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February 28, 1978

31st Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Hansard Transcripts

L006 - Tue 28 Feb 1978 / Mar 28 fév 1978

DARLINGTON NUCLEAR PLANT

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

BOARDING HOUSE FIRE

SECURITIES LEGISLATION

INCOME TAX DISCOUNTS

VITAL STATISTICS LEGISLATION

VISITOR

JUDGE WILLIAMS

HEALTH RECORDS

HEALTH RECORDS

PUBLIC OFFICERS’ SECURITIES

ORAL QUESTIONS

HEALTH RECORDS

SPADINA EXPRESSWAY

CROWN LAND SALES

JOB CREATION

OHIP CLAIMS PROCEDURE

HEALTH RECORDS

MINIMUM WAGE

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION FUND

RAPE

BRAMPTON TIMES DISPUTE

TRUCKING LEGISLATION

WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION

GOLD COIN PURCHASES

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF HYDRO PROJECTS

BEARE ROAD LANDFILL SITE

DRIVING INSTRUCTION

PETITIONS

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

CITY OF TIMMINS-PORCUPINE AMENDMENT ACT

SHORELINE PROPERTY ASSISTANCE AMENDMENT ACT

SECURITIES ACT

COMMODITY FUTURES ACT

BUSINESS CORPORATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

INCOME TAX DISCOUNTERS AMENDMENT ACT

VITAL STATISTICS AMENDMENT ACT

FOODLANDS PROTECTION ACT

HYDRO CONTRACTS

HYDRO CONTRACTS

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

DARLINGTON NUCLEAR PLANT

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Speaker, on a point of personal privilege: Yesterday afternoon in this chamber, the member for Halton-Burlington (Mr. Reed) stated the following:

“The new Minister of the Environment (Mr. McCague) went on record, two days after he was sworn in, as saying that pollution standards would have to be relaxed in the coming months in order to facilitate employment. I had the experience of being with one of the NDP members, speaking to the Environmental Law Association, who also espoused the same kind of philosophy. It was interesting to see the NDP and the Tories in bed together.”

There was an interjection and the hon. member followed up by saying:

“Well, the hon. member should ask the member for Nickel Belt exactly what he said. He should also ask his friends from the Ontario Federation of Labour; the treasurer, who was there, talked proudly about marching with the demonstrators at the Darlington site.”

In the interest of the truth, I would like to clarify what was said at the annual meeting of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. What I did say was that I understood the dilemma of workers when they were faced with the cruel choice of either unemployment or participating in a job that contributed to the destruction of our environment.

Ms. Gigantes: A false choice.

Mr. Laughren: I also know, given the economic policies of this government and of the federal government, that workers will increasingly have to make that rather cruel choice.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity of correcting the record.

Mr. Martel: Some people are careless with the truth.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

BOARDING HOUSE FIRE

Hon. Mrs. Birch: Mr. Speaker, several questions were asked yesterday about a fire at an unlicensed boarding home in Chelmsford. Five elderly residents died at that time and a sixth person died Saturday night in a Sudbury Hospital.

An inquest has been set for Monday, April 10, and it is to be conducted by Dr. Donald McGowan of Capreol. I share the concerns of my colleagues regarding the circumstances under which this tragedy took place and I will pursue this with my colleagues, the ministers of Health (Mr. Timbrell) and Community and Social Services (Mr. Norton).

I can confirm for the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. S. Smith) that space was available at the Pioneer Home for the Aged in Sudbury, about seven miles away. I am sure he would agree that the role of government is to protect those who are not competent. It is not the role of government to tell people where they should live.

SECURITIES LEGISLATION

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Mr. Speaker, I am introducing today, bills that would revise the Securities Act, enact a new Commodity Futures Act and make corollary amendments to the Business Corporations Act.

Last fall, I announced we would not proceed with this package of bills until the spring session in order to provide both the new chairman of the Ontario Securities Commission and myself with an opportunity to review the legislation. This is now done.

Additional review and consultation with interested organizations has resulted in a number of changes in each of the major bills. The principles of these changes have been discussed with most of the provincial securities commissions and I am optimistic that the bills I am tabling today will establish the precedent for uniform securities and commodity futures legislation across Canada.

A number of areas of the new Securities Act are revised to enhance effective investor protection. The most significant changes include: detailed provisions requiring timely disclosure of material events in the affairs of reporting issuers; more detailed rules concerning takeover bids; a new pattern of exemptions from prospectus filing requirements; more detailed rules establishing civil liability for inadequate documents -- including, for the first time, specific statutory liability of underwriters.

In addition, there are a number of changes of a technical nature that will improve the practical application of the Act and its efficient administration. Past versions of this bill have been described to this Legislature, but I should refer to the significant changes that have resulted from the consultation of the past couple of months.

Most important is the area of takeover bids. The Securities Act defines “takeover bid” in wide terms, but includes an exemption for bids carried out by private agreement. A number of problems have arisen as a result of this exemption, the most important among them being that holders of a control block have disposed of it at a premium price unavailable to minority shareholders.

Past versions of this bill would simply have deleted the private agreement exemption, but it has become apparent that this approach would be unduly restrictive, would increase the administrative workload of the commission and would force businessmen to apply to the commission for its approval of many transactions, even though they would have no element of a control block premium. As a result, flexibility of trading would be decreased and costs of administration and compliance would be increased.

Accordingly, the proposed bill would reinstate the private agreement exemption, although in a narrower form than in the present Act. Where this exemption is relied upon to purchase control at a premium, the vendor would be obligated to offer the same or an equivalent price to minority shareholders within 180 days after the acquisition of control.

Concern with costs of compliance and of administration has also influenced the second significant change. Under earlier proposals, mutual funds, their management companies and their contractual sales plan service companies would have been required to register with the commission and would have been made subject to additional substantive rules.

These proposals had their genesis in a 1969 report that was written when certain abuses or potential abuses were detected. Major changes have occurred since then; the mutual fund industry is now much smaller and less able to withstand unnecessary administrative costs. Further, the securities commission has established effective control over the industry through the prospectus filing and other requirements contained in the present Act and in the bill now before you. In these circumstances, the proposal is that the new registration requirements and certain of the substantive rules be deleted.

The third significant change is of a more technical nature. As I have already mentioned, the bill contains statutory filing disclosure requirements applicable to reporting issuers. It also contains a new set of exemptions from the prospectus filing requirements, based on the assumption that the new timely disclosure requirements will make it appropriate to distribute certain securities to the public without the benefit of a prospectus.

I agree with this approach; again, it will reduce costs of compliance and of administration but on a basis consistent with investor protection. However, there should be an opportunity for practical experience with the new timely disclosure rules, and the proposal is that the new exemptions come into force 18 months after the rest of the Act becomes law. The amendments to the Business Corporations Act are to move all elements of investor disclosure into the Securities Act where they belong.

Turning to the Commodity Futures Act, the broad structure of the Act, again, remains unchanged. It contains registration requirements and related rules for the protection of investors in commodity futures. Since the protections of the Act are not needed for persons whose business requires them to trade in futures, an appropriate exemption is provided.

In the prior version of the bill, this exemption took the form of an elaborate and detailed definition of “bona fide hedging transaction.” In the bill now being introduced, that definition is deleted and a much simpler definition of “hedger” is substituted.

You will note that we have not tabled any compendia to this legislation. The compendia were made available last spring and any changes to the legislation which have evolved since then were covered in this statement.

I commend each of these bills through you, Mr. Speaker, to the hon. members. They will significantly improve the pattern of investor protection in this province and will enable Ontario to keep its lead in this area within Canada.

INCOME TAX DISCOUNTS

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Just 12 weeks ago this House enacted a bill to combat the tax discounters. These people charged some citizens about 50 per cent of the value of the tax refund due back to them. We have learned a tremendous amount in the ensuing three months. We know they are operating in open defiance of the law. We have discovered that the existing statute is simply not enough to deal with this problem.

With the concurrence of this House we expect to tighten up the offence sections of the bill. In our effort to be constitutionally respectful, we drafted a

section which made a transaction where the consumer got less than a 95 per cent refund invalid. We now want to go further. We want to make it a clear offence to pay less than 95 per cent. We want to make this

section read, “No discounters shall pay less than 95 per cent.” We still wish to be constitutionally correct, but we are not going to be easy with these firms. An offence clearly it should be and an offence it will be, and charges will be laid.

We have learned that one enterprising firm has taken to giving the taxpayer 50 per cent in cash and a note for the remaining 45 per cent. They tell the customer he can have the remaining 45 per cent if they lose in court. We propose to deal with this problem in the forthcoming amendment.

I have further been advised that a firm in Ottawa with a branch in Hull does the first portion of the paperwork in Ottawa, and then sends its clients to the Hull office to pick up the cheque. The discounter receives the power of attorney to claim the refund in Quebec. This manoeuvre effectively takes jurisdiction over the transaction out of the province and therefore beyond the reach of prosecution and civil action in Ontario. I frankly do not know what I can do here but clearly this illustrates the need for federal involvement.

I recall clearly my predecessor pushing the federal government on the Borrowers and Depositors Protection Act. We pressed for a long time the idea that the federal government should move swiftly against those buying government cheques at a discount. Instead they are including this thrust in a bill which deals with a much broader package of measures covering the lending field. The whole effect of this has been to slow down action in these areas where action is sorely needed.

These usurious border games would not be taking place if the federal government had simply moved ahead and tackled these specialized deals with specific legislation. In the face of this non-action, five of our sister provinces have moved one way or another on tax discounters. Everyone got fed up waiting for something to happen, but let me say this. We are in now and we are going to deal with these situations. We are going to lay charges everywhere these people operate, if we must.

We are really looking forward to the confrontation up to and including any constitutional arguments, though, as I have just finished saying, if the federal government had moved when they should have, we would not be fighting that issue at all.

[2:15]

Through you, Mr. Speaker, I would like to urge the hon. members of all parties to cooperate in pushing this amendment through without delay. We are just entering the peak of the tax return season and we must act now.

Mr. Speaker: I would urge the hon. members to keep their private conversations down, including the member for Sudbury East (Mr. Martel).

Hon. Mr. Grossman: He is missing a lot of good stuff.

VITAL STATISTICS LEGISLATION

Hon. Mr. Grossman: Today I’m introducing for first reading the Vital Statistics Amendment Act, 1978. The purpose of this bill is twofold: To permit the names of children to be registered with any combination of the parents’ hyphenated surnames and to allow the designation of sex to be changed on a transsexual’s birth certificate.

At the present time, the Vital Statistics Act permits hyphenated or combined names provided the surname of the father precedes that of the mother. In other words, the issue of John Jones and Sally Smith must be named Jones-Smith, if a compound surname is desired. The amendment would permit, at the discretion of the parents, either Jones-Smith or Smith-Jones.

Subsequent children of the union must bear the identical combination of surnames, and there are provisions in the bill to change the birth certificates of children born prior to the amendment.

Mr. Deans: Now the Minister of Labour (B. Stephenson) can use both her names.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It gets better.

Mr. Nixon: I hope so.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: It’s worth waiting for. When the Vital Statistics Act was amended in 1976 to permit hyphenated names, there was some editorial outcry over the possibility of Betty Brown-White marrying Bobby Black-Green and naming their children Black-Green-White-Brown. This possibility still exists, of course, although the deputy registrar general assures me there have been no line-ups to register even hyphenated names.

In any event, the government cannot be put in the position of legislating against silliness, and Lord knows we should sometimes. We hope the Major Major Major syndrome remains confined to Joseph Heller’s fiction.

