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February 20, 1989

34th Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

L149 - Mon 20 Feb 1989 / Lun 20 fév 1989

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

PROVINCIAL-MUNICIPAL RELATIONS

HOMEMAKERS’ PENSIONS

NATIVE PEOPLE AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

ORILLIA SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

CAREERMOBILE

HOUSE PRICES

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

RESPONSES

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

ORAL QUESTIONS

PROPERTY SPECULATION

DRUG ABUSE

USE OF MINISTRY AFFILIATION

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

PROPOSED GRAVEL PIT

PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION PLANS

ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE

BEEF MARKETING

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES

FUNDING OF SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCIES

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

LONG-TERM PLANNING

PETITIONS

NATUROPATHY

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

MOTIONS

ESTIMATES

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

ORDERS OF THE DAY

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING (CONTINUED)

The House met at 1:30 p.m.

Prayers.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

Mr. R. F. Johnston: The world is full of irony. Today, when we have learned that a policeman has been shot, it follows by just a couple of days the announcement that the Canadian murder rate is at a 20-year low in this country. I want to make a statement regarding capital punishment today.

I was in Florida when the morbid fascination and delight at the death of multimurderer Ted Bundy took place in a state where the number of murders is escalating at an incredible rate, even though it has had a very highly publicized death penalty for some time. It was with great pleasure that I noticed that our murder rate had dropped so significantly that not one police officer died last year in this country, a country which has again turned away from the death penalty as a deterrent.

To all those people who had thought of it as such, I hope this argues very strongly against the notion that it should be used in those terms. For those people who believe that somehow it should be kept in terms of an eye for an eye or who believe, as the head of the police association said, that there has to be a place for vicious animals who cannot be rehabilitated, I would say to them that we have no argument. There is no discussion that can take place on that kind of basis. For those of us who wish a safe society, we have found a good solution in this country, far better than those countries which have opted for the death penalty.

PROVINCIAL-MUNICIPAL RELATIONS

Mr. McCague: I read two items recently which explain why Ontario’s municipalities are disillusioned with the Liberal government. The first noted that the only thing worse than the inaction of the government has been its actions. The second stated that the local option has become a stylish way for the province to cop out on thorny issues.

Ontario’s municipalities, victims of both Liberal lethargy and buck-passing, would heartily endorse those opinions. From housing to infrastructural renewal, courtroom security, Sunday shopping and education financing, the Liberal government’s idea of leadership that works has been to toss the matters to the municipalities and say, “Here, you lead.”

To make matters worse, the Liberals have cut back on the financial resources municipalities require to do the province’s job for it. Instead of freezing unconditional grants, the Liberal government should freeze all attempts to slough off its responsibilities on to municipal governments.

It should also stop treating municipalities, as one official of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario said, like a ministry branch office. Our municipal governments deserve more than high-handed paternalism disguised as a respect for local autonomy.

HOMEMAKERS’ PENSIONS

Ms. Poole: In December 1983, the federal government’s special committee on pension reform recommended that the government implement a homemakers’ pension. In a nationally televised debate on women’s issues in August 1984, Brian Mulroney stated that a homemakers’ pension could be implemented “in an evolutionary way, without the cost being unbearable.”

“In fact,” he said, “a saving could be realized.”

More than four years later, during the 1988 leaders’ debate, the Prime Minister tried to explain his inaction on this promise by stating, “We couldn’t do everything overnight when we came in and inherited a very bad fiscal situation.”

There is a very fundamental inconsistency in these two statements. In 1984 women were told that a homemakers’ pension could ultimately save the government money. In 1988 they were told the federal government could not afford to implement that homemakers’ pension.

Approximately three million women in Canada are waiting for pension protection. The Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has stated that he has raised this matter during meetings of the federal Finance minister and the provincial treasurers. The time has come for the Prime Minister to stop making excuses and to act on his promises in both 1984 and 1988, promises to implement a homemakers’ pension. The women of Ontario are waiting.

NATIVE PEOPLE AND THE JUSTICE SYSTEM

Mr. Hampton: The Race Relations and Policing Task Force completed its hearings in Thunder Bay on the weekend. While in Thunder Bay, they heard about some very disturbing events involving native people and the criminal justice system.

