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February 23, 2011

39th Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2011-Feb-23 (PDF)

L084 - Wed 23 Feb 2011 / Mer 23 fév 2011

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Wednesday 23 February 2011 Mercredi 23 février 2011

ORDERS OF THE DAY

INTERIM SUPPLY

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

INTRODUCTION OF PAGES

ORAL QUESTIONS

HYDRO RATES

HYDRO RATES

TAXATION

TAXATION

ENERGY POLICIES

HEALTH CARE

TAXATION

TAXATION

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

INFRASTRUCTURE

PROGRAM FUNDING

DIALYSIS

HEALTH CARE

ABORIGINAL LAND DISPUTE

AIR-RAIL LINK

ABITIBI DAMS

WATER QUALITY

VISITORS

ESTIMATES

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

GENERAL MOTORS OF CANADA

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

ONTARIO BUDGET

POVERTY

REEVES OF HALIBURTON–

KAWARTHA LAKES–BROCK

RAY DESJARDINS

TOM SYMONS

ATIKOKAN RENEWABLE FUELS

RAINBOW FAMILY DAY

WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION IN PROVINCIAL PARLIAMENT /

REPRÉSENTATION DES FEMMES AU PARLEMENT PROVINCIAL

SPECIAL REPORT, OMBUDSMAN

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

ONTARIO FOREST TENURE MODERNIZATION ACT, 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 SUR LA MODERNISATION

DU RÉGIME DE TENURE FORESTIÈRE

EN ONTARIO

SMALL BUSINESS

BILL OF RIGHTS, 2011 /

CHARTE DES DROITS DES PETITES ENTREPRISES DE 2011

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS AMENDMENT ACT (COMMENCEMENT OF TERM

OF OFFICES DATE), 2011 /

LOI DE 2011 MODIFIANT LA LOI

SUR LES ÉLECTIONS MUNICIPALES

(DATE DE COMMENCEMENT

DES MANDATS)

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

AND RESPONSES

FOREST MANAGEMENT

PETITIONS

HUMAN RIGHTS CODE

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES

CHILD CUSTODY

OAK RIDGES MORAINE

HYDRO RATES

WASTE DISPOSAL

HYDRO RATES

REPLACEMENT WORKERS

PARAMEDICS

SERVICES FOR THE DEVELOPMENTALLY DISABLED

PARAMEDICS

ONTARIO PHARMACISTS

CHRONIC CEREBROSPINAL

VENOUS INSUFFICIENCY

ORDERS OF THE DAY

SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE PROPOSED TRANSACTION OF THE TMX GROUP AND THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE GROUP

The House met at 0900.

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

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

INTERIM SUPPLY

Hon. Monique M. Smith: I move that the Minister of Finance be authorized to pay the salaries of the civil servants and other necessary payments relating to the legislative offices pending the voting of supply for the period commencing February 23, 2011, and ending on March 31, 2011, such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation for the 2010-11 fiscal year following the voting of supply.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Ms. Smith has moved government notice of motion number 52. Debate?

Hon. Monique M. Smith: Today we are debating our motion on interim supply. It’s not typical that we would actually debate the motion. However, it would seem that my friends in the third party are feeling a lack of practice, having just come back from the break, so for the member for Timmins–James Bay and possibly the member for Welland, we will give them an opportunity to wind themselves up this morning.

An interim supply motion can authorize spending for up to six months. This motion is specific to the Legislative Assembly offices and covers a period of less than two months, from February 23 to March 31, 2011.

Spending authority is required from February 23, 2011, until the passage of the Supply Act. Without spending authority, most scheduled and unscheduled payments, such as salaries and wages or suppliers’ accounts, cannot be paid. This motion would give government continuous legislative authority to make payments for the legislative offices. It does not authorize any additional expenditures beyond the 2010 budget and the 2010-11 estimates.

I want to assure the House that the motion before the Legislature does not authorize any additional expenditures—the maximum amount of expenditures under the motion of interim supply as set out and authorized in the Supply Act.

It is also important to note that the legislative offices’ expenditures are not over their budget. The current spending is actually under the amount of the 2010 Ontario budget. Current spending of the legislative offices is covered by the Interim Appropriation for 2010-2011 Act, 2009, and the Supplementary Interim Appropriation Act, 2010. This authority, however, is not sufficient to cover the legislative offices’ required expenditures until the end of the fiscal year, and that is why we’re here this morning debating this motion.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to speak to this motion and to set the table for the ongoing debate.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Further debate?

Mr. John O’Toole: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for that accommodation as well.

I’ve been wishing to speak on the supply motion, which allows the government to pay the bills. I’m not surprised that I’m a bit concerned whether they have the resources to pay the bills. I’m actually waiting for the budget; that Mr. Duncan, the Minister of Finance, will come in and tell us we have a deficit in the order of $20 billion. So I am concerned.

But I’m more specifically concerned—Mr. Speaker, you would know as well—that they made a commitment, a promise, to hold the line on spending. Now, not to say that the public sector is not deserving of the pay and remuneration they get. They are. I don’t in fact have any dispute with that. But when you have a boss, which would be the McGuinty government, that is spending money faster than there is revenue coming in, they’re putting everyone at risk; not just the civil servants of Ontario but the people of Ontario, the families. They’ve got to learn to be fair with everyone.

If I look around at what causes these collapses in the economy, it’s mismanagement, squarely on the shoulders of the Premier and his cabinet—not so much on some of the members here this morning. They’re not in cabinet; what do they know? They get the notes to read, and that’s as far as it goes.

I will say this: One of the major policy areas where they have completely failed is the energy file. You see it in its evidence when you open up that energy bill in your house. You open up that bill, and you’re shocked. Not only that, you’re frightened and you feel abused—because Premier McGuinty’s energy plan for Ontario is simple.

We—Tim Hudak—say that conservation is the first and most important policy step they can take. Conservation would give consumers and families the right tools, like Energy Star appliances. They should get a tax credit on those. That was Tim Hudak’s plan. Premier McGuinty cancelled it.

Their conservation plan is that they make electricity so expensive that you’ll have to conserve; you’ll actually have to turn off appliances. That’s the plan. It’s a very simple plan: They charge you so much that you can’t afford to watch television or dry your clothes during the week; you have to do it on the weekend, on Sunday when the rates are lower.

Here’s the other one: The Green Energy Act is the biggest misguided—we’re in favour of renewable energy. First, conservation; second, renewable resources, and third, making the system more intelligent. Now, I’m going to talk a bit about the energy file because—Mr. Speaker, you would know this—in an economy the most important input cost is energy. Ontario was founded on a policy from way back 100 years ago. Sir Adam Beck’s policy was safe, reliable and—here’s the key word—affordable power.

In fact, his phrase was “power at cost.” “Power at any cost” is what he meant, because they actually supported industry by having a cheap energy policy. That is kind of how it ran. Whether it’s steel, forestry, the pulp and paper industry, the auto sector, the petrochemical sector—all those sectors rely on safe, reliable, affordable power.

What have we got today? We’ve got safe. I think OPG and Hydro One generally do a safe job; that’s not the question. Reliable? We saw a couple of schools in Toronto closed yesterday—supply of energy. Affordable? We saw the big Beck tunnel in Niagara Falls, almost a $1-billion boondoggle. We see the whole thing on solar power: the microFIT program, paying 80 cents per kilowatt hour and then selling it for 5 or 6 cents. Who in their right mind would have done that? Since you’re paying 80 cents and selling it for 5 or 6 cents, who is paying for it? Who is paying for that? The taxpayer is paying for it.

Interjection.

Mr. John O’Toole: The member from Northumberland is barking over there. He’s saying right here in the House that he’s in support of wind energy. That’s what he’s saying. He’s in support of that. That will be another large problem for the province of Ontario, especially in Northumberland–Quinte West. I think that he’s listening to the wrong people, because—even in the city of Kawartha Lakes, I would say the member from up in that area isn’t listening to the people as well. He would know that—I’m just looking up his name.

Rick Johnson, the member from Haliburton–Kawartha Lakes–Brock, isn’t listening to his constituents on this whole issue around industrial wind turbines of two and three megawatts, 200 or 300 feet from someone’s house. There is medical evidence that—Dr. McMurtry, the dean of medicine from the University of Western Ontario, says that it constitutes a health hazard.

Interjection.

Mr. John O’Toole: Now they’re saying over there that it doesn’t matter. People matter. Stop and get it right. That’s all I’m saying to you on this file. Take your time. What’s the rush here?

Everyone’s in favour of replacing the coal plant. In fact, I was there when the Lakeview plant was closed. It was the first and only coal plant closed in Ontario. They have shut down some of the furnaces at Nanticoke, but they have not closed the plant, and they’re not going to close it. Mr. Speaker, you would know that, and you know how much trouble you got into from wind energy down in your area.

Interjection.

Mr. John O’Toole: Yes; it’s offshore. They backtracked on that. They knew it was a problem. Freshwater, offshore wind power—they knew it was a problem. What did they do? They cancelled them. Now they’re in court, and they’re going to pay all kinds of liability costs on that file.

Ever since Brad Duguid took over this file, it has been completely—he’s in Scarborough somewhere in his riding, and he’s in trouble, too. He’s from Scarborough Centre. I think that’s why they cancelled the offshore wind. It’s like with Kevin Flynn; they cancelled the gas plant. I understand that. It’s called “save cabinet at any price.” That’s the plan.

Mr. Jeff Leal: Not at all.

Mr. John O’Toole: No, no, he’s priceless. He’s a very decent person. I think the world of Kevin, but he may not be here in a few months. But that’s another—

Interjections.

Mr. John O’Toole: It’s a risky game that we’re in. But they did their best to save his seat by moving that Oakville gas generator. They moved it.

Here’s the issue: This thing is just unravelling on them. When you look at it, they move it from Oakville. Where are they moving it? They’re moving it to my good friend Mr. Martiniuk’s—Cambridge is where they’re moving it to.

Who got the contract? When you cancelled the one in Oakville—they have made a secret deal, I believe. I’m on my own on this. I’m saying this on my own, but I’m quite intuitive. It’s a secret deal of cancelling the plant, and the company that’s going to build it is TransCanada Pipelines. TransCanada Pipelines, without any RFP or RFQ being done—a secret single source, another broken promise by Premier McGuinty, who promised not to have any of these sole-source searching—

Interjections.

Mr. John O’Toole: I know I’ve touched a nerve, and I know they’re upset because we’ve uncovered some of the secret, questionable transactions. I can only tell you this: The evidence is clear that this file is in complete dishevelment, or whatever the word would be. He has completely ruined the energy file.

I would say that the next and most important thing in the limited time I have—I wish I had a full hour, but they’ve cut it to 40 minutes. I’ve been following the important change of heart in transit. Transit is a very important file, and the reason this all ties back to this interim supply motion is because they have to approve the salaries of the civil servants and other necessary payments relating to the legislative offices pending the voting of supply for the period commencing today, February 23, and ending on March 31, such payments to be charged to the proper appropriation for the 2010-11 fiscal year following the vote of supply. And that just brings them through the fiscal year.

That’s fine, but one of the largest single areas of the economy being in such a devastating condition here—they’ve lost 300,000 jobs. They keep saying that they’ve created jobs; they haven’t created any jobs. These guys who are building the solar panels and the wind turbines—when the wind turbines are up and the solar panels are up, there are no jobs there. These people will be in the unemployment line.

The Second Career program is another example of a failed plan. They’re training people and there are no jobs. If you read any of the stuff, less than half of the people who have spent all this money and put their families at risk haven’t got jobs. The most important thing for dignity in this society is to give a person an opportunity and the right to work to earn their legitimacy in life, if you will.