The government feels this amendment is very much in keeping with the contemporary social mores, and we can see no reason to deny parents this option. The recommendation is contained in the Ombudsman’s report of 1976-77 but, even prior to that my predecessor (Mr. Handleman) said that when the amendment to permit hyphenated names was originally brought in, he would have been prepared then to make the order of surnames optional. But, at that time, the issue was never even raised.

The second part of the amendment provides a method for individuals who have undergone transsexual surgery to have the sex designation on a birth certificate changed to reflect the results of the surgery performed. This change may be made when the operation is complete and in conjunction with the presentation of a certificate signed by a licensed medical practitioner. Until now, sex designations have been amended only if there was a mistake made at the time of issue.

We feel the inability of an individual who has undergone a transsexual operation to obtain a birth certificate showing the new sex could be very disturbing to someone engaged in the difficult task of establishing a new lifestyle. Since Ontario recognizes the medical necessity in proper circumstances for this type of surgery --

Mr. Roy: He’s got more guts than his predecessor had.

Hon. Mr. Grossman: -- it should be prepared to facilitate the transsexual’s transition to his or her changed circumstances.

Mr. Handleman: Does the member for Ottawa East want to apply?

Hon. Mr. Grossman: I should add that we are not stating that the legal status of the transsexual has been changed. This is a matter for the courts and there is no Canadian precedent for it, although according to British and United States decisions, the status of the individual is not changed. Again, I should point out that this matter was raised in the Ombudsman’s report for 1975-76. As I pointed out during the meeting of the select committee on the Ombudsman in February 1977, six months before I assumed this portfolio, the ministry had already agreed to amend its legislation to coincide with that of other Canadian jurisdictions.

Roth parts of this amendment are desirable in that they reflect contemporary social standards and conditions. I commend this bill to the hon. members and urge its speedy passage.

VISITOR

Mr. S. Smith: May I have the attention of the House for a moment, because the hon. gentleman has to leave shortly, to introduce in your gallery, sir, the Leader of the Opposition of the province of Newfoundland, Mr. William Rowe.

Mr. Peterson: And the next Premier.

Mr. Nixon: And to wish him well.

Hon. Mr. Davis: What party is that?

JUDGE WILLIAMS

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, in a few moments I will be tabling a report of the commission of inquiry into Provincial Judge Harry J. Williams, together with a copy of the order in council removing the provincial court judge from office pursuant to

section 4 of the Provincial Courts Act. Very briefly, the conclusions of the Hon. Mr. Justice Sydney L. Robins, the commissioner, are as follows:

“Now, regrettable as it is in view of his past service on the bench it is inescapable that his position as a judge is untenable. Plainly stated, he has destroyed his effectiveness and usefulness as a judge. In all the circumstances it must be concluded that Judge Williams’ misbehaviour has been such that it does not serve the best interests of the administration of justice in Ontario that he continue as a provincial judge of the provincial court, criminal division.”

HEALTH RECORDS

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I also have a further statement in relation to additional information for members of the Legislature in relation to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Ontario Health Insurance Plan.

Members will recall that last fall I provided a statement and a memorandum on dealings between the federal police force and OHIP. At that time, I had been given certain information by the RCMP to the effect that the force had obtained non-medical biographical data from OHIP files. The RCMP reported that after searching their files and canvassing their staff they had found one exception to this practice. In this ease, the force had verified information of a medical nature with OHIP on a highly sensitive counter-espionage investigation involving a communist-bloc intelligence service operating in Canada.

My office has now received additional information from the RCMP in this regard and I want to share it with the members. I have been informed by the RCMP that further information from their members revealed they had obtained information of a medical nature from OHIP in two cases involving security screening of federal employees. I would now like to quote from a letter to me, dated February 17, 1978, from R. R. Schramm, chief superintendent and acting commanding officer of the RCMP’s “O” Division in Ontario. There is also a follow-up letter from Chief Superintendent Schramm, dated February 24, which I will also be referring to. Dealing with the February 17 letter, I quote:

“These cases deal with two investigations conducted by the RCMP security service in connection with our security screening responsibilities in which we are required to undertake field investigations requested by federal government departments which wish to give selected employees access to sensitive information. The results of these investigations then become part of the overall departmental decision to grant or deny such access.

“Among other things, one of the requirements laid down by government policy in security screening matters is that we are to investigate and report on any indication of mental instability. In both these cases, information was received through investigation that indicated the employees had undergone previous psychiatric treatment. OHIP was subsequently contacted and confirmed such treatment and provided details of what treatment was received.”

This is the end of the relevant quotation from that particular letter. In the letter, Chief Superintendent Schramm informed me that the RCMP’s earlier information to me was incorrect but said he had only learned of the two cases I have mentioned on February 14, 1978. After receiving this letter and discussing its contents with the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell) as well as senior officials in my ministry, I sought a clarification of several points in it. I now have a letter dated February 24, 1978, from Chief Superintendent Schramm. This letter indicates in more detail the type of information obtained by the RCMP, and I will quote to members this information in its entirety.

In relation to the first case, the letter states, and I quote:

“Our member learned through investigation that the federal civil servant being considered for a position where he or she would have access to sensitive information had received previous psychiatric treatment. He then contacted OHIP for confirmation. He was told that OHIP had been billed by the physician under two code numbers, namely 300 and 303. He was further told what categories of illnesses were included under these two codes.

He was told that code 300 covers 16 primary illnesses, which were detailed to him, with some sub-categories, while code 303 covers two primary illnesses, which were also given to him with some sub-categories. He was not told specifically which illness or illnesses the person had been treated for. Additionally, he was provided with the dates on which the treatment had been received.”

In relation to the second case, the letter states as follows, and I quote it in its entirety:

“Our member learned through investigation that the federal civil servant being considered for a position where he or she would have access to sensitive information had received previous psychiatric treatment. He contacted OHIP for confirmation. He was told that OHIP had been billed by the physician under code 300 which contains the primary and secondary categories as indicated previously. He was not told specifically which illness or illnesses the person had been treated for.

He was also told that this person had been treated under code 780 which denotes ‘signs and symptoms not yet diagnosed’ and code 799 which denotes ‘no diagnosis.’ At this time, our investigator was also told that the spouse of the person being security cleared had received similar treatment. Additionally, our investigator was provided with the dates on which treatment had been received.”

That is the end of the quotation from this latest letter.

I am advised that these incidents happened before the Ministry of Health considerably tightened its procedures in this regard last fall.

Mr. Lewis: Incredible.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I bring this information to the attention of the members to set the record straight, as I am aware of it as of this date, and to keep the members fully briefed on this matter which is, of course, of great concern to us all.

The commission appointed by this government to investigate the confidentiality of OHIP records and headed by Mr. Justice Horace Krever of the Ontario Supreme Court has been advised of these cases by Arthur Pennington of the federal Justice department, who is representing the RCMP before the Krever commission.

Mr. Lewis: You should have told them what you thought of them for seeking that kind of information.

HEALTH RECORDS

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I would like to add my comments to clarify the extent of medical information received by the RCMP. I also want to emphasize that the access gained by the RCMP occurred before matters of confidentiality of medical records were brought to the attention of the House last fall and before my ministry tightened up provision of information to police agencies.

In the two incidents referred to, the RCMP, apparently during the course of investigations, received information that two individuals received psychiatric treatment. The RCMP then approached OHIP for confirmation and OHIP confirmed it had been billed by physicians under certain code numbers. The RCMP were informed of the categories of illnesses included under these two codes. There was no access to psychiatric files. In fact, OHIP does not maintain psychiatric files.

Mr. Lewis: That’s just ridiculous; you’ve given the illnesses.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: On December 1, I announced in the House that we had further tightened our procedures for access to information in medical records. Since early December, our policy has been that we will not supply any information from OHIP records to police forces without a court order.

Mr. Roy: You should have done that before.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I believe that as far as is humanly possible, the safeguards now in place should maintain confidentiality of records.

Ms. Gigantes: Court orders for job applications.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: I am determined to ensure, to the best of my ability, that the principle of confidentiality of medical records is not violated.

Details of the two incidents clarified by the RCMP have been passed to Mr. Justice Krever, and we are looking forward to any further improvements that he can recommend to maintain the confidentiality of medical records, whether they relate to a specific part of my ministry, a branch, a particular office or hospital, or to the system itself.

[2:30]

PUBLIC OFFICERS’ SECURITIES

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, the Public Officers Act requires that within the first 15 days of every session I advise the assembly of all securities furnished on behalf of public officers and of any changes made to such securities since my last statement, which was on June 30, 1977. There have been no changes in either category.

ORAL QUESTIONS

HEALTH RECORDS

Mr. S. Smith: I would like to direct my question to the Attorney General, Mr. Speaker. If I understand his statement correctly regarding the RCMP and the OHIP information, and I read the third paragraph of his statement, he says at that time he had been given certain information by the RCMP to the effect that the force had obtained non-medical biographical data. He goes on to say that the RCMP reported, after searching their files and canvassing their staff, that they found one exception to this practice, a case of a highly sensitive counter-espionage investigation et cetera.

I may be incorrect, but I do not recall the Attorney General ever telling us of the existence of this exception. I have in front of me the Hansard record of November 25, in which he assures us that “at no time has the force in Ontario sought or obtained medical files from OHIP” and so on; I recall that quite well. Can the Attorney General tell us whether in fact he had this information of the one exception at the time that he spoke to us in the House and chose, for security reasons, not to divulge it? Or is this something which has just recently come to his attention? If so, when?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I do not have copies of statements that I made last fall, Mr. Speaker, so I am relying entirely on my memory. My recollection, first of all, is that I have had that information for some period of time. My recollection is further that I advised the House of this information, probably not in great detail.

I certainly will be pleased to check on the statements I made to the Legislature last fall in this respect, but I would like to repeat that it is my recollection that I had mentioned this matter to the Legislature.

Mr. S. Smith: I guess we will have to wait for the Attorney General to look back in his records. I do not recall it, but I could be wrong.

As a supplementary, may I ask the Attorney General what action he has taken with regard to the original information that he received from the RCMP, which apparently left out this obviously vital and very shocking matter, that merely being treated in a psychiatric facility apparently is considered to be of some importance by the RCMP and that such information has been given out by OHIP?

Since that is directly in contradiction with the information which the RCMP gave to the minister and which he gave to this House, what action has he taken to express the displeasure, the anger and, in my opinion, the outrage of the province of Ontario at the way in which this has happened and, furthermore, at the way in which the Attorney General has been misled by the RCMP originally?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I made it abundantly clear in all my discussions with the RCMP that as far as I was concerned they were to conduct their activities within the law in the province of Ontario. I could not have made my position more strongly in that respect.

I further indicated at all times to the RCMP that in the event any information came to their attention which would indicate that some member of the force had acted illegally, I expected to be so advised. After the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell) and I learned of this information, I think the Minister of Health has made it abundantly clear that he has instructed officials in his ministry, particularly those in relation to OHIP records, of course, that in no circumstances are any records of any kind to be delivered to any police officer without a court order, without a subpoena. I think we have made our positions as strong as is humanly possible in that regard.

Ms. Gigantes: Lay charges.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary: Has the minister sought and received assurances from the RCMP that no other such breaches of confidentiality, beyond the three cases that are now documented, have taken place; or does the minister intend to come back with further incidents over the course of the coming months where the RCMP sends further letters telling what it has been doing in the past?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, again I am simply repeating what I have said before: I have requested the RCMP to advise me of any such cases and the RCMP have indicated they will advise me of any such cases at such time as they come to light. As Chief Superintendent Schramm stated in his initial letter of February 17, it was only on February 14 that these two cases first came to his attention as the acting commanding officer.

I am confident that when Chief Superintendent Schramm gives me his personal undertaking that he will bring any such matters to my attention that he intends to honour that commitment.

Mr. S. Smith: By way of supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Since the Attorney General will recall that the reason the charges were not laid with regard to the giving out of this OHIP information was because there was a procedural manual within the Ministry of Health, which advised certain employees to give out these bare-bones biographical or demographic data, now that he has discovered that more than such data has been given out -- in fact information concerning diagnosis and place of treatment has been given out -- will he consider pressing charges against those employees, or those responsible for those employees, who permitted this information to be given out in contravention of the law?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: I just want to correct the Leader of the Opposition in one respect; it is my information that dates of treatment were given out, not places of treatment.

Mr. S. Smith: Diagnosis.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: In my view the appropriate course to follow at this time, in view of the commission headed by Mr. Justice Krever, is for Mr. Justice Krever to review these cases. He has indicated to me, and I have also advised Mr. Justice Krever directly, that I intend, of course, to bring any such cases to his attention. In my respectful view, Mr. Speaker, the appropriate forum to investigate these matters at this point in time will be the Krever commission; and any decision as to whether any charges should be laid in my view, should await the deliberations of the Krever commission, rather than suggest some parallel investigation be carried out.

Mr. Renwick: Mr. Speaker, by way of a supplementary question: First of all, when did these two latest incidents in fact occur; and secondly, what assurance, if any, has this minister sought, or his colleague the Minister of Health sought, that as a result of these investigations the persons who were being investigated did not suffer adverse reports because of this information?

Mr. Lewis: It is witch-hunting in psychiatric records, that’s what is going on.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Again, I think I can only repeat what I said a moment ago. In my view Mr. Justice Krever has a mandate to investigate these matters. He is in a better position to investigate them than any individual police officer or police officers, because he has the power to subpoena witnesses and to require them to testify. In my view this is the most effective forum to bring this additional information to light; and as the Minister of Health stated, to make recommendations to avoid any such recurrence in the future.

Mr. Roy: May I ask the Attorney General, isn’t it a fact that no authorization was obtained to obtain this information -- no authorization at least from the individuals themselves; and there was no court order? In view of the fact that the law prohibited this -- the present law existing now -- why does the minister have to wait to transfer the matter for investigation to the Krever commission, when in fact it would appear from his discussions with his colleague the Minister of Health that somebody in the Ministry of Health has breached an Ontario statute? Why do we have to wait for someone else to look into this? Isn’t the minister’s responsibility to do that now?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: Mr. Speaker, it is my judgement, at this point in time, again I repeat, that the most effective way to deal with this is through the Krever commission.

Mr. Lewis: I ask the Attorney General, has he inquired of the RCMP whether the information extracted from OHIP records in Ontario prejudiced the employment of those applicants whose psychiatric background was under investigation? What effect did this have on the jobs for which they were applying and what happened in the final analysis?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: No, I have not inquired, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Lewis: Would the minister do so?

Mr. S. Smith: Well, we won’t find out whether he intends to, so I’ll ask a question of the Premier.

SPADINA EXPRESSWAY

Mr. S. Smith: According to an

article in the Sunday Star, it is alleged that there has been some arrangement made whereby Metro Toronto will in one way or another reobtain ownership of land that would have been used for the Spadina expressway had it been extended past Eglinton. Can the Premier tell us whether that

article has come to his attention? In any event, can he tell us whether some arrangement has been reached regarding the Spadina expressway corridor south of Eglinton and in particular how that relates to the three promises that he made to the city of Toronto at the time that he spoke on this matter some years ago dealing with the paving of the portion as an arterial road, the portion that went down to Eglinton?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I think there were several parts to the question. I am really not sure of the origin of the story in the Star. My best recollection is that there were three areas where the government was involved in terms of the “Spadina Expressway”.

One was the three-foot reserve. There has been some difficulty, I gather from the legal people, in terms of where that three-foot reserve is geographically located. I think it was felt initially that it would go right along the southern limits of Eglinton Avenue with -- and I’m going strictly from memory -- a part of it, perhaps, in York; and so there was some consideration of altering that three-foot reserve to some other geographic location.

Another part of the consideration, as I recall, was the proposal made for the construction of some parking facility. There has been very extensive discussion with the city of Toronto, with Metropolitan Toronto, firstly on the question of having a parking facility, which a study in the Ministry of Transportation and Communication indicated was viable, I think. Then, of course, the discussion moved to where that parking facility might be geographically located. The province is still interested in pursuing that. I can’t tell the Leader of the Opposition just where it stands in terms of timing at this moment.

On the question of Metropolitan Toronto in some way gaining title and having -- I guess the story was suggesting this -- perhaps the legal ability to move ahead with the expressway -- if that is what the Leader of the Opposition is concerned about -- I can assure him that I have no such indication; and from my limited knowledge of the subject, I don’t really see how it would be possible with the impediments that are there.

Mr. S. Smith: By way of supplementary, can the Premier explain why he would now consider -- as, frankly, he did mention in his original statement -- giving this land back to Metro when in fact it was originally taken from the city of Toronto? Why not cede it back to the city of Toronto from which it was taken in the first place? What possible logic can there be to returning it -- albeit allegedly for housing purposes and so on -- to Metro?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, I must say I am going strictly by memory, but I think at the time -- and the hon. member can correct me if I am wrong -- that it was the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Corporation that had jurisdiction. I have a feeling that is still the case and I think that is the rationale for having it go to the Metropolitan Toronto Housing Authority, because they were the ones who had this responsibility. I don’t think there was a city of Toronto Housing Authority per se; I think it was Metro, and this was the rationale for it. I see the member for St. George (Mrs.

Campbell) is nodding her head in an affirmative fashion, so I assume that my recollection is fundamentally, reasonably correct.

[2:45]

Mr. S. Smith: The land is Toronto’s, not Metro’s.

Mr. Warner: Supplementary: Could it be that that three-foot strip of land which needs to be deeded over to the city of Toronto is not being so deeded because there are forces putting pressure on the government not to do it so that the Spadina expressway can be extended further south of Eglinton?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I really don’t know where the hon. member gets his information or rumour, et cetera.

Mr. Warner: Sam Cass.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I have had no pressures exerted on me on this particular issue for some time and I know of no plot afoot in terms of extending the expressway south of Eglinton Avenue.

Mr. Grande: You’re right, you don’t know what’s going on.

Mr. Reid: Supplementary: Did I understand the Premier to say that he had not, or the government had not reneged on its commitment in regard to the parking garages, that the 75 per cent funding for those garages was still in the works and that he was going to go ahead with that when he could find a place to put them that would satisfy everyone? I understand that the Premier or the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) had told Mayor Crombie in a meeting that he was not going to go ahead with that commitment.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I don’t recall saying we would not go ahead with that commitment.

Mr. Cunningham: You’re going to slow it clown.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The discussion has been as to the geographic location of the proposed parking facility. I think that’s where it rests at the moment.

Mr. S. Smith: Final supplementary: Given that the city of Toronto would like to have this parking garage at Glencairn and that there seem to be reasonable arguments in favour of that, why does the Premier continue to deal with Metro? Why not put the garage at Glencairn to fulfil the promise he made? Since the land that the housing south of Eglinton is on belongs to the city of Toronto -- albeit that the housing was under Metro administration, the land was the city’s -- why not give the land back to the city and settle the matter that way?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I know the Leader of the Opposition is sometimes a little contradictory; I guess we all are. The attempt of the government has been to reconcile the sometimes conflicting points of view of Metropolitan Toronto and the city of Toronto. The Leader of the Opposition is wont to say these days: “If I were in charge of running things” --

Mr. Mancini: It won’t be long either.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- “I would impose my will on these local autonomous municipalities.”

Mr. Nixon: The Premier never did that, did he? He was very careful about the Spadina expressway.

Hon. Mr. Davis: He has travelled all around the province in the last several months saying just how much power he’d give them and how sympathetic he is to the local municipalities. He says all of these great things to them when he’s with them. But then he comes into the House and says: “Mr. Premier, why don’t you lay down the law to Metropolitan Toronto and build the garage at Glencairn?” He can’t have it both ways.

Mr. S. Smith: You took away the land.

Mr. Roy: The Premier tries to have it both ways all the time.

CROWN LAND SALES

Mr. Cassidy: I have a question of the Minister of Natural Resources. Can the minister explain his advocacy for selling our Crown land for cottage lots to foreigners when this is so obviously at odds with his colleague, the Minister for Northern Affairs (Mr. Bernier); and when it was the sale of Crown land to foreigners which led to the freeze on Crown land sales seven years ago?

Mr. Laughren: Shameful.

Hon. F. S. Miller: I’m sure it will come as a real shock to some of the hon. members, but once in a while before cabinet has had the opportunity to consider a matter some of us aren’t of the same opinion.

Mr. Warner: Aren’t informed.

Hon. F. S. Miller: That very seldom happens but once in a while individuals do have different opinions.

Mr. Wildman: Misinformed.

Mr. Warner: Shocking.

Hon. F. S. Miller: This matter has not been resolved by cabinet. Yesterday I happened to be asked straightforwardly what my opinion was and I offered it. It was not shared by other colleagues; it may well not be shared by cabinet; but I gave an honest answer as to the way I felt at that time. It was as simple as that.

Mr. Laughren: It better not be. It’s a sell-out.

Mr. Cassidy: In view of the overwhelming opinion in this province that Crown land should be reserved for Canadians, will the minister say how the rift in cabinet is going to be healed; and will he resign when the decision goes against him?

Hon. B. Stephenson: Oh, hold it. You were on CBC this morning. When you say “overwhelming opinion,” in whose opinion?

Hon. Mr. Bernier: Solidarity all the way.

Mr. Speaker: I’m sure everybody wants to hear the answer to that.

Hon. F. S. Miller: In reply, I’ll probably have to deal with the “rift-raff”.

An hon. member: It’s not very often the Minister for Northern Affairs is right.

Mr. Warner: The rift would be healed if the minister resigned.

Mr. Wildman: Which ones over there are riff-raff?

Mr. Makarchuk: Which are the “riff” and which are the “raff” over there?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Mr. Speaker, our party has a great ability to approach a problem with differing points of view and to come up with a solution that we can all enjoy. We are doing that right now. My ministry has been charged with the job of coming up with a series of alternatives. It is doing so. They will be explored by the policy field. They will be either changed or accepted by them and then examined by cabinet. When all of that is done we will have a policy which I will support and make public.

Mr. Reid: I find it difficult to understand how these policies are arrived at when the minister does not know the ramifications of it.

Has the minister or cabinet, or whoever wrote the Speech from the Throne, considered the aspect of taking away the land’s 20 per cent land transfer tax that now applies to non-residents? Is this part of a package that we are looking at or are we merely talking about selling Crown land to non-residents of Canada, with which I do not agree?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I do not think the two things are connected at all. The Treasurer (Mr. McKeough) has had a 20 per cent tax on the purchase of land by foreign, non-resident Canadians, and I do not feel that this is in conflict at all.

Really, the basic decision was to sell Crown lots, particularly to improve the economy of that part of the province which the member represents.

Mr. Martel: Which you support?

Hon. F. S. Miller: Yes. We believe -- and I hope the member’s party can believe -- that people who have ownership of land will feel more secure in their tenure, will be more likely to put up better homes; they will, we think, be contributing more to the economy of the area and, therefore, will create a demand for supply of goods and services to stimulate the economy, particularly of northwestern Ontario.

Hon. B. Stephenson: It’s the only honourable thing you can do.

Mr. Cassidy: He is selling the store; the store and then the mortgage.

