. We make them do

it. We tell them it's good, and it is good. It has saved a huge number of lives in the same way that this motion, if passed and if the minister obeys what the House is telling the minister, will save the same number of lives.

Perhaps there is another analogy which is even better, and that is the whole use of hockey helmets. When I was a boy, nobody wore a hockey helmet. I don't remember a kid who had a hockey helmet. We all played

hockey and shinny and stuff, I wasn't very good at it and still am not, but we all played without hockey helmets. Nobody wore them at all, and then people started to notice the number of head injuries that kids were having from not wearing hockey

helmets. Wise people came forward and suggested that kids should be wearing these, and eventually you started to see the odd child here and there wearing a hockey helmet. Nothing really changed. Some kids wore them, some didn't, until a remarkable

thing happened: You started to see some NHL players wearing hockey helmets. They were not required by law to wear the hockey helmets but they determined that it was in their best interests to put them on.

Once the NHL players started to put on hockey helmets, so did the kids. Once there was this role model in front of them when they turned on Saturday night hockey and saw half the team wearing a hockey helmet,

their friends could no longer say, "Hey, you're a sissy," or "Why are you wearing that?" or "Does your mother make you do it?" It was seen as something they could do without ridicule. I can't remember the last time I saw somebody skating on the

ice without a helmet, but it was a good, long time ago. The NHL finally came to its senses and made the hockey players wear helmets, and all of the junior leagues made them wear helmets. Every kid today who plays hockey and every player, no matter

where it is on up the road, wears one too.

The reason I'm telling this story about the hockey helmet is because children will emulate the response of adults. Children who see that adults are not wearing a helmet while they're on a bicycle, or hear a

person who is 17 who says, "On the day that I'm 18, I don't have to do this anymore because I'm an adult," will change their minds. Or they will change their minds and they will do what is right and they will wear it. And the kids will grow to

become accustomed to the fact that that is the way it is done. I believe that too.

I want to imprint on you again that this has been a very difficult speech for me. I hope I have made some sense. It has been a very difficult speech because of my brother Derek. I think back to all the things

that he missed. I think back also, though, to what his family missed. I think back to the two kids and the wife whom he left. I think back to the difficulty they have had these many years in not having a father. They've grown up quite well. One

has finished university and has her own business and the other is in university. My sister-in-law continues to work. But there is an emptiness that they have inside, and I can feel it, because I feel it myself. I feel it and know that we could

have and should have done something about it.

I'm saying to the minister that when you get this motion -- and I hope this passes today -- have the courage of what it takes to simply do the right thing: End the exemption. You don't need anybody else's

permission. You will know that this House, all members of this House and all parties in this House know that this is the right thing to do. Do not let the emptiness that still is within my family, do not let the emptiness that my parents share to

this day, be visited on anyone else. It is a simple thing to do. For those naysayers, and I'm sure there are going to be some, who are going to send me e-mails and faxes and phone me and tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, I will remind

them, and I did remind them, of what it means to me.

I salute Mr. Milloy for not giving up this fight. I commend him for taking the time to come back and look at why his last attempt did not pass and come at it from a different angle which, in the end, will

leave it up to one person, and one group of people within the cabinet, to change a regulation. If we can change that regulation, if we can do what we need to do, we are going to save the lives of many, many people. But more importantly, we are

going to set an example for children so that a generation from now, just like what happened in hockey, you will get on a bicycle, but before you do, you'll put on your helmet. You'll put that on when you're eight and when you're 12 and when you're

15 and when you're 85. It won't matter whether you're in downtown Toronto in traffic or whether you're on a small country road. It only takes falling off that bicycle and one small accident to make a change forever. This bill, I hope, makes sure

that all the changes that happen will be good ones.

Mr. Jeff Leal (Peterborough): As I did two years ago, I certainly intend to support the motion from my colleague from Kitchener Centre.

There are very few times when there is absolute quiet in this House. But there was, indeed, two years ago when two members of this House had great courage to share very personal stories with us about the

ramifications of having adults over 18 not wear helmets when they were cycling. The member from Beaches-East York two years ago chatted about the tragedy of his brother, and my colleague the Minister of Health Promotion talked about a very close

friend who lost his life while cycling and not wearing a helmet.

To me, it should be a very easy thing for the Ministry of Transportation, our colleague Donna Cansfield and the executive council to change the regulations dealing with the wearing of helmets while cycling for

those over 18.

I've had the opportunity to chat about this issue with the local brain injuries organization in my riding in Peterborough. Two years ago they certainly pressed me to support the private member's bill of my

colleague, and I indicated, when I heard that the member from Kitchener Centre was going to bring this back again, that this morning I would support the resolution.

I listened carefully to my friend the member from Oxford talking about bicycling on a quiet back road in rural Ontario and not wearing a helmet. About a year and a half ago, I talked to the local OPP

detachment in Peterborough. One of the things they talked about that day was not accidents related to cyclists but car accidents that happen on rural back roads in Ontario. There's often a false sense of well-being, when one is travelling on one

of those back roads, that perhaps because of the idyllic conditions on an autumn day in rural Ontario, you're not paying attention to the road as well as you should be, as one's mind wanders off thinking about other things. Indeed, there are many

serious vehicle accidents that happen on those quiet back roads, even for people cycling, where something happens right out of the blue and they find themselves injured.

I think it's important that we move forward today and pass this motion to put pressure on the Minister of Transportation and the executive council, to make sure that we bring in this motion for people over 18

to wear helmets while cycling. I just think it's the right thing to do. It will prevent a lot of injuries and a lot of hospital care. I think it's important that we move forward on this motion today.

Mr. Lou Rinaldi (Northumberland): I'm delighted to stand today and support this motion from my good friend the member from Kitchener Centre.

We've heard stories that have been very touching and compelling, and they're all perfect. And I see the reasons why this member is trying to deal with this motion, to move it forward, because of those

particular reasons. But I'm going to put a little bit of a different spin on this. I'm going to focus a little bit on cycling, although I'm not a cyclist very much. Cycling has become very big in our communities these days. The use of bicycles has

increased dramatically.

I was fortunate to be a member of a municipal council that was instrumental in putting in the waterfront trail that now spans from Niagara to the Kingston area, the Thousand Islands. It goes right in front of

my house. I can tell you that many times, as I'm on my driveway, there are a number of cyclists who come down that bicycle path, a dedicated path that stretches across the north shore of Lake Ontario. I guess what I'm getting at is that there is

more and more use of bicycles, and the more we use them, the more the percentage of injuries goes up, as we just heard, specifically head injuries.

As legislators, we need to think of that. We tend to always react when the statistics get way out of whack, and then we rush in and put in laws to try to fix it. But the unfortunate part of that is --

Mr. Khalil Ramal (London-Fanshawe): Prevention.

Mr. Rinaldi: We don't do enough prevention, whether it's health care or, in this case, to protect injuries from bicycles. We waited so long before we instituted seat belts in cars, and yet we

knew for a fact that if a person was properly restrained in a vehicle, the opportunity for injury was very much reduced.

Sometimes we wonder why we wait so long to do certain things as legislators for the health and welfare of our communities. I know my friend from Kitchener Centre has made an attempt at this in the past. I'm

sad to say that it hasn't progressed fast enough. But I hope, as we sit around here and debate this motion, we really see the importance of it, because an injury is not an injury until it happens. We can talk about it -- "Maybe, maybe not. This

could happen" -- but when something happens, we always say, "It's too late. We should have done something."

I think we have to be a bit forward-thinking. I'm prepared and I hope the rest of the members of this House are prepared to support this, because I think it's -- I'm not going to say that it's too late, but

maybe we should have done it before. Let's do it now.

Hon. Jim Watson (Minister of Health Promotion): It's not normal that a minister speak at private members' hour, but I felt very strongly about Mr. Milloy's motion. As Mr. Leal pointed out, I

too had a similar situation occur to me -- obviously not a relative. I very much appreciate the member for Beaches-East York talking passionately about the loss in his life of a brother as a result of an accident when his brother was not wearing a

helmet. I had a friend -- in fact, ironically, Mr. Milloy knows this friend, Carl Gillis -- who was in-line skating and not wearing a helmet, and he tragically died prematurely. That's why I'm here to support this motion, as I was here to support

Mr. Milloy's private member's bill.

Our Ministry of Health Promotion is listed in the motion, and if this House does adopt this motion, I very much look forward to working with Mr. Milloy and members of the injury prevention community throughout

the province of Ontario to do what we can to better educate people about the importance of wearing helmets.

We know for a fact that a properly fitted helmet helps protect the head by absorbing force from a crash or a fall and decreases the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 85% and brain injury by as much

as 88%.

I also want to commend all of the medical officers of health. I know our former medical officer of health in Ottawa, Dr. Rob Cushman, is a leading expert in the importance of wearing helmets while in-line

skating, skateboarding and riding a bicycle.

We are in the process in our ministry of putting together an injury prevention strategy. This motion, if passed, would be an ideal complement to making sure that we get it right and that we reach out to those

groups that are doing good work to see if we can help them do a better job of getting the word out about the importance of wearing a helmet.

I want to commend Mr. Milloy, the member for Kitchener Centre, for the work that he's done, the persistence in making sure that this issue stays alive, because we know that if more people wear helmets,

particularly past the age of 18, more lives will be saved.

I want to commend Dianne Cunningham, the former member from London, who brought forward the motion in the first place. Let's continue the good work she's done by supporting this resolution of Mr. Milloy's in

the memory of people like Mr. Prue's brother and my friend Carl Gillis.

The Deputy Speaker: Mr. Milloy, you have up to two minutes to respond.

Mr. Milloy: I've appreciated the debate this morning in the Legislature. As I think I pointed out in my presentation, this motion is really about balance. It's about making sure that we have

the type of legislation and regulation which makes people sit up and notice when it comes to issues of wearing helmets and, at the same time, that it's complemented with education and an education campaign that has real teeth.

I want to thank the speakers from all three parties who stood here today to speak in favour of the motion. Due to the brevity of time, I just want to comment on two speeches. The first is that of the Minister

of Health Promotion, who is named in the motion put forward today in the sense that we are asking for a government education campaign. I just want to state my appreciation for his commitment here that, if passed, he will certainly make it part of

health and safety campaigns that he's moving with in the future. The second person I want to pay particular tribute to, of course, is my friend from Beaches-East York. I want to congratulate him on his courage in coming forward to the Legislature

and telling his personal story.

As I said at the beginning, data is important, research is important, but at the end of the day, it's the personal stories which I think convince all of us of the importance of helmet use in our province, and

the fact that it can withstand so much and prevent so many tragedies. At the same time -- I see my time is running out -- I do want to thank all the groups and organizations who have come forward to endorse my bill. The brain injury association in

my own community of Waterloo-Wellington -- I have to mention them specifically for the leadership that they have shown at home. They really encouraged me to move forward, and I was then able to connect with a large number of local

organizations.

In closing, this motion does something very simple. It creates a culture of safety which hopefully is going to lead to a situation where no one in this province would get on a bicycle, go in-line skating or

skateboarding without wearing a helmet. Thank you very much.

The Deputy Speaker: The time provided for private members' public business has expired.

CO-OPERATIVES

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): We shall deal first with ballot item number 67, standing in the name of Mr. McMeekin.

Mr. McMeekin has moved private member's notice of motion number 33. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry?

All those in favour, say "aye."

All those opposed, say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

We will call in the members after dealing with the next ballot item.

WEARING OF HELMETS

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): We shall now deal with ballot item number 68, standing in the name of Mr. Milloy.

Mr. Milloy has moved private member's notice of motion number 34. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Call in the members. This will be a five-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1202 to 1207.

CO-OPERATIVES

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Mr. McMeekin has moved private member's notice of motion number 33. All those in favour, please stand and be recognized by the Clerk.

Ayes

Arnott, Ted

Arthurs, Wayne

Barrett, Toby

Bisson, Gilles

Bradley, James J.

Broten, Laurel C.

Brownell, Jim

Dhillon, Vic

Flynn, Kevin Daniel

Fonseca, Peter

Hardeman, Ernie

Horwath, Andrea

Jeffrey, Linda

Kwinter, Monte

Leal, Jeff

Levac, Dave

Marsales, Judy

Matthews, Deborah

McMeekin, Ted

McNeely, Phil

Miller, Norm

Milloy, John

Mitchell, Carol

Mossop, Jennifer F.

Ouellette, Jerry J.

Parsons, Ernie

Prue, Michael

Racco, Mario G.

Ramal, Khalil

Rinaldi, Lou

Runciman, Robert W.

Ruprecht, Tony

Sandals, Liz

Scott, Laurie

Smitherman, George

Van Bommel, Maria

Watson, Jim

Wilkinson, John

Wilson, Jim

Zimmer, David

The Deputy Clerk (Ms. Deborah Deller): The ayes are 40; the nays are 0.

The Deputy Speaker: I declare the motion carried.

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

The House recessed from 1210 to 1330.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

CONTAMINATED PROPERTY

Mr. Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): I rise today to bring to the assembly's attention the lack of Ministry of the Environment action to deal with a big oil company's responsibility for

the contamination of privately owned property and the impact the contamination has had on the lives of the owners and their family-operated business on the now polluted site.

My constituents Brent and Linda Carriveau discovered a gas leak on a property owned by Petro-Canada beside their restaurant west of Ottawa, at Silver Lake Provincial Park. The Carriveaus reported the

contamination to the ministry six years ago, yet they've been left alone to fight with a large corporation to salvage their business. They have had to press ministry staff to visit the site to check neighbouring property, including the provincial

park.

The Ministry of the Environment has never charged Petro-Canada for their irresponsibility and the damage incurred. They've effectively abandoned the Carriveaus to fight Petro-Canada on their own, and this big

oil company with deep pockets is using every legal avenue available to delay a settlement and drive the Carriveaus to financial ruin. Last week, in a CTV news report, Mr. Carriveau was quoted saying, "We didn't have anything to do with this

contamination, yet we're being left to fight this oil company on our own. It's like a mouse wrestling an elephant."

In this instance, the Ministry of the Environment has clearly neglected its responsibility. I call on the minister to get her officials involved and provide much-needed and -deserved support and assistance to

the Carriveaus.

EVENTS IN NORTH BAY

Ms. Monique M. Smith (Nipissing): Mr. Speaker, as you know, Christmas is always a great time of year and always a great time in downtown North Bay.

Downtown North Bay was awash in lights and a happy glow a few weeks ago as the residents of North Bay celebrated our downtown Christmas walk. Thousands of people came downtown to see the great tree lit and

enjoy the hospitality of our downtown merchants. On November 19, we had a huge Santa Claus parade, which was a great success as hundreds and hundreds of young people enjoyed over a dozen floats that came down on a bright Sunday afternoon.

Our downtown North Bay boasts some wonderful merchants and some beautiful storefronts. I want to highlight but two this afternoon. On October 27, Mr. Ralph Diegel, the owner of Deegan's Shoes, celebrated his

80th birthday. As well, he celebrated 60 years of working in downtown North Bay in his business, which has been in operation since 1889 -- that's 117 years. On November 25, Gulliver's Quality Books and Toys celebrated 20 years of business in

downtown North Bay. Suzanne Brooks and her staff have been providing the people of northeastern Ontario with a great literary hub, as she stocks great books, great children's books and toys, and brings some fabulous authors into our community.

These two merchants, together with countless others, make downtown North Bay a great place to shop and North Bay a great place to live. I want to take this opportunity to congratulate Ralph and Suzanne, to

wish all of our downtown merchants a successful holiday season, and to wish all the residents of Nipissing a very happy and safe holiday.

MINISTRY SPENDING

Ms. Laurie Scott (Haliburton-Victoria-Brock): I rise today and hold a copy of an invitation to a bash held on December 11, hosted by the Minister of the Environment, here in this Legislature.

The party was to pat herself on the back for her avoidance-of-responsibility legislation disguised as the Clean Water Act. Interestingly enough, neither the NDP critic for the environment nor myself were formally invited, although I do have in my

hands this piece of partisan swag in the form of a baseball cap which the minister was handing out to attendees before they went to the bar and got their free drinks. The minister is not only a paper environmentalist; she's now fully engulfed in

the business of partisan swag.

In light of the Auditor General's report and the obvious disregard of taxpayers' money by the members across the way, who paid for the open bar and these hats?

Next Tuesday, the purchase of the Green Lane landfill site will be completed. Is the minister going to make the taxpayers pay for yet another party? Minister Broten and her colleagues think it's open season on

hard-working taxpayers.

The minister promised to meet all of Justice O'Connor's recommendations. Nowhere in these recommendations does it say to establish a separate piece of legislation that downloads responsibility to rural Ontario

and nowhere in these recommendations does it say to use taxpayers' money and throw a partisan party with an open bar and baseball caps.

I would think the minister knows not to be using taxpayers' money for the back-slapping, open-bar party she probably hosted this past Monday, but I assure you the official opposition will be checking, just to

make sure.

The Speaker (Hon. Michael A. Brown): Thank you.

ONTARIO ARTISTS

Ms. Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale-High Park): I rise in the House today to acknowledge the professional artists and cultural workers who are unable under current legislation to improve their working

conditions and livelihoods through collective bargaining, a right presently enjoyed by six million other Ontario workers.

During the 2003 provincial election campaign, the McGuinty Liberals promised to introduce status-of-the-artist legislation to improve the lives and incomes of Ontario's workers in the cultural sector. This

promise was reiterated on May 15, 2006, by the Minister of Culture in her statement to the Legislature. Yet despite months of consultations, the Ontario government has failed to introduce legislation that would deliver improved minimum working

conditions, enhanced economic and social benefits and collective bargaining rights.

Artists and cultural workers need protection for child performers, access to training and development programs and funds, income averaging and/or exclusion of certain incomes from provincial taxes, and

protection for senior artists. Without these steps, the government will have failed all professional artists and cultural workers. They, and we, demand action now.

MARILYN ALEX

Ms. Judy Marsales (Hamilton West): I rise in the House today to pay tribute to a wonderful woman, Marilyn Alex, who will be truly missed by family, friends and the Hamilton arts community.

Marilyn was tragically killed in a car accident last week.

I had known Marilyn from my first audition in 1978 to appear in the stage production of Carousel produced by Hamilton Theatre Inc. Marilyn was an inspirational choral director, mentor and friend to myself and

all who loved music and theatre. She carried herself with dignity and was a gracious model to aspiring musicians, singers and actors. She was gifted with a wonderful full voice which could demonstrate tenderness and power to articulate any

theatrical role.

Marilyn was well-known for her theatrical accomplishments. Her last performance was in a production at Drury Lane as Madame Armfeldt in A Little Night Music. She held many senior roles in theatre. She gave

everything she had to her profession, always striving to be the best she could be.

She worked for Hamilton Police Service for over 20 years and Hamilton's CHML as a record librarian. She was the founding member of Hamilton Theatre Inc. and the Harlequin Singers. She was a member of Canadian

Actors' Equity and ACTRA. She was a member of Choral Bells for over 50 years.

She is survived by her sons Adam and Timothy, two grandchildren and a brother and sister.

I am sure she is organizing a theatrical group of angels as we speak. I want to say thank you, Marilyn, for all you have contributed towards making Hamilton a great city for music and theatre.

REMOVAL OF CHRISTMAS TREE

Mr. Frank Klees (Oak Ridges): I'm calling on the Premier and the Attorney General to publicly denounce the decision by Justice Marion Cohen to order the removal of a Christmas tree from the

lobby of the Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto. The reason cited was that, "It is a Christian symbol that alienates people of other creeds and traditions."

This is

an act deeply offensive not only to Christians, for whom in fact the Christmas tree has an enduring religious significance; it is also offensive to the many Ontarians of diverse faiths and culture for

whom it has become a symbol of this holiday season and in many ways is in fact symbolic of goodwill for all.

Here in this Legislature, we have commemorated the Muslim feasts of Eid-Ul-Fitr, the Hindu feast of Diwali, and this week we will also be lighting a menorah in honour of Hanukkah.

If there is any place where the fundamental principles of religious freedom and affirmation of our diversity should be abundantly evident, it is in fact at the centre of our justice system. The action taken by

this judge is contrary to our best-established traditions of celebrating diversity and of tolerance. I therefore call on the Attorney General to intervene and in fact to undertake to ensure that Ontarians are not only able to celebrate their faith

and culture, but that it will also be protected and respected by our justice system.

DURHAM COMMUNITY

STRATEGIC PLAN

Mr. Wayne Arthurs (Pickering-Ajax-Uxbridge): I rise in the House today to draw attention to the wonderful progress being made by the regional municipality of Durham in realizing the objectives

outlined in the Durham community strategic plan. I recently received the third update report on the progress in the implementation of their six objectives, and I want to highlight just a few of the many noteworthy initiatives going on in Durham

region.

The first one is in regard to transportation. They're making tremendous progress with the establishment of a region-wide transit system with a single ticket fare, giving the public more choice for travel. The

Salem Road interchange on the 401 is being completed, the Stevenson Road interchange is well under way, and the widening of the 401 between the two interchanges is under way. That is as a result of co-operation with the province of Ontario. An

environmental assessment is moving forward on the extension of the 407 eastbound.

On the environmental front, Durham is partnering with York region to develop an energy from waste facility, thereby reducing landfill and producing energy, if it all gets approved. All of Durham now has the

green bin kitchen food waste composting program, so wet waste is no longer going to a landfill.

On the safety and health front, they are making progress with increased seniors' beds in regional facilities as a result of the rebuild of Lakeview Manor, and a second facility, Hillsdale Terraces.

On the economy, the Durham Strategic Energy Alliance is facilitating research, program development and implementation. Having the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in the community promotes a very

educated workforce.

Finally, on partnerships and government effectiveness, they are partnering with many municipalities for supportive submissions on issues such --

The Speaker (Hon. Michael A. Brown): Thank you.

COMMUNITY GRANTS

Mr. Mario Sergio (York West): As the MPP for the riding of York West, I am absolutely thrilled with the recent McGuinty government announcement of $6 million in support of the community grant

program. Our government has recognized the need and the work being done in various communities to reach out to our youth before they are lost to guns, gangs and a life of crime.

Premier McGuinty is partnering with various faith churches that are doing excellent work and bringing hope to so many of our bright young people. Indeed, the announcement at the First Baptist Church in

Toronto, the oldest community institution working as a community and information centre, will lead the efforts to deliver the message of hope.

In my own area, the Jane and Finch area: the San Romanoway Revitalization Association; the Jane-Finch community centre; PEACH, the school away from school initiative; the Christian Centre Church; Lisle

Memorial Baptist; and the World Centre for Mission Mobilization. The Black Action Defence Committee, as well, will be receiving a three-year, $450,000 grant.

All these dedicated and caring people will be working to make a real, positive difference in so many lives: our youth, our most vulnerable, single mothers and those who suffer as victims of violence.

I compliment the work of the faith church organizations and the support from Premier McGuinty in partnering and delivering inspiration and hope --

The Speaker (Hon. Michael A. Brown): Thank you.

WORLD LEADERSHIP AWARD

Mr. Peter Fonseca (Mississauga East): As the member for Mississauga East and a member of the Mississauga Healthy City Stewardship Centre, I would like to say that we have won the 2006 World

Leadership Award held on December 6 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, England.

The purpose of the World Leadership Awards is to identify exceptional leadership in cities across the world and to use that leadership as an example and inspiration to other cities facing similar problems.

Cities were judged on criteria such as leadership displayed, difficulties or obstacles the city has overcome and the degree of inspiration the city may give to others. Furthermore, this award is about

communities: how a wide range of actors play in the role of building up a community to the point that the world recognizes the collective growth of