I see in my own riding people afraid to turn on the lights because of the cost of electricity. They’re unable to go to the simplest kind of entertainment because the HST is charged on everything. Even if you had an accident and you’re taking physiotherapy, there’s tax on that now. Everything that moves or breathes is taxed at 13%. And they’ve got other taxes in mind. The energy file is actually a tax, because it’s non-discretionary consumption—in other words, you have to have electricity, and now it’s taxed, so it’s non-discretionary consumption; it’s taxed at 13%.

Every service—even when you do your income tax this year, it’s going to be taxed. That’s a fact. To get your income tax done, it’s going to be taxed, because it is a service; it’s going to be taxed 13%. Everything you do in the family—you register the children in sports, it’s taxed; in recreation programs, taxed; physical fitness programs, taxed—unbelievable, the greed of that one tax. The HST is a symptom that they have a spending problem.

What they have to have—a good start would be to have a little respect for the taxpayer, for the hard-working families. They feel the grip around their necks, it’s that bad. They feel impaled, crippled, impugned, whatever. They feel helpless under the pressure of unrelenting tax, getting into every pocket and opening in their body that might have money in it. They just can’t wait to get their hands on your money.

I can understand—I want to go back to first principles here. I appreciate the work that’s done. My wife was a teacher; my daughter is a teacher; I have two sisters who are nurses. These are critically important functions in society that are highly respected and highly valued. I was at a clinic in Port Perry last week, Medical Associates of Port Perry, for the commissioning of a new CT scanner. Doctors there work collaboratively as a team and the health care system is working. But here’s the problem: Every hospital in my riding, including the member from Peterborough—every single hospital in this province has a deficit.

Mr. Jeff Leal: No—

Mr. John O’Toole: The member from Peterborough is yelling. They’ve had to lay off some 66 nurses.

Interjection.

Mr. John O’Toole: You can get up in your rebuttal.

They’ve laid off 60-some nurses and they paid about $3 million in severance—and they already had about a $6-million deficit.

Mr. Jeff Leal: We’re in a surplus position, John.

Mr. John O’Toole: I would say you should stand and put that on the record, because clearly, from everything I know, people on the foundation and everything else, there are signs all over town: “Jeff Leal, stand up for your hospital.” That makes me worry. The signs are down—

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): The member for Durham, I’ve been a little lax this morning. There have been some names used. We don’t use the names of members; we only use their ridings, please.

Mr. John O’Toole: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

With the member from Peterborough, I respect what he’s trying to do there, but I still believe that all hospitals in the province of Ontario are in debt. All children’s aids are in deficit. Every function in this province of Ontario is in deficit. Not some, all. They’re all in deficit.

I’m going to look at one more thing. I know they don’t want to hear it. I’m using this from the Globe and Mail, an

article on revisiting the transit blueprint. This is worth reading. This is a recent article. First of all, Metrolinx is kind of a manager, if you will, an unelected board. I’ve met with—Rob MacIsaac was there for a while, and now they have Dr. Rob Prichard. He was the president of U of T., a nice fellow. I went to U of T some time ago.

The key here is that Rob Prichard and the president—what’s his name—did a deal with a Japanese company, Sumitomo Corp.—I think it’s a division of Samsung—and spent $53 million buying these low-particulate-matter diesel trains, with a commitment to buy more of them.

The issue here is electrification of the transit system—these are diesel. So they’ve made this commitment, and now they’ve agreed that they are going to electrify that. Bruce McCuaig is the other fellow; he’s the president of Metrolinx. The government has intervened and interfered with—not a competitive bid, no RFP, no RFQ, nothing. They just did a deal with this Japanese company. Why wouldn’t they use Bombardier, Siemens—one of our companies where our constituents work? No, they always go to Samsung: $7 billion to help us with our renewable energy. Get a life. We’ve got some of the best universities in the world right here: UOIT, Trent University. I can’t believe it.

Anyway, I met this morning with a few people at AUTO21, and they were concerned about the economy as well. I don’t know that the ministry even met with them. How is that? We’ve got the innovation community, AUTO21—these are the innovators for the auto sector—and a lot of the manufacturing sector. I had a few names I wanted to mention, but I’ve only got one card here, for some reason or other. This is Peter Frise, a Ph.D. in engineering, with AUTO21, and another couple of young engineers that I met.

Here’s my point: I don’t believe they are not working strongly enough with our Ontario industries. In this particular case, they are going to electrify each of these diesel rail cars they are going to buy. The reason for this quick sale and electrification issue is that they want to get it in before the Pan American Games in 2015. That’s the deal. That’s why this artificial date—this two-week event, the Pan American Games—so this train that goes to the airport would be electrified. Well, they are going to waste, I would say, $200 or $300 million—I’m putting that on the record here—more than that, actually, absolutely wasted.

We had the eHealth example of $1 billion. Can you now go to a medical clinic and give them your card and get your record or the tests you’ve had pulled up on the screen? No, you can’t. Where is the money going?

Now, in the energy file we have an even deeper, more troubling problem: the debt retirement charge. When they restructured Ontario Hydro, the debt retirement charge was set to be about $21 billion.

Interjection.

Mr. John O’Toole: The House leader on the other side is squawking away, and that’s fine. I know she’s not running again because she probably realizes that time is up.

Here is the issue, though: $7.8 billion was set aside as residual stranded debt, and it’s reported in the public accounts on the Ontario Electricity Financial Corp.

Hon. Monique M. Smith: What year?

Mr. John O’Toole: It was done in 2002-03. Now, this is important—she’s engaged, she’s listening; this is good. Each year on your electricity bill, you pay .07 cents per kilowatt hour. Look it up. It’s on there; it’s a line. It’s the debt retirement charge: .07 cents per kilowatt hour. Each person—your family pays about $10 to $15 a month, roughly $100 a year. It could be more, but $100 a year is good—plus HST; they get the HST on top. So it’s a little over $100 a month that you’re paying on that.

Since 2002 to the end of 2009-2010, you had paid back $7.8 billion collectively. She may have a different point of view; she’s entitled to get up and speak. So $7.8 billion has been paid off. But now, surprisingly, they’ve extended this debt retirement charge to 2018. They may dispute whether it’s paid off or not paid off. This is a more complex issue. The remaining portion of the debt after the restructuring was basically set aside because it was going to be paid back by Hydro One and the other utilities, because this was the spreading out of how much the assets could create revenue.

Some of the assets with Hydro One, the transmission system and the distribution system, as well as with OPG, the generation system, were assets that could generate capital; revenue to pay off the debt. This was the residual stranded debt.

What we’re calling for? Our leader, Tim Hudak, is calling for a forensic audit. It’s a fair compromise. We’re not trying to—I just think it’s one more example on this file and the finances of Ontario. They’ve increased spending beyond the rate of growth in the economy. They have almost destroyed the energy system completely, because these 20-year contracts on the feed-in tariffs are future debt. Don’t ever, by any means—that’s future debt. It’s a commitment by the taxpayers of Ontario. And what are the taxpayers telling me in my riding? They can’t take it anymore.

All the laudable objectives are one thing. The deception of all this is, how are they going to pay for it? The only choice here to pay off this accumulated debt and squandering of resources is to increase taxes. Well, they’ve already hit the tax ceiling, in my view, whether it’s taxes when you drive your car, auto insurance, tuition for students, registering kids in fitness programs. Everything is taxed to the max.

Now there’s a new tax hiding until after the next election; it’s called the eco tax. Every battery that you’ve ever used, every electronic appliance you’ve ever used, is going to be taxed, either at consumption or at disposal. Probably both. So if you have any old television stuff sitting around, get rid of it now, because I’ll tell you: Right after the election, if they happen to be elected, it’s going to be taxed. It will be taxed on disposal and on purchase of your new one.

There’s nothing that they won’t tax. In fact, if I look at it, they have raised taxes in health care. They called it the health tax. It’s about $1,200 a year—

Mr. Jeff Leal: Oh, but you’re keeping it.

Mr. John O’Toole: They don’t know—don’t even bother listening anymore. Now they’re saying different things.

Mr. Jeff Leal: No, you are.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Order.

Mr. Jeff Leal: I asked Sylvia Jones about that one.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Order. The member for Peterborough.

Mr. John O’Toole: They have delisted a number of services. That means you’re paying for it out of your pocket. Not only that, this is—it’s quite tragic, really.

They have a war going on with the pharmacists. The Ministry of Health says, “Oh, it’s all resolved.” No, no; it’s not resolved at all. Now either you can’t get drugs or you have to buy the patent drug, which is twice as expensive. Some of the drugs you can’t get.

I think one of the areas that they’ve done quite well on—they’ve invested a lot—is the whole idea of full-day learning. I would say this on the full-day learning: It’s universally taxed. We’re all paying for it. It’s about a billion and a half a year. When fully implemented, it’ll be over $3 billion. That’s just the operating side, plus they’ve got to build more classroom space.

Now what is doing it? The wrong people are delivering the program. Not only that; not everybody in Ontario can avail themselves of it. Some of these three- and four-year-olds cannot ride on a bus when they live in Timmins or some other area that’s not Toronto. It’s fine, probably great, for Toronto.

In fact, I have two daughters that have children; our grandchildren. We have five now. We’re going to have seven here by October, I guess. I’m getting busier all the time—at least certainly my wife is. I’m great at playing games with them, I guess. I take them skiing; I do say that. Two of them are old enough now, four and seven: Meghan and Daniel. I’ve taken them a few times.

But the point I’m saying is, this idea of the full-day learning isn’t fairly or equitably distributed. Some families cannot get this service. In fact, it’s going to be after the next election before some of them will be able to get it. That’s simply not fair. This is all I want. Families in Ontario want to be treated fairly. That’s all we’re asking. Take the foot off their throat or off their chest, ease off on the spending a bit, quit making all these reckless promises. Treat people with respect, as opposed to assuming that they’re just another function of your tax policy: Get them working so you can tax them.

Young people today, in the future of Ontario—I’m questioning what the jobs of the future are. Not everyone can be a university professor or a highly qualified nurse; not everyone can do that. We need to have jobs for families and jobs for the young people. I look at these pages here today who are new; they’ll be introduced today, I think. That is the most exciting opportunity for them.

I think it’s people first. That’s the function of government. We are elected at the will of our constituents, and the Premier at the will of the province. People just want to be treated respectfully and with dignity.

That means quit taking every measly cent you can out of their pockets. Give them some of the choices in life, whether they want to have daycare or they want to have another—give them tax relief for certain expenditures, for child care. Some people work shift work. Some of these programs are designed for everybody who works for the government. How about the people who are working in a steel plant who are on shift work? They may want daycare at a different time of the day. They may even have it on the weekends or in the summer.

These programs aren’t designed for today’s economy; it’s sort of 7-24. And a lot of the economy of the future—I have a couple of children who are lawyers and have a master’s degree and all these kinds of things. Some of them actually have quite good jobs here in Toronto, and they actually work at home a day or two a week. My son is legal counsel for Procter and Gamble Canada. He does pretrial discovery hearings and that online.

So your future won’t be getting on some GO Transit bus, riding for an hour and a half to get to some bank tower in Toronto to do financial transactions. That’s baloney. In 20 years, you’ll be doing it from some remote office, probably in your home. All that transit stuff we’re talking about, I don’t see a vision, and I don’t see a plan where they put people first, and the changes in the economy.