Mr. Martel: A supplementary question to the minister: I am wondering if the riff-raff he is talking about are his six colleagues who signed the select committee report of four years ago, when in fact a land study was done pertaining to recreation land. Is it the minister’s intention to follow the recommendations of the select committee of four years, which said the committee recommends that Crown lands for cottage lots be leased only to Canadian citizens and landed residents resident in Canada? That was signed by the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. W. Newman) and five more of the minister’s colleagues.

Hon. F. S. Miller: Once the alternatives have been considered we will have a policy.

Mr. Speaker: Final supplementary, the hon. member for Algoma.

Mr. Wildman: Could the minister indicate to us whether or not his ministry has any figures on how much recreational land is presently owned in Ontario by non-Canadians, and will this be part of his study in determining what his policy might be -- when it comes to deciding what it might be?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I am not aware of the figures. As they are available I am sure they will be given to me during this next two weeks.

Mr. Breithaupt: If the minister is unsure as to whether there is policy in this area, could he explain how the original comment got into the Speech from the Throne at all?

Hon. F. S. Miller: I can explain that quite easily. Two ministries were very concerned about different aspects of land management and the economy of this province. The Ministry of Northern Affairs, charged with the responsibility for seeing that the north has a better economy, was concerned that it needed ways and means of stimulating employment.

Mr. Reid: It doesn’t want to sell.

Mr. Warner: It’s a “buy Canada” program.

Hon. F. S. Miller: On the other hand, my ministry, charged with the administration of the land of the province, felt that leasing of land, as pursued for the last few years, did not have all the advantages originally foreseen for it. Between those two, we concluded that the sale of certain lots, for a period of time at least, should be followed.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Scarborough Centre with his second question.

Mr. Cassidy: Scarborough Centre? Not him, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: You have combined the best features of the member from Scarborough West and myself, but that would not have yielded a member from Scarborough Centre.

JOB CREATION

Mr. Cassidy: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Premier. Given that the Ontario Economic Council’s projection of employment for the next 10 years falls 50,000 jobs short of the Premier’s promise in the Bramalea “charter” of last summer, given that Ontario has not reached its target rate of job creation in the past year, and given that the government has made no significant proposals for job creation in the Throne Speech, does the Premier now share with me and my party the feeling that this government will never reach its own target for job creation?

Hon. Mr. Davis: Mr. Speaker, not only do we not share his party’s view on this -- we don’t share it on most important issues --

Mr. Martel: Thank God.

Mr. Renwick: Thank goodness.

Hon. Mr. Davis: -- we are still committed to 100,000; we have come very close, and that remains our target and our objective.

Mr. Martel: If you had two trees for one, you might reach it.

Mr. Cassidy: Supplementary: In view of the fact that the Treasurer’s own document indicates a creation 27,000 jobs below the Premier’s target in 1977, given the continuing weakness of our manufacturing sector, and given the projections by the Economic Council that the share of employment in manufacturing will continue to drop precipitately over the course of the next 10 years, does this government intend to bring any policies to strengthen the resource sector and the manufacturing sector in this economy?

Hon. Mr. Davis: We have already brought proposals to this House, proposals which the hon. member’s party has consistently opposed; and anyway his party would be on the other side of any proposals we had to inhibit the economic growth of this province. He knows that; we know it.

An hon. member: Why don’t you answer the question?

An hon. member: Bring out something worthwhile.

Hon. Mr. Davis: We will be discussing the resource industry later on this afternoon. His party’s panacea for the resource industry is: “If it’s making a dollar, let’s nationalize it.” Soon they will be saying it about McDonald’s Restaurants.

Mr. Renwick: It’s no panacea; it’s a solution to a real problem.

Hon. Mr. Davis: Who knows where they will end up in their approach to economic growth? They don’t have the answers; we do. We are going to make it work.

Mr. Martel: What are your answers? Why are these 300,000 kids unemployed?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Renfrew North.

OHIP CLAIMS PROCEDURE

Mr. Conway: A question of the Minister of Health, Mr. Speaker: Can the minister share with this House any results of a ministry investigation which he may or may not have commissioned into the particulars of the billing procedures of a Dr. Takahashi, which was raised in this House on Friday and reported to some degree in the papers of this week?

Mr. Cassidy: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: I understood the member for Renfrew North was getting up on a supplementary. It took some time to fathom what he was talking about --

Mr. Reid: Yon were finished and did not know it.

An hon. member: You were sleeping again, Michael.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Renfrew North was the only one who stood.

Mr. Cassidy: You must agree, Mr. Speaker, it is an obscure question.

Mr. Roy: He’s going to tell you how to run your job now, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: In fact, Mr. Speaker, I do have an answer for the hon. member; I had intended to give it later in the question period.

On February 24 the member for Renfrew North asked if I was aware that -- and I quote from Hansard of that day -- “under the present OHIP legislation it is possible for a doctor who has opted out of the direct payment scheme to refuse with impunity to submit to OHIP the bills his patients have paid, thereby preventing the patients from being reimbursed for the moneys they have paid to that doctor?”

Under the Health Insurance Act 1972,

section 21, the physician prepares, on a claim card provided by the plan, the necessary information to have the claim processed and paid.

Ms. Gigantes: We can’t hear you.

Mr. Makarchuk: Stop mumbling.

Mr. Roy: Tomorrow, “instant” Hansard will show your whole answer was inaudible.

Mr. S. Smith: Speak distinctly.

Mr. Samis: The minister is as bad as Conway.

Mr. Roy: Can we revert back to statements? I’ve got a feeling that’s what is coming.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: The hon. member’s feelings are usually misguided, but we will see.

Mr. Roy: Don’t worry about my misguided feelings -- just run your ministry.

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: In April 1977 OHIP became aware, through numerous complaints from subscribers, of a particular physician who refused to provide claims to the patient or to forward the claims directly to the plan on their behalf in order that the patients could be reimbursed by the plan.

In April the Toronto district OHIP office contacted the doctor by telephone and asked that the claims cards be forwarded. The doctor said he would comply. OHIP obviously cannot make any payment if it has nothing on which to base a claim. We cannot spend public money without proof of provision of service.

In July 1977, when the claims cards were not forthcoming, the director of our insurance claims branch wrote to the doctor -- and I quote from that letter to Dr. Takahashi: “Under

section 21(1) of the Health Insurance Act, you are required to submit a claim for these services to the plan on a claim card as supplied to you or, alternatively, give your patient a completed card for submission to the plan.”

OHIP approaches to the physician were to no avail and in September 1977 the case was referred by the director of the insurance claims branch of OHIP to the secretary of the medical review committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons for disciplinary action.

[3:00]

In addition, the colleges see the large number of complaints from subscribers and each was referred to the complaints committee of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and in turn the complaints were referred to the discipline committee. The discipline committee arranged for a hearing on February 6, 1978, but due to a procedural problem the hearing was deferred until March 13, 1978, two weeks hence.

The legislation does not, as the member for Renfrew North indicated, grant impunity. I want to assure hon. members that as soon as the doctor in question submits his claim cards, the patients will be reimbursed accordingly.

This is the first case of its kind that the plan has ever experienced since its inception. As a result of this matter being brought to our attention, the current proposals to amend the Health Insurance Act will oblige opt-out physicians and practitioners to submit the required claims documentation to the patients or directly to the plan within six months of the date of service and provide for a penalty for failure to comply.

HEALTH RECORDS

Mr. Lewis: Mr. Speaker, I’d like to put a question to the Minister of Health, to revert to the statement made originally by the Attorney General.

Since the information given was clearly given illegally, since it was partial, incomplete and loaded with nasty, prejudicial possibilities, does the minister not think he should intercede with the federal government to find out what happened to those two applicants and to attempt to have the matter reopened if the OHIP material had a specific disqualifying effect on their job applications?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I will take that suggestion under advisement.

Mr. Lewis: Supplementary: Doesn’t the minister think he and the Attorney General could respond with a little less passivity to the illegal gathering of information from Ontario records for the purpose of an explicit invasion of privacy in a way to which this whole Legislature obviously objects? Has he no passion at all about this thing, no feeling about what they’ve done to these two people?

Hon. Mr. Timbrell: Mr. Speaker, I think I’ve made clear on more than one occasion in this House, and outside of the chamber, how much I detest the abuses of the system which are coming to light. I think I’ve made equally clear my intention, in the declaration of policy, to keep the OHIP system, as much as is humanly possible, and all aspects of the health care system, secure on the question of confidentiality of medical records.

I may not go around frothing at the mouth or ranting and raving, but that doesn’t mean that my outrage, my personal outrage, is any less than that of any other member.

Mr. Roy: No, you are certainly not doing that.

Mr. Lewis: No, you are not.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: On a point of order or a matter of personal privilege, whatever is appropriate: I’d like to have the opportunity to respond to the allegation that I have been passive about this. I want to make it very clear that I feel deeply shocked --

Mr. Warner: You didn’t answer the question.

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: -- about the nature of this interference with the rights of individual citizens; and I think it is shocking --

Mr. Laughren: So what are you going to do?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: -- both on behalf of the RCMP, but perhaps even more so on behalf of the federal government that would instruct the RCMP to interfere in this manner. While the OHIP employees must share some responsibility too, the role of the federal government and the RCMP, obviously --

Ms. Gigantes: Come on now; they’ve exercised a bit of leeway, haven’t they?

Hon. Mr. McMurtry: -- is one that would outrage, I think, any reasonable citizen.

Mr. Makarchuk: Are you going to lay charges?

Mr. Lewis: If I may, speaking to the point; that’s exactly what some of us hoped some of you would say occasionally, and then follow it up to find out what happened to these people.

MINIMUM WAGE

Hon. B. Stephenson: On Friday morning I was asked to give the names of some of those eminent economists who have written articles related to the minimum wage. I have to apologize, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. McClellan: Wonderful.

Mr. Lewis: They are not so eminent.

Hon. B. Stephenson: -- for my faulty memory and my incapability to remember the names of a list of economists.

Mr. McClellan: It took you four days to find it.

Mr. Cassidy: Your research staff must have been working all weekend.

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I have a very short list at the moment which I will be glad to present to this House. There is Mr. Kenneth Boulding of the University of Colorado; Professor Jacob Mincer of Columbia University; Mr. E. G. West of Carleton University; and Dr. Edward Gramlich of the University of Michigan. The journals in which they have written and the articles which they have written are in this list as well, for the benefit of those who wish it.

Mr. Laughren: They’re a pretty selective group; boy, you selected them carefully, didn’t you?

Mr. Lewis: And we are checking the records of them all.

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION FUND

Hon. Mr. Wells: Mr. Speaker, last Friday the hon. member for London North asked me a question concerning contributions to the teachers’ superannuation fund. I would like to answer that question.

As the hon. members will recall, an amount of $102.8 million was approved in supplementary estimates that were passed earlier this fiscal year and this amount represented the remaining portion of the amount that was identified in the 1975 actuarial evaluation as owing to the teachers’ superannuation fund in respect of calendar year 1976.

The original intention was to follow a procedure of slip-year financing, which involves making payments one year in arrears, and included in it was the provision that interest be paid on the amount. Subsequent to the supplementary estimates it was deemed to be more prudent fiscally to proceed with payments in this year of the amount that was due in respect of calendar year 1977, plus, at this time, to pay the interest in respect of the 1976 payment which was due December 31, 1976, and was paid December 31, 1977.

Therefore, this means there will be a double payment this fiscal year, which will now put us on

schedule as far as the payments required under the actuarial report, and that means there will be another supplementary estimate of $107.2 million to go into the teachers’ superannuation fund in this year.

Mr. Van Horne: I appreciate the minister’s answer, but I am concerned that from time to time when we deal with these large amounts of money we get replies --

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. Van Horne: -- suggesting that we are, in fact, over our heads, and I think I am quoting exactly the words of the Treasurer.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: We see it all the time.

Mr. Van Horne: The obvious question, in the light of the report of the actuaries, which was, in fact, available in July 1977 when we dealt with the estimates, is why was this amount not included with the supplementary estimates when we reviewed them in December? The minister knew that information. In my opinion it makes the whole estimate process a mockery and I would like to be satisfied now to hear the minister tell me why this was not discussed on December 12, 1977.

Hon. Mr. Wells: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I am afraid my friend must have been drafting his question rather than listening to my answer, because I explained in my answer why it was not included in the supplementary estimates that we brought forward in September. We were adopting a program of slip-year financing.

Mr. Wildman: Slippery financing.

Hon. Mr. Wells: We were going to pay the 1976 payments that were due and we were then going to pay 1977’s in the next fiscal year along with the interest on the amount. We have now decided that it would be more prudent fiscally to pay on the current year and so therefore we are putting in the amount required plus the interest on the 1976 amount, which will bring us completely up to date, and the amounts that will be in the next fiscal year’s estimates will be the amount that will be required.

Let me also say to my friend that he knows, and I have told him many times, the actuarial statement was not publicly available for us to consider when we considered our original estimates in committee in July. It was not available and had not been completely considered by the fiscal authorities and the people who had to consider it here in this government when we considered those estimates, and he knows that.

Mr. Van Horne: I also know, Mr. Speaker, if I may be permitted a supplementary, it was available on December 12, the date to which I referred a few moments ago.

Mr. Speaker: That’s not a question.

Mr. Van Horne: Having said that, I would like, Mr. Speaker, to ask one final question of the minister --

Hon. Mr. Wells: As I recall, Mr. Speaker, I made a copy available.

Mr. Van Horne: There will be a new chairman appointed, hopefully within the next few days, to the social development policy committee --

Mr. Speaker: I still don’t hear a question.

Mr. Van Horne: You will hear it if you listen, Mr. Speaker, and that is --

Mr. Speaker: Order, order. I have given you two opportunities and I still don’t hear a question. I will hear the hon. member for Hamilton West.

Mr. S. Smith: Can the minister tell us where the additional $100-odd million will be coming from? Will it increase the net cash requirement, or the deficit, depending on which of the languages one wishes to use? If not, if he is able to find that money and other expenses at the end of the year, can he explain to this House how he can so easily come up with $100 million from his very tight budget?

An hon. member: It’s called fiscal bilingualism.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I might refer the hon. Leader of the Opposition to the December 31, 1977, Ontario Finances, which indicates where the money was being paid and where it was being found. Essentially, it has been found along with, as I recall, another $92 million in savings which have been accomplished by Management Board and others during the course of the year.

Mr. Cassidy: A supplementary, if I may, to the two-headed respondent to this particular question. Is it the government’s intention to take this $100 million as a further credit to municipalities and thereby as a further means of undermining the Edmonton commitment about municipal finance?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: Obviously, anything which goes into the Teachers’ Superannuation Fund will reflect as part of the commitment.

Mr. Cassidy: Does this mean that the municipal taxpayers of the province will now be required to come up with a further $100 million in increased property taxes this year, because of the government’s misinterpretation of its commitment under the Edmonton statement?

Hon. Mr. McKeough: The answer to that question, of course, is no. The answer is that this is something that is going on during this current year, during the year ending for the municipalities, really, December 31 last. Obviously it will not affect in any way what the transfers are to them during their year beginning January 1 last, our year beginning April 1 next. There is a table which shows all this in the budget which will be tabled in the House, as I understand it, a week from today. It will be fully set out. I would hope then that those people over there could get through their heads the efficacy of slip- year financing.

Mr. Ruston: Slippery financing.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: You just don’t understand slip-year financing.

Mr. Stong: We understand you. Keep ‘em in the dark as long as you can. Having emptied the store you might as well turn out the lights.

Mr. S. Smith: Yet another $100 million, in fact, in your budget.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Time’s a-wasting.

RAPE

Mr. Stong: I have a question of the Solicitor General. Now that it has been three weeks since the Justice secretariat sponsored a seminar on rape, could the minister indicate what policy or programs he intends to implement to reduce the incidence of this crime and decrease the trauma in victims in reporting and following through and preparing evidence for trials arising out of this crime?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Mr. Speaker, to answer the second part of the hon. member’s question, of course the answer is basically law enforcement. As to the first part and to the conference, there will be a report in respect to that conference. As the hon. member knows, it was a consultation, rather than a conference. It wasn’t an open meeting. We hope to have a report from that meeting which will be given to the participants. Then as a result of that we will make certain recommendations, after which we will have, hopefully before the summer, another meeting.

Mrs. Campbell: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: If the original questioner has a supplementary, he should get the first opportunity.

Mr. Stong: I do have a supplementary. In the interim, would the Solicitor General confer with his colleague, the Minister of Health (Mr. Timbrell), with respect to proper reimbursement of doctors who are required to conduct medical examinations, and who at the best of time are reluctant to give evidence and get involved? Would he reconsider reimbursing them properly under OHIP so that they will conduct these examinations more thoroughly and give proper evidence in court?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I realize one of the findings of that particular conference was the reluctance of doctors to get involved in examinations of that kind -- even the reluctance of some hospitals to admit that type of patient. I would think that would be involved in the whole OHIP fee structure, rather than any specific fee for a specific examination.

[3:15]

Mr. Stong: Supplementary: Doesn’t the minister think it’s more important or important enough that he can --

Ms. Gigantes: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. member for Carleton East have a supplementary?

Mr. Germa: That’s why she’s standing.

Ms. Gigantes: Supplementary: I wonder if the Solicitor General, instead of consulting with the Minister of Health about payments for doctors, might consult with the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Norton) about funding for the real victims of violence against women -- the women --

Mr. McClellan: For rape crisis centres.

Ms. Gigantes: -- the funding that we don’t have now in Ontario that we should have, for rape crisis centres.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Again, that was one of the issues that was raised at the consultation. There were a number of people there who are with the crisis centres, not only in Metro but in different parts of the country. They are concerned about continuing their operations, the lack of funds.

Ms. Gigantes: What are you going to do in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Again, that, as the hon. member knows, is separate and apart from what the hon. member for York Centre was talking about.

Ms. Gigantes: I know.

Mr. Stong: That was my next question -- the real question.

Ms. Gigantes: That should be the first question.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I would be happy to talk to the hon. minister who would be involved in that type of remuneration.

Mrs. Campbell: Supplementary: In view of the fact that it was abundantly clear from the statements of the police officers at that workshop that there were difficulties with the medical profession due to the difficulties in the whole machinery of administration of justice, has the Solicitor General discussed the matter at all with the Attorney General (Mr. McMurtry) to see what can be done to reduce those cases which are concluded to be unfounded by reason of the failure of medical evidence?

Hon. Mr. Kerr: Yes, Mr. Speaker, our justice policy committee has discussed the results of the rape consultations. We’ve had a report from the deputy provincial secretary. There has been a general discussion as to where we should go from here in respect to the findings and to the submissions that were made, particularly by the police officers. As the hon. member knows, there have been some changes in the Criminal Code that certainly are a marked improvement as far as the whole trial procedure in respect of rape is concerned, and there are still further improvements or further amendments that we feel are necessary. That will be the subject of ongoing discussion and our final report.

BRAMPTON TIMES DISPUTE

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question to the Premier. Is the Premier aware of the nasty situation that’s developing at the Brampton Daily Times in his own riding where the news editorial staff have been recently certified and are attempting to achieve a first contract, and where the newly appointed publisher and general manager brought in from another province, Mr. Clarence Wiseman, has come to the negotiating table in a most antagonistic manner, delivering ultimatums and rejecting proposals as basic as the Rand formula?

Would the Premier intervene in the dispute on behalf of the employees to see that management does bargain in good faith or use his good offices with the Minister of Labour to see that it does bargain in good faith with the employees of the Brampton Times?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I am aware that there are some difficulties at that particular excellent newspaper.

Ms. Gigantes: Yes? Yes?

Mr. Martel: What about the second half?

Mr. Mackenzie: Supplementary: Is the Premier willing to use his good offices to try to achieve some bargaining in good faith in this particular situation?

Mr. Roy: What good offices?

Hon. Mr. Davis: I think that while I have always endeavoured to solve problems within my constituency, as do all members in this House, there are appropriate times.

Mr. Laughren: Give us a straight answer for once.

Hon. Mr. Davis: The timing itself of interventions of this nature is fairly important.

Mr. Laughren: Just say “no” and be done with it.

Mr. McClellan: Just say you couldn’t care less.

Hon. Mr. Davis: I really can’t give any undertaking to the hon. member except to assure him that I am aware of the difficulty.

TRUCKING LEGISLATION

Mr. Cunningham: I have a question for the Minister of Transportation and Communications. Would the minister clarify what was meant by “selective deregulation” as outlined in the Speech from the Throne, and would he be inclined to assure this House that any changes would not be implemented by regulation but rather through legislation in this House?

Hon. Mr. Snow: Mr. Speaker, the selective deregulation that was referred to in the Speech from the Throne I think will be quite obvious when the amendments to the Public Commercial Vehicles Act are introduced. I can assure the hon. member it will be by legislation, not regulation.

Mr. Cunningham: Supplementary: I would like to ask, is the minister aware that changes to the

definitions respecting fruits and vegetables currently contemplated will jeopardize a large number of Canadian trucking companies currently operating in the Niagara Peninsula?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I would suggest that we wait until we see what is being contemplated before we make any rash decisions.

Mr. Haggerty: A supplementary to the minister: Can he indicate whether any study has been done in this particular area of transport --

Mr. Wildman: The select committee.

Mr. Haggerty: -- reciprocal agreements with the different states and the province of Ontario? Has any study been done at all in this area as to what effect it will have on employment; whether it will increase or decrease employment in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Snow: I presume the hon. member is referring to the reciprocity agreements being entered into with a number of states of the United States.

I believe we have signed agreements with six or eight states and we have negotiations going on with a considerable number more. It was recommended in the select committee report that we establish a reciprocity office within the ministry and that we negotiate such agreements -- and I might say we have been quite successful in doing so. We have done this, I believe, with the support of certainly the majority of the trucking industry.

WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION

Mr. Bounsall: A question of the Minister of Labour, Mr. Speaker: Would the minister indicate clearly to this House exactly what sources of provincial or federal funding she had in mind Friday last “which would be available to the families of injured workers in receipt of low-level WCB pensions,” inasmuch as the final WCB pension determination occurs long after the worker would be eligible for any UIC benefits, and even to qualify for a federal CPP pension benefit? The degree of disability would have to be so high as to have already qualified those workers for a high WCB rating and pension with, of course, neither of these pensions --

Mr. Speaker: The question has been asked.

Mr. Bounsall: -- having a family size or family need component involved in them.

Hon. B. Stephenson: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the hon. member’s editorial comment about those funds which are available --

Mr. Cassidy: Answer the question.

Hon. B. Stephenson: -- but indeed those funds are available.

Mr. Deans: They are not.

Hon. B. Stephenson: The disability portion of the Canada Pension Plan and UIC have been used in many instances for supplemental support. DVA allowances are also available --

Mr. McClellan: What has that got to do with it?

Hon. B. Stephenson: -- for those injured workmen who are veterans. And, indeed, there are family benefit programs available as income supplement from the provincial government.