For example, Shirley O’Connor of the Ontario Native Women’s Association spoke of killings left uninvestigated and of individuals lost in the bush who froze to death because police would not conduct a search. Sara Melvin, representing 33 communities in the Sioux Lookout area, described seeing police batons with the words “For Indians, hold here” inscribed on them.

The problems that native people have encountered with our criminal justice system are not new. They have in fact gone on for far too long. The Attorney General (Mr. Scott) has stated on various occasions that he intends to address the plight of native people in our criminal justice system, yet we have seen precious little other than unkept promises from the Attorney General.

We want to discuss many of these issues in some detail with the Attorney General. We have been waiting for some time for the Ministry of the Attorney General estimates and the native affairs estimates to begin so that we could examine in some detail the expenditures and programs of these ministries as they relate to our native people, yet the Attorney General has postponed these estimates week after week. When will they happen?

ORILLIA SOLDIERS’ MEMORIAL HOSPITAL

Mr. McLean: My statement is directed to the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) and concerns the proposed development of Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital.

The minister knows that a consultants’ report commissioned by the hospital’s board of directors recommends the construction of a second health care facility in Orillia. The existing building would be used for chronic care and the proposed second campus would be used for acute care. In fact, three separate consultants have recommended the construction of this second campus.

The consultants’ report was sent to the minister in January 1988 and the minister said the final decision on the proposed second campus would be forthcoming in March 1988. We are now approaching March 1989 and the minister has still not announced her decision. The hospital’s board of directors is close to wrapping up its $5-million fund-raising campaign. They must know if they should extend this campaign to support the construction of a second hospital campus in Orillia.

I would urge the minister to meet with the board of directors of Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital as soon as possible to clear up the confusion surrounding the proposed construction of a new health care facility in Orillia. That meeting should take place within the next few days.

CAREERMOBILE

Mr. Mahoney: I would like to inform my colleagues in the House about a very successful program that has been launched by the Peel Board of Education.

On November 2, 1988, the Careermobile, which is a mobile career counselling centre, opened at its first location, the Port Credit Secondary School. It is a mobile career assessment and information centre and it is staffed by a career assessment officer and three technicians. They work with and enhance existing guidance programs that are offered in the secondary schools. The cost for this 40-foot by 12-foot trailer is jointly shared by the Peel Board of Education, the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission and corporate donations.

I recently toured the Careermobile during its three-week visit to Erindale Secondary School and was very impressed with the available computer, video and print materials. These materials include information on over 1,000 different occupations, education and training programs, job search skills and nontraditional career options, as well as student job opportunities. I feel it is a very worthwhile and innovative program which will assist our students in determining their future goals.

Today there are so many various avenues to research for a career decision and very often our students do not have the facilities to investigate all these avenues as well as the opportunity to sit down with a counsellor to help them.

During a three-week stay at various schools throughout Peel, the Careermobile is open for the community as well as the student population.

HOUSE PRICES

Mr. Laughren: Last week in this House, I asked the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) which community had the fastest-escalating house prices and he tried to tell me it was not Brantford. As a matter of fact, it was indeed Brantford. I used the figures from the Canadian Real Estate Association. The Treasurer used the numbers for the months from January to December; we used December to December, 12 months, which seems to me a more logical way to go about it.

Even when we used the Treasurer’s way of figuring it out, it proves out that Brantford had higher price increases as a percentage than Toronto did last year, so somebody in the Ministry of Treasury and Economics has made a mistake. The fact is that house prices are rising too fast all across the province.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I hope members will be interested to know that Ontario Hydro successfully floated a $500-million bond issue in Europe today. The 10-year issue was led by Merrill Lynch Canada Inc. and is the first to be completed by Hydro in Europe since 1984. It carries a coupon of 10 7/8 per cent. Costs associated with this financing are approximately one quarter of one per cent lower than those for an equivalent financing transaction in Canada and constitute a saving of $1.25 million per year. Ontario Hydro’s finance program for 1989 totals approximately $3.2 billion.

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

Hon. Ms. Oddie Munro: Today marks the start of Ontario Heritage Week 1989. This is a time to celebrate the heritage preserved and reflected in such things as buildings and landmarks.

Beyond these landmarks of the past, we also want to focus on other aspects of our heritage, such as music, folklore and traditions. This broader emphasis reflects the rich diversity of the province’s multicultural tradition. This broader perspective is also the basis of the review of the Ontario Heritage Act that is under way.

The importance of the preservation and wise use of our vast cultural heritage, in all the forms in which it exists, has never been more evident. In a rapidly changing world, a sense of who we are as Ontarians is surely critical to the future.

On the occasion of Ontario Heritage Week, I would especially like to thank the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians in communities across the province who have made the preservation of our heritage their responsibility. I congratulate them for their significant achievements.

RESPONSES

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

Miss Martel: In anticipation of the statement that I knew was going to be made by the Minister of Culture and Communications (Ms. Oddie Munro), I do have a response on behalf of our party. We are pleased to join with the minister in celebrating Ontario Heritage Week. This is a good opportunity for all Ontarians to discover, celebrate and showcase our history and our roots.

Heritage groups will be demonstrating the work they do in various locations throughout the province during this week. Highlighting these activities will serve to make Ontarians aware that who we are today is very much a function of our past, who our ancestors were and how their contributions helped to shape this province.

I hope all members will join their constituents in celebrating the rich and diverse cultural and historical heritage of their communities and of the province as a whole. While our multiculturalism brings unique opportunities for enrichment, the same diversity also presents challenges which we can better face with increased understanding, acceptance and tolerance.

I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the thousands of individuals who work so hard to organize the activities in each community during this special week and throughout the year. Among the thousands of individuals and organizations involved in heritage activities are, of course, the Ontario Heritage Foundation, historical societies, local architectural advisory committees, museums, libraries, archives, schools, etc. These people all deserve our thanks and appreciation, for without their efforts and dedication such events would not be possible.

The preservation of our heritage, both natural and historic, is vitally important. Let all of us keep our heritage and our history alive and vibrant and enjoy this week both as Ontarians and Canadians.

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

Mr. B. Rae: I would have thought that in the interests of accuracy, the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) might have wanted to point out that when he was the critic for the opposition he often used to point out that in borrowing overseas you might save a little bit on the interest from time to time, but there is also the factor of the changes and fluctuations in the value of the dollar as opposed to the value of the currency in which money is being borrowed.

The Treasurer is then telling us that this leads to an automatic saving of $1.25 million per year. I would have thought that in the interests of accuracy he might have, at least, added the sentence, “This will, of course, depend on what happens to the dollar and on what happens to other currencies.” On these decisions to float in other markets, I would have thought that might have been something that would have been added to the Treasurer’s statement.

ONTARIO HERITAGE WEEK

Mr. McLean: I want to respond briefly to the announcement with regard to Ontario Heritage Week. I, for one, want to compliment the minister for making this statement today. I, for many years, have known the value of reflecting on our history and on our past. When you travel around the world and in this great province, you are always looking at a heritage that we should not forget.

There are so many things that I know the minister has funded over the past period of time that are so important to Ontario in maintaining the heritage that we have. We must protect our present and look at the past and our future. When we look at some of the train stations in this province being torn down and being remodelled to be bus stations and for other purposes, I think it is great that we are maintaining that for the future. We also look at tourism and for people to come here and see what we have in our heritage. That

part is very, very important.

I think it is interesting. We will be watching the review with regards to the legislation. There is a lot of history in many of our municipalities. I would hope there would be some help for these municipalities in putting a profile together so that we can maintain and look back at our heritage and see where we have all come from and how we can make Ontario a better place to live.

ONTARIO HYDRO BOND ISSUE

Mr. Runciman: I have a brief response to the announcement regarding the Ontario Hydro bond issue. I am just wondering about the fiscal responsibility of Ontario Hydro, which we so frequently like to talk about and which the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) and his leader used to talk about a number of years ago but certainly do not pursue with any vigour of late.

I want to talk about something that I made the Minister of Energy (Mr. Wong) aware of some time ago in respect of the windfall, if you will, to Ontario Hydro in respect of the value of the Canadian dollar over the past year. In its budget, Ontario Hydro had looked at, I think, about a 75-cent Canadian dollar. The dollar, as we all know, was of significantly higher value than that and this represented a windfall in the neighbourhood of $150 million to $200 million for Ontario Hydro in the last fiscal year.

I suggested, along with a number of others in the province, that this be applied to a one-time payment to reduce the significant Ontario Hydro debt, part of which is a United States debt which is in excess of $9 billion, as the Treasurer will be well aware. To my knowledge, that has not been done. Hopefully, consideration is still being given to that initiative, but we are not optimistic.

The study carried out by Cresap indicated that there are 2,500 redundant managerial employees in just one sector of Ontario Hydro’s operations. What is the response of Ontario Hydro to that? “Well, we’re going to look at keeping these individuals on through a period of time and finding opportunities for them within Ontario Hydro.”

Shortly on the heels of that announcement, we have another indication from Ontario Hydro that it is going to build an approximately $200-million edifice in North York to house -- guess how many Ontario Hydro employees? -- 2,500, exactly the number identified by Cresap as being redundant: an edifice in North York which is nothing less than a monument to excess.

This Treasurer and government try to convince us that they are fiscally responsible on frequent occasions. We have to wonder about that; but we certainly do not have to wonder about it in respect to Ontario Hydro. It is not the hallmark of that crown corporation, and this government, despite all its rhetoric, has done nothing to change that.

ORAL QUESTIONS

PROPERTY SPECULATION

Mr. B. Rae: I would like to address a question to the Treasurer, who has been musing over the last few days outside this place both to the Toronto Sun editorial board and, indeed, to a great many reporters on Thursday about the wisdom of imposing a land transfer tax increase on every single purchaser of real estate in the province; in fact, he is talking about doubling the land transfer tax.

Since the doubling of that tax would have the effect of increasing the average resale price of somewhere over $250,000, increasing the cost to that purchaser by a more than $2,000 tax ripoff, can the Treasurer tell us what possible justice or merit there is in even contemplating a tax increase that will not deal with speculation, that will not focus attention on the real crux of the problem, but will instead punish absolutely every person who is in the housing market?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I have never given even a passing thought to doubling the land transfer tax. I do not intend to do it, and the question is therefore irrelevant.

Mr. B. Rae: I wonder if the Treasurer might tell us then what was on his mind when the Toronto Star on Friday, February 17, reported he said, “an increased land transfer tax could slow speculators who purchase homes and flip them for a profit.”

If the Treasurer says he does not have something on his mind, perhaps he would do us the justice of saying what he does have in mind. Again, why is he focusing attention on a land transfer tax when that is a tax that applies to every single purchaser across the board, instead of focusing attention on a tax on land speculation which will deal directly with speculators in the marketplace and not punish everybody and treat all the people out there who are trying to buy a house as if they are some kind of speculators?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think the honourable member is aware that there are other problems in the development of the general community of Ontario that perhaps he has not brought his mind to bear on; the necessity, for example, of providing infrastructure, sewers, water and so on that the province is providing assistance to municipalities on. This is funded in large measure by the amount of money collected on the land transfer tax.

The honourable member knows that we do not earmark those revenues, but he is aware that as these properties are sold, it provides the province by way of the consolidated revenue fund with the resources to meet those requirements based on these growing communities.

Mr. B. Rae: I am asking the Treasurer to focus specifically on the question I have asked him, not some other question which he might have hoped somebody else might ask him. He has a choice as to what kind of tax he is going to impose or not impose to deal with this question of speculation.

Just to ask the Treasurer to cast his mind to one specific example: He will know that the federal Tory government sold a 17-hectare site at Wilson Heights Boulevard to a company for $14.28 million and, two months later, this company resold the property for $19.8 million, which is a profit of $5.5 million.

The land transfer tax on this original sale was $212,675; if doubled, it would take it up that much higher. But whether doubled or not, the company is still left with over $5 million in speculative gain, gain that is pure speculation, a quick flip of property which was previously public property, the price of which then escalates and goes right through the market as it is flipped again and again.

I want to ask the Treasurer one more time: Why does he not deal with that situation by imposing a very tough and rigorous speculation tax, rather than contemplating increases in the land transfer tax which simply punishes absolutely everybody who decides to try to get in on buying a house? Why does he not choose the effective method?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I am not convinced that the land speculation tax is as effective as the honourable member would point out. However, I did say in response to the question asked by his financial critic, that the Treasury is looking at alternatives in land taxation that may or may not be useful. The fact that the member raises it every day is interesting, but we are reviewing it and we are examining what the effects on the community might be.

It appears to me that the governments in the past have moved in with draconian solutions at about the most inappropriate point in the market. My own view, having lived through this -- from the opposition’s point of view particularly -- was that the land speculation tax, in my judgement, was not effective in the trial that it had here in this jurisdiction.

Mr. Speaker: New question.

Mr. B. Rae: Two years ago the Treasurer was telling us that the heat had gone out of the market.

Mr. Speaker: Question to which minister?

DRUG ABUSE

Mr. B. Rae: In the absence of the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan), I would like to address a question to the Premier. Reports from police, social workers and people who are working on the street provide us with a most disturbing picture of the dramatic increase in the use of cocaine and, in particular, the use of the drug which is a cocaine derivative known as crack.

I want to ask the Premier why it is that, given this dramatic increase in the use of cocaine and crack and a dramatic fall in the price of both cocaine and crack, there has been really no change and no improvement at all in the provincial facilities for the treatment of people who clearly now have an addiction problem with both these drugs?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I appreciate the honourable member’s anecdotal information in that regard. As he knows, we have a very large facility funded by the government, the Addiction Research Foundation; and a number of other programs have been instituted to try to address this problem, both at an enforcement level and at an educational and medical level.

I can tell my honourable friend that the need for facilities for rehabilitation is one of those matters that is constantly under review. Should the government deem that to be necessary, obviously that is what will be done.

Mr. B. Rae: In the report that the Metropolitan Toronto Police made to the Metropolitan Toronto Police Commission last year, in their request for more help and more police officers to deal with this problem, they said there were 24 deaths in Ontario in 1987, 12 of them in Metropolitan Toronto, which in their view were directly caused by cocaine. In 13 other deaths, cocaine was found in the systems of the deceased, along with other drugs. In 17 other deaths in Ontario, cocaine was found in the bloodstream of persons who died from other causes, that is to say stabbing or shooting.

This is not entirely anecdotal evidence. It is evidence that is very firm on the street as to the large number of people who are affected and who, in fact, are killed by the use of these drugs and by crimes associated with these drugs.

The Premier referred to the Addiction Research Foundation. The Addiction Research Foundation has 10 inpatient beds for all youth addiction, that is to say drugs and alcohol. When the Premier talks about the Addiction Research Foundation, is he telling us that he thinks 10 inpatient beds for kids who are addicted to all drugs and alcohol, all those drug problems, are in any sense adequate, even for beginning to touch on this problem?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: Certainly that is not the full extent of the government’s programs. Some very helpful person under the gallery just handed me a note that may interest my honourable friend:

“The ministry currently is spending $35.6 million on 149 community-based programs, including detox centres, day and residential treatment and evaluation and counselling services, funds the Addiction Research Foundation with an annual operating budget of $32 million, the Donwood Institute and public and psychiatric hospitals. Annual funding for mental health and addiction programs has increased 50 per cent since last year.”

That being said -- and those are some facts for my honourable friend’s consideration -- I am not trying to argue that that is enough; we are always looking at ways to upgrade our programming to assist people.

Mr. B. Rae: While the Premier is getting his information from under the gallery, perhaps he could answer these questions. His own report from the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black) showed that in 1987 nearly 1,000 Ontarians were treated outside the province for drug-related medical conditions, and even the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay referred in his report to the terrible shortage of services for young people and the terrible shortage of services in northern Ontario, two specific problems which he said cried out for action.

We are dealing now with a crisis affecting our young people in this province: waiting lists; kids having to go down to the United States; kids going into programs which their families cannot afford and which are not adequately subsidized by the Ontario health insurance plan; costs to families which are running in the thousands of dollars in terms of this treatment. There is a crisis of people who are not getting treatment because the services simply are not available in this province.

Does the Premier recognize the severity of this crisis and what is he prepared to do to see that we begin to get it under control in terms of treatment?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: I think the honourable member would say that this government is indeed concerned and has started to implement action as a result of the Black task force.

Mr. B. Rae: Nothing. You have not made one announcement.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: That just is not correct. We have a wide range of programs that are available in a residential community-based area. That is the thrust, as the member knows, of health care delivery of this government and this province. That being said, these matters are constantly under review; if we can improve them, we will.

USE OF MINISTRY AFFILIATION

Mr. Harris: I wonder if the Minister of Housing can tell us why her ministry has given permission for a member of her ministry staff to use his job with the Ministry of Housing to run a private association with the aim of promoting the use of Smart card technology.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am sorry. I would like more information about the question that was raised by the member and I will look into it.

Mr. Harris: I am not surprised that she does not know what is going on over in her ministry. That has been demonstrated time and again.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Harris: I have here a business card of Lorne M. Boates, CA, founding president of the Advanced Card Technology Association of Canada. The address is third floor, 777 Bay Street, and the phone number is the ministry phone number. The minister will know that address is the Ministry of Housing address. The phone number is, indeed, the ministry phone number. Yet nowhere on that card does it mention or say anything about the Ministry of Housing.

I wonder if the minister can tell us how she or her deputy would allow a civil servant, whose salary is paid for by the people of Ontario, whose office, phone number and fax number are paid for by the people of Ontario, to work on behalf of a private association which has nothing to do with his housing responsibilities or his responsibilities with her ministry.

Hon. Ms. Hošek: As the member has indicated, this is a matter that I am pleased to investigate. As soon as I have an answer, I will bring it to the House.

Mr. Harris: When the minister is investigating, she might also want to investigate not only his involvement but also the fact that the card says he is the founding president of this organization that is clearly intended not to study the possible use of Smart cards but to promote their use to the government of Ontario, and in all likelihood to the Ministry of Housing of which he is now an employee, at some time in the future.

I also would refer the minister to minutes of the last meeting of the Advanced Card Technology Association of Canada. It was indicated there in the minutes of this meeting that the Ministry of Housing would be prepared to pay the costs of the incorporation of this association. Can the minister explain the reasoning for her ministry to be paying for the incorporation costs of a private organization that has nothing to do with the work of her ministry?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I must say I admire the member opposite’s capacity to spin one question into three. I will answer as I answered before. I am pleased to look into the matter, and anything that needs to be said about it I will bring back to the House.

RAPE CRISIS CENTRES

Mr. Jackson: My question is to the Solicitor General. On Thursday of this week, the minister will meet with representatives from several of Ontario’s rape crisis centres. As she will recall, last year, based on several questions we raised in this House and based on the closure of two centres and the potential closing of four others, she agreed to review the funding policies for staffing in these centres. In fact, as we know, she only modified the policy, but in reality the access to staffing moneys is as strict as ever in Ontario.

The minister also announced last year that she would request five-year plans in order to stabilize funding in Ontario rape crisis centres. She has now informed these groups that they must come up with new, one-year-only plans.

Could the minister please tell the House why she is backpedalling from her commitment to provide staff funding, as the Liberal government in Quebec does, and why she is backpedalling from a five-year stabilization plan for Ontario’s rape crisis centres?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I am indeed happy that I will be meeting with these groups this week, as we have a very major undertaking to look at. During the summer months, I went and visited at least half of the rape crisis centres around this province and was interested to realize as I travelled around that they have very much changed their mandate.

Whereas originally they were addressing primarily victims of recent sexual assault, which is why, I suppose, they were placed under the Ministry of the Solicitor General, in fact a great deal of their time and energy is now devoted to the problem of incest recovery. This is a growing and very demanding new mandate and one that I, with them, will be examining.

It is not what was originally under their planning process, and it must be looked at in new and creative ways, because many communities in this province have no services at all, while indeed the organizations that do exist could all have twice the money and still be short-staffed.

Mr. Jackson: The minister knows that she has postponed these meetