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November 30, 2011

40th Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2011-Nov-30 (PDF)

L007 - Wed 30 Nov 2011 / Mer 30 nov 2011

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Wednesday 30 November 2011 Mercredi 30 novembre 2011

ORDERS OF THE DAY

HEALTHY HOMES RENOVATION

TAX CREDIT ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR LE CRÉDIT D’IMPÔT

POUR L’AMÉNAGEMENT DU LOGEMENT

AXÉ SUR LE BIEN-ÊTRE

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

ORAL QUESTIONS

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

MINING INDUSTRY

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

PUBLIC TRANSIT

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

SECURITIES INDUSTRY

RENEWABLE ENERGY

PAN AM GAMES

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

HOME CARE

DIABETES

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

LAKE SIMCOE REGION

CONSERVATION AUTHORITY

EVENTS IN HAMILTON EAST–

STONEY CREEK

LAKE SIMCOE REGION

CONSERVATION AUTHORITY

RICK HANSEN INSTITUTE

COMMUNITY CARE EAST YORK

CANADA WORLD YOUTH

DAVE GIONET

MCMASTER MARAUDERS

FOOTBALL TEAM

TREK TO BETHLEHEM IN BALA

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

ACCEPTING SCHOOLS ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 POUR

DES ÉCOLES TOLÉRANTES

ANTI-BULLYING ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR LA LUTTE

CONTRE L’INTIMIDATION

ONTARIO SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL

ENGINEERS ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR L’ASSOCIATION

DES INGÉNIEURS DE L’ONTARIO

PUBLIC SAFETY RELATED TO DOGS

STATUTE LAW AMENDMENT ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 MODIFIANT DES LOIS

EN CE QUI A TRAIT À LA SÉCURITÉ

PUBLIQUE LIÉE AUX CHIENS

JEWISH HERITAGE MONTH ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR LE MOIS

DU PATRIMOINE JUIF

RESPECT FOR VOTERS ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR LE RESPECT

DES ÉLECTEURS

MOTIONS

MEMBER FOR PICKERING–SCARBOROUGH EAST

ANNUAL REPORT, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER OF HEALTH

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

AND RESPONSES

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES /

PRÉVENTION DE L’INTIMIDATION

PETITIONS

WIND TURBINES

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES

WIND TURBINES

TAXATION

CHILD CUSTODY

WIND TURBINES

REPLACEMENT WORKERS

WIND TURBINES

WIND TURBINES

WIND TURBINES

LYME DISEASE

WIND TURBINES

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

ORDERS OF THE DAY

THRONE SPEECH DEBATE

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Please let us pray.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

HEALTHY HOMES RENOVATION

TAX CREDIT ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR LE CRÉDIT D’IMPÔT

POUR L’AMÉNAGEMENT DU LOGEMENT

AXÉ SUR LE BIEN-ÊTRE

Resuming the debate adjourned on November 29, 2011, on the motion for second reading of Bill 2,

An Act to amend the Taxation Act, 2007 to implement a healthy homes renovation tax credit / Projet de loi 2, Loi modifiant la Loi de 2007 sur les impôts en vue de mettre en oeuvre le crédit d’impôt pour l’aménagement du logement axé sur le bien-être.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Further debate?

Mr. Peter Shurman: Good morning, Speaker. I will be sharing my time this morning with three fellow members: the member from York–Simcoe, the member from Durham and the member from Leeds–Grenville.

I’m interested in this particular bill because, as members here know, over the initial four years of my first term I spent a lot of time on two opposite ends of the age spectrum: one was young children and the other was seniors. We have a lot of those in all of our ridings, notably in mine, so when we can take some measure that assists one of these extremes, I am always up for it.

Our party, I would argue, has the best track record in the entire House for dealing with seniors. We constantly are bringing forth, whether it be private members’ bills or our support for other legislation—we do work in order to support our seniors. I myself have introduced several times a property tax deferral bill for low-income seniors; it’s a bill that the Liberal government voted down twice, including, for the first and last time in history, voting down a bill where one of their own members was co-sponsor.

I found that rather interesting, especially in light of the fact that that bill was reintroduced by way of an election promise by that Liberal government in September during the election campaign. Who says they can’t learn, Speaker? But I digress.

It is because of our party’s support for seniors that I stand here today and speak to this bill. We have in Ontario a jobs crisis. That’s right, we have a jobs crisis. You’ve heard those words; listen well, because we have one and it’s in the private sector. This means Ontarians across this entire province are in the depths of an income crisis as well.

Many of these Ontarians are taking care of aging parents and taking care of aging grandparents. Especially in these tough economic times, it is the job of government to create the right conditions for businesses to thrive so that they can, in turn, create good-paying jobs for Ontarians and so that Ontarians can indeed take care of their families. Accountability and fiscal responsibility on the part of the government are crucial to achieving that objective.

So at a time like this, when we are literally standing on the brink of an economic disaster in the province of Ontario—and no, Speaker, I’m not overstating—every single move counts. At all times the government must make the decisions that will deliver the biggest bang for the taxpayers’ buck. It’s incumbent on the government to do this.

The question for us, Speaker, is this: Is the McGuinty government doing what it should to help Ontarians get the good-paying jobs they need so that they can help their families? The facts, I am afraid, suggest that this is not the case.

Ontario lost 75,000 full-time private sector jobs in October alone. In question period yesterday, the Premier stood up and said proudly that Ontario had regained 276,000 jobs since the recession, which occurred, as we know, in 2008-09. That’s a gross number; it’s not a net number. And we have to start thinking in net terms, because if we’re creating jobs but losing more, we’re basically not even running in place.

This is the 58th straight month in which our province, once Canada’s economic engine, has had a jobless rate higher than the national average. This means that in far too many cases, Ontarians who are supporting their aging parents or supplementing their parents’ or their grandparents’ retirement incomes may well be out of a job. At a time like this, a responsible government would be considering measures that would target our jobs crisis; proposing for consideration by this House bills that are innovative, that are thought out, that are meaningful.

Enter the McGuinty government on a white horse with the healthy homes renovation tax credit. But on closer examination, that horse is stumbling, the armour is tin and the knight on the horse is tilting at windmills again. If the aim of this bill is to help seniors, it fails miserably. If the aim of this bill is to help Ontarians with disabilities, it fails immeasurably. If the aim of this bill is to stimulate Ontario’s economy, it fails completely. The only thing that hits the mark with this bill is the title—it does have a nice ring to it—“healthy homes.”

At that income level, in the best-case scenario, we’re talking about nearly half of the annual income of most seniors living in this province. That is the spending limit. So you’re writing off a number of people—a huge number of people—right away. While some seniors in Ontario may be in the position to put $10,000 into necessary renovations—which, let’s face it, is a very substantial sum—the reality is that far too many can’t.

The other caveats we’ve heard: This bill peels that onion away and away, and it gets down pretty far; I would say right down to the core of the onion or indeed to the seed. So I’ve got to ask, Speaker, how cynical is that? Are you really out to help seniors? Because the slice of the seniors’ pie that you’re actually helping is minuscule, especially with savings having taken a very serious hit over the past couple of years and diminishing the nest egg that provides for seniors’ cash flow. This is what you are doing.

We have already established that there is a jobs crisis in Ontario. Seniors who are living off their savings or are dependent on their families for income are unlikely to be able to take advantage of this tax credit, and too many of our families at this point cannot assist because, as we know, Speaker, we’re dealing with a situation where, as I’ve mentioned, our unemployment level is the highest in the country; for the past 58 months, it’s over 8%. We’re running a risk of seeing that expand, because of the softness of the economy.

Furthermore, on this bill, even if you are a senior on low income and you’ve managed to save enough money to renovate your home to increase its value, so that you can build equity and secure an income for the future, well, you’re not eligible, because that’s not what this tax credit is about. And if you are a senior with a disability and require this help, you can only benefit from this tax credit if you’re not already receiving any other assistance. So if you’re on ODSP or have assistive devices that are paid for by the province—any of those things—they negate at least some, if not all, of what you can claim under this bill.

So the question is begged: Who does this bill actually help? The answer is the Liberals, because it sounds a heck of a lot better than it actually is, and it benefits that small percentage of seniors who are in a stable, financial situation and who probably would have proceeded with the needed renovation whether there was a tax credit or not.

The rules of the game on this bill say that you must have attained at least 65 years by the end of 2012. I feel a personal relationship with this bill, because I will have attained that age by the end of 2012.

Applause.

Mr. Peter Shurman: Thank you very much for that round of applause.

What that means is that if I want to do a $10,000 renovation to my home, I get to put $1,500 in my pocket, and yes, Speaker, I can afford it. So I might do it. But the truth is I don’t need it. If I do it, it will be something that will enhance my mobility, given that, God forbid, I need it, or I’ll do it to enhance the value of my home and I’ll put 1,500 free dollars in my pocket. That’s who’s going to benefit, and that’s not what the intention should have been.

You have the option to help so many people in this province. You have that option. You could do it by broad-based tax relief. If you want to help seniors only, there are so many ways to do it. You could increase long-term-care beds; you could certainly help in the home by increasing your allocation to home care. But no, you do basically a political dance and you dangle a carrot that most people cannot have. That’s what this bill is, and let there be no error about that.

Like many of the McGuinty government policies we’ve had to endure over the years—the ban on pesticides springs to mind; it’s one of my favourites—this bill has a title that overcommits, while the content underdelivers. That bill guaranteed a ban on pesticides in the province of Ontario—100%. But if you look at the exemptions and find out what was actually banned, they banned 1.5% of the use of pesticides—that was the 2,4-D you put on your front lawn. The rest of it, all the rural people and the golf courses and the railway rights of way—so the 100% ban was a 98.5% ban.

My point is this: Whatever you do by way of legislation, you say one thing with the title and you do something else with regulation. Your intent, almost invariably, is political. Sure, it’s a great thing to get a $1,500 tax credit, and many Ontarians can certainly use $1,500. Unfortunately, those who need it the most are in practice rendered ineligible.

In short, this bill sets out to benefit those, like myself, who don’t need it. So this bill actually fails the broad-based category called seniors: people who are in need, people who cannot have through this bill.

How does this bill fail families? It does that too. If the goal is to offer financially strapped families some relief, then how about taking action to tackle the actual problem at hand? I mentioned broad-based tax relief. The example that comes to mind immediately, because we dealt with it in this House based on an NDP private member’s bill last week, is HST relief on heating, or you could do HST relief on hydro. There are a lot of things that you could do.

When it comes to economic stimulus, putting 8% of the cost of home heating or the cost of hydro back in the pocket of every single Ontarian and having those people spend that money to stimulate the economy—that’s great. And by the way, that applies to seniors as well, and it applies to the families who take care of seniors. So why not deal with that?

An HST break on hydro bills to leave families some additional income in their collective pocket so that they could make decisions on what they need to spend their money on, or spending responsibly with respect for taxpayers’ money so that Ontarians are not overburdened with taxes and fees and premiums that take away from their families. That’s the hallmark of this government.

While we’re on the topic of spending responsibly, I mentioned earlier that Ontario is in the midst of a jobs crisis and Ontarians are facing an income crisis. My friends over there know full well that the depth of the economic problems that Ontario currently has is extremely significant. Everybody knows we’re in trouble. I’m afraid, Speaker, that people don’t know just how much trouble we’re in.

When you’ve got a province that owes over $250 billion and with the projected deficits—forget about promises made, promises broken; I don’t see us getting to a balanced budget before we get to a collective debt of about $300 billion—one begins to wonder when it is that the ability to borrow on the part of this province becomes compromised. I don’t think I overstate the case to say that this is the precise scenario that we saw in California; worse in Italy, in Greece. We see bond rating agencies downgrading even France at this point. Where does Ontario stack up in this? We have a problem.

Do you know who’s not facing an income crisis, Speaker? The McGuinty government—no income crisis there. In 2011-12, the McGuinty government took in a record revenue of $108.3 billion. I point that out because when we’re dispensing money in one program or another and we’re listening to fall economic statements, we’ve got to get the definition and terms correct.

The finance minister said that one of the problems that created the $16-billion deficit projected for the current fiscal year is that revenue fell short by $750 million. It fell short of his projections, but his projections haven’t been right since he’s been finance minister. What it didn’t do is, it didn’t fall short of the prior year. We actually collected record revenues in the province of Ontario—about $1.6 billion or $1.7 billion more in the current year than we did the prior year. So when you talk about revenue falling short, let’s remember that.

And that’s revenue that comes out of the pockets of individual Ontarians and Ontario corporations. Still, they put our province into a $16-billion deficit.

Since donning the mantle of finance minister, Dwight Duncan increased spending by $21 billion per annum and has never balanced a single budget. The reason that the McGuinty government was able to get away with spending that much is because the province can still borrow, and that’s how the current finance minister has increased Ontario’s debt by $70 billion. Yet that is still not the most frightening aspect of the Liberal spending spree of the past eight years. The McGuinty government has managed to increase its spending by also moving money from the reserve fund to cover their expenses, and we illustrated that in question period last week.

The Auditor General’s review of the 2011 pre-election report on Ontario’s finances stated that the purpose of the reserve “is to offset the impact of unexpected and adverse future events of the magnitude of, for example, a SARS outbreak … in 2003 or a global recession” like the one in 2008. It should never be used to cover year-over-year expenditures or to reduce a deficit. This irresponsible use of the reserve fund is not in the best interests of Ontario, and certainly it’s not in the best interests of Ontario seniors.

Events like SARS, as we know, tend to have a significant impact on the senior population. Ontario’s Auditor General, in the review of the 2011 pre-election report on Ontario’s finances, states that Ontario’s population of seniors is projected to grow to 14.1% this year and 16% in 2016. Statistics also indicate that health care spending per person rises significantly after age 65.

Despite this and the expected rise in the senior population, the government somehow believes that the impact of aging on health care costs will be negligible over the next three years. By the way, that’s also coming from the AG’s report. If that is not a bad excuse for horrific planning, I’m not sure what is. Like always, the McGuinty government has cold facts staring it in the face, but chooses to look the other way and daydream and defer. That’s what they’ve done for eight years, and that’s what they’re still doing.

I find that, Speaker, more than passing strange because we’re not in the Parliament that we left back in June. It’s a new day, and we saw that last Thursday when this government began to lose votes. I would say that that heralds a point in time where they’re going to lose a significant vote.

I’m not rattling a sabre; the point is that you’ve got to come to the table and realize that you do not run the place single-handedly, that there are exigencies and problems that have to be addressed and that there are people who represent a majority of the citizenry of the province of Ontario sitting on this side of the House who, if the Liberals are absent without leave, will take their place. We’re ready to do that.

According to the AG, our health care costs will rise significantly as a result of an increasingly aging population. How does this government plan on taking care of Ontario’s seniors when it is wasting money on ineffective programs? Some $60 million here, a billion dollars there, an eHealth scandal or two, and it all adds up to literally—literally—billions in debt, billions in deficits and a very vulnerable senior population that cannot count on the services that they have worked hard for in the province that they built.

That is something that I keep top of mind when I deal with seniors, as I do with some frequency. These are the folks who built what we have. These are the folks who invented that rule that said that you don’t spend more than what you have. These are the folks who understand that there’s a column marked “needs” and a column marked “wants,” and you don’t go and stray into the column marked “wants” unless you have an extra amount of money put aside for the rainy day or, at least, the day where you can go and delve into wants, take that vacation or whatever it happens to be.

On this side of the House, we say that if the McGuinty government really wants to do something for seniors, they should rein in their spending, show some respect for the taxpayer and manage the province’s finances responsibly—responsibly. That way, seniors will receive the health care and the medication that they need, the services that they require and, yes, the reward that they deserve. This means that the McGuinty government could have done a lot more for seniors than offer token policies that miss the mark.

In fact, Speaker, I would say to you that what we have in the first two weeks of this 40th Parliament, by way of the presentation or at least the announcement of impending legislation or bills that affect Ontario, are bills that I consider to be entirely cynical. They’re all politically motivated: “Oh, we think we have a problem in southwestern Ontario; we’ll go and fix that fund.” “We have a problem with seniors; we’ll go and address something to them.” But there isn’t really any help. It’s kind of a shell game. The McGuinty government could have done so much more for seniors than offer these token policies.

There were warning signs, you know, all along the way, as Ontario was slipping, slipping into an economic downturn, losing jobs long before there was any global crisis. We were out there raising the warning flag; nobody was listening. It was going to be happy times forever—but it wasn’t, was it? The McGuinty government was not listening then. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like they have learned any lesson and they’re not listening now.

The fall economic statement confirmed that Ontario’s debt is soaring, literally soaring. I cannot believe what I saw here in this House last week. I ran companies for most of my life, and I know what the bottom line is supposed to look like. There is no bottom line in governing a province, but there is an ability and a need to bring in a bottom line that is zero. In other words, you create a budget, you take in the money you predict, you spend that money and you wind up with zero. You don’t wind up in debt; you don’t wind up in deficit.

But what I saw here last week was a standing ovation for a finance minister who announced that he was delivering a $16-billion deficit. That was up $2 billion over a $14-billion deficit last year—“But don’t worry, Speaker, we’re going to balance the budget by 2017-18,” he said.

Where I come from, all you have to do is sit down at your computer and open up Excel and put in the points for each year. The way I see it, those lines are spreading. Our deficits are rising. Our ability to balance a budget by 2017-18—well, it’s well beyond the next election, so why should they worry?

That’s what I saw last week, and yet here we are with programs that suggest that what we’re going to do is take money that wasn’t spent in other programs, shift them, and we’ll be able to afford these new programs. The fact of the matter is that’s spending—you can call it anything you want, but that’s spending in excess of what we had, and the point is that the deficit next year—mark my words, because we’ll be here discussing it next year—will be in excess of what they’re talking about and moving quite the opposite from the line that goes towards a balanced budget.

How the Premier and the finance minister—

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): Excuse me. There’s two sidebars down there by the third party. I’d appreciate it if we could keep it down to a dull roar.

Mr. Peter Shurman: Thank you, Speaker. How the Premier and the finance minister of Canada’s largest province are always the last ones to know is beyond my ability to explain, as is their stubborn refusal to consider managing government salaries.

Let’s put everyone on a fair playing field, Speaker. Why should Ontarians be getting a deal far worse than government employees? Why should Ontario families, who are the ones responsible for their elderly parents and grandparents, or those parents and grandparents themselves, foot the bill through taxes for people who don’t want to step up and take one for the team? Ontario families had to take shorter shifts at work, had to pay higher fees for services—the health tax being one—and had to take pay cuts. Some non-unionized employees had their wages frozen for a few years.

According to some reports—the Canadian Federation of Independent Business comes to mind—even before we consider benefits and pension plans, government salaries are 13% higher than wages for comparable jobs in the private sector. So when we talk about wage freezes, because we need more money capable of addressing the deficits that preclude these kinds of programs, we’re not just whistling in the wind.

Statistics Canada shows that there were over 92,000 people working for the government of Ontario. That’s the public sector, not the broader public sector, so it excludes arm’s-length agencies, boards, commissions, what have you. Their combined salary, according to Stats Canada, was over $6.5 billion in 2010. Health and social service institution workers’ salaries reached over $13.5 billion. Add post-secondary and trade institution salaries—another approximately $7.6 billion; local school boards, over $14.8 billion.

I might call attention to that, because that’s actually higher than what we paid health and social services—educating our kids; government enterprises, nearly $3.2 billion. That’s where the money goes.

Adding all that up, taxpayers are carrying at least $45.6 billion in government salaries. The Auditor General has outlined that collective agreements the government has negotiated in the past eight years with the two main ministries included pay increases that, in most cases, exceeded the rate of inflation. How many Ontarians out there had that same experience? The answer, Speaker, is pretty clear: None. So this may sound like I’m straying a little bit from the point at hand, but the point at hand is our ability to afford what it is we want to do.

We are the first to stand up for seniors, but we’re the last who are going to support a bill like that, because all that is, is increased spending for a very tiny tranche, or slice, of the population that basically would much prefer broad-based tax relief.

And then, to add insult to injury, they introduce the healthy homes renovation tax credit, a bill that pretends to solve seniors’ income problems, while in reality it does absolutely nothing to help those Ontarians who are in most need.

I cannot reiterate strongly enough the fact that this is a vulnerable segment of the population. It is a cynical approach to dealing with that vulnerable

section of the population to suggest that you’re going to create a bevy of healthy homes by giving seniors across the board something when, in fact, you’re giving a very tiny number of seniors something or you’re giving seniors who don’t need it something.

Broad-based tax relief, I say; and broad-based tax relief is what my party is prepared to support. That’s why we voted with the NDP last week.

I began my remarks by stating that our party is proud of our track record of supporting seniors. I will end my remarks by saying that the province that Ontario seniors left us was an immeasurable gift, and we must never forget that and we must never forsake it. Ontario has a proud tradition of entrepreneurial spirit, a proud tradition of diversity.

Interjections.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): Excuse me, the sidebar at the end, that’s the second time I’ve asked you to keep it down. Thank you.

Mr. Peter Shurman: This is a province of great potential. If you listen to the McGuinty government, you hear that their initiatives are making this province ever better, but these claims are quickly negated by the facts. What the McGuinty government does not want anyone to know is that while they are coming up with catchy bill titles, the content of these policies is making Ontario worse. What is truly distasteful is that this time they are doing so by invoking the words “Ontario’s seniors,” as if they were the sole guardians of that group.

If you want to invest in Ontario seniors, invest in home care. We all know it’s desperately needed. Put in more long-term-care beds. An aging population needs that kind of investment. Offer broad-based tax relief, like an HST cut on essential services for everyone. The healthy homes renovation tax credit is not the way to repay our seniors for their years of hard work in building our province, and it is not the way to build a better future for their grandchildren.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): Further debate?

Mrs. Julia Munro: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased to be able to join the debate on Bill 2, the proposed home renovation tax credit for seniors.

While it appears obvious at the beginning and the goal of making it more affordable for seniors to make home improvements to help them stay in their homes may be commendable, this credit will not help seniors on fixed incomes who need the tax credit most.

To access the full $1,500 tax credit, Dalton McGuinty’s so-called relief requires seniors to spend $10,000. I certainly don’t know many seniors with $10,000 to spare. Ontario seniors most in need would have benefited more from a reduction in the HST on their home heating or their hydro bills. Certainly in my constituency office, the question of the increase and the additional HST burden on these necessities was one of the things that I heard most about for several months, last winter particularly.

Seniors are struggling to pay bills on a fixed income, and they cannot afford to put up thousands of dollars to be eligible for a home renovation credit. I think it’s important to note that once again the McGuinty government has chosen, frankly, a sound bite over real help for seniors. Ontario seniors deserve better.

The government’s press release announcing the credit claims, “The credit would make it more affordable for seniors to install lifts and make other improvements to help them stay in their homes more safely and comfortably.” As I said a moment ago, it’s a worthy goal but one that is being defeated by this government’s failure to address its failings in the home care field.

The speech from the throne directly connected the proposed tax credit and the issue of home care: “In combination with this new tax credit, your government will move to increase home care services for seniors.” Now, I think a lot of us would like to know what the government means by the word “increase” when it makes this promise.

The auditor spoke about the funding of home care in his Review of the 2011 Pre-Election Report on Ontario’s Finances. He said, “Long-term-care home costs have increased an average of 8.6% per year over the past eight years. Over the 2011-12 [to] 2013-14 period, the government plans to hold growth in expenditures to an average of 4.2% per year, or about half of the past growth rate. The growth in CCAC expenditures has averaged 7.2% per year over the past eight years. The government’s forecast for the 2011-12 [to] 2013-14 period assumes that growth in CCAC expenditures will average 2.3% per year, or only about one third of the past growth rate.”

Now, the obvious question to ask is, if the government is going to increase home care services, what number are they starting with? The increased need for funding is driven by the increased demand for home care. Yet, the government is cutting the rate of increase from an average of 7% down to 2%.

Would the government have us believe that the demand has fallen? If the government does not increase funding enough to meet the demand, then it will mean more and more seniors and others in need on waiting lists for home care. And if they do not meet the long-term-care demand, they will face an ever-increasing demand for home care as people sit on waiting lists for long-term care.

It is doubtful that the government will be able to meet its targets to reduce the increases in long-term-care funding and home care funding. The Auditor General’s 2011 review stated, “We concluded that the government’s assumption that both programs will be able to significantly reduce their annual expenditure growth rates is optimistic rather than cautious.”

So it appears that funding will go up, probably more than the government predicts, and I suppose the government will try to claim that this means that services will go up. This is an assumption, obviously, that many people will be pinning their hopes on.

The best measure of this is not funding in dollars; it’s how much help each individual who is assisted needs and, more importantly, how much he or she gets. I think it’s very important to look at the fact that in the 2010 annual report of the Auditor General he points out the problems with people receiving the services they need. The first one: “Funding is still not being allocated primarily on the basis of locally assessed client needs but rather remains a historically based allocation.

This can result in clients with similar home care needs not receiving similar levels of services.” The second problem he points out is that “CCACs do not have adequate assurance that services are being acquired from their external providers in the most cost-effective manner.”

The unequal provision of health and social services throughout Ontario is an issue that I have raised a number of times in this House and that this government has done little to deal with. My fast-growing constituency has always received a lower level of funding for services than slower-growing areas, and many constituencies, particularly in the 905 belt, are in the same boat.

When you look at these two issues, then—and, as I say, in the throne speech, they tie them together as the home renovation credit sound bite on the one hand and improved, increased funding for home care. But an examination of both these initiatives demonstrates the level of superficiality in terms of what seniors might be able to expect.

As we point out, the criteria are to be 65 or over and to be a permanent resident of Ontario, and that’s it. There’s a list of things that are eligible for funding, and obviously they may or may not be able to be afforded by those people who need them most.

When you look at the numbers for long-term care and home care, they are not based on the increased need. We know that the senior population is increasing; we know that health care funding is more important at the senior level, and this is not being addressed at all. To suggest that, by the numbers, you’re going to cut the increases in half when the increases in the last eight years have not been matched to growing numbers and growing needs—this is a pretty chilling picture that the government is facing.

We also know that they have refused to look at more generalized approaches to providing relief. Certainly, as I mentioned, the most common cause of telephoning my office throughout the six months in the November-to-March period of time was on the HST being added to those essentials of home heat and hydro. The fact that this government is totally unwilling to provide that kind of support for people is really quite disingenuous when you look at this—as I refer to it—sound bite that sounds like it will do something for seniors.

When we look at the kind of funding mechanisms that home care and long-term care are going to be faced with, this is a very bleak picture in reality. So it seems to me that these two parts, as they were put together in the throne speech, need to be seen together. They do not look like a picture where we are going to be able to stand up and say that we have provided for the most vulnerable in our community.

The question of real relief isn’t there. The question of providing for a very small part of the senior population through this healthy home tax credit must be seen for what it is, and that is, a very superficial response to a very serious and growing need: looking after seniors in this province. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): Further debate?

Mr. John O’Toole: I was very impressed by our member from Thornhill, our finance critic, and his very thorough and well-researched response to a very targeted bill, Bill 2,

An Act to amend the Taxation Act, 2007 to implement a healthy homes renovation tax credit.

I think it’s important to start at the beginning, and then I’ll frame it out, with your indulgence, Mr. Speaker. In the

preamble of the bill, it does outline very carefully how it’s targeted, and it says, “The tax credit for a taxation year is generally determined with reference to qualifying expenditures”—in other words, it’s by regulation what you can actually spend the money on—“paid by or on behalf of” someone else after September 30 and before January 1, 2013. So there’s about a year there.

Then there’s

section 103.1.1, which lists the eligibility: “An eligible individual’s tax credit for a taxation year is 15 per cent of the lesser of $10,000 and the amount by which the individual’s qualifying expenditures”—so it’s really about 15%. It’s actually $1,500, spending the maximum.

Let’s look at how they get that money and how they spend the money. It’s very important. If they have to cash a GIC, they may have to pay tax on it to get it out. To do that, for instance, if you want to get your hands on $10,000, you’ve got to cash in $20,000, because you’re probably going to pay tax in the range of 50%. So they’re reducing their capital asset in a time—there’s no income security on that, either. They may be taking it out of a plan that’s paying a reasonable rate of return, and in today’s climate, you’re lucky to get between 1% and 1.5% on a GIC.

This is the cynical part of this. The member from Thornhill touched on it, and I’m going to wrap this back to the real underlying problems here. We found out last Friday that Bill 4, the NDP’s bill on giving everyone the provincial portion of the HST back—let’s say it’s $100 a year. Those seniors or other persons who would qualify for that reduction of 8% would be spending that money probably on food and/or other kinds of—feeling comfortable in life a bit. It would have gone directly into the economy, because anybody making under $30,000 spends all of it—not some, all of it.

The very rich who make $300,000 probably only spend a third of their money. They’re putting the rest in some kind of investment, deferred income, a trust, whatever.

But this thing here, when they spend $10,000, how they get it is important. When they spend the $10,000, there’s 8% HST on that. So they’re taking right off the top of that expenditure half of the money. Do you understand? They’re going to be—so they’re really not getting back $1,500. Because of the HST, which is 8% more on everything, they’re actually only getting back about $200. That’s how cynical this really is.

Yet they refused. The majority of the people of Ontario voted for the NDP and the Conservatives; the opposition now has the majority. That means 50%-plus of the people of Ontario voted for the opposition side of the House. We voted unanimously in support of giving everyone a fair break. And I felt the member from northern Ontario spoke passionately about how you have to turn your oil furnace on—we don’t have natural gas as much in some of the northern communities—probably in October, and it probably goes until April.

I’m going to put something on the floor up here for the Premier or the Minister of Finance to listen to. Why didn’t they compromise? Why didn’t they say, “Okay, we’ll give you the HST off during the winter months”? They kept saying it was going to cost $300 million to give this credit back; that’s absolutely assumed revenue, that people are going to be spending that much on home heating. They could have easily compromised that day and been victorious and said, “Look, we’ll take it off from November till March.” All the people in northern Ontario who must heat their home would have received relief—everyone.

I think it would have been a fair thing to do and a reasonable thing to do, extending the olive branch to the opposition and giving credit to the NDP for trying to work with the government. But what have they done? They’ve put another shell on the table here that’s empty. Once you open the nut, you find out it’s empty.

Also the member from Thornhill mentioned, if you looked at the throne speech last week, it was absolutely a disappointment, to put it mildly. I only have a couple of minutes left. This is a plan for jobs and the economy. Everybody knows that Ontario is in serious trouble, and it’s not me that is saying it. It’s the experts who are saying it.

I’m going to give you three or four references here. There is a report out here; it’s Prospects for Ontario’s Prosperity. This is from Roger Martin; it’s the prosperity institute. I’m going to give you a few references. These are not political statements; these are statements by experts who aren’t bound to political outcomes. He says here, “We offer a set of recommendations for an overall prosperity agenda for 2020.” There’s so limited time here. He says, “Ontario’s manufacturers shed 300,000 jobs. While the hemorrhaging has stopped, there is no evidence that these jobs will be coming back....” There are 300,000 jobs gone. What’s their plan? There isn’t a plan.

The report goes on, and it states here that we are probably heading towards a double-dip recession. What’s the plan? They’re increasing spending. That spending is going to be the taxation of the future for these young people.

If you look at the Auditor General’s report, which the member mentioned several times—I have a copy of it here, and I’d encourage everyone in Ontario to get a hold of it. What it’s telling us in this report—I’m going to give you some idea. This is done by the Auditor General, whose report will be filed on Monday. Here’s where we are: Health from 2003 to 2011 has spent, on average, 7.1% more each and every year. This is the Auditor General; it’s on page 18. The projected forecast by Premier McGuinty is 3.6%, so they’re cutting health care funding by 50%.

What is this home renovation tax credit all about? They haven’t built any long-term-care beds—none. What is the growing population—it’s aging. What’s most needed is care for seniors. There’s nothing in this home renovation; that’s all baloney.

They have a program in the Ministry of Health called the Aging at Home strategy. I can tell you, from my riding of Durham, it’s referred to as aging alone. There’s nobody coming to help you with your personal care needs. CCACs are on their knees. I can’t believe for a moment that they have no real plan to deal with the aging population. It’s a tsunami of silver people; this is what it’s called by the health care community.

Education spending from 2003 to 2011 was an average of 4.8% a year. The auditor says it’s going to be 3%. Post-secondary training: They’ve been spending 8.6%; it’s going down to 2.4%. Justice is 5.8%; it’s going down to—they’re taking 1.6% away from them. The court systems are already backed up. They’re taking spending from growing at 6.9% to 1.8%.

Now, I’m going to say what Don Drummond has said, and this is going to take the last part. Don Drummond is the person doing the full, respectful analysis. Here’s what he said about your plan—you are a dismal, distant—you’re 15th out of 16 jurisdictions in North America. You’re 15th; you’re almost last.

Here’s what he said, and I’m going to end here, because I have to share my time. This is Don Drummond speaking, and it’s an interview piece. He says, “Even to achieve the deficits I’m talking about,” there’s slight tightening of growth in spending that has to occur. He said it in an interview. “It’s a lot higher than people are thinking,” and it’s generally illustrated. He says Ontario has a structural deficit. That’s Don Drummond. It’s not Tim Hudak.

We’ve been saying the fix is to freeze the payroll, which is the largest single expenditure in the ministry. It’s the right thing to do. Nobody loses their job, to any great extent. His plan is to lay off 7% of the workforce of Ontario. That’s going to cut services, and it’s going to take three years to implement because everyone will have to get a severance cheque to leave.

Then it’s completely—there is no consistent plan that is respected by any business leader or any other leader in public policy. Thank you.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Paul Miller): The member from Leeds–Grenville.

Mr. Steve Clark: I’m pleased to have the opportunity to speak about the bill that’s entitled the Healthy Homes Renovation Tax Credit Act. There’s a long list of reasons—and I want to thank the member for Thornhill, the member for York–Simcoe and also the member for Durham for putting some of those reasons out in front.

It’s typical of this government that they haven’t told us too much about how they’re going to pay for this or how much it’s ultimately going to cost. It’s simple: It really shows their philosophy. It shows that when they’re in a $16-billion hole, they decide the reason should be to keep on digging, and that’s just not right.

The bill is so flawed, it goes right to the heart. I think it was the member for Thornhill who first talked about it, the reference to a healthy home. I’ve had the opportunity over the past 18 months to knock on doors in my riding not once but twice: during my by-election and also my election. I have to tell you that there are many homes in my riding that are far from healthy. After eight years of Dalton McGuinty’s Ontario, particularly for those seniors, they’re faced with higher taxes, skyrocketing energy bills; the cost of living is going through the roof.

So I guess the fundamental question, Speaker, that we need to put forward to ourselves today is, how do we make those homes and the people who live in them healthy? Well, I can tell you one thing: You’re not going to do it by passing this bill, because it doesn’t get to the heart of the problem.

The government made it very clear by this bill that they don’t fully grasp how desperate people out there are. They proved it last week when they first introduced this bill and then voted against a bill that would remove the HST from home heating. To make matters worse, we had the finance minister acknowledge that even though the majority of MPPs voted in favour of that private member’s bill, the government wouldn’t bring it back for third reading.

So let me make it clear to you over there, because you obviously don’t get it: People are hurting, and they need a break. They’re calling and they’re writing our constituency offices, and I know they have to be contacting you; they had to be mentioning to you at the door that they’re having difficulty making ends meet. This need for relief is especially true for our seniors living on fixed incomes.

They read in the newspaper about the bill that we passed on second reading to eliminate the HST from home heating, and they were excited. They think, “Finally Toronto, Queen’s Park, is listening to what we’ve been saying.” They’ve called me; they stopped me on the street all weekend and they said, “Thank you to the opposition for representing our views”; the fact that we could get together as two parties and put forward, in co-operation, a private member’s bill. They felt proud, and they were shocked that a minority of members across, as the government, could stop that bill from coming to third reading.

I took a lot of time over the weekend to talk to folks about this tax credit program, and I used some of the examples—I was glad the member for Ottawa Centre used some examples about access to homes and bathrooms, shower amendments, widening doors. So I asked people, “Given the chance to choose, what would you choose? Do you have 10 grand in your jeans to spend on some of these renovations to get $1,500 back, or would you prefer the HST relief?” Unanimously they all said the same thing. They supported what we were talking about.

Mr. Jeff Leal: How are the people in Athens?

Mr. Steve Clark: I’m glad you mentioned that. There were many people in Athens that I asked.

Mr. Jeff Leal: I’ve got to get back to Athens.

Mr. Steve Clark: Well, you don’t want to come back on this issue, I’ll tell you that. They have no use for you on this issue.

Over the weekend, I also had a chance to speak to Linda Carr, who is a friend of mine. She’s a very hard-working community activist, a member of Rideau Lakes council. She was the Leeds–Grenville representative at the 53rd annual convention for the United Senior Citizens of Ontario. They met for three days in August in North Bay.

During the convention, they debated and voted on 29 resolutions from all over the province—29 resolutions—on everything from doctor shortages to being gouged at the gas pump. They even had two resolutions dealing with hydro and home heating costs. Do you know what? It sounded a lot like the private member’s bill that this side of the House voted in favour of. But do you know what wasn’t in those 29 resolutions? There wasn’t one that even remotely mirrored your bill—not one. Again, it was pretty obvious from talking to seniors in my riding what choice they would make.

The Premier talked about not playing politics, making sure that—you know, he didn’t want the opposition to divide. It’s funny: He says one thing and does another. To my surprise on Friday, when I got back to my constituency, one of the members of the media handed me a press release that the member for Guelph distributed in my riding. It was entitled “Will Clark and Hillier follow Hudak’s lead and vote against seniors?”

Who’s trying to divide now? Who says one thing about working together and does something else?

I actually brought this around and showed it to people and said, “You know, I’m a little worried you’re going to think that Mr.

Hillier and I are going to vote against seniors.” They couldn’t believe that this government would say one thing to the media, say one thing about working together, about listening to people, about moving things forward—moving forward; “Forward, together”—yet, when we get together on this side of the House, when we represent the majority of Ontarians when they want immediate relief, when they want relief on the HST, when they want relief to try not to pay $10,000 for renovations—they’re having difficulty paying a few hundred dollars on their hydro bill.

I had hydro bills put in my face at the door and they asked: What are we going to do about it when we are elected? Well, I tell you, we told them that we were going to stand up for seniors, and we did last Thursday.

You think you’re fighting for seniors. You know what? Joe Kapp and Angelo Mosca have more fight than you people across the way on seniors. I was more impressed with their battle than I am with your battle since we got here. You consistently say one thing and do another.

Madam Speaker, we had an opportunity last Thursday for the opposition to show the government, in a vote of 54 to 50, that we could do better, that we could move forward together, all parties, for things that our constituents wanted, for things that they told us they wanted at the door. I think it’s important for us to listen to what they have to say. They don’t have $10,000. They don’t have that type of money that they can provide for a healthy home tax credit.

What is healthier is for their legislators to listen to them, to provide that relief on their home expenses, on those bills that they’re struggling to pay for, that they have to choose, one over the other. We all have the need to provide our seniors with relief, but not with this bill, Speaker; not with this bill.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Questions and comments? The member for Beaches–East York.

Mr. Michael Prue: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I’d like to comment on the four speakers. I listened to all of them quite intently: the member from Thornhill, the member from York–Simcoe, the member from Durham and the member from Leeds–Grenville. Each of them had something unique to say.

The member from Thornhill used the expression and the word “cynical” many times in talking about this particular government program. In his view, he thinks that what is happening here is a cynical exercise because the government has many options on how to spend $150 million. In his view, this is a cynical exercise.

The member from York–Simcoe used a good expression. She said, Madam Speaker, that this was a sound bite over real help for seniors, and then did the tie-in with home care and how it is very difficult to understand how this government is going to proceed with only one aspect of their help for seniors, when you talk about the healthy homes renovation tax credit without also indicating what the home care is going to be.

The member from Durham gave a very good example about cashing in GICs to afford renovations. He used the word that this was all baloney because not many seniors are going to take it up.

The member from Leeds–Grenville talked about the choice that seniors are going to have to make and the choice that seniors would make. It reminded me a little bit of the unscientific Toronto Sun poll, when they polled their readers and asked them, “Which one, if you had a choice between taking the HST off home heating and the healthy homes renovation tax credit, would you choose?” The readers, by a 6-to-1 margin, chose taking the HST off of home heating—

Hon. Deborah Matthews: They don’t have the same price tag. They don’t cost the same.

Mr. Michael Prue: No, no, but I mean—

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you. Questions and comments? The member for Oakville.

Mr. Kevin Daniel Flynn: Thank you, Speaker. It’s a pleasure to join the debate this morning. Like other members, I listened intently to some of the remarks that were made. Certainly, I would think, at the end of the day, I didn’t agree with most of the remarks.

I think on October 6, Ontarians also said that they didn’t agree with most of the remarks that were made this morning. We’re in the position that we’re in the House now and we’re moving forward. That was obviously an election that the Progressive Conservative Party was expecting to win but things happened along the way.

Mr. Jeff Leal: Fifteen points ahead in June.

Mr. Kevin Daniel Flynn: Fifteen points ahead in June, and October 6, a much different result because people were able to look behind the curtain, were able to look at what the Conservatives were talking about. I think that came out very clear this morning when we heard some of the comments.

The healthy homes renovation tax credit is intended to help seniors stay in their homes longer. It’s that simple. It helps family members who may decide to share a home with a senior; it helps them to perform that renovation. It also provides stimulus to the economy at a time when I think all three parties in the House would realize that the important thing that we need to be doing is that; something needs to be done about ensuring that people have jobs. Something needs to be done about ensuring that people who would prefer to be in their own home are able to equip their own home in a way that allows them to stay there.

It’s going to support about 10,500 jobs a year. Now, that may be a laughing matter to the opposition; it certainly isn’t to the people who end up with the jobs. I think that would be some very welcome news.

It’s going to support, we figure, about $800 million in home renovation activity. That’s something that I think is a major point of stimulus to the economy. That’s something we’ve been after.

So the people spoke on October 6 and asked us to move ahead with this type of—

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you. Questions and comments?

M me France Gélinas: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Although we would all agree with the goal of the bill—the goal, as stated, is to help seniors stay in their own homes. The four members who spoke before us understand that and agree, but it isn’t the way to get there. We’re talking a $150-million program, and we’re talking a direction that the government is taking that is going to help so few.

Like the four speakers who spoke before, we know that seniors have a hard time staying in their homes, but they have a hard time staying in their homes because they cannot afford to heat their homes. Taking the HST off home heating would help them. They have a hard time staying in their homes because they cannot afford the property taxes on their homes, but there’s nothing in this bill that will help this.

Do seniors have a hard time staying in their homes? Yes, they do. Is it because of renovations? Some of them, some of the time, but we’re talking a very tiny, little slice of the problem there. We’re talking a decision to allocate $150 million when the people of Ontario—60% of the people who voted—voted either for the NDP or for the PCs. That 60% of the people voted to take the HST off home heating, but are we going to respect the wishes of 60% of Ontarians? No, we’re going to move ahead with a policy that is so tiny that it’s not going to help a whole lot of people.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Further questions and comments?

Mr. Phil McNeely: These incentives are only a small part of what our government has been doing for aging at home. There are many other pieces of the Aging at Home strategy, and this will help some seniors make that decision to ready their homes for when they have to.

I participated in the federal project when these same types of tax credits were available for other issues. Would I have replaced my furnace and my roof at that time? I probably might have waited a couple of years. But this gives us the incentive to do it.

These tax credits are targeted to specific items: walk-in tubs, lifts etc. Seniors will look at their alternatives and aging at home will be promoted by the bill.

Of course, not all seniors can afford to take advantage of the tax credits. There will be, however, an incentive to prepare our homes for infirmities we encounter as we age. Renovations are not made for one year; it’s not $10,000 for one year, it’s $10,000 over maybe 10 or 15 years that you’ll be in your home, so it comes out to maybe $1,000 a year. So more people will be able to participate in that, looking at it over the long term.

This will incent those improvements, will create economic activity and will assist in making this option available for more seniors. The ability to age in our own homes is very important as we—in my own case, as we get closer to this age, this is what we want to do. It’ll advertise the fact that these improvements can be made. The dollars can be set aside, and to think that it has to come out of your pocket immediately is erroneous. Your home improvements are put in over several years.

This will be great incentive to getting more people aging at home, and that, in our society, is what the seniors want, and that’s what we want for them.

Thank you, Speaker.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): Thank you. Response? The member for Thornhill.

Mr. Peter Shurman: Thank you very much, Speaker. It’s a pleasure to debate with my colleagues from York Simcoe, Durham and Leeds–Grenville and put our party’s points across, and as well, to listen to the responses of our friends from Beaches–East York, Oakville, Nickel Belt and Ottawa–Orléans.

You know, my friend from Durham brought up something very interesting, and it illustrates what I talked about when I mentioned a shell game. If you think about it—take a senior, 73 years old, who wants to take advantage of this and whose income is entirely derived from what is now a registered income fund. So that money comes out of there, and it’s taxable when it’s withdrawn.

So there is tax paid to both the federal government and to Ontario on that money that’s being used for the home renovation, and then the home renovation itself pays for goods and services that carry a 13% tax, the HST, 8% of which goes to the province of Ontario. So that’s just moving money around and penalizing seniors for wanting to do this, number one.

Number two, to take a look at the $1,000 home renovation that the member from Ottawa–Orléans talks about, where there would be a 15% rebate—$150—take a look at that $150 and ask yourself the question: In the broad-based tax relief that I spoke about, the HST being the example, that’s approximately the amount that that same senior would be getting back every year—not just one year, every single year—if the 8% were taken off that.

The problem with you folks is you’re choking on the Kool-Aid. You’ve got to stop looking at it as—my friend from Oakville talks about “the people have spoken on October 6.” Yes, they did speak. They wanted broad-based relief or they wouldn’t have put more people on this side than they put over there. The sooner you people get this through your heads and start to understand what’s going on in this House, the sooner we can get on with business. We’re not going to be here for four years, and you know it.

Thank you very much, Speaker.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Julia Munro): The time is close to 10:15, and I declare this House recessed until 10:30.

The House recessed from 1013 to 1030.

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

Hon. Rick Bartolucci: I’d like to acknowledge the presence of Chris Hodgson and the Ontario Mining Association, who are in and around the Legislature today for their Meet the Miners event. On behalf of the OMA, the Ontario Mining Association, I’d like to invite all members to make their way to the reception this evening at the Sutton Place. The Ontario Mining Association has invited all of us to meet them. They are very, very interesting people.

Mr. Ted Arnott: The Salvation Army is the largest non-governmental direct social service provider in Canada, providing critical aid to more than 1.5 million Canadians every year. Queen’s Park is pleased to welcome representatives today as they host the Salvation Army parliamentary reception: Lieutenant Colonels Susan and Dirk Van Duinen, divisional leaders, Ontario central east division; Lieutenant Colonel Lee Graves, divisional leader, Great Lakes division; Major Pat Phinney; Majors John and Brenda Murray; and Lieutenant Colonel Ray Moulton. I encourage all members and their staff to attend today between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. in committee room 2. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you, member. Further introductions? Attorney General?

Hon. John Gerretsen: Thank you very much, Speaker. I wonder if you could help me welcome four very good friends of mine from the Kingston area that have joined us today. They are Dan Couture, Sam Laldin and Grace and Bill Eves. They’re sitting right here in the gallery.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): We welcome our guests.

Further introductions? There being none, it is now time for oral questions—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Excuse me. I’ve got to learn to use my broader vision. Yes, member? Carry on.

Mr. Reza Moridi: Richmond Hill. Mr. Speaker, it’s my pleasure to—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Richmond Hill.

Mr. Reza Moridi: Yes. It’s my pleasure to welcome Lester Lui from Richmond Hill, visiting the House today.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Yasir Naqvi: Thank you very much, Speaker. Congratulations. You’re really coming along with remembering the names of all the ridings. For week two, it’s really good.

I want to take this opportunity to wish the Minister of Children and Youth Services a belated happy birthday. It was his birthday yesterday, so if you can all give him a round of applause.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): That’s not an introduction. I would have saved that for another moment at another time.

The member from Scarborough–Rouge River.

Mr. Bas Balkissoon: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Let me say, congratulations to you for being elected the Speaker of the House. I haven’t had a chance to say this to you publicly.

I would like to recognize my Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, who celebrated her birthday last week. I had the honour of serving under this minister in previous terms.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): There is another time to do that. I appreciate the members’ enthusiasm, but I would ask that you keep your introductions brief and that we can move on to oral questions.

ORAL QUESTIONS

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mr. Tim Hudak: My question is directed to the Premier. As you know, Ontario is in the midst of a jobs crisis. There is a frightening paradox here in Ontario, where we have high unemployment at the same time that we have a skilled trades shortage. In fact, your own Ministry of Finance estimates that there will be a million positions unfilled by 2021 in skilled trades.

Premier, we brought forward an idea yesterday to create 200,000 new positions for electricians, plumbers, welders and HVAC operators, to actually put that talent to work here in the province of Ontario. I hope you’ve had time to review our proposal. Will you support the PC plan to modernize our apprenticeship system?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Speaker, first of all, I am pleased to take the question. I certainly support the thrust of my honourable colleague’s purpose here, which is to ensure that we have a highly skilled and educated workforce and that, amongst other things, we continue to invest in and support apprenticeships and the trades.

To that end we’ve established a College of Trades. It’s the first of its kind in Canada, I am proud to say. It’s designed to ensure that all our young people and all our families see the skilled trades as a real, viable career option for them.

It’s also to ensure that the college itself takes responsibility for dealing with issues like ratios. I’ll provide a bit more information in the supplementary.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: Premier, only one quarter of the apprentices actually complete their job training. That’s a fact from Colleges Ontario. So of the 50 or so young people we saw here today who aspire to put their considerable skills and energy to work in the trades—as welders, HVAC operators, plumbers or bricklayers, for example, Speaker—only one quarter under your current system actually finish their training.

Premier, I think you would admit that the apprenticeship system in Ontario is stuck in the 1970s when it comes to its ratios. We are now in 2011. Other provinces have modernized their systems and brought them into the 21st century.

Regardless of the College of Trades, Premier, would you at least agree that it’s time to bring our ratios into the 21st century and move to a one-to-one journeyman-to-apprentice ratio?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: First of all, I think it’s important to understand what has happened in terms of some of the basic numbers, because I believe that we have a very strong record when it comes to supporting apprenticeships in Ontario. More than 120,000 apprentices are learning a trade today; that’s nearly 60,000 more than when we first earned the privilege of serving Ontarians in government. Annual apprenticeship registrations have grown from 17,000 to more than 29,000.

On the matter of ratios, Speaker, my honourable colleague will know we have changed eight; on their watch in government, they changed none. We’ve established a college, and that college has the responsibility in the upcoming year, 2012, to re-examine 34 ratios, including plumbers, electricians and steamfitters. We’ve assigned that responsibility to an independent arm’s-length college. I would ask my honourable colleague to have confidence in that college.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Final supplementary.

Mr. Tim Hudak: Well, Premier, you know we don’t have confidence in the college. You know we don’t because, basically, you’re putting many union bosses in charge; I think five out of eight on your board to date. And I think, as I brought up to you in the House already, Premier, that the majority of employer groups—those that will actually create the jobs—have opposed the college and have called for its abolishment.

Let me ask you directly—you mentioned ratios. In Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Manitoba, for every journeyman bricklayer, they can have one apprentice. Under your outdated system from the 1970s, you need five journeymen for one apprentice. That means that job opportunities are cut by 80% here in Ontario.

Will you at the very least, agree, Premier, that the other provinces have moved forward, that clearly our ratios are stuck in the 1970s and should be modernized toward a one-to-one system that exists in those provinces?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I would say to my honourable colleague that language such as “union bosses” is more properly relegated to the 1970s and even past that. I think our shared responsibility is to find a way to move forward.

We’ve set up a new college, and I would encourage my honourable colleague to take a look at the makeup of the college. It is made up of one half employer representatives and one half employee representatives. I’d encourage him to look at that.

I want to remind him as well, Speaker, that the college’s mandate is to re-examine 34 separate ratios, including plumbers, electricians and steamfitters. That’s their job, and they’re going to take that on for all of us.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. New question.

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mr. Tim Hudak: Back to the Premier on the same subject: Your 1970s apprenticeship system means a lot of young people can’t get jobs in the trades today—I pointed out, when it comes to bricklayers. Similarly, when it comes to electricians, there’s a one-to-one ratio, meaning for every journeyman, they can hire one apprentice and create a job opportunity. Here in Ontario you have to have three journeymen, which means that as a result, the job opportunities are cut to a third.

Premier, here’s something very important, too, and this is your own Ministry of Finance. We are actually producing 46% fewer tradespeople per capita than the rest of Canada. So we have less than half that are actually getting their position in the trades. Doesn’t that tell you the system is outdated and it’s time for you to give direction to move to a one-to-one ratio and create jobs?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Speaker, again I want to say to my honourable colleague that I really do recommend that he place his confidence in the college. They are now taking on the responsibility of lending shape to the apprenticeship system and skilled trades in the province of Ontario. It’s the only college of its kind in the country. I’m glad to say that in Ontario we have elevated the status of the skilled trades to one that I think will inspire confidence in parents and young people alike.

The college is going to take a look at 34 ratios in 2012, and they include brick and stonemasons, cement finishers, construction boilermakers, construction millwrights, drywall finishers, electricians, floor covering installers, general carpenters and so many others as well.

My honourable colleague raises some real issues about ratios, but I have confidence in the college to get that done in the best way for all of us.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: Respectfully, Premier, you seem to be one of the few, aside from the union leaders who are running the college, to have confidence in this instrument.

Let me give you some examples. Eight construction employers say that your College of Trades is broken and are calling for its abolition: the Heavy Construction Association of Toronto, Merit Ontario, the Ontario Electrical League, the Ontario General Contractors Association, the road builders, the sewer and water main contractors, the progressive contractors, the residential construction council. I know there are unions that oppose your approach too, Premier.

I mean, we’re talking about hundreds and hundreds and thousands of jobs here. They’re the ones who have no faith in your system—that you’re handing over the decisions to people who have a special interest, Premier. So it’s not just us. Hundreds and thousands say they don’t have confidence in this.

It’s your role. It’s your job. You’re the one who can make the call. It’s one simple regulatory change. Don’t create a new bureaucracy; make the change. Create the jobs today. Open up 200,000 positions. Won’t you show leadership and do the right thing?

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Speaker, if my honourable colleague is interested in jobs, then I would ask him to support our healthy homes renovation tax credit, which will create over 10,500 jobs on an annual basis.

Again, we’ve set up a college. It is independent; it is arm’s-length; it enjoys equal representation from employers and employee groups. I think we should give the college a chance to do what it was set up to do. It’s specifically mandated to take a look at 34 ratios this coming calendar year. I think we should leave that responsibility to them. Let them take a look at it, let them be thoughtful, let them then be decisive, Speaker. I’m sure they’re going to give expression to the public interest.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Final supplementary.

Mr. Tim Hudak: You know, Premier, I don’t think the folks in the industry believe that. They believe, basically, you are handing over the decision-making to the special interests, those that have a special interest in maintaining high ratios to limit the number of people who are coming into the field. I think that’s clear. And that’s not just me, Speaker, that’s all of the associations representing hundreds of thousands of jobs across the province.

The Premier—one thing he’s right about: This is the only such animal in all of Canada. The other nine provinces don’t have that. To me, that tells me he’s actually down the wrong path, because they’ve moved forward. They’ve moved into the 21st century. He’s stuck in the 1970s on this.

It worked in nine other provinces; they didn’t need a new bureaucracy. They didn’t need to hand over the decision-making to some special interest groups. They had a Premier—seven provinces, different political parties—who had the courage to do the right thing, who had a serious plan, who moved it into the 21st century. Why won’t you show the leadership that we will, Premier, and move to a one-to-one ratio and create 200,000 jobs in the skilled trades in the province?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, I want to remind my honourable colleague that on their watch, during their eight years in government, they changed no ratios—none. There were concerns expressed at that time, Speaker, and they chose to do nothing. We chose to get involved on eight separate occasions; we’ve changed eight ratios. Now we’ve set up an arm’s-length college. The responsibility of that college, among other things in the upcoming calendar year, is to re-examine 34 separate ratios.

I think we should place our confidence in that college that enjoys equal representation from employer and employee groups. Let them do their job. Let’s have confidence in that new college. It’s our new college, and we should be proud of it.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. When the Premier announced his plans to establish the southwestern economic development fund, he noted a study from KPMG that showed this is an effective means to leverage investment and create jobs. This is what he claims.

My question to the Premier is, why hasn’t he conducted a similar study into the effectiveness of his corporate tax giveaways?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Speaker, I know my honourable colleague and I see things differently in this regard, but I think in order to build a competitive economy, we need to bring a multi-faceted approach. That includes investing in the skills and education levels of our people. It includes investing in our infrastructure. It includes modernizing and rebuilding our electricity system.

And yes, it includes making sure we have a competitive tax system. It’s no longer just a matter of ensuring we are better than the US competition; we’ve got to take a look at what’s happening in other parts of the world as well. I’m informed that our corporate tax rates today come in about the mid-level when it comes to the European competition. So we need to keep an eye on the big picture when it comes to the competitiveness of our taxes and ensure as well that it’s just part of a broad approach to ensuring that we have a competitive economy here in Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, the Premier plans to invest about 30 times more money into corporate tax giveaways than into the new southwestern economic development fund. Independent studies by groups like the Conference Board of Canada have indicated that this is one of the least effective ways to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

At a time when every dollar counts, Speaker, why is the Premier pushing ahead with a plan that costs billions and billions of dollars without any evidence at all that it’s working?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, I think it was in the 2010 budget we announced our package of tax reforms, and that included $12 billion in tax reductions for families, for people, and I think it’s about $5 billion for our businesses.

I remind my honourable colleague as well that in terms of external assessments of just how well we’re doing and how competitive we’ve become, I refer her to FDI, foreign direct investment, which has determined that we are now the second most attractive jurisdiction in all of North America for foreign investment. I’d refer her as well to Forbes magazine, that issue in particular that has catapulted Canada from fifth to first place in terms of being the best place in the world for business to invest.

The single most important reason for that escalation, Speaker, in terms of our attractiveness was because of the tax changes that we’ve made here in Ontario. I’d recommend that my colleague take those into account when she assesses corporate taxes.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Final supplementary.

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, the Premier expects families to buy into his corporate tax cut plan, but he can’t even get some of his own cabinet colleagues to buy in.

Corporate tax giveaways and sky-high CEO salaries in the public sector are an absolute necessity for this Premier, but tackling the crisis in senior care, making life more affordable, not so much. Why won’t the Premier even consider the possibility that billions and billions of dollars diverted into corporate tax giveaways doesn’t create jobs and doesn’t stimulate our economy?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Speaker, you know, it really is easy to pass off corporations and businesses as a kind of evil, I guess. But the fact of the matter is they employ people, lots of people. Families count on them for their jobs and their sense of hopefulness about their future.

I want to recommend one other piece of information to my honourable colleague. Because of the tax changes that we have made, in particular the corporate tax reductions, we are now witnessing a dramatic increase in investments in equipment and machinery, which marks the beginning of an investment in productivity—additional competitiveness—which means that our businesses can grab more market share, which means they can hire more people.

So, in fact, I would argue with my honourable colleague on this score. These corporate tax cuts are in fact having an impact on the front lines. They will mean more jobs.

MINING INDUSTRY

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The question is to the Premier. The Premier has called the Ring of Fire “the most promising mining opportunity in Canada in a century.” My question to the Premier is: Is he willing to let these good processing jobs from this great opportunity be shipped overseas?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I do share the same enthusiasm as my honourable colleague, the leader of the third party, when it comes to the promise to be found in the Ring of Fire. They tell us, Speaker, that it’s one of the most exciting mining finds in Canada in the last 100 years.

We are going to work with the community, we are going to work with our First Nations, and we’re going to work with folks in the north to make sure we get this right. There is a tremendous opportunity before all of us, and we will work as hard as we can, I say to my honourable colleague, to ensure that we maximize the benefits for the people of Ontario.

If my honourable colleague has any specific recommendations in that regard, we’d be most willing to listen to those.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Supplementary.

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Speaker, Cliffs Natural Resources says it plans to send chromite concentrate mined in the Ring of Fire to China for processing. That would redirect good-paying jobs, value-added jobs out of northern Ontario. By refusing to answer the question yesterday, the minister suggested that he was okay with it. I want to know if the Premier’s okay with it.

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, I say to my honourable colleague, we’re going to do everything we can together to maximize the benefits for the people of Ontario.

I know where my friend wants to go on this, and I can’t agree with her in that regard. She would suggest that we put up a wall around our resources sector here in Ontario. The fact of the matter is, we receive raw minerals from other parts of the world. We bring them into our province, we process them here, and we create good jobs here. So that’s not the kind of fight I want to get into with the international community.

Having said that, I again say to my honourable colleague, let us see if we can find a way, all of us together, working with northerners in particular, to ensure that we maximize the benefits of the development of the Ring of Fire for the benefit of all Ontarians.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, Speaker, the sad and frustrating thing is, we’ve seen this story before. We saw it with Xstrata. Xstrata in Timmins put 700 people out of work after they exported processing jobs across the border into Quebec.

Cliffs claims that by processing the chromite into concentrate, they won’t even need the province’s approval under the Mining Act to send that quasi-processed material over to China for full processing.

I want to ask the Premier very clearly, is this something that he agrees with? Does he believe that this is the right solution and in the best interest of the province and northern Ontario people?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: We are part of the global economy. We are a free-trading jurisdiction.

I would remind my honourable colleague that, today, in Ontario there are thousands and thousands of jobs that are associated with us receiving from other provinces, other countries, indeed other continents, minerals that are coming in for us to process here.

I say to my honourable colleague, do we really want to get into a trade battle based on protectionism, where we put up walls, because I think, in the end, that will cost us thousands of jobs, and it will hurt our families.

Having said that, let’s find a way to maximize the benefits for the people of Ontario when it comes to developing intelligently, thoughtfully and responsibly the Ring of Fire.

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: My question today is also to the Premier. After eight years of trying to create jobs your way, the results are in: 300,000 manufacturing jobs are gone; 58 straight months of Ontario trailing Canada in job creation; and 75,000 full-time jobs lost just last month alone.

You tried it your way and you failed. You refused to listen to our plan to modernize the apprenticeship system and create 200,000 jobs right here in Ontario. Instead, you take pride in creating a looming boondoggle called the Ontario College of Trades.

Premier, can you inform the House today of how much money the College of Trades has cost Ontario taxpayers up to this point?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities.

Hon. Glen R. Murray: As the member should know, this is a private sector partnership not borne by the government.

It’s fascinating. We talk about proposals here. This is the Conservative Party’s research position on trades: three sentences.

This is two years of work by leading professionals and 26 consultations with business and labour leaders, leading to one of the most well-researched, well-executed projects ever.

One sheet, three sentences; consultation with 26 industry business associations and labour groups.

It’s interesting to me, Mr. Speaker. These folks think we’re cozy with labour because we want labour leaders to sit down with business people to look at these. Those folks over there think we’re cozy with business because we think they need some tax breaks to create jobs. Mr. Speaker—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Stop the clock.

Member, I am going to get some advice. I would wish that members be reminded of the rule of using props. I would probably have ruled on that if I had been quicker on my feet. So I would remind everyone about props at all times.

I will accept the member’s supplementary question.

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: Thank you, Speaker.

I didn’t expect that you would actually divulge information that has been so closely guarded and hailed by your good friends in the Working Families Coalition. The key objective of the College of Trades is to compulsorily certify many additional trades that are functioning absolutely fine right now, and they will do this with no known public criteria. This will cost tens of thousands of jobs in the housing and road-building industries alone, as well as drive up the cost of all construction.

Minister, just when are you and the College of Trades planning on informing the construction workers of your plan to have their trades compulsorily certified, and how much will tradespeople be charged to belong to this unnecessary institution?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: Mr. Speaker, by 2025 we have to create 362,000 apprenticeships. That is the serious work that this government is involved in.

The comment was made by the Leader of the Opposition—I wish they’d actually read these reports; maybe they would come up with better questions. Maybe the leader should ask his critic to read the reports and then ask some questions.

It’s interesting, because the comment was made, Mr. Speaker, out of 1970s-style thinking. You were in power many more years than we were since the 1970s. You cut apprenticeship by 74%; you didn’t designate one ratio. You didn’t have years, you had decades to do it, and you did nothing. Now you’ve got ants in your pants and you’re all terrified by this. It’s absolutely hysterically funny.

We consulted with 26 trade organizations—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you.

PUBLIC TRANSIT

Mr. Jonah Schein: To the Minister of Transportation: Reports indicate now that Metrolinx is looking to privatize the proposed Eglinton crosstown transit line. It seems that, almost weekly, there is another setback on this project resulting from the McGuinty government’s mishandling of the Eglinton line, from soaring costs to technical challenges to lengthy delays. Is the privatization of this line just another indication of how badly off the rails this project has gone?

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: I thank the member for the question and I’m pleased to clarify the situation for him. The Eglinton crosstown line is an $8.2-billion investment on the part of our government and will create 82,000 jobs. With investment that significant, it’s natural that Metrolinx look at all procurement options to achieve the best value for taxpayer money.

No decision has been made at this point in time. This is one option and discussions are ongoing. No matter which way we move forward, value for taxpayer money, community consultation and seamless service are absolutely critical to this project. Metrolinx has, in fact, already started community consultations on the crosstown line.

Most importantly, I want to note that alternative financing and procurement does not mean private operation of the facility. When Infrastructure Ontario does procurement on a hospital, we still have doctors and nurses funded through OHIP—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mr. Jonah Schein: Thank you, Speaker. Toronto once had an affordable, publicly run and widely supported plan for light rail expansion across Toronto: It was called Transit City. Then the McGuinty government systematically dismantled this plan, delaying and shortening routes with a $4-billion cut, and willingly let Mayor Ford spend almost the entire budget on one line while cancelling or cutting lines to underserved neighbourhoods across this city.