I worked for the auto sector for 31 years, mostly on the computer side, personnel side and production. That’s the three different types of careers I had: a computer programmer at the beginning; personnel is the labour relations area; and my last 10 years basically was in production. Those jobs, unfortunately, may not exist in the future. Countries like Mexico and China and Brazil and those kinds of economies will probably have a lower wage factor—for the short term, mind you—and we have to be innovative about the economy of the future. For young people, my children—we have five children, and we have seven grandchildren coming up—it’s a knowledge-based economy, a global economy.

One of the best books that I’ve read recently is Friedman’s book called Hot, Flat and Crowded. It’s Friedman’s book, absolutely mandatory reading about the future economy.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: He’s a right-wing nut.

Mr. John O’Toole: No, it’s true. It’s talking about the globalization of the economy, “hot” meaning global warming, “flat” meaning the technology, and “crowded” meaning the population. Right now there are about 5.5 billion people in the world. When there’s about seven billion, there’s not going to be enough stuff—water and air. That’s the number the demographers use: At about seven billion there are going to be shortages of all the resources we use. Water will be scarce. Gas, we’re almost at peak oil now. If you read the book on peak oil, it will tell you that those things will become more and more expensive as more and more people want them.

The emerging economies need that chance. They need that chance to grow their economies. We can’t be greedy and take all the resources for North Americans’ consumption. I think it is important that we have a globalized approach to resolving these resource-sharing issues. In fact, they are big issues.

But what troubles me most of all, when I look at this interim supply motion and why the House leaders had to come up with some way of paying the bills, or at least to be debated—we felt it was a good time to reflect. Our House leader, John Yakabuski, the member from Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke, made it clear to us—and our leader, Tim Hudak—that we’ve got to make everything focus back on the family’s ability to pay. I support that. Being a person of average means myself, and my family and my constituents in Durham, I feel very much the same.

Let’s put it in perspective. We shouldn’t be making a lot of cuts, but we shouldn’t be making promises about more because that’s future debt on these children. In fairness, any fool can promise you anything, but “is it being disingenuous” is the question that should be asked. I question those who promise things. It’s like someone who has a drug problem or something. They’re impaired in their thinking of what they can do. It’s unfair to be dishonest with our youth, because if you’re spending more than you’re earning, pretty soon you’re going to be bankrupt. And what’s that doing for our collective future?

I’m concerned now—the evidence is pretty well together; we had a briefing last week—that they will have doubled the public debt. I think the debt is around $15,000 or $20,000 per person. Now, some investments are worthwhile. Investments in knowledge and the economy and that kind of thing are very important investments. Health care, of course, is about 40% of the budget.

Here’s how I look at it, in

summary. I’m trying to summarize this a bit because this is about paying the bills and the interim supply motion. Right now, the government’s budget is about $115 billion. This is important. That’s our own purpose spending, health care being about 41% of that. Education and post-secondary education: Remember, we have the highest tuition already so there’s not a lot more room to move there. The students can hardly afford to get the education they need to get the job—the lawyer, the accountant, the scientist.

The OMA is advertising on the radio and television now. Why? The Ontario Medical Association is afraid. Their budget numbers for the last—this is true, as well; I was assistant to the Minister of Health for, I think, four years. The average spending increases annually in health care are 6% to 7%. Their last financial statement was 3%. Health care spending—doctors, nurses and front-line health care workers—is 78% of their total payroll in a hospital, wages and benefits, so if you don’t give them the money they’re going to have to lay people off. I want that on the record, and I want people to hold me accountable because that’s what they’re doing.

This is a postdated cheque till after the election, and then they’ll say, “Oh, we’ve got this problem, Houston. We’ve got to raise taxes.”

The whole budget is $115 billion. Listen up, here: That doesn’t include the off-book debt. WSIB, Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, has—listen up—$12 billion in debt over and above the $20 billion.

Winding up here, I’m just going to wrap it all up: You take the electricity debt, the WSIB debt, their own debt, the budget is about $120 billion. About 25% of all spending is debt. This is not sustainable. The families of Ontario should know it and be worried about it because Premier McGuinty has taken this province down the wrong path.

I’d love to be able to promise more but I should not deceive the people. I should at least tell them how I’m going to pay for it.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the time I have left.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Further debate?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I’m going to use this time to do a couple of things, one of them to actually speak to the motion on interim supply to the Legislative Assembly and speak to that in some degree. Before I go there, I want to speak to a couple of things that I think need to be addressed by the board, and some members may take some exception to it but nonetheless I just want to put some of that on the record. I also want to speak in the broader terms of what interim supply allows us to do.

First of all, just so people understand what we’re talking about, this is the estimates to be approved for the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Assembly is run by an organization called the Board of Internal Economy and that Board of Internal Economy is made up of, I believe, three or four government members and a member from each of the opposition parties and the Speaker. The thing that you have to glean out of what I just said is that the board is actually controlled by the government.

I just want to say that one of the reasons that we find ourselves here today, very late in the process of the estimates, because the estimates, as far as interim supply—this should have been dealt with a long time ago. The reason that we’re here today is that I believe the board is somewhat dysfunctional. I think what happens is that every government, in this case the Liberal government, tries to micromanage the board. They think that there is some kind of conspiracy to everything that comes before the board, so therefore it has to meet with much, much scrutiny.

We have these big long processes of discussion, of meetings, of briefings, of more meetings and more briefings and more meetings in order to try to deal with things that are pretty straightforward.

I would not argue for a second that the board should not take its responsibility seriously when it comes to scrutinizing the expenses of the Legislative Assembly and making sure that we get the best value per dollar. That is not my argument. I think that is a given. I think all members of the board, New Democrats, Conservatives and Liberals, all have that in mind. But I think where it falls dysfunctional is in the way that the board is structured.

If you look at our friends in Ottawa—and you have some friends in Ottawa, I’m sure, Speaker, as I do—they have a much different process when it comes to how their Board of Internal Economy functions. What they do there, which I think is very smart, is they have a Board of Internal Economy that is made up of one representative from each of the recognized parties. That allows every caucus, Conservative, NDP, Bloc, Liberal, in the federal House of Commons—and Reform when they were there—to take ownership and responsibility for decisions taken at the board.

Because the structure that we have now is that the government is afraid that, no matter what happens at the board, they’ll wear it, because they have the majority on the board, and I think I understand. What I would say up front is I understand why the government feels that way, because in fact they are the majority on the board and if something passes that is controversial, even if the opposition voted for the motion with the government, it’s the government that’s going to wear it because they’re the people who have a majority on the board.

Therefore, they could have stopped or allowed to have happen whatever it was proposed at the board.

So I just want to put on the record that I think there needs to be reform to how the board is actually structured. I’ve always suggested at the board itself, and I suggest it here in the Legislature today, that I think we need to amend the act. I think we need to change how the board is structured so that you really can have decision-making in which all of the three parties are engaged and have ownership of when it comes to the decisions made at the board.

That way, if you make a decision, whatever it might be: about members’ budgets as far as how much money you’ve got to run your constituency office; if we decide to do renovations in the building, as we have done before; or we decide to deal with the security budgets in regard to how security is maintained here at the Legislature, all of those issues, then each of the caucuses would have to look very specifically at what it means and understand that if they vote yea or nay—it doesn’t matter which way they would vote—they would own ownership of that vote and would be accountable, I think, much more than they are today.

Therefore, I propose—and I’m not doing it as far as a motion today, but I propose as we come back after the next election, those of us who are fortunate enough to come back, we should really seriously look at changing how the board is structured so that really, you have a board that is there for the benefit of members and benefit of the assembly; so that we can make some rational decisions and not political decisions about how this place operates.

I’ve sat on the board longer than anybody else in this assembly. I’ve been sitting on the board since about 1993. That makes me the veteran in this assembly on the board. I can tell you, I’ve seen boards run by the government under New Democrats, I’ve seen it under Conservatives and I’ve seen it under Liberals. There’s been some difference about how the board is operated between all three governments, but that underlying fear that the government has that whatever decision they make, pro or con, is going to come back to haunt them is what really drives decisions at the board, and I don’t think that’s the way that we should do business.

For example, one of the things that the Board of Internal Economy does and one of the things that we’re approving in the estimates today, through this interim supply motion, is constituency budgets. There are some legitimate arguments that have been put forward by members of this assembly. Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats have spoken to me or have sent letters to board members to deal with issues within their constituencies.

I’m not going to get into discussions we had at the board, because that would not be the right thing to do, as far as who said what, but I want to speak to some of those issues so that members of the assembly understand why it is that we need to do this particular reform.

Members of this assembly have constituency offices. Some of them find themselves in a very difficult spot. Their rents have gone up because of rents just normally going up and their budgets have not kept the pace. Yes, there’s been an adjustment for CPI on rents. I think the CPI adjustment, if I remember correctly, is about 1.1%. But members over the years have been trying to make do in constituency offices where the rents have gone up way beyond the CPI. Therefore, they’re having a hard time trying to make ends meet. Then they have to pay their heat and their hydro, and the heat and the hydro have gone up and there’s not been an increase for that. Added on to all of that, there’s an HST.

The point is, many members find themselves in a position of not really having the amount of money that they need to properly serve their constituents, so they’re having to make decisions such as I had to make, which is to lay off a staff member. It really came down to that in my budget where I come from, where I run, in Kapuskasing and Timmins: I had to lay off my halftime person because I can’t afford to pay her. She left my employ sometime early in the fall. It is at the point where rents have gone up, wages have gone up, everything has gone up and the budgets have not kept pace with that. As a result, you’re having to lay off staff.

Some people will say, “Too bad, so sad, Bisson. That’s just the decisions you got to make when you’re a manager.” I understand that, and I’m not asking for any treatment for any member in this assembly that would be different from what our friends in the private sector or our friends in the public sector would have to deal with. But they at least live in a system that is a bit more rational than what we live in under the Board of Internal Economy.

For years, members have been going to the board, under New Democrats, under Conservatives and under Liberals, to properly address the issue of constituency budgets so that when the constituent walks into our offices, the lights are on, the heat has been paid, the computers are plugged in and you have adequate staffing to be able to respond to the needs of your constituent. In some cases it’s more expensive to run those services because of the geography of those ridings.

There are ridings in southern Ontario, and certainly there are those in northern Ontario, where it is almost impossible to provide the services that one needs to do, as a result of the budget.

I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you three ridings that I know well. One is mine, Timmins–James Bay. To be able to do the work that has to be done in that riding as far as properly staffing it and being able to have a presence in the communities where constituents have particular things to do, there is not enough money to do that. Is it fair to those constituents, compared to somebody who lives in a downtown Toronto riding or a downtown Sudbury riding? If I was in the riding of Sudbury, I would get essentially about $20,000 less than what I get in Timmins–James Bay.

But you can go anywhere in that riding in the same day, you have only one constituency office that you have to maintain and you get essentially the same budget as somebody who has a large geographical riding such as Timmins–James Bay, Algoma–Manitoulin, Thunder Bay–Superior North or Kenora–Rainy River. Is that right?

Yes, I know the members of the government will come and say, “There’s a geographic adjustment in your budget already,” and they’re right; it’s about $20,000 a year. But certainly to God, we have to have a rational discussion at the board about what is adequate when it comes to supporting the needs of constituents in those ridings—Liberal, Conservative or NDP. It’s not the issue of partisan politics.

The issue is, does a resident living in a large geographic riding have the same right to be able to see his or her MPP and deal with their constituency staff on issues that are important to them that somebody has who lives in an urban riding? I think the answer is yes. But we have not had and have been able to have, a rational decision at the board about how we deal with that.

Oh, yes, they all come to me, and I’m sure they go to the Liberal members of the board and the Conservative members of the board and they say, “Oh, God, can you do something for me? I’m with you, Gilles. I’m with you, Elizabeth” or Monique or whoever. “We’re with you to make changes.” But the reality is, government members aren’t about to stand up and become a target within their own caucus on issues around the board when the Premier and the cabinet and people at the Board of Internal Economy say, “No, don’t stand up and don’t talk about these things, because at the end of the day these are losers for us politically.”

I think, hence, there’s the problem. You need to have a board that is structured so there is a representative from each party that is recognized in this House, that we have a rational discussion so that a member of the assembly, be it an independent member or a member from any of the caucuses, can bring an issue to the board and have a fair hearing so that the issue is at least dealt with and it’s not dismissed out of hand.

One of the issues that came to the board and has been coming to the board for some time is that members have to travel to neighbouring ridings to attend meetings. For example, for me it’s not an issue. In my riding, if there’s a meeting it’s somewhere in my riding, because it’s big enough that you’re not going to go anywhere else. If there is a CCAC meeting or a meeting of the health unit or a meeting of some sort of regional organization that provides funding to the communities that I represent, it’s either based in Timmins, Kap or Hearst. Those are all in my riding, so it’s not an issue for me.

But imagine you are the member in downtown Toronto and you hold a riding such as my friend Mr. Murray, who is in—what riding is yours?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: Toronto Centre.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Toronto Centre. Somebody calls and says, “Listen, I really want my MPP to come to a meeting that has to do with health services in my community,” and the meeting is, let’s say, for some reason five ridings over, which is, quite frankly, what normally happens. He cannot expense that as a travel allotment for mileage, or if he has to pay a fee to get into a particular conference five ridings over he cannot expense that, and I don’t think that’s right. I think the member should be allowed to do what has to be done to represent his riding.

If the meeting is five or seven ridings over or one riding over, it’s up to him to justify to his constituents every four years if he was doing his job right. If he went to represent a health interest or an economic development issue in his riding at some conference or some meeting that took place outside his riding, he should be allowed to expense that.

We’ve been trying to deal with this at the board for, God, it’s got to be at least two years. Each and every time this issue comes up before the board, the government basically digs in its heels and gets into all kinds of discussions about how that is somehow giving some member an advantage. Tell me how it’s an advantage when you get called to a meeting five ridings over at 7 o’clock at night on a Thursday. You’d rather be at home with your family if you had a choice, so don’t tell me it’s some sort of great advantage.

When you go to these things, people actually expect you to do some work and they actually expect you to do some follow-up. The member is not benefiting financially in any kind of way; the member is going to do their job.

Another example is the members down in the southwestern region of the province or the eastern parts of the province. If I was in a riding somewhere north of Kingston, the CCAC services I believe are in Kingston, or some of them may be overlapping into Ottawa. You may have to go to the regional capital in order to go meet with the regional organization that provides services in your riding and you’re not a regional capital member. I would think that would be the case for Mr. Clark when it comes to Leeds–Grenville, I believe his riding is.

I’m sure there are meetings about services in his riding that are taking place in Kingston or in Ottawa. He is not allowed, as the member for Leeds–Grenville, to get in his car and drive there, expense it at the 42 or 43 cents that we get for mileage, and if he has to pay a fee to get into the meeting because there’s a fee charged, and sometimes those things happen—it’s like a conference that they ask us to come to in order to find out what’s going on on a particular issue that’s important in your riding—he could not expense it. I don’t think that’s right. I think he should be allowed to expense it.

But again, why can’t we deal with this? Because the structure of the board is completely dysfunctional as far as serving the needs of the members.

I just say, here are two examples—constituency budgets, and here’s another example in regard to members’ travel—that are really issues we’ve tried to deal with at the board and can’t because of the way the board is structured. I would say, just as I end on this particular issue, that I believe that the solution to the problem is to change the board’s structure.

To do that we need a change in the act that would say that we will change the structure so that one member from each of the recognized parties be named to the Board of Internal Economy and approved by this House so that we then, as members, can sit down collectively and figure out how to deal with this.

Because then I’ll tell you what’s going to happen: If, let’s say, a Conservative, NDP or Liberal member comes to me as the NDP member of the board and says, “I want you to deal with an issue,” I had better do my homework and make sure that first of all, I understand what the issues are, but I’m going to have to own the decision. Therefore, there’s going to be some discussion with the Conservatives and Liberals about how should we deal with this particular issue? With a mind to the public purse, is this money that we can afford to spend, yes or no?

With a mind to the politics of the issue—because maybe all three political parties are going to think, “Well, that’s not a very good idea. If we do that, we’ll be seen as self-serving, so maybe we shouldn’t do it.” But we would at least be able to start having some rational decisions.

On the board issue—I’ll just end on this particular issue and that is that of members’ pensions. You all know in this Legislature that we have a huge pension—

Laughter.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: They’re all laughing. Exactly.

Back in 1996, one Mike Harris came to the assembly with a piece of legislation that stripped what they called the gold-plated members’ pension. Here’s what the pension was—it was a very good pension, a very rich pension; I admit that freely. We had a pension that was similar to that of our federal counterparts.

The reason that was put in place was that if somebody decides to quit their career—let’s say they’re in a law office or they have their own business or whatever—and run for Parliament, and they do it for five, 10, 15 years, they would continue accruing some type of pension so that when they go to retire they’re not penalized for those years they’ve left where they were at, where they were getting a real pension.

So at the time, some years ago, a pension was devised for the assembly, and yes, it was richer than what you would get in the private or public sector. There’s no question about that. Under our pension plan, I think you were allowed to make —I think it was 75% of your best five is what it came out to if you were fully vested in the pension after about 15 years. Some people thought that was too rich. Rather than Mike Harris coming in and saying, “It’s too rich. Let’s change it and let’s make sure people don’t retire at age 42,” he decided to scrap it altogether.

So ever since then, we’ve been without a pension in this Legislature, since 1996. Nobody in my riding believes me. Who in this assembly thinks that in their constituency, if you went out and said that you don’t have a pension, you would actually be believed? Stand up, please. I don’t see one of you getting up, because you get the same thing I do. They all think we’re getting a pension. So my thing is, we can’t have a rational discussion at the board about this, let alone in this assembly.

I don’t argue that you bring back a gold-plated pension at Queen’s Park—I don’t argue that for two seconds—but I should at least get the pension of a civil servant. To me, it’s weird that I’m employed by the Ontario Legislative Assembly and not at least entitled to an OPS pension. We can’t even have that discussion. If we were able to have some mechanism to have those discussions in a more rational way, maybe then members could actually be treated a little bit more fairly and we could have things that are more reflective of what our counterparts get in either the private or the public sector.

I know I’m going to get e-mails stirred up by Liberals and Conservatives as I give this speech, that Bisson is advocating pensions. That’s not my point. I want to be really, really clear. I’m not advocating that we have a gold-plated pension. I’m just advocating that we have a process where we talk about members’ services and benefits in a way that makes some sense. At the end of the day, we’re all responsible and we understand that we’re accountable for our decisions.

I trust that I’m not stupid enough and other people around this assembly aren’t stupid enough to do things that would be completely offside with the public, but I think most of the public would say, “Well, you know what? Why shouldn’t you get what the Ontario public sector gets?”

It’s a small pension. You work there for 30 years and you get basically a pension of around—I think it would work out to about 60% or 65% of your best five. Now, very few people will be here for 30 years, so it wouldn’t amount to much of a pension, but at least there would be something.

And when people decide to run for public office and to come to the Ontario Legislature, they can say, “I’m working someplace where there’s a pension and there’s some mechanism so that I can continue paying into my pension plan for the four years that I’m here,” or eight, 12, whatever number of years, “so that as I leave my private sector or my public sector employer, I continue pension contributions for the time that I’m in the Legislature.” That at least would be fair. I don’t argue that we make some super-duper pension that makes people rich but, at the very least, that people who come here don’t lose it.

I was listening yesterday and Mr. Clark said he was CAO of a municipality and he was a member of OMERS. Wouldn’t it make sense that there would be some mechanism that he could continue paying what would be equivalent to his OMERS pension?

It’s not a lot of money as far as cost, and it’s certainly not a lot of money as far as the benefit he would get at the end, but at least it would be fairer, so that he and his family are not put in a position where after five, 10 or 15 years of service here there is a five-, 10- or 15-year hole in the contributions to his pension, which may make a difference in a person’s ability to retire. Those conversations you can’t have unless, I believe, you have some reasonable way to structure how decisions are made here.

On the broader issue of the interim supply motion, a lot of interim supply motions—and yes, Madame Smith was right when she said I was one of the people who wanted to have a debate on this, because I wanted to put on the record a couple of things: some stuff around the Board of Internal Economy, but also some of the general issues that affect the economy of Ontario, and specifically the place that I come from, Timmins–James Bay.

There is, I’ve got to say, a real sense of anger out there on the part of the public. It’s really an anger that’s directed at the McGuinty government. The anger is on the basis, I believe, of a couple of things. One is, people are feeling that they’re getting hit in their pocketbook each and every day.

I was just talking to one of the members from the Conservative caucus before I got up to speak. I asked him unprompted, “What top two issues are you getting in your riding?” He said the same thing I did, and some of the Liberal members I’ve asked this have told me the same thing: hydro bills and HST. They are still today the top issues why people contact us in our constituency offices when it comes to complaints. I’m not talking about workers’ compensation questions or trying to get a birth certificate; those things always happen. But when people contact their elected official to complain, those are the top two issues.

I’ve been getting, and I’m sure you’re getting, phone calls and people walking into my office who have all kinds of horror stories of where they’re at. I got an email and I called this woman back I guess on Thursday or Friday last week. She has a house on the same lake where I’ve got a cottage, out in Kamiskotia. Her hydro bill in the last two years—she’s electrically heated, uses wood as a primary source of heat but when she’s not there the backup system is electricity. There’s no natural gas out there so it means the heating of your hot water, your oven, your dryer, all of that stuff, is all electric.

She went from having to pay on average about $300 a month a couple of years ago to where now she’s paying 700 bucks a month. She’s saying, “My God, this is getting ridiculous.” So I gave her a call and had a chat with her. She is mad as heck and she wanted me to pass on to the government, why is it that you think it’s right that she pays all this extra money for electricity that puts her in a position of not being able to make ends meet at the end of the month? She is typical of the many phone calls and emails I get in my constituency office.

I had another gentleman, whom I called yesterday. A Mr. MacDonald, I think it was Joey MacDonald; he gave me a call. I believe he lives in Schumacher. I may have the town wrong. But Joey gives me a call and he says, “Gilles, this is really getting ridiculous. My wife and I do everything we can in order to live within the rules the government has established around when you should use your hydro meter. We don’t do our washing and drying in peak hours. We do that in off-peak hours. We do all the things that we’ve been asked to do. My hydro bill has gone up about $100 a month since last year.

My God, they want me to conserve. At the very least, the conservation rate should have been less than what they have on the bill now.” Because all the government did with these smart meters is that they took the going rate and they made that the base non-peak rate and then charge extra above that when you’re in the peak.

He said, “Listen, I’m having to pay more than I ever had to before because they brought in the HST in July on the hydro bill, the hydro rate itself has gone up and the government has brought in the smart meters. We find ourselves having to pay almost $100 a month more than we did before. My wife and I are still working but we’re getting close to retirement. My wife’s about to retire, I’m shortly behind her, and we’re having to make some decisions about when we’re going to retire and what we’re going to do.

The cost of maintaining our home is going up because not only has my hydro gone up when it comes to rate of hydro and the HST, but so has my gas bill because of the HST, so is the gas that I put in my truck because of the HST.”

He just wanted me to pass on to the Liberal government that he, as a constituent of mine, is very angry, is obviously not going to be voting Liberal in the next election; I think he’s voting for me. I hope; I didn’t ask him, but I would imagine.

I think it is indicative of where the public is at. They’re saying, “You know, governments are elected in order to make decisions on behalf of citizens, and we trust that those governments are going to keep that trust in mind when it comes to what you’re going to do when it comes to dealing with the everyday issues.”

So Joey MacDonald and others who have emailed me or called me or stopped into my offices about hydro are mad as heck, because they’re saying, “This government broke that trust. You were supposed to watch out on my behalf, and all I know is I’m working harder today than I ever have before and I’m having to pay far more than I ever had in the past.” And the hydro story is just the one.

It doesn’t matter where I go in my riding; if it’s in Moonbeam, Kapuskasing, Moosonee, Attawapiskat or Timmins. The number one issue I hear about when it comes to complaints is around both the hydro bill and the HST. I think that is true for most members in this assembly who want to honestly say what it is that they’re getting at their constit offices. This government, quite frankly, has created a royal mess. They have made some decisions around electricity policy that have driven the price of electricity through the roof.

I find it very amusing when I come into the House and I listen to question period, because if you listen to the Conservatives talk, they would say this is all a Liberal doing. Well, you know, I’ve been around here long enough to know where this all started: It started with Ernie Eves. Do you remember that guy? He was Premier of Ontario. He was a Conservative, right? I think we all agree. He is the one who started this: the whole dismantling of Ontario Hydro into the seven corporations that it is now—or the nine, whatever it is; I’ve lost count—OPA and the rest of them.

He basically started the dismantling, the deregulation and the privatization of hydro. That was an initiative that was started by the Conservatives.

I remember Dalton McGuinty, in opposition, was opposed to it. He said, “Oh, my God, this is terrible. We’re like the New Democrats: We believe that hydro was set up as a crown corporation to deliver power at cost in order to be an economic development tool for the industry that is established in Ontario. One of the main driving forces behind the economic success that we have in Ontario is our electricity rates.” I remember those speeches that the now-Premier gave when he was Leader of the Opposition.

Well, my God; a funny thing happened when they got elected. They found the Tory playbook in the cabinet room and they said, “Let’s keep on playing the same game.” So now the Liberals have embraced it as a Liberal policy—well, to my point, what’s a Liberal? It’s just a Conservative in a hurry. That’s always been my definition of a Liberal. They basically, in essence, have taken the Conservative policy and run with it. So now you’ve got this pillow fight between the Liberals and Conservatives about electrical policy in Ontario, and I hear the Tories go on about how terrible it is, what the Liberals are doing.

My God, they’re salivating that they can’t do it themselves. This is exactly what the Conservatives wanted in the first place.

When I speak to constituents in my riding—and I speak to people around Ontario who send me emails that I respond to, or phone calls, or when I run across them, wherever I might be—I always try to point out, “Hey, listen, don’t give the Tories a free pass on your hydro bill, because a large part of what happens here was set up by way of the initial policies of the Conservative government.”

We’ve now got this mess, and what are we going to do with it? We know, for example, that one of the things that recently happened was—Cliffs Natural Resources was one of the three companies in the Ring of Fire. It’s out there, recognizing that people in northern Ontario are saying, “If any ore comes out of the Ring of Fire, that ore has got to be processed in Ontario. That means the refinery, the smelter—everything has got to happen in Ontario. These are our natural resources, and we should benefit by way of jobs and investments when it comes to minerals that come out of the Ring of Fire.”

I think Cliffs Natural Resources understood the political mood, not only in Ontario but specifically in northern Ontario, that if they tried to develop those ore bodies up in the Ring of Fire they would not be able to sustain the displeasure, on the part of northern Ontarians, if they tried to move that ore out of Ontario. We saw what happened to Xstrata in the city of Timmins.

So here we go: Cliffs Natural Resources says, “We have four preferred sites where we can build a refinery and a smelter. We’ve got Timmins, Sudbury, Greenstone and Thunder Bay.” They’re saying, “Those are the four sites that we’re prepared to look at.” Further, Cliffs Natural Resources says, in a press release a couple of weeks ago, “We think that Sudbury is probably the preferred site.” So of course, myself, as a representative from Timmins, and the representatives from Greenstone and Thunder Bay were advocating for our communities, too. God bless. That’s what should happen in this system.

But Cliffs Natural Resources said, “It ain’t going to be built in any of these communities if we don’t deal with the electricity policy. The hydro rates in this province are beyond what’s sustainable to be able to build and sustain that type of production. If the hydro rates are not adjusted to some form of industrial hydro rate, the refinery and the smelter will be outside of Ontario.” Do you know where I think it’s going to land? It’ll probably land in Canada: Manitoba or Quebec. Why? Because their electricity is less.

My colleague Mr. Hampton raised yesterday a really important point when he talked about this whole issue around Cliffs resources and the Ring of Fire. He made the point that if you compare what Cliffs resources will have to pay in electricity and the difference of what they would pay if they established a refinery or a smelter in Ontario versus Manitoba over a 30-year period, do you know how much money it is? It’s a $1-billion savings. By the way, how much does it cost to build a refinery smelter? It’s about a billion bucks. The company is saying, “We can capitalize the entire cost of a refinery smelter being built in Canada if we put it in Manitoba compared to Ontario or Quebec.”

If we’re trying to compete for these types of investments, and we should be, the Ontario government has got to realize it has a responsibility to ensure that we do what is right for Ontarians, and that is, these are our natural resources, and we need to make it attractive for those mining companies to establish their processes here in Ontario.

There are some in the environmental movement that say, “Maybe it’s a good thing that we move it somewhere else because then, that’s pollution we don’t have to worry about in Ontario.” I would say to my environmental friends that it’s just moving the footprint somewhere else. I would rather have the footprint in Ontario where I have a say about what the emissions are going to be.

The other part of the story is that Ontario, when it comes to emissions into the air, has the MISA regulations, which are amongst the toughest in the world, to the chagrin of many in the mining industry, forest industry and other industries that are affected. So I say to my friends in the environmental movement, you got what you wanted under MISA, and now some of you are out there saying it would be a good thing if we didn’t do those types of activities such as the development of the Ring of Fire.

All I’m saying is that if we don’t do it here, it’s going to be done somewhere else, and the footprint will be a lot larger because regulations around discharges into the environment are a lot weaker in other jurisdictions compared to Ontario. So I think we should take our responsibility if we have the ability to develop it here.

I just say to my friends, there is an anger out there, a huge anger when it comes to what’s going on in Ontario, when it comes to the issue of electricity prices, from both individuals and those people who are worried about their jobs and what happens in industry.

I’ve only got a couple of minutes left, and I guess at this point it would be hard to get into a whole other subject, so at this point, I will wrap up my debate.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bruce Crozier): Further debate? Does any other member wish to speak?

Ms. Smith has moved government notice of motion number 52. Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? Carried.

Motion agreed to.

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

The House recessed from 1013 to 1030.

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

Ms. Cheri DiNovo: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I believe we have unanimous consent for everyone to wear Elect More Women: Equal Voice buttons.

I also have the pleasure of introducing Rosemary Speirs, who’s the founder and chair of Equal Voice in Canada. Welcome.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): We’ll deal with the unanimous consent first. Agreed? Agreed.

Mr. Rosario Marchese: I’d like to introduce the friends from OPSEU. That includes Warren “Smokey” Thomas, the president of Ontario Public Service Employees Union—he’s right there—along with many other colleagues: Benoit Dupuis, Florry Foster, Roxanne Barnes, Dan Sidsworth, Jamie Ramage, Greg Hamara, Brenda Wall, Marnie Niemi, Gord Hamilton and Rod Bemister. Thank you for coming today.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I’d like to introduce the family of page Amanda Belzowski: Lisa, Dan and Joshua Belzowski, who are in the gallery. Amanda is the Amanda of Amanda’s Lemonade Stand fame. Welcome.

Mr. Steve Clark: I’m pleased to introduce in the west members’ gallery Bart Millson, the father of Tyler Millson, my legislative page from Leeds–Grenville. Tyler goes to Kemptville Public School, and we’re pleased to have Bart with us in the assembly today.

Ms. Helena Jaczek: I’d like to introduce two of my constituents visiting us today. In the east members’ gallery, we have Brian and Lee McPhail.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Joining us in the west members’ gallery today is Phil Gillies, former member of the Legislature from 1981 to 1987, who served in the riding of Brantford and served in the Parliament at the same time that my father, Paul Yakabuski, did.

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Il me fait plaisir d’introduire aujourd’hui Maureen Hasinoff, who used to work in my constituency office and is a student at Ottawa U, and her better half, Ted Horton.

Mr. Frank Klees: Visiting with us today will be students from Charles Howitt Public School in Richmond Hill. Their teacher, Mrs. Janice Bainbridge, is with them, as well as Mrs. Bainbridge’s daughter Sarah Bainbridge. We welcome them to the Legislature today.

Hon. Gerry Phillips: One of our fine pages is from my area, Scarborough–Agincourt, Lakshman Thayaparam, and his proud mother and father are with us today behind us in the gallery, Usha Thayaparam and Selva Thayaparam. I welcome them to the Legislature.

Hon. John Gerretsen: I’d like to welcome today Mr. Mitch Stein, who is the father of Erik Stein, a page from Kingston and the Islands.

Mr. Dave Levac: I know he has been introduced but I thought it important that I indicate my support for a fellow colleague and a friend, Mr. Phil Gillies, who worked very tirelessly in our community and did good work. He’s one of my favourite Tories.

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

We have with us in the Speaker’s gallery today the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Canada, His Excellency, Mr. Junsai Zhang, accompanied by the consul general of the People’s Republic of China at Toronto, Mr. Ligang Chen. Please join me in welcoming our guests to the Legislature today.

Also in the Speaker’s gallery, I’d like all members to warmly welcome the Honourable Peter Milliken, Speaker of the House of Commons and member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands. Welcome to Queen’s Park, Mr. Speaker. I trust that all members are going to show Speaker Milliken how to run a question period.

INTRODUCTION OF PAGES

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I’d like to ask the pages to assemble for introduction, please.

I’d like to ask all members to join me in welcoming this group of legislative pages serving in the second session of the 39th Parliament: Amanda Belzowski, Don Valley West; Beau Bouliane, Sault Ste.

Marie; Oliver Campbell, Chatham–Kent-Essex; Michael Church Carson, Beaches–East York; Simon Cook, Oakville; Madeline Diab, Essex; Julian Dusko-Bernyck, London West; Benjamin Hillier-Weltman, Ottawa West–Nepean; Sadie Honderich, Parry Sound–Muskoka; Emily Hutchings, Niagara Falls; Braden Leal, Peterborough; Holly Rose Lorenzon, Vaughan; Brittany McCorriston, Oak Ridges–Markham; Alexandra McLaughlin, Huron–Bruce; Nicolas Meilleur, Sudbury; Tyler Millson, Leeds–Grenville; Ira Sharma, Etobicoke North; Erik Stein, Kingston and the Islands; Lakshman Thayaparam, Scarborough–Agincourt; and not from the riding of Lambton–Kent–Middlesex but from the great riding of Elgin–Middlesex–London, Maria van Bommel; and Hailey Weller, Timiskaming–Cochrane.

Welcome to all of our pages.

ORAL QUESTIONS

HYDRO RATES

Mr. Tim Hudak: My question is to the Minister of Energy.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would remind the honourable member from Halton that we do not make reference to attendance of members.

Mr. Tim Hudak: Minister, as you are aware, hydro utilities have been fined for charging illegal rates of interest for late payments, but in a decision released yesterday your Ontario Energy Board said that hydro utilities will be allowed to pass on the $18 million in illegal fines to Ontario families. Why are you making Ontario families pay the price for illegal activities?

Hon. Brad Duguid: The member does raise an interesting question that I think deserves some explanation. This was a lawsuit that started in 1998 under the Harris government in the Ontario courts applying to a practice that, frankly, began back in 1981 when the Davis government was here.

In 2010, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled on the terms of settlement. As part of the ruling from the court, local distribution companies were directed to go to the Ontario Energy Board, an independent regulator, for direction on the recovery of these settlement costs. Yesterday, the Ontario Energy Board did in fact rule that local distribution companies are allowed to recover the settlement costs from the rate base.

While local distribution companies may recover the settlement costs from the rate base, we’ve directed Hydro One to not do that, to recover the costs from within, and we’d encourage other local distribution companies to do the same.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Tim Hudak: With all due respect, this is not an interesting question; it’s a scam, what you’re doing to consumers across the province. You’ve made an expensive mess out of our hydro system, and you don’t respect the fact that Ontario families pay the bills at the end of the day for your bungling. Ontario families were overcharged for late payments with punitive interest rates. They won a victory when the Superior Court ruled that the utilities were in the wrong and that the interest rates were illegal. But Minister, I ask you again: Why is it, when Ontario families even win in the courts, you still make them pay the price of illegal activity?

Hon. Brad Duguid: There’s no question that Ontario ratepayers are paying the price for a lot of the things that you did when you were in office. They’re paying a lot of the bills that you left in this energy system. Why do you think we’ve had to invest so much to improve our energy system? Why do you think we’ve had to do so much to improve our generation in this province? Because you left our energy system in a mess. This, frankly, is just another example of that.

We have to respect the laws of this land and we have to respect the courts, but I’ve made it very clear. Hydro One will be finding these costs from within; they will not be putting these costs to ratepayers across the province. I encourage other local distribution companies to take a similar approach to this.

It’s pretty rich when the member from the government that put our energy system into the ground is standing up and suggesting somehow or another—

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

Mr. Tim Hudak: Come on, Minister. As the expression goes, you know that dog won’t hunt. Ontario families want to see a minister who’s going to get on his feet and stand up for Ontario families, a minister who will show them the respect they deserve.

So, Minister, to put it back to you: Ontario families were charged exorbitant rates of interest—upwards of 60% annually.

Section 347 of the Criminal Code makes it a criminal offence to charge that level of interest. Ontario families, under Dalton McGuinty, who are working hard, who are—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Sorry to interrupt, but I’d remind the honourable member that we don’t make reference to members’ names.

Mr. Tim Hudak: Ontario families, under the McGuinty government, who are working hard, who are playing by the rules, should not be on the hook for the illegal activities of the utilities. Minister, what will you do to set this right and let Ontario families get the respect they deserve?

Hon. Brad Duguid: It is a little rich that the member is talking about activities that took place while he was in cabinet. This goes back to 1981, and frankly, I can’t just blame them for this; governments of all stripes were in power when this was taking place.

The courts have ruled. I would think the member would expect that we would want to respect those rulings. I’ve indicated what our direction to Hydro One has been and that’s that Hydro One should recover these costs from within. I think that’s a fair approach. He can support that or he can not support that. Maybe he should share with people what his position would be on this issue.

I would encourage other local distribution companies across the province to follow our lead. I think it’s responsible. I think it’s fair, in the circumstances. That’s what we’re going to do. Maybe he should share with Ontario families what his approach would be.

HYDRO RATES

Mr. Tim Hudak: Back to the Minister of Energy: This decision happened yesterday, where the OEB—your OEB that you’ve gerrymandered and turned into another McGuinty tax collection agency—is now passing on illegal fines to consumers. So families who have played by the rules, families who have worked hard, families who have paid their bills are now going to face a jacking of their hydro rates to pay for illegal activity.

What do I see from the minister? He shrugs it off. He says, “There’s nothing we can do. We’re going to let it happen.” Why don’t you restore the OEB to its core mandate as a consumer protection agency and say that this outrageous decision will not stand in the province of Ontario?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I think the Leader of the Opposition has a short memory. I would suggest, before he gets up on these issues, that he might want to do a little bit of research into his past history, because the OEB was following a ruling that took place under his previous government with Enbridge that ruled in the exact same way. What was good then, for some reason, isn’t good today.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Sorry to interrupt. The honourable member from Renfrew—I warn him, and he starts to heckle. I just ask that you come to order. I don’t need help from the other side.

Minister?

Hon. Brad Duguid: The Ontario Energy Board was following precedents set when he was in office. You know what? I respect the ruling of the Ontario Energy Board, and I respect the courts of this land as well on this. But I’ve said to Hydro One that they should not pass on these costs to their consumers, and I would recommend the same for other local distribution companies. What does he think—

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

Mr. Tim Hudak: Minister, you know that your government has turned the Ontario Energy Board, which should at its core mandate be for consumer protection, into another tax collection agency for the McGuinty government. Now we find out that families who played by the rules, who paid their bills on time, are going to face $18 million in fines because you don’t stand up and fight for them.

You allow these things to happen. You pass them on down; you say, “What’s a couple more bucks?” Well, it’s adding up for Ontario families, who are saying enough is enough. They want change in our province and a government that respects the fact that families pay the bills at the end of the day. So Minister, I’m going to ask you: Stand up your in place and say this decision is wrong and it will not stand. It is outrageous to pass on these costs to families who played by the rules and paid their bills. Will you do that, Minister?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I think I’ve been very, very clear, and I’ll repeat it again so the member can understand. We’ve directed Hydro One to recover these costs from within, so they’ll not be passing them on to their ratepayers, and we recommend to other local distribution companies and their municipal boards that they do the same thing. It will be up to them what they do. You didn’t do that with Enbridge. You had the opportunity to do that when that happened, and you chose not to. We’ve dealt with this in the most responsible way, with ratepayers front and centre in our decision.

Perhaps it could be said this is just another piece of that Tory legacy that we’ve had to clean up: an energy system that was left in a mess; an energy system that was relying on dirty coal; an energy system that was outdated. We’re cleaning up their mess every single day, and maybe it can be said that this is just another example of that.

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

Mr. Tim Hudak: My goodness. This minister, like his Premier, is so out of touch with what’s happening on the ground, at kitchen tables and in businesses in our province.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The Minister of Finance will withdraw the comment that he just made.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: Withdrawn.

Mr. Tim Hudak: Quite frankly, a shrug and a wink and a nod is not leadership in the province of Ontario. Families who played by the rules, who paid their bills on time, are now being dinged because of your mismanagement and the fact that you’ve corrupted the OEB and turned it away from consumer protection and into a tax collection agency. Restore the OEB as a consumer protection agency. Put in place, as we described, a consumer advocate to fight for Ontario families each and every day. Minister, say this is wrong for all utilities in the province of Ontario. Ontario families should not be stuck with the bill for your mismanagement of the system.

Hon. Brad Duguid: Once again, I’ve been very, very clear. We’re the shareholder for Hydro One, and under these circumstances we’ve directed Hydro One to indeed take these costs on and cover them from within so that they don’t pass them on to Ontario consumers. I think the member would know—but then again, he really didn’t understand the energy system when he was in office. Maybe he should know that local distribution companies are generally owned by municipalities. They’re the shareholders of local distribution companies.

I’ve said very clearly that I would recommend that they go by our example, that indeed they go by the example that’s being set by Hydro One: recover their costs from within, not pass them on to the ratepayers. But I think the member knows, or should know, that we don’t have the authority to rule that they do that. Indeed, they’re independent bodies that are run by municipal boards, by and large.

TAXATION

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Acting Premier. For over a year now, I’ve been asking the Premier to tell families just how much the HST on gasoline, hydro and home heating was going to add to their household budgets. He refused to answer that question, and so did his ministers. Are the McGuinty Liberals prepared now? Are they ready to share that information today with the people who are footing those bills?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: Actually, we shared that a few weeks ago, and you know what we found out? When you factor in our tax credits, when you factor in the personal tax cuts, when you factor in the one-time payments, Ontario families are further ahead. Why is that?

I say to my friends in the official opposition, their expert witness from two years ago is going to be speaking this morning at 11:30. Their expert, Mr. Jack Mintz, is coming to Toronto and will be speaking about the most competitive tax regime in North America for new investment, new jobs, a better future for our kids and fewer taxes for working Ontarians.

Tell us what you’ll do differently. Are you going to take it off or are you going to continue to play games with the future of this province’s economy?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop—start the clock. Members will please come to order.

Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: According to documents obtained through freedom of information, the McGuinty Liberals’ HST on gasoline, home heating and hydro takes $1.6 billion out of already-stretched family budgets. Why did the McGuinty Liberals hide from families the true cost of the HST on these essentials?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: The documents that I was pleased to release to the opposition show clearly and unequivocally that in fact Ontarians are further ahead as a result of our tax package.

But I think what Ontarians really want to know is, what will the NDP do with the HST? Let me give you an example.

Mr. Paul Miller: That’s a great document. They’re all blanked out.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Member from Hamilton East. Stop the clock.

Minister?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: What will the NDP do? Will they do what the NDP government in Nova Scotia did and raise the HST? Will they do what they suggested we do and raise the old PST? They used to talk about repealing the HST. Now they’re promising to amend it and leave it in place.

The only thing Ontarians want to know is, what is that leader’s position, what is her party’s position and why is she playing games with the future of this economy and jobs for the people in our province who need those jobs?

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Speaker, $1.6 billion is $350 a year from every single household in this province. That calculation does not include this government’s 50% rate increase in hydro rates; OPG’s proposed 6.2% rate increase; the $18 million that utility companies will soon be collecting from customers that they’ve been overcharging on their late fees; or gas prices that are now at their all-time high in two years.

How much more is the HST costing Ontario families as a result of the increases in hydro and gas rates?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: I’d really like to know what the leader of the NDP believes with the HST. She’s trying to have it every which way. They said they’d get rid of it; now they’re keeping it.

We have laid out a tax plan for jobs and growth—the numbers she’s referencing are two years old and incomplete—$10.6 billion over four years in personal income tax cuts, which will leave 93% of Ontarians ahead of the game, which will leave our tax system more competitive, which will create jobs in places like Windsor, Hamilton, London and right across the north, areas that were hurt badly during the great downturn. We stand by that package.

We will continue to make the kinds of investments we need to, to build the jobs of the future, to ensure that our kids have a better future and that we have the most competitive tax system for all Ontarians anywhere.

TAXATION

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Back to the Acting Premier: While the McGuinty Liberals were hiding their own estimates about the real impact of the HST on family budgets, they rejected our analysis of the HST and kept insisting that customers would feel no pain, that consumers wouldn’t feel any pain at all. But they were actually sitting on nearly identical estimates the entire time.

Why did the McGuinty Liberals keep basic information about the HST from the public while rejecting figures that were similar to their very own?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: We’ve actually published these numbers over and over again. What’s amazing is that that member is ignoring the work done by the Centre for Policy Alternatives. A chap named Hugh Mackenzie, who would be familiar to many of the members of the NDP, says that this is a net neutral for all Ontarians. That’s why every anti-poverty group in this city and many across the province endorse the tax cuts we’ve done for low- and moderate-income Ontarians.

Difficult times call for real leadership. Leadership is absent on that side of the House. First they say they’ll repeal it; then they say they’ll keep it. We’re building a better future for Ontarians—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Where’s your leader? Oh, he’s absent too.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I ask the honourable members—I remind them again about making reference to attendance.

Mr. Ernie Hardeman: We were just listening to the presentation.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Oxford, the Speaker would like to listen and be able to hear as well.

Minister, 10 seconds.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: My colleagues remind me: What Ontarians want to know reminds us of the old song with the NDP on the HST, “Will it stay or will it go?”

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Today the Premier is back on the road chatting with a friendly audience in Vaughan, but who he won’t hear from are people like Celine Russell, who writes this: “I live alone, have a small house, and I have been keeping my thermostat at 61 all winter so far. I’m still paying about $340 per month on my gas bill and $40 of it is HST tax.”

Were the McGuinty Liberals unwilling to tell families the true impact of their HST because they knew just how hated their unfair tax has become?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: What Ontarians want to know is, why is the NDP unwilling to say what they’ll do about it? Are you going to repeal it? You said that last year. Then this year, they’re starting to make amendments to it. Will it stay or will it go?

They ignore the advice of anti-poverty groups and what they have said about the positive impact our tax plan has had on low-income Ontarians. So I ask them again, will it stay or will it go? Just what is the position of the NDP? Do they support the Nova Scotia NDP and believe in raising the HST? I don’t know. All I know is, Ontarians want to know, will it stay or will it go?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The finance minister has got a career in the music field.

Carole Barry is a senior living in Terrace Bay, and she writes, “I am a widow who has to live on less than $1,500 per month. My last heating oil fill-up for the month of January was a whopping $486.”

Do the McGuinty Liberals think that women like Carole won’t notice that their government keeps making their lives more and more expensive, or do they simply not care?

Hon. Dwight Duncan: I think Carole probably should ask the NDP, “What are you going to do with it?” Why did you vote against the northern Ontario energy credit? Why did you vote against every initiative we have done to help consumers, especially northern consumers? So Carole should probably, in her next letter, ask the leader of the third party, “Will it stay or will it go?” And if it’s going to go, what are you going to do instead? Are you going to go back to the old provincial sales tax? And remember, they wanted us to raise the old provincial sales tax.

Difficult times require strong leaders. Dalton McGuinty has taken the right decisions to move—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I remind the honourable member that we don’t make references to members’ names.

Hon. Dwight Duncan: The Premier of Ontario is a leader who has taken the tough decisions to move Ontario forward, to build a better future for our children, more jobs, a steady hand at the till. That’s what Ontarians—

Interjections: Will it stay or will it go?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I think we’re all doing a real disservice to The Clash. The Clash sing that much better.

New question.

ENERGY POLICIES

Mrs. Julia Munro: My question is for the Minister of Consumer Services. I’m asking you today to act on a matter of serious concern to Ontario families. Today Ontario families are waking up to discover the impact of Premier McGuinty’s gutting the Ontario Energy Board of its historic consumer protection mandate. Now Ontario families will pay $18 million more for compensation to utilities that charge their criminal interest rates. Someone has to look out for families. Today, will you appoint a consumer protection advocate to protect Ontario families from the McGuinty Liberals?

Hon. John Gerretsen: I refer this to the Minister of Energy.

Hon. Brad Duguid: I appreciate the question, but it’s very, very obvious that the member opposite—

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Free Gerretsen.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I can free the member from Nepean–Carleton.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The members will please come to order.

Minister?

Hon. Brad Duguid: It’s very obvious that the member opposite didn’t listen to the first six questions in this question period, because I stated very unequivocally that we’ve given Hydro One direction not to pass on these increases to their consumers. They’ll have to deal with these costs from within. We’re recommending that other local distribution companies do the same.

But it’s a little ironic: One minute the Conservatives are calling for us to interfere with OEB decisions; now they’re calling for us to not do that. You can’t have it both ways, and they’re trying to do it. Which is it? Do you want us to interfere with the OEB? Or do you want us to leave them independent?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. John Yakabuski: The latest hit to the pocketbook is just another in a long list of hydro hikes by the McGuinty Liberals, including the regulated price increase, the HST tax grab, the so-called smart meters, the so-called green subsidy, secret backroom taxes, the Samsung deal and OPG and Hydro One rate increases. A few bucks here, a few bucks there: It all adds up to Ontario families not being able to afford the Dalton McGuinty Liberals any longer.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would remind the honourable member—and I’m going to start passing on questions—about making reference to members’ names.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I apologize.

When will the McGuinty Liberals show some respect for Ontario families, stop the assault on their pocketbooks and give them some needed relief that they need so badly in this province?

Hon. Brad Duguid: The member opposite, obviously, and his party have lots of opinions about the efforts we’ve been making over the last seven years to turn around their ugly energy legacy. We remember that legacy. It was dirty, it was unreliable and it is outdated, and we’re turning that system into a clean, reliable and modern system that Ontario families can count on.

He’s doing a lot of chirping over there today, but what they don’t want to talk about is their plans for energy. Maybe that’s because they don’t support our clean energy benefit that’s taking 10% off the bills of Ontario families over the next five years. How are you going to explain that to Ontario families? Maybe it’s because he’d have to explain to Ontario families why he continues to oppose our efforts to get out of coal and build a healthier future for our kids and grandkids. Maybe it’s because they don’t have the courage to look workers across this province in the eye and tell them that they don’t support their jobs and their plan would put them right out of work. Mr. Speaker—

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

HEALTH CARE

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est pour la ministre de la Santé et des Soins de longue durée. Yesterday, the Minister of Health called the hundreds of dollars in fees that hospitals are charging patients who refuse the first available long-term-care bed “completely inappropriate and unacceptable,” and I agree with her. Yet hospitals throughout Ontario have had these policies for years. This practice has been out in the open and the McGuinty Liberals have simply turned a blind eye to this despicable policy. Why, for so many years, did the minister stand by and allow hospitals to threaten to charge distraught families exorbitant amounts of money?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I was very clear yesterday in the House, and I will be clear again today, that it is completely unacceptable for a patient in our Ontario hospitals to be charged in excess of $53.23 per day if they are waiting for long-term care. I am communicating with the LHINs to ensure that the hospitals are aware of this policy.

Today I am happy to reiterate that it is completely unacceptable to charge anything in excess of $53.23 per day for a patient who is waiting for long-term care.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

M me France Gélinas: Metroland’s news investigation documented the illegal fees and the bureaucratic mess that families encounter when they try to place their loved one in a long-term-care bed. The

article told the story of the Barger family in Cambridge, who resisted the hospital trap of $871 per day. To do this, they had to hire a lawyer. But there are countless other families who did not receive legal advice or representation, and they paid these fees in order to protect their loved ones because they felt they had no choice.

Does the minister know, first of all, how many families have paid those exorbitant amounts of money? What is her plan to reimburse them?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I would definitely recommend that, if someone has paid the fee, they be in touch with the hospital that charged them that fee to clarify whether that fee was a legitimate fee or not.

As I said, there is no reason why someone waiting for long-term care should be charged that fee. If someone is in a hospital and is discharged and ready to go home, then, yes, there are unregulated fees that are available.

We are working very hard to improve health care in this province. We are working hard to improve long-term care, community care and hospital care. The Tories tell us, “Let’s cut health care.” The NDP are saying, “Let’s fund everything.” We are determined to continue to improve health care in the province of Ontario.

TAXATION

Mrs. Liz Sandals: My question is for the Minister of Revenue. Minister, critics say that the HST is bad for Ontario. People in my riding of Guelph have asked me why we are implementing the HST and our comprehensive tax package. That being said, Statistics Canada paints a different picture. It shows that Ontario’s economy has turned the corner on the recession and is emerging stronger than before.

Minister, can you explain to the House some of the benefits of the HST that we’re now seeing?

Hon. Sophia Aggelonitis: That is a very important question. The parties opposite seem to talk down the HST and our full, comprehensive tax package, but a number of studies, including one by Jack Mintz, have said that the HST will create jobs. He says that the HST will create approximately 600,000 net new jobs in the province of Ontario as well as $47 billion in capital investments.

We have recovered 95% of the jobs lost during the recession, due, in large part, to the initiatives of the McGuinty government such as investing in infrastructure to stimulate the economy, lowering personal income taxes and bringing in measures like the HST.

We will continue to invest in this province to make it stronger and more competitive.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mrs. Liz Sandals: The minister says that the HST will help create jobs in the province and increase investment. We’ve also heard that 95% of the jobs lost before the recession have been recovered. In fact, in my riding of Guelph, we can clearly see these benefits emerging. Guelph is a manufacturing town and was hard hit by the recession. But local business operators tell me that the HST and our comprehensive tax package is exactly what they’ve needed to help them weather the storm and now recover the jobs for my constituents.

If we are hearing that the HST and the McGuinty government’s tax package are working, can you explain why the Leader of the Opposition is so adamantly opposed?

Hon. Sophia Aggelonitis: I’m not sure why the parties opposite are against this. One day, they’re for it; one day, they’re against it, so we don’t know where they stand.

But in the hopes that they would like to learn more about how the HST is creating jobs in the province of Ontario—we know that Jack Mintz is in town today. In fact, he will be speaking at the Economic Club of Canada on the tax competitiveness of 83 different countries around the world. I am confident that he will speak about Canada in a very, very positive way.

I have a little suggestion. I think that some members may want to go to the speech, so I brought some tickets. Just in case anybody wants to go—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The honourable member knows that props should not be used in the Legislature.

New question.

TAXATION

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: My question as well is to the Minister of Revenue. Since 2003, the McGuinty Liberals have hit the pocketbooks of Ontario families with the HST, eco taxes, secret hydro taxes and more. Yesterday, the member from Lambton–Kent–Middlesex showed just how out of touch this McGuinty Liberal government is with Ontario families when she cited a 2003 promise not to raise taxes when she tweeted, “Promise made, promise kept.” This is a slap in the face to Ontario families who are struggling to pay for all your hits to the pocketbook.

Minister, why are Liberal MPPs saying you haven’t raised taxes when you have?

Hon. Sophia Aggelonitis: I appreciate the question from the member. You know, there’s a really important speech today. It’s happening at 11:30. Jack Mintz is in town. He’s going to be talking about how competitive we are as a province.

Interjection: Do you have tickets?

Hon. Sophia Aggelonitis: Yes, I have some tickets.

It’s important for the member to look at our record and to see what the HST and our full, comprehensive tax package is all about. It’s about up to $12 billion in tax cuts and credits for families. It’s about helping families. It’s about helping low-income Ontarians.

We want to make sure that we grow a stronger province, because that’s what families are asking us to do.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: If Jack Mintz had a nickel for every single time that minister mentioned his name, he’d be as rich as the Samsung guys with their new agreement.

If the Premier and this minister had spent the last 75 days listening to Ontario families, they would have heard how they can no longer afford his HST, his eco fee tax increases and the skyrocketing hydro bills.

But this out-of-touch Premier and this out-of-touch minister choose to spend their time lecturing Ontarians on their tax increases. On February 8, the Premier gave his one-hour-long lecture in London. How I do know how long it was? Because I had to sit through it in Ottawa. It is very long and tedious.

The question that I do have for this minister is, was the member from Lambton–Kent–Middlesex a no-show for the Premier’s lecture in London, or did she fall asleep before he got to the important part where he lauded his tax increases?

Hon. Sophia Aggelonitis: Again, I don’t think I got an answer about whether or not she’d like to go to Jack Mintz’s speech today, but if she does, I have some tickets.

Let me just share some of the numbers of the comprehensive tax package: Nine out of 10 Ontarians have already received a permanent tax cut; 90,000 low-income Ontarians have been taken off the tax roll; 83% of everything we buy has seen no changes at all; and the average family will see about $355 in income tax cuts this year alone. In fact, we have the lowest provincial tax rate in Canada on the first $37,000. Some transition cheques have already gone out to families, either $1,000 or $300. We have the permanent Ontario sales tax credit, which will help families by about $260 per month.

It’s about building a stronger Ontario. That’s what we’re doing, and we’re moving—

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

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Mr. Rosario Marchese: My question is to the Minister of Colleges and Universities. Minister, in October 2008, you passed Bill 90. I remember praising you for doing that because it was a bill that allowed the part-time faculty and support staff at community colleges to be able to bargain collectively, to have a union.

I think, two and a half years later, this bill is still great on paper, but there’s a little problem: 10,000 of these workers have cast votes on union representation, and after two and a half years these ballots remain sealed and workers continue to be denied the right to unionize. Are you not embarrassed?

Hon. John Milloy: I know the Minister of Labour will want to comment in the supplementary, but I’d like to begin by welcoming the representatives of OPSEU and the college sector who are with us here today at Queen’s Park.

I am very, very proud of Bill 90, which extended the right to bargain collectively to part-time and sessional workers in our college system. It was based on the best advice that came from noted labour expert Kevin Whitaker, who is now a respected member of the bench. The bill outlined a process. That process has been put under way and there are issues arising from it which are in front of the Ontario Labour Relations Board.

I think that the honourable member would recognize, himself a former cabinet minister, that it would be totally inappropriate for a minister to speak about a matter or to comment on a matter in front of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, which is a quasi-judicial body of this government.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Rosario Marchese: Three years later and you’re talking about a process—a process that you could intervene in, a process that you, if you’re proud of Bill 90, could change today. But you and the Minister of Labour and the Premier refuse to take action on a bill that’s yours. The McGuinty government has allowed the management at colleges and their high-priced lawyers to flout the community colleges bargaining act and to block the Ontario labour review board from opening and counting the ballots that workers have cast. The McGuinty government still refuses to take action.

If you’re proud of Bill 90, do something about it. When will this government intervene and deliver on its promise to allow part-time college workers the right to unionize?

Hon. John Milloy: To the Minister of Labour, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Charles Sousa: We recognize that fair and balanced labour laws have been the foundation for our province’s prosperity for decades. That’s why our government did introduce a Colleges Collective Bargaining Act, 2008, granting bargaining rights to part-time and sessional college workers for the first time and to better serve the needs of students and college systems. The Ministry of Labour promotes a stable and constructive labour relations climate and fosters productive workplace relationships in Ontario. Productive labour relations are the key to economic growth and give Ontario a competitive advantage.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union is seeking to be certified as a bargaining agent for a unit of part-time and sessional college instructors and a unit of part-time college support workers—which process is now before the board. The Ontario Labour Relations Board is an independent adjudicative tribunal, and as the matter is before the Ontario Labour Relations Board—

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

INFRASTRUCTURE

PROGRAM FUNDING

Mr. Lou Rinaldi: My question is to the Minister of Infrastructure. On December 1 of last year the minister and I visited an infrastructure stimulus project in my riding in Cobourg, the Cobourg Community Centre, or the CCC as we like to call it. This is an extraordinarily exciting project. The CCC will have a 2,000-plus-seat arena plus a smaller 400-seat arena. There will also be two gyms and change rooms and 1,000 square feet dedicated for a youth centre and three multi-purpose meeting rooms.

The CCC is on track for a grand opening this spring. However, Cobourg council still applied for an extension to the March 31, 2011, deadline to make sure that the workers have time to get the finishing touches done. My question to the minister is, will the deadline extension be granted?

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: I’d like to thank the member for the question. First, I’d like to congratulate the people of Cobourg for coming together to create this project in partnership with the federal and provincial governments and for becoming part of the largest and most successful infrastructure program in the history of the province of Ontario. Born out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, stimulus is creating 700 jobs in the Northumberland area and 300,000 across Ontario for Ontario families. Indeed, Ontario has recovered 95% of the jobs lost during the recession, compared to only 11% in the US.

The federal and provincial governments have worked together to create over 9,500 projects to improve our quality of life and to improve the economy of Ontario.

I’ll deal with the deadline in the supplementary.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Lou Rinaldi: Minister, your comments about the community coming together are exactly right. In the case of the Cobourg Community Centre project, that’s happening in all sorts of ways. For example, with the help of Alice Vander Vennen, one of our local artists, members of the community are working together to help design 100 brightly coloured fish that will become a giant floating sculpture for the great hall entrance to the community centre. Plus, we’re not relying on just federal and provincial funds for this project. The local community is raising more than $3 million to put toward the capital costs.

Again, Minister: Will the extension request for this project be approved?

Hon. Bob Chiarelli: Again, congratulations to the residents of Cobourg, a town of only 19,000, for raising $3 million towards this project. In general, we expect to approve almost every one of the extension applications we received.

For months our government urged the federal government to join us in extending the stimulus deadline. Not once did the Leader of the Opposition join us in our call for an extension. In fact, he argued against the most successful job-creating program in the history of the province, calling it “too much,” and he also voted against it. He voted against 300,000 jobs for Ontario families. He voted and argued against 4,100 jobs for families in his own Niagara region and he voted against the YMCA project in Grimsby. He was a no-plan man for the recession. When will he start standing up for jobs for Ontario families?

DIALYSIS

Mr. Jim Wilson: My question is for the Minister of Health. The waiting list for dialysis services at Collingwood General and Marine Hospital is growing to a crisis level for families and seniors in my riding. There are six dialysis machines that operate six days a week, Monday to Saturday, and three evenings a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. At all other times, the machines sit empty while patients are forced to drive long distances to Barrie and Orillia.

People like Margaret Khull are appalled by the idea of having to travel three times a week outside of the local area for dialysis. She told the Blue Mountains Courier-Herald last week, “I live alone, I don’t have family to help with the driving and I live on Canada pension so I can’t afford the $500 a month in travel costs.”

Minister, why haven’t you responded to the hospital’s request to alleviate the backlog?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this. There is no question that dialysis is something that, whenever possible, we should be able to provide as close to home as possible. When someone is on dialysis, they are having to go to wherever they get that treatment three times a week. It is a very onerous lifestyle challenge for people on dialysis. That’s why the Ontario Renal Network is looking very closely at expanding dialysis to more communities: so that people don’t have to travel as much as they could. We’re very committed to increasing the number of people with home dialysis and increasing dialysis opportunities outside some of the major hospitals.

But what’s frustrating for me is how a member from that party, a party that is advocating cuts to health care, could stand up and advocate for more.

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

Mr. Jim Wilson: The minister knows that what she just said isn’t factual at all. We’re not going to cut health care one penny.

I set up the dialysis clinic in Collingwood to prevent patients from having to travel long—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Stop the clock.

Hon. Sandra Pupatello: It’s not my plan to close hospitals.

Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: It’s not my plan to raise taxes.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Kitchener–Waterloo, Minister of Economic Development, Minister of Municipal Affairs, Minister of Agriculture.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister of Community Safety, Minister of Finance, Minister of the Environment.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister of Economic Development for the second time.

Please continue.

Mr. Jim Wilson: I set up the clinic in Collingwood to prevent exactly this: to prevent people from having to drive long distances and to force services closer to home.

For Bob and Shirley McCombie, the long drives to Orillia and Barrie are taking their toll. They told the local paper that they have to drive to Barrie the night before her dialysis appointment, stay at their daughter’s house, then drive to the hospital for 7 a.m. and home to Collingwood after the session is over. Mr. McCombie told the paper, “We’ve had some pretty tough drives, this winter has been terrible for driving.” In fact, winter road conditions have caused many dialysis patients to cancel their appointments for this life-saving treatment, which in essence will kill them.

Minister, will you issue a directive today to make it clear that the hospital, with the help of the ministry, needs to clean up—

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

Hon. Deborah Matthews: As I said in the initial question, we are committed to increasing our capacity for dialysis and we are committed and acting on increasing the locations where people can get that dialysis treatment.

It is unbecoming of the people opposite to pretend that they can cut taxes and not cut services. I don’t know what kind of magic wand they have, but I’m going to give you a little bit of help about what cutting $3 billion actually means. We could completely eliminate home care for all Ontarians; that could save you $3 billion. You could shut down the LHINs; that will save you $70 million. You’ve got to find $3 billion more. You could close all of the hospitals, every single hospital on University Avenue, shut down—that would find you $3 billion, except it wouldn’t; you’d have to do that twice. Every hospital on University Avenue, twice. Another option: eliminate drug programs—

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

HEALTH CARE

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Minister of Health. While the Premier has been busy patting himself on the back for his supposed success in health care, communities across the province are seeing systems in decline. In London, families are facing the province’s longest wait for cancer surgery, an excruciating and cruel wait time. Now, hit by the seasonal flu, the situation has only gotten worse, as hospitals have to cancel surgeries and they’ve seen admission times soar. How can this minister tell families that her health care plan is working when so obviously and clearly that is not the case?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I’m very happy to have the opportunity to talk about the improvements we’ve made in health care across this province, including in my community of London and the member opposite’s community of Hamilton. When it comes to wait times, the party who was in charge before us was afraid to even measure wait times. They did not measure wait times. We came into office and we started to measure. We publicly report. We’ve made strategic investments. We now have the lowest wait times in Canada, and I’m very proud of that accomplishment.

In the member opposite’s own riding in Hamilton we’ve been able to bring down wait times for angiography by 44% and angioplasty by 91%. Bypass surgery wait times are down by 43% and hip replacements by 58%. Because we measure, because we publicly report, we know what progress we are making and we know where we need to do better, and we are—

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Notwithstanding this minister’s claims, instead of timely and effective solutions to the growing crisis in London, the situation is only getting worse. In January, St. Joseph’s urgent care centre started severely cutting back their hours. Urgent care centres are supposed to be taking the pressure off hospitals by treating less complex patients, and yet they’re closing their doors. Now, urgent care is being cut in spite of the staggering burden that London hospitals are facing. Why has the minister completely ignored the concerns of families and allowed the health care disaster in London to get as bad as it is?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I would welcome the member opposite to come to London and talk to the front-line health care workers there, talk to the doctors, talk to the nurses, talk to the patients, and ask them if we’ve made progress when it comes to improving access to primary care and if we’ve made progress when it comes to bringing down wait times.

I am very proud of the progress. We’ve got almost 3,000 more doctors working in our health care system today than when we took office. We have 1.2 million more Ontarians with access to primary health care. We’ve got more than 10,000 more nurses working in our system. Our wait times are down, and our quality is improving. I stand by the progress we’ve made in health care. I would put our record up against the record of that party opposite when they had the chance to govern this province, and certainly against the official opposition.

ABORIGINAL LAND DISPUTE

Mr. Dave Levac: My question is for the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. Monday marks the fifth anniversary of the challenging events that unfolded at the Douglas Creek Estates. I do understand that only the federal government carries responsibility for solutions to the underlying issues surrounding the Six Nations land claims; however, it is important for all of us to continue to work hard to bring the communities together.

Interjections.

Mr. Dave Levac: If they heard the question, they would understand that I believe all of us are culpable for this.

It is vital that we encourage citizens of both communities to continue to foster a positive atmosphere so that new relationships based on trust and mutual respect can grow.

Can the minister tell us what he and this government have been doing to move the situation forward in a positive and respectful way?

Hon. Christopher Bentley: The member from Brant has done some very good work in bringing people together. He recognizes that the solution to some very challenging issues along the Haldimand tract is about building relationships, not taking them apart. So he has supported the good work that Six Nations, the mayors of Caledonia, Brantford and Brant have bee