Mr. Cassidy: You are the slipperiest Minister of Labour we have seen.

Hon. B. Stephenson: But I was speaking specifically of those which are available through the federal government and as a supplemental income program through the provincial government.

Mr. Laughren: What a disgrace you are as the Minister of Labour.

Mr. Deans: Family benefits and welfare. Absolutely clears up what we didn’t understand yesterday.

GOLD COIN PURCHASES

Mr. Epp: I have a question of the Minister of Revenue.

An hon. member: The minister has to answer his first question.

Mr. Reed: He was afraid of that.

Mr. Epp: Given that the Numismatic Association has expressed concern about the imposition of provincial sales tax on the purchases of gold coin classified as legal tender by the Canadian Mint, is he aware of any petitions that have been submitted to his ministry? If so, did he obtain a legal opinion on these petitions, and what is his opinion about the matter?

Mr. Gaunt: Your big chance, Lorne.

Hon. Mr. Maeck: Do you want me to bow?

Mr. Speaker, this is a problem that has been brought to my attention on quite a few occasions -- not necessarily in the form of petitions but through form letters and other letters from people who collect coins. We have looked into this in some detail but we can’t really see where there is anything wrong with us charging sales tax. It’s quite legal to charge it. We feel that if we are going to charge sales tax on antiques and paintings and so on there should be no difference between that and coins that are collected. I have adopted the position that sales tax will remain on the coins.

Mr. Sweeney: How about new dollar bills? Do you tax them too?

Mr. Epp: Mr. Speaker, does he not agree that gold coin is legal tender and therefore it is not legal to tax currency?

Hon. Mr. Maeck: The legal branch in my ministry advises me that it is quite legal to collect sales tax on these coins. It has been looked into.

Mr. Martel: When are you going to learn to go round about? You should learn from Bill Davis -- he knows how to say nothing.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT OF HYDRO PROJECTS

Mr. Wildman: I have a question of the Minister of Energy. In view of the meetings that his officials have had with the officials of Ontario Hydro, the royal commission on electric power planning and the Ministry of the Environment, regarding Hydro’s request that the terms of reference of the Porter commission be changed to remove consideration of the needs for Hydro’s priority projects and that these projects be turned over to the Environmental Assessment Board, can the minister indicate what the status is of these discussions and what his position and that of his ministry is on Hydro’s request?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions. There have been no changes and no changes are planned to be made, as far as the terms of reference of the Porter commission on this particular aspect are concerned.

Mr. Wildman: Supplementary: Does that mean that there will not be any changes or there just haven’t been any changes up to this point? Is the minister saying that it is his policy that the Porter commission terms of reference will not be changed in relation to the priority projects?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I am saying that certainly at this stage in time no changes are being actively considered.

BEARE ROAD LANDFILL SITE

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Speaker, a question of the Minister of the Environment: Could the minister indicate when his officials intend to meet with the ratepayers’ association with respect to the Beare Road landfill site?

Mr. Laughren: Yes, it’s about time too.

Hon. Mr. McCague: Mr. Speaker, no, I am not aware of a date being set. There was a meeting about February 15. I thought maybe somebody from our ministry was there but I wouldn’t be certain of that.

Mr. Gaunt: Supplementary: Is it fair to assume that ministry officials are prepared to meet with the ratepayers’ association at their earliest convenience to resolve this rather thorny problem?

Hon. Mr. McCague: Oh, most certainly.

Mr. Gaunt: Mr. Speaker, I have another supplementary that he can respond to in the same manner if he wishes.

Mr. Roy: He is so co-operative you should give him another try at it.

Mr. Gaunt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Could the minister indicate what procedure the ministry has in mind to resolve the problems of odour in that particular area?

Hon. Mr. McCague: I think it would be a matter of advice to the municipality as to what should be done. I think the problem is that there is a high water level there because of heavy rains last summer and fall. The water is escaping and allowing gases to escape also. There probably can be some vents put in and as the water levels go down we think the problem will be less. But it’s really a municipal responsibility.

[3:30]

DRIVING INSTRUCTION

Mr. Young: I have a question for the Minister of Education in respect to the report that the courses for driving instructors are to be cancelled over the coming summer. I’d like to ask the minister if these reports are accurate and, if so, are they related to the concern expressed by the select committee on highway safety that the results of the present system of driver training are not what they ought to be? Is this a preliminary to the upgrading of not only the syllabus for the driving instructors, but of the quality of the whole system of driver instruction in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Wells: It is correct that there will not be any driver education summer courses given this summer. The reason is not exactly as the member has stated. The reason basically is that it’s one of the economy measures that we have decided to undertake in order to keep the budget of this ministry --

Mr. Lewis: That’s a good economy measure. That is smart stuff.

Hon. Mr. Wells: -- within the very real restraint measures that all of us in this government are following.

Mr. Swart: That means more people out of work.

Mr. Warner: You guys are going to have to drive now.

Hon. Mr. Wells: The reason that this was done is that this is one of the higher-cost summer courses and it was our feeling it could be given every other year. I think the additional benefit will be that the kind of things the hon. member mentioned will be able to be taken into account before the course in 1979 is given. It will be given in the summer of 1979. I understand my colleague, the Minister of Transportation and Communications (Mr. Snow) has a white paper on driver education that will be coming out shortly that may also be helpful in this area. The member is quite correct: there will be no courses given this summer.

PETITIONS

Mr. Davidson: Mr. Speaker, I beg leave to present a petition addressed to the Lieutenant Governor and members of the Legislative Assembly of the province of Ontario. The petition reads as follows:

“We, the undersigned, are in favour of a change in the Coroners Act of Ontario to allow removal and use of the pituitary gland where mandatory autopsies are required by law. This will improve the supply of growth hormone serum in Ontario.”

Attached to it are 5,164 signatures.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

CITY OF TIMMINS-PORCUPINE AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. McKeough moved first reading of Bill 5,

An Act to amend The City of Timmins-Porcupine Act, 1972.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: These amendments would enable the Ontario Municipal Board, upon the application of the council of the city of Timmins or a formal petition of the electors, to redivide the city wards, alter or dissolve the wards and vary the composition of the council. Until the Ontario Municipal Board makes any such alteration, the minister’s order which determined ward boundaries and council size will remain in effect.

SHORELINE PROPERTY ASSISTANCE AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. McKeough moved first reading of Bill 6,

An Act to amend The Shoreline Property Assistance Act, 1973.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. McKeough: This amendment clarifies the repayment terms of debentures. Members will recall that the Shoreline Property Assistance Act came into being in the wake of fierce spring flooding in 1973. The Act enabled shore property owners to borrow from their area municipalities to repair buildings damaged by high water and build breakwaters to prevent further damage or erosion. To finance these loans, the municipalities issued debentures to the province. Both the loans and the debentures have 20-year terms.

In all, approximately 465 loans have been made, averaging $3,000 to $5,000 each. Since 1973, many of these small loans have been repaid to the municipalities and their accrual has presented a problem in that the municipality cannot reinvest such small sums in any reasonable manner and our consolidation provisions for the debentures prevent the municipality from prepaying its liability before the 20-year time designated. This amendment will permit partial as well as full prepayment.

SECURITIES ACT

Hon. Mr. Grossman moved first reading of Bill 7,

An Act to revise The Securities Act.

Motion agreed to.

COMMODITY FUTURES ACT

Hon. Mr. Grossman moved first reading of Bill 8,

An Act to regulate trading in Commodity Futures Contracts.

Motion agreed to.

BUSINESS CORPORATIONS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Grossman moved first reading of Bill 9,

An Act to amend The Business Corporations Act.

Motion agreed to.

INCOME TAX DISCOUNTERS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Grossman moved first reading of Bill 10,

An Act to amend The Discounting of Income Tax Refunds Act, 1977.

Motion agreed to.

VITAL STATISTICS AMENDMENT ACT

Hon. Mr. Grossman moved first reading of Bill 11,

An Act to amend The Vital Statistics Act.

Motion agreed to.

FOODLANDS PROTECTION ACT

Mr. Swart moved first reading of Bill 12,

An Act to provide for the Designation and Retention of Foodlands.

Motion agreed to.

Hon. Mr. Welch: How many more?

Mr. Foulds: About a dozen. This one should not be postponed.

Mr. Martel: We are trying to save your seat for you.

Mr. Swart: Mr. Speaker, this bill provides for the classification of Ontario agricultural foodlands in the classifications one to four of the Agricultural and Rural Development Act (Canada); and for the surveying, designation and preservation of such foodlands.

Mr. Deans: Why don’t you just accept it?

Hon. W. Newman: Listen, you are the one who wants to cut up the best fruitland.

Mr. Deans: Me? On a point of privilege. The minister is interjecting --

Mr. Speaker: Order, order. There is no point of privilege.

Mr. Havrot: Put pavement on it.

Hon. Mr. Kerr: I can show it to you in writing.

Interjections.

HYDRO CONTRACTS

Mr. Cassidy: I move, Mr. Speaker, seconded by the member for Sudbury East, that the orders of the day he set aside in order to debate a matter of urgent public importance, namely the government’s decision whether or not to permit Ontario Hydro to proceed with the contract with Denison Mines Limited for the supply of uranium valued at a minimum of $4.2 billion by the deadline at midnight tonight.

Mr. Martel: Don’t give it away, Reuben.

Mr. Speaker: Proper notice has been given under standing order No. 30 and I will listen to the mover for up to five minutes.

Mr. Cassidy: This matter is a matter of urgent public importance. It is urgent because this is the first opportunity that the Legislature will have to debate the contract which has been under negotiation in secret by the government for a matter of five years and was referred before a select committee of this House less than two months ago.

It is urgent because the deadline that has been placed on the contract by agreement between the government and Denison Mines is midnight tonight, and therefore if the House does not comment on the proposed contract now it will not have a chance to comment before the deal is either consummated by the government or has been rejected.

It is a matter of enormous public importance because the government and Ontario Hydro are involved and because of the magnitude of the contract of $4.2 billion.

It is a matter of public importance because of the stake that we all have in the future of Ontario’s nuclear power industry, which depends on the security of supply.

It is a matter of importance to this Legislature because of the clear indications that the government intends to ignore both the advice of its own advisers within Hydro and the recommendations of this Legislature as expressed by the select committee.

It is a matter of importance because such varied authorities as the former chairman of Hydro, George Gathercole, the Hydro staff, and the people on the Hydro Project Wellesley all recommended an alternative route, namely the acquisition of these uranium assets by the people of the province of Ontario in order to benefit everyone in this province in terms of a lower price, in addition to ensuring security of supply.

There have been flimsy promises to tax excess profits by the government, but in fact Ontario stands to get less than $7,000 in licence fees and land taxes from the land on which it is proposed, through this contract, that $1.6 billion minimum in windfall profits be given to a private mining corporation.

Those are the reasons, Mr. Speaker, for which we say that this contract is not in the public interest and that it is a matter of urgent public importance that the opinion of the Legislature be expressed now before the government proceeds.

Mr. Deans: It is also a sellout.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. member for Brock, if he so wishes.

Hon. Mr. Welch: Mr. Speaker, the government certainly has no objections to this debate and, indeed, I think it is in keeping with the spirit of the way this matter has been handled up to now. The widest possible discussion has been sought by the Premier (Mr. Davis), as indicated by his letter to the chairman of the select committee on Hydro, dated December 19. I think it is important to have this debate, if it is your wish.

Certainly the government has no objection to the debate. It is really in keeping with and an extension of what the Premier himself put in motion when he wrote to the chairman of the select committee a couple of months ago. In that letter of December 19 the committee has had very full discussion. I’ve never heard anyone suggest that the committee felt in any way handicapped, as far as time was concerned, to go into all the issues; but that matter may be discussed during the course of the debate.

[3:45]

On December 19, not long after the committee had been established, the Premier of this province wrote to the chairman, the member for York South (Mr. MacDonald), and this is the letter:

“Since 1974, Ontario Hydro has been negotiating with Rio-Algom-Preston Mines Limited and Denison Mines Limited for longer term uranium supplies from Elliot Lake to meet its requirements and its obligations under federal government policy guidelines. Negotiations with Denison have been finalized and a contract has been signed by Ontario Hydro subject to approval by order in council.

“While all the terms of the contract with Rio-Algom-Preston have not been finalized, it is expected that they will be settled in time for the ministry’s consultants to complete their review early in January. When the ministry’s review is complete and the second contract signed by Ontario Hydro, subject again to approval by order in council, the government proposes to send the documents related to both contracts to you for consideration by the select committee which you chair.

Given the need to supply nuclear fuel to existing and committed reactors in Ontario, and because of the size of these contracts and their implications for the people of Ontario, I should like the select committee to consider the findings of the consultants retained by the Ministry of Energy in order to confirm that entering into the above agreements is in the public interest of Ontario.”

Mr. Wildman: They said it wasn’t.

Hon. Mr. Welch: “Those findings were based on a consideration of the world’s uranium outlook, the federal government’s uranium policy guidelines, and a comparison with other uranium supply contracts. It would be my hope that this review could be undertaken as quickly as possible and be completed before the end of February 1978.

“The prime responsibility for providing details of the contracts to the select committee would rest with Ontario Hydro, and I can assure the select committee of the full and complete co-operation of both Ontario Hydro and the Ministry of Energy.” That was signed by the Premier.

So, in keeping with the spirit of that particular letter and the assignment of this matter for the consideration of the select committee, the government certainly at this date would have no objection to having the matter further debated this afternoon.

Ms. Gigantes: How long did it take you to set up the committee?

Mr. Reid: The contract hasn’t been signed.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, my Liberal colleagues believe that it is quite appropriate to set aside the ordinary business of the day in order that these contracts be debated. We have expressed our views, as members of the committee, that the contracts are not in the best interests of the public and we will be putting those views forward further this afternoon, with your permission.

Mr. Speaker: As this matter is of urgent public importance, and due to the time factor involved, I deem the motion to be in order. The question before the House now is, shall the debate proceed?

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Speaker: I would like to remind you that the debate will conclude at 6 o’clock or prior to that if all members wishing to speak have spoken, and each speaker will be restricted to 10 minutes.

Hon. Mr. Welch: One point before the clock starts: I wonder if we might have the general agreement in concurrence with the House that in keeping with the spirit of provisional order 25, which is the one providing for the minimum number of days for the Throne Speech debate, that notwithstanding the fact that this afternoon is not available for Throne Speech debate -- and we will get back to the Throne Speech debate this evening -- that, in fact, the House concurs that rule 25 has been complied with, notwithstanding, as I say, the fact that this time is taken out of the debate.

Mr. Speaker: Is that agreed?

Agreed.

HYDRO CONTRACTS

Mr. Speaker: Do we have a speaker? The hon. member for Ottawa Centre.

Mr. Cassidy: The basic reason for having this debate is that the hands of Ontario Hydro were tied when it came to negotiating for the security of supplies for uranium for the nuclear power program which is now under way. Hydro was not permitted to seek the best deal that was available or to act on sound business principles in ensuring the security of supply because the option of acquiring uranium assets or acquiring Denison Mines was closed off by government action and Hydro was not allowed to proceed down that particular route.

Hydro’s hands were tied because of the determination -- in fact, the obsession -- of this government with giving handouts to its friends in the monopoly sector of the mining industry rather than ensuring that the best interests of the people of Ontario were served in the uranium deal.

Mr. Martel: The Duke of Kent.

Mr. Laughren: Stephen Roman and his friends.

Mr. Cassidy: They interrupted my train of speech.

There is a pattern here which I find very, very dangerous and distressing. Just today we had the Minister of Natural Resources (Mr. F. S. Miller) say that he intended to recommend to cabinet that it ignore recommendations of the select committee on economic and cultural nationalism related to the sale of cottage lots and Crown land to Americans. We have had just recently the government deliberately undermine recommendations of the select committee on Inco in relation to protecting the jobs of miners up in Sudbury.

Now we have a situation where the government is clearly preparing to ignore the vote of the select committee on Hydro as to whether or not this particular uranium deal was in the public interest.

The Premier’s letter to the select committee, which was just quoted, indicated the government’s position. The indications we have are now that the government intends to hold a hasty cabinet meeting at the conclusion of this debate and then to proceed with the ratification of the contracts, despite the clear opinion of the Legislature as a whole that this is not in the public interest.

That action by the government makes a mockery of minority government when they have a pretence of consultation after five years of secret dealing and then refuse to listen both to the advice of the committee and to the advice of the majority of members of this Legislature representing a majority of the electorate who voted in the last provincial election.

While the committee has been able to discuss this particular deal at some length over the course of the last six weeks, its proceedings have inevitably had to be carried out under great haste and great duress. I would contend that there has not been adequate time for the people of the province of Ontario to grasp the enormity of this enormous deal. It is the largest single sale of uranium in Ontario’s history -- in fact, in world history. It is the longest contract for uranium in the world’s history and it is the biggest sellout of Ontario’s natural resources that has ever been carried out whether by this government or any government before it.

Mr. Foulds: Positively shameful.

Mr. Cassidy: We in the New Democratic Party are convinced that this uranium supply contract between Hydro and Denison Mines is absolutely not in the public interest of Ontario. It is a sellout. It is a contract of $4.2 billion that will yield to Denison Mines a windfall profit of a bare minimum of $1.6 billion.

The result will be to inflate the cost of generating electricity for all hydro-electric consumers for a lifetime. The contract will inevitably raise the cost of electrical energy that is used by industry as well as by individuals and it will, therefore, have an adverse impact of an economy which is already damaged by successive oil price increases prescribed by federal policy and which has already been undermined by the failure of any sensible industrial strategy or policy of the Davis government.

To sign this contract tonight will amount to an abandonment of the long-standing policy, an honourable and a fine policy, of power at cost which was introduced to this province 70 years ago when a Conservative government created Ontario Hydro in order to bring the hydro-electric resources of this province into the public sector.

I want to point out several specific arguments that we have about this particular deal. First, the profit that is being accorded to Denison Mines is utterly without justification. There is no risk for the corporation because it is committing this entire mine on a contract which is as good as the word of the province of Ontario. There is no risk on capital because the capital is being advanced interest-free. The costs of management in this particular case are entirely guaranteed because it is a cost plus contract.

The only cost to which Denison Mines is committed is $7,000 a year in mining fees and land leases. It is highway robbery to get $7,000 back and give $1.6 billion in windfall profits.

Mr. Makarchuk: You are minding the store.

Mr. Cassidy: We also believe that this deal is completely unnecessary because there is an economically feasible alternative to the contracts, namely, for Ontario Hydro or for the Ontario Energy Corporation to acquire Denison or to acquire Denison’s uranium assets.

This is as good a deal for the taxpayers of Ontario today as it was three or four years ago. According to both the staff of the select committee and to such unimpeachable Conservative sources as the former chairman of Hydro and the former president of Consolidated Edison of New York, the uranium can and should still be exploited for purely public benefit. I didn’t mention Sinclair Stevens, the Conservative finance critic in Ottawa, who also believes it should be brought into the public sector.

We will be setting out that case in more detail over the course of this afternoon, but it is worth noting that if Denison were to be acquired and brought under the public sector now the profits from its committed sales to Japan would be enough to pay for the takeover, and it would not be in any way a charge on the people of Ontario.

Third, we believe that Ontario has many levers at its disposal to secure Denison’s compliance with this course, despite the arrogant refusal of the federal government to acknowledge that uranium should now be in the provincial sector as our only remaining domestic energy resource. We have the power under

section 113 of the Ontario Mining Act to refuse to grant export permits for unrefined uranium, and we should be prepared to use those powers.

We have the power to raise the annual acreage fee on those particular uranium leases to a level that would wipe out Denison’s windfall profits. We have the power to raise provincial mining taxes to a level that would wipe out the windfall profits. But a promise from a Minister of Energy who has been in office for less than two weeks is not enough to guarantee to the people of this province that we will get that back if the Conservatives are in power five or 10 years down the line. And I for one, Mr. Speaker, intend to ensure that they are not.

Finally, we have the power to terminate Denison’s mining leases, most of which come up for renewal between now and 1986, and a government which was determined to protect the people’s interests in the uranium natural resources of this province would use that particular lever in order to ensure that it is the public, and not a private mining corporation, which would get those benefits.

I want to conclude by talking for a moment about the urgency of signing the Denison contract right now. It is urgent to debate that contract today, but in fact the first deliveries under that contract will not take place until 1980. By 1984 only four million pounds, or about three per cent of the entire contract, is slated to be delivered, and by 1990, 12 years from now, only 16 million pounds are to he delivered. There will in fact be, during the entire period of the 1980s, a shortfall on Ontario Hydro’s uranium needs of 10 million pounds of uranium under these particular contracts.

In other words, if the government argues that the short-term security of supply of uranium is at stake the figures clearly prove that the government is wrong, because we will be out on the open market, or with the federal government, trying to borrow uranium during the 1980s. This contract is not dedicated to short- and medium-term security of supply, and that is why we should use the time that is available in order to ensure that that uranium is brought into the public sector.

We conclude that the acquisition of Denison’s uranium resources would provide Ontario Hydro with the assured supply of fuel that is necessary to meet its $14 billion investment in nuclear-power generating facilities over the long term; that that acquisition of those uranium resources would provide that security of supply at prices which are considerably below those that are provided for in this particular contract; and that in doing so Ontario’s hydro users would have their needs met and would be relieved of the onerous burden of a completely unwarranted $1.6 billion tie to the Conservative government’s friends in the mining industry.

To do anything else but bring these assets into the public sector --

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. member’s time has expired.

Mr. Cassidy: I am just concluding -- would be an unforgivable betrayal of the people and of the industries of the province of Ontario.

[4:00]

Hon. Mr. Baetz: This is a day of decision, Mr. Speaker, and I am pleased to open this debate for the government on these historical contracts for Ontario Hydro and the people of this province.

Let me make it very clear from the outset that I do believe the Hydro contracts with Denison Mines and Preston Mines to be in the public interest of Ontario.

Mr. Wildman: What about the select committee?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I have therefore signed the formal recommendations and conveyed them to the executive council, asking that the necessary orders in council be issued. I have done so because, firstly, they do provide long-term assurance of uranium to fuel Hydro’s nuclear reactors which are already in operation or committed to be built -- an investment of more than $14 billion. They will assure Ontario Hydro of its required electrical power for the foreseeable future.

Secondly, they contain pricing and other terms which are favourable to Hydro and its consultants, yet provide reasonable incentives to the producers.

Mr. Makarchuk: Reasonable? It’s a ripoff.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Thirdly, they will generate many new jobs in Elliot Lake -- don’t forget this -- and in supporting industries, thereby providing the economy of Ontario a badly needed boost.

Mr. Foulds: So would the public sector. Elliot Lake is going full blast; you couldn’t get another worker in the community.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Mr. Wildman: There are lots of jobs in Elliot Lake already.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Fourthly, it would provide a significant measure of provincial control over a federally dominated resource industry.

I have been impressed by the thoroughness of the review which has been carried out in recent months by the Ontario Hydro staff and their consultants, by my ministry and its consultants and, as an ultimate measure, by the select committee and its consultants’ reports.

Mr. Warner: Were you impressed by Stephen Roman?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I have examined these voluminous data and can find no compelling evidence which would change my mind that the contracts are appropriate and should be allowed to proceed.

Mr. Cassidy: You’re pretty blind. They all recommend against the contracts.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I have also considered the alternatives to the contracts that were reviewed by Ontario Hydro and rejected by the Hydro board on solid business grounds. It did not surprise me, therefore, that the select committee staff reached the same overall conclusion. The evidence was there, and it is there and it is clear.

Mr. McClellan: Yes, that it is a sellout.

Mr. Cassidy: What about the select committee members? Aren’t they important?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: What was surprising, and in my mind irresponsible, was the dog-in-the-manger attitude of the opposition. They could not and would not agree on what was in the public interest, but refused to support what the government believed to be the only sensible course of action. In my view, government and the public at least could have expected a credible alternative from the opposition, and we did not get it.

Mr. Cassidy: We provided one.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: We have listened to the Leader of the Opposition fantasize as he has created his dream-world scenarios in which he would have controlled all the actors and written the perfect contracts. But surely he must know that the real world is not totally a controlled, clinical environment.

Ms Gigantes: The real world is a rip-off.

Mr. Warner: It’s full of corporate creeps.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Circumstances over which we have little or no control must be faced squarely and the best possible decisions reached.

Mr. Wildman: It’s vicious out there.

Mr. Swart: The real world of Steve Roman.

Mr. Foulds: You contaminated the real world.

Mr. Warner: Greedy corporate creeps.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: The Leader of the opposition’s make-believe dream world also has no taxes.

Mr. McClellan: What about windfall profits? Are they part of the real world?

Mr. Warner: Steve Roman and other octopuses.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: It’s a dream world that has no taxes; at least that is the only conclusion we can draw from the extravagant and alarming claims he has made from the beginning of the select committee hearings about the excessive or bonanza profits which would be made, and we heard it again this moment from across the House.

Mr. Peterson: You talk about taxing them?

Mr. Breithaupt: Of course they are profits. What do you think?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: It was suggested that my statement to the select committee on the taxing powers of the government was a gimmick -- an afterthought made, as we have just heard, by a rookie.

Mr. Makarchuk: Absolutely.

Mr. Cassidy: It certainly was.

Mr. Martel: Like afterbirth.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I’ll tell you why I made the statement, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Makarchuk: Your record speaks for itself.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: It was in response to the wild speculation about the excessive profitability of these contracts to the producers. I felt it necessary to remind the committee and the general public of Ontario of the reality that the government has the power to tax.

Mr. Makarchuk: That’s a profound statement.

Mr. Foulds: Darcy and Frank Miller have forgotten that.

Mr. McClellan: This was news, was it?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I stated the obvious truth, which was blurred by the opposition, that if, as and when circumstances dictated, it would be up to the government of the day to change the system of taxation to redress any unforeseeable imbalance in the distribution of revenue from this source.

Ms. Gigantes: Who pays the taxes?

Mr. Makarchuk: So far the system has been putting it on the property owner.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: I did not start the speculation, but I had to respond simply to maintain some reasonable perspective on the subject.

Mr. Peterson: You are weasling out.

Mr. Foulds: Bring back Jim Taylor.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: The Leader of the Opposition charges that we haven’t tried hard enough to change the federal government’s position.

Mr. Makarchuk: The system has been putting it on the property owner.

Mr. Kerrio: Right on.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: He fails to recognize the intransigence of his federal counterparts, and naively says we should have done more.

Mr. Nixon: You didn’t do anything.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Another case, Mr. Speaker, of a make-believe world. Where was the support of this Legislature to the government’s stand against the federal energy pricing policy of moving crude oil and natural gas to world prices?

Mr. Peterson: Who wrote this junk?

Ms. Gigantes: Where are the world prices, for heaven’s sake?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: The consistent demand by the leader of the NDP to expropriate the mines --

Mr. Martel: You didn’t have a policy in those days, for heaven’s sake. It was a sellout. The Premier negotiated and didn’t know what he was negotiating. Nobody told him the difference between well-head price and pump price.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: -- is, for reasons which have been fully documented, so ludicrous and so unrealistic as to warrant no further comment from this side of the House. The policy of the Ministry of Energy is to ensure an adequate supply of energy to Ontario at prices that people can afford --

Mr. Warner: You have abandoned the people of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: -- and with a minimum effect on the environment.

Mr. Cassidy: And with a maximum sellout to private companies.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: Mr. Speaker, on the basis of the mass of information available --

Mr. Warner: Did Steve Roman write this?

Hon. Mr. Baetz: -- I believe these uranium contracts satisfy all three objectives.

Mr. Warner: Particularly Steve Roman’s.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: It also makes good sense for Hydro and the companies. It stimulates jobs and investment, especially in northern Ontario. It is, in short, in the public interest of Ontario to press ahead.

Mr. Warner: You don’t even know where northern Ontario is.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: While the opposition may wish to continue ad nauseam their partisan political posturing, this government, being responsive and responsible, must act and must act today.

Mr. Warner: Progressive Neanderthal.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: That is why as Minister of Energy I have signed the formal recommendations to ask cabinet to approve the issuance of the order in council. Thank you.

Mr. Cassidy: Being a minister has gone to your head.

Mr. Makarchuk: Shame. You are giving the country away.

Mr. Reed: Mr. Speaker, the arguments that are being put forward here this afternoon, of course, have been developed and put forward in the select committee, and I choose this afternoon, if I might be permitted, to try and shed whatever new light could be shed on the position which my party has taken --

Mr. Laughren: Some hope.

Mr. Reed: -- and with which I concur most wholeheartedly. I would like to, first of all, inform the Minister of Energy that the way the contracts are constructed at the present time, and the way I understand them, and the way I am sure he does too, the taxation that the province of Ontario is empowered to impose in case of excess profits is written into the cost of uranium. Because it is written into the cost of the uranium the people who buy the electric power in Ontario are going to pay for those taxes and no one else.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: He is at least talking about taxes.

Ms. Gigantes: Recycling our own money.

Mr. Reed: The minister referred to the fact that the mining of uranium in Elliot Lake would generate jobs, and it certainly will. Mr. Roman has also pointed out to us that if we choose not to buy the uranium he will sell it somewhere else. So the jobs are there so long as the uranium is there, and I should make that quite clear.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: And Ontario stays in the dark.

Mr. Reed: I’ll get to that in just a minute. There were a few premises upon which the government based its argument for accepting the contracts. One was the security of supply. That was one of the paramount arguments that were put forward by Hydro under consultation through Robertson Associates, who painted the picture that precipitated their position or their decision.

The security of supply is a very interesting thing to contemplate, since for many years, as we know, the uranium business was in the doldrums. It has only been in the last couple of years that there has been any active exploration.

I was asking one expert the other day about just how extensive the exploration had been in Canada. He said: “We have covered Canada from aerial surveys at 25 kilometres.” I said: “Could you find the Denison mine with a 25-kilometre survey?” He said: “No.” I said: “What are you doing now?” He said: “We have started to cover it aerially at five kilometres.” I said: “Could you find the Denison mine at five kilometres?” He said: “Not unless you flew right over it.” I said: “How do you find the uranium?” He said: “You have to go in on the ground to find it.”

It was interesting to note that since the exploration has intensified in the last year or so the finds have started to come in. We know that during the time the select committee was sitting, announcements were made of finds -- one in Australia near Darwin which is so close to the surface it will be mined open pit. It’s very rich and it is considered by experts to be five to 10 times larger than anything found in Australia to date. In Canada, Hydro-Shell, that combination exploration effort, announced a find in Labrador as we were sitting. It was quite interesting.

The Globe and Mail, February 25, 1978 -- another little article: “Interest is Revived by Uranium Deposit Find” -- “The discovery of yet another significant deposit of uranium mineralization in northern Saskatchewan has revived interest in a number of companies…” I would dare say that we will probably have a dozen or so new mines or new ore bodies come into being or be assessed in this next year.

That is entirely in contrast to the position taken by Hydro under the advice of their experts who painted the picture that the Denison Mines and the Preston Mines and the Elliot Lake ore bodies were all we were going to get. That’s what they said, and that was the premise upon which they went into those negotiations. The government’s other premise was its own fundamental philosophy which basically opposed any alternatives to outright purchase of the yellow cake after it was processed. It is interesting that that philosophy pervaded the whole picture right through the years of negotiation.

I must agree with my friend in the NDP that Hydro went into those negotiations with its pants around its ankles. You have to remember that; they went in negotiating out of fear.

Mr. Nixon: That was just the chief negotiator.

Mr. Reed: The whole picture has turned over since then. Look at the size of the contract, to begin with. The staff of the select committee told us that there was an over-purchase in it over the 35 years of about 55 million pounds.

Hydro is about to revise its load forecast downward and by 1986 shows a downward forecast of 3,000 megawatts. If you spread the consumption of a reduced load forecast of 3,000 megawatts over that period of time -- I’m not counting for any further reductions or anything at all; just what Hydro is doing itself -- we can write another 30 million pounds into that over-purchase.

Ms. Gigantes: Right.

Mr. Reed: Now we’ve got an excess purchase of uranium under these contracts of 85 million pounds and that is almost the capacity of Preston Mines. So just let the minister remember that when he is making his recommendation to the Premier.

The value of the front money was another thing which we discussed at length in the select committee. According to the expert who testified on the last day -- on the Friday -- we asked him what the value was of front-ending those two mines to the tune of $300 million-odd and how did that relate per pound in uranium -- what value could be applied? The answer was -- and it surprised me -- was upwards of $6 a pound. If you take the contract and add the $5 and you add your 50 cents and you do your split between your world price and you take another $6 input, Mr. Speaker, you are coming so close to world price you can eat it.

Hon. Mr. Baetz: You didn’t convince your staff of that.

Mr. Reed: I want to talk about two more things before I am told to sit down, if I can. First of all the world price of uranium -- and these things are tied to world price. The world price right now is supposed to be around $42 or $52.50 a pound. It’s interesting to note that I have a little

article here that appeared in the paper last July 14 which says, “France is buying 1,000 tons of uranium from Africa to begin delivery in 1980” -- at, guess what? $27 a pound. That’s a long way from $42.

[4:15]

I challenge the minister to explain to this House what the world price of uranium really is. He doesn’t know and I don’t know. We discussed in great detail about how the so-called club or cartel could have precipitated the escalation of prices and so on. We see prices, according to the world-price charts, of so much a pound. Then I read an

article like this that an actual sale was made at $27. So where does the minister stand? He has no way to assess it. Yet he’s tying it to a fictitious figure. How can he do that?

Ms. Gigantes: You are going to get hosed.

Mr. Reed: There is one other thing that I would like to put on record, that is, the Denison mine itself. It has come to my attention, and I probably should have paid more attention to it a little earlier in the game, that certain parts of that ore body, as we get down through the extraction of the uranium, contain an ore that is -- and you’ll have to forgive me, Mr. Speaker, because I’m not too up on my technology here -- a highly chloritized ore. Apparently, there is a whole vein of highly chloritized ore that runs through part of this.

I have the map here, if the minister would like to see it, that shows that during part of that excavation there’s going to be a tremendous high cost awarded to the extraction of that uranium. I will quote from a book, A Geological Survey of Canada, 1969: “Highly chloritized ore was intersected in Denison’s drill hole No. 29, a few thousand feet west of Can-Met workings.”

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. member’s time has expired.

Mr. Reed: Mr.