Does the minister really think that privatizing transit will get the Eglinton line back on track?

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I want to say this government is known to work co-operatively with cities and municipalities across this province and has done so with the city of Toronto and with the TTC. We have a memorandum of understanding that is a consensus between the TTC, Toronto and the province of Ontario. We are still discussing the issue with them, we’re negotiating with them, and we will come up with a consensus position, as we have in the past.

We work co-operatively with our partners, we will continue to do so, and it will be in consultation with the public: strong, strong communications with the public as well as the TTC and the city of Toronto.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Mrs. Teresa Piruzza: Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Economic Development and Innovation. Yesterday, the minister introduced legislation to create the southwestern Ontario development fund and continue the eastern Ontario development fund. This is an important step and people are interested to know more about it and how the program will work. I know because I’ve been speaking to people in Windsor about it.

This bill has widespread support from many groups across southwestern Ontario and eastern Ontario. There is concern, however, because the opposition critic yesterday expressed that he does not support this bill.

In my community there is a lot of support and optimism for this initiative. People want to see us working together, putting jobs ahead of politics. Is the minister confident that this initiative does indeed have support across the region it would serve?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I’d like to thank the member for her advocacy for jobs in southwestern Ontario, which is so important for her region. I know she knows that as well.

I, too, was concerned by the comments that the critic made yesterday in opposition to this—and frankly quite surprised, given the support and interest that I’ve received on a one-on-one basis from many of his colleagues in the PC caucus, who are very interested in the jobs that these funds could possibly create in their communities. Mr. Speaker, I was surprised as well that he would take that position without hearing out all sides that will occur when this legislation comes forward and is debated in this House.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that his colleagues who have expressed an interest to me about getting jobs in their communities from this fund will persuade the critic to think twice about this, persuade the critic to hear out all sides and listen to groups like the Southwest Economic—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Supplementary?

Mrs. Teresa Piruzza: Speaker, we know that all of us are committed to strengthening Ontario’s economy and to making Ontario the best place in North America to do business, but this can only be achieved if we have strong regional economies.

The eastern Ontario development fund has been in place for a number of years now. Ontarians want to be confident that their tax dollars go to good use. These are important investments being made. Is the minister confident that the regional structure for these funds is the right one, and has the eastern Ontario development fund been successful?

Hon. Brad Duguid: Absolutely. Since the eastern Ontario development fund was established in 2008, the Ontario government has invested $52 million, Mr. Speaker, leveraging private sector investment of $485 million. These investments have created or retained 11,700 jobs in communities in eastern Ontario, and believe me, Mr. Speaker, I know those communities very much welcome those jobs.

This fund has also demonstrated what we call a higher leverage rate—that’s the grant versus the total investment—than regional economic funds in other jurisdictions. Really, Mr. Speaker, that’s what it’s all about: making investments here on behalf of the province of Ontario, leveraging those investments to even larger investments on the part of the private sector, and creating jobs. It has worked in eastern Ontario; it will work in southwestern Ontario.

It’s something we on this side of the House are very, very proud of. I really recommend to both opposition parties that they take a good look at this, because their constituents in southwestern Ontario and eastern Ontario are going to be on them for this to help us create jobs in those regions. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Norm Miller: My question is for the Minister of Northern Development and Mines. Minister, last week we heard that Global Sticks of Thunder Bay has shut down, and workers are still waiting for their paycheques. As you know, the Ontario government has a big investment in Global Sticks; you gave them $7 million. On May 20 of this year, you put out a press release. It said, “McGuinty Government Creating 130 Jobs for Oliver Paipoonge Township.” My question is: How is it possible that you so recently gave them this money and the jobs have disappeared?

Hon. Rick Bartolucci: Listen, Speaker: We’re very, very proud of the northern Ontario heritage fund and the incredible opportunity it brings to northern Ontario, whether it be northeastern Ontario or northwestern Ontario. It brings real jobs and real opportunities.

The fact of the matter is that since 2003, when we re-profiled the northern Ontario heritage fund away from what it used to be before, under the previous Tory government, one that used to fund golf tournaments, we turned it into a job creator. In fact, statistics would indicate that 17,918 jobs have been created because of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp., and we’re very proud of that.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Norm Miller: Again, to the minister: I don’t know where he gets these numbers from; he just picks them out of the air. These are real jobs I’m talking about.

Minister, reports say that it’s the Ontario government that is creating the problems for Global Sticks. It has been death by 1,000 cuts. The plant first broke ground in 2009. It took 1,137 days from the start of this project before they were operating. It took two years to get the C of A for the boiler from the Ministry of the Environment. They had no wood supply and they had to get wood from Minnesota.

My question is: After investing over $7 million of taxpayer funds, what exactly is the minister doing to help get Global Sticks back on track and open its doors?

Hon. Rick Bartolucci: To the Minister of Natural Resources.

Hon. Michael Gravelle: Mr. Speaker, we are working very closely with Global Sticks and have from the beginning. They came forward to us a couple of years ago with a good business plan for a good product, and they had good markets. We did due diligence, provided them with some significant support, but they continued to have some challenges. They came to us and asked for a wood facility licence—no need for a crown allocation. We helped them with that; we were happy to provide that as well.

I wish I had a lot of time to discuss this. What I can tell you is that indeed we continue to work closely with them, including, when they identified that they still had some challenges, we identified over 35 different suppliers of wood for the white birch that they needed for the product.

We are proud of the investment. We understand they’re working their way through a restructuring. We’re optimistic that indeed they will do so. We will continue to work closely with them. This is an example of a company that came forward with a good product and a good market. We—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. New question.

SECURITIES INDUSTRY

Mr. Michael Prue: My question is to the Minister of Finance. Yesterday, Competition Commissioner Melanie Aitken informed the Maple Group consortium that she has concerns, and I quote what she said, “about the likely competitive effects of the proposed transactions ... primarily in connection with equities trading and clearing and settlement services in Canada.”

With this new development, the proposed acquisition of the TMX by Maple Group has clearly been put in some jeopardy and doubt. Will the minister reconvene the select committee that looked into the TMX-LSE merger in light of this new development in order to protect Ontario’s interests?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: I think, given that this is a federal process, we will have to rely on the federal government to protect Ontario’s interests.

I’d remind the member opposite that, in fact, the Competition Bureau has stated some concerns, concerns which we signalled last spring. I think the response of the Maple Group to the concerns is that we need to work with the regulator to address those concerns.

I think the work the select committee did last spring was good work. There’s also the Ontario Securities Commission, as well as the Quebec securities commission, that have regulatory issues to deal with.

I think it’s appropriate for the proper constitutional authorities and regulatory authorities to let this process unfold. I think that’s in Ontario’s interests, both in the short and long term.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Michael Prue: I am glad the Minister of Finance agrees that the select committee did a good job last time. I think all members of this House acknowledge the excellent work done by the all-party select committee that looked at the original bid by the LSE for the TMX.

In the spirit of all-party co-operation in this new minority environment, surely the minister will reconvene, or will agree to reconvene, the select committee, and not just pass it over to the federal government.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: We look forward to working with both opposition parties on a variety of issues. We had, I thought, a very good meeting yesterday, where you, on behalf of your party and leader, put forward some very good suggestions for moving forward, so I do want to do that.

The Competition Bureau has clear authority here; they have the expertise. We have to rely on that regulatory process, in my view, which is established in law, endorsed at both the federal and provincial levels, to take its course. There have been concerns expressed about this. I think this is the right organization. I think that the Maple Group needs to work with the regulators at both the federal and provincial levels.

I’m proud that it was this government and Premier that first raised questions about the control of our major stock markets and our derivative markets. I think the Legislature—all of us—did a good job, and I think we need to let the regulators follow their processes and require the Maple Group to respond to the challenges raised.

RENEWABLE ENERGY

Ms. Helena Jaczek: My question is for the Minister of Energy. There has been a great deal of interest in Ontario’s clean energy economy. Ontario has become a global leader in clean technology and manufacturing through the North-America-leading Green Energy Act and feed-in tariff program. Despite the opposition’s constant threats to destroy this economy, it has thrived, creating jobs and establishing manufacturing facilities across the province.

However, we are facing uncertain times in the global economy and my constituents in Oak Ridges–Markham are concerned about the impact on our clean energy economy.

Can the minister please provide this House with an update on the status of Ontario’s clean energy economy?

Hon. Christopher Bentley: The member from Oak Ridges–Markham asks a very important question, because we are in a worldwide fight for jobs. The Green Energy Act and the clean, green economy has not only helped clean up the air for Ontarians, but we’ve got more than 20,000 jobs and $26 billion in investments—investments which have gone to places like Oxford county and Tillsonburg; hundreds of jobs in a Siemens plant.

I can tell you, Speaker, these are construction jobs that employ apprentices like the ones who were here yesterday, and journeypersons—jobs that will come to a crashing halt if the bill from the member for Prince Edward–Hastings ever became law, because it would create such uncertainty that the jobs that many are relying on in urban and rural Ontario will not be available and investment will not flow into the province of Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Helena Jaczek: Thank you, Minister, and I’m certainly happy to hear that Ontario’s clean energy economy is still a global leader in manufacturing.

I’m pleased that Ontario is on track to replacing dirty coal-fired generation with cleaner sources of power, and this is cleaning up the air for my constituents, their children and their grandchildren.

Minister, you said that Ontario’s clean energy economy is about to transition from a procurement stage to a construction stage. I think that we’re all interested in the impacts of this evolution and what it will mean for Ontario’s clean energy program.

Minister, can you please tell us what this transition in the clean energy economy will mean for jobs in the sector and for existing manufacturers of clean energy technology?

Hon. Christopher Bentley: We are in a phase when we’ve had the very important initial two years—lots of excitement, lots of contracts. Now they’re beginning to be built out, and we’re constructing all over the province.

We have a feed-in tariff review to make sure that our green energy economy has a solid foundation for the future. I know members like the one from Oxford and like the one from Newmarket–Aurora, where they’re hiring with Northland Power, creating hundreds of jobs, buying solar panels, building them in his riding—you know, that’s the type of job that will disappear if the member from Prince Edward–Hastings has his day and his bill ever becomes law.

What do you say to the families who are looking for those jobs? What do you say to the apprentices and the journeypersons who are involved in those jobs? What do you say to Ontarians? Where are the jobs? They’re in the green—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. New question.

PAN AM GAMES

Mr. Rod Jackson: Speaker, my question is to the Premier. On November 16, we saw nothing but yet another example of public information being hidden from public scrutiny and accountability. Hamilton city councillors were told that they would not gain access to details about three bids for the Ivor Wynne football stadium rebuild for the 2015 Pan Am Games—that is, unless they waive their right to inform the public.

How can the people of Ontario be certain that Infrastructure Ontario’s cloaks of secrecy are not merely shielding government cronyism?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Infrastructure.

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: The procurement that it does is recognized as among the best in the world, internationally. Infrastructure Ontario has completed 52 projects, worth $21 billion. They have come in on time and under budget.

In terms of procurement, they are in a competition process to try to get the best prices possible for the projects that they’re working on. They cannot disclose the information until after the contract is let and all the details have been negotiated.

We have to be really proud of the work that Infrastructure Ontario is doing. It has tremendous credibility in the construction industry and in the financial sectors. Let them do their work, and they’ll come in on time and under budget.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Rod Jackson: How can the minister justify the endemic secrecy of the Pan Am planning? It’s the same endemic secrecy that blocks Hamilton city councillors from holding government to account unless they waive the right to inform the public; the same endemic secrecy that facilitates the sole-sourced equestrian deal in Caledon, where Pan Am CEO Ian Troop’s brother benefited when he sold land to the bidder for the development; and the same secrecy that denies freedom-of-information requests by the opposition to discover the secretariat’s updated budget forecasts.

Minister, will you grant free access to public information so that Ontarians can be sure that hand-picked Liberal cronies are not serving their personal best interests cloaked behind Kafkaesque policies?

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: First of all, I want to take the opportunity to congratulate the member on his election. Having just gone through an election campaign, I’m sure the member is fully aware of the tremendous level of investment in Hamilton and the confidence that the government of Ontario has shown in Hamilton with respect to the infrastructure that is ongoing there. It has been unprecedented in terms of what we have provided to the city of Hamilton.

We want to implement that significant infrastructure in a professional, responsible manner. That means that, in the procurement process, it is absolutely imperative that the information remain confidential until the amount is known, until the contract is announced, because otherwise, the competition is destroyed. So please understand the process.

I’d be happy to sit down with the member and talk to him about the operations of Infrastructure Ontario and most—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. New question.

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. There seems to be a growing consensus that bullying in our schools is a problem that needs to be confronted. Students who want to tackle this problem have a simple question: Will they be able to establish gay-straight alliance clubs in their schools?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Speaker, today I had the opportunity, together with the Minister of Education, to speak about a new initiative. I certainly hope we can count on support from all members of this Legislature. What we simply want to do is convey to all our children in all our schools that they have our support. We want our schools to be warm, welcoming, safe, secure and accepting. We want all our kids to feel free to be who they are.

In response to my honourable colleague’s question, yes, we’re going to require that, at every school where students request that this be put in place, they be permitted to organize themselves with a gay-straight alliance. It may not be that name that they use, but the important thing is we’re going to have that kind of supportive group there available in all our schools.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, I was starting to feel a little bit positive and then, all of a sudden, got disappointed near the end there.

Nearly two-thirds of LGBTQ students and their parents say that they feel unsafe in their schools. There have been at least three young people who have taken their own lives in the province of Ontario. It is heartbreaking, Speaker, but it is also completely unacceptable.

Can we finally put the politics aside and answer a simple question? Will students who want a GSA club in their schools be allowed to put one together and have one in their schools?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Yes. The answer to that, very simply, is yes. In fact, that wording is in the bill. I appreciate the sincere passion demonstrated by my honourable colleague, and I think we have a shared purpose. I invite all legislators in this assembly to come together on this very important issue.

We need to be able to say to all our kids in all our schools that we’re going to stand up for them and that you will not be the subject of discrimination on the basis of gender or race or place of origin or tradition or culture or sexual orientation. We need to speak with one voice on this issue together as adults in the province of Ontario. Our intention through this bill is to send that message loud and clear.

POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION

Mr. Grant Crack: My question is for the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. These are uncertain times in the global economy and challenging times for our families. This is the time to make bold choices to continue our investment in developing the skills and education of the people of Ontario. In tough times, we need to make the right choices while we take the steps to move forward together.

Speaker, the families in my constituency are worried about the rising cost of post-secondary education. Getting students to pursue post-secondary education is critical to making Ontario the most attractive place in the world for knowledge-based jobs.

Speaker, through you to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, what is the minister doing to ensure that post-secondary education is affordable and accessible for college and university students at this time?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: I want to congratulate the new member from Glengarry–Prescott–Russell, who is joining us in the House. It’s great to have another former mayor amongst us; some of us have a special affinity for that.

Under the Premier’s leadership, and I think the Premier has stated this over and over again, education is an unqualified priority for our government. We have added 200,000 spaces, so 200,000 more Ontarians get a yes when they apply for college or university; they used to get a no. We have increased the number of students who receive OSAP support by 66%, and we have a program for low-income students that gives them 50% of their tuition.

As you know, we are moving forward now on our election commitment of a 30% reduction for first-entry students in our post-secondary education system. If there is a supplementary, I’ll be happy to elaborate on the future.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Grant Crack: Thank you, Minister. I remember the time when our government took office in 2003. Successive NDP and PC governments had abandoned our colleges and universities, leaving us with too many students jammed into cold, outdated buildings while allowing tuition to skyrocket. I am proud that our government has taken the action to implement the 30% Ontario Trillium tuition grant, an important investment to the future of Ontario students.

Students entering their first year of post-secondary education have raised their concern about the 30% tuition grant. Their concern is that they will not be eligible for the grant since they are enrolled in a professional program. Speaker, through you to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities: How is the minister going to ensure that these first-year students in professional programs are eligible for the 30% tuition grant?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: This grant applies to families whose household income is less than $160,000; to students who are within four years of high school, which will be upwards of about 340,000 students. It applies to all first-entry programs. So, if you’re going to Ryerson University and you go into nursing, you’re in a first-entry program and you’ll apply those grants.

It is one of the most significant assistances to working families in difficult times. It’s not just an investment in young people—especially those from smaller communities like you represent, who often have to travel to get the specializations they want and have a particularly difficult challenge and additional costs, which is why we have the satellite campus program and others. It’s also important to all of us as we get older, because we’re going to rely on the next generation to support those of us with greying hair around here, and we want them to have the best opportunity for the best jobs.

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: Mr. Speaker, through you to the Premier: I’m very pleased that you’re going to take further steps to respond to the very serious issue of bullying and its devastating consequences on our students—all of our students. We need to provide them with a safe and secure environment for learning.

Today, after two years of consultations with students, with parents, with educators, I introduce for the first time in the province of Ontario a piece of legislation designed with the sole purpose of comprehensively addressing the problem of bullying in our schools. I would say to you, Premier, it deals with raising awareness, prevention, accountability and the Ministry of Education assuming leadership. Are you prepared to support this bill?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I thank my honourable colleague for her question, and I thank her for her initiative. I have yet to see the bill, but I think there’s good news here. I think a lot of us are on the same page. I look forward to seeing the bill, learning a bit more about it and seeing what we can do to make common cause.

Again, I think there is a growing sense of responsibility that we share in this Legislature to send a very important message to all of our children, right across this province, who find themselves in any one of our schools, that we are going to stand up for their interest. I get the strongest sense that is exactly the intention of my honourable colleague. As I say, I look forward to looking at her bill closely and seeing what we can do to make common cause on this very important issue.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: Well, Mr. Speaker, I’m encouraged because we can no longer implement pieces of legislation that are ad hoc. We need to take a comprehensive approach. We need to ensure accountability. We need to make sure that statistics on bullying that are kept in our schools, in our boards, are provided to the Ministry of Education and that each year, the Minister of Education can report to the public as to what’s going on in order that we can do everything possible to reduce the instances of bullying. This bill will do that.

This bill will also provide a process to deal with the reporting, the monitoring, the investigating. This bill will also make sure that our teachers are provided with in-servicing in order that they can respond and intervene appropriately. Also, and finally, it makes the Ministry of the Education the lead body tasked with devising and implementing a province-wide bullying prevention and intervention policy. Will you do so?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, Speaker, this is all very encouraging. As I understand it, our bill as well takes into account a responsibility that we place on the ministry to collect data and to make that public. What our bill essentially does is give the force of law to policies that pre-existed. It adds to that, but essentially it says to our school boards, “We’re going to step it up now when it comes to treating bullying seriously. We’re going to impose a legal obligation on you this time around to prevent bullying, to intervene where it takes place and to ensure that there are progressive consequences, up to and including expulsion.”

So I think, Speaker, there’s a lot of common ground here. I’m encouraged by the information I’m receiving from my honourable colleague and I’m convinced that we can and will in fact work together on this.

HOME CARE

Ms. Cindy Forster: My question is for the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. Yesterday, Port Colborne city council in my riding unanimously passed a motion calling for stable home care funding. The Niagara peninsula, as you know, has the largest concentration of seniors in Ontario and Canada, yet the services that these seniors have access to, to stay healthy in their homes, are hard to access and are inconsistent in the Niagara peninsula and across the province. Port Colborne, in their motion, asked for the minister’s help. Will the minister work with Port Colborne and other local municipalities across our province to develop a stable and comprehensive program of home care in Ontario?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: Thank you very much for the question, because enhancing supports for home care is a key priority for my ministry and for our government. We believe—in fact, we know—that the more we can do to help support people in their own homes actually takes pressure off our hospitals and our emergency departments and our long-term-care homes, so investing in the community, providing funding to do that, is exactly what we are doing.

We have significantly increased funding to the home care sector. We’ve also added new programs like our Aging at Home program that is doing exactly what the member opposite has talked about: helping support people in their own homes.

Speaker, we are very encouraged by progress that has been made across the province in bringing people home after they’ve been in hospital. I’ll be happy to speak more to that in the supplementary.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Cindy Forster: The motion notes the importance of supportive homemaking services. Those services have been seriously eroded over the last 20 years. The CCAC criteria provides for 90 hours of care in their homes, but the average person is only getting 30 hours of care across the province, and in many cases housekeeping is not allowed. For many seniors, it isn’t a complex health issue that forces them to move out of their home; it’s rather the daily tasks of cooking, laundry and housekeeping.

During the election, the Ontario New Democrats recognized this and we developed a plan to provide seniors with the supportive services they need. Will the minister work with us, the local municipalities and the health care groups to develop a province-wide plan for supporting seniors in their homes?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: Speaker, as I said in the first question, helping people stay at home is a very high priority for us. That is what our healthy homes renovation tax credit is part of. We are adding three million hours of PSW support for exactly the kind of functions that the member opposite has spoken about. We’ve got some great successes. We are now seeing fewer people getting on the list for long-term care. We’re seeing more people coming home from hospital, stabilizing at home so that they don’t need to go into long-term care. This is exactly where we need to go, and this is where we are going.

DIABETES

Mr. Jeff Leal: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care. November is Diabetes Month. In Ontario, diabetes is on the rise. Today, an estimated 1.2 million people have been diagnosed with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. This astounding number represents 8.3% of the population.

Diabetes is serious and needs managing. If neglected, the complications of diabetes can lead to serious long-term complications, including heart and kidney disease, stroke, blindness and, often, amputation.

Diabetes also counts for a significant number of emergency room visits each year and costs the health care system an estimated $4.9 billion every year.

Mr. Speaker, to the outstanding Minister of Health and Long-Term Care: Can the minister please tell us what this government is doing to help Ontarians living with and affected by diabetes?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: Thank you, Speaker, through you to the outstanding member from Peterborough, for this really important question, because November is Diabetes Awareness Month.

Speaker, I’m very proud of what we have been able to do. For example, Ontario is the first province in Canada to fund diabetes insulin pumps for young people and adults with type 1 diabetes. We’re also creating centres of excellence in bariatric surgery. We are funding over 2,000 procedures a year. It means less waiting for people. It also means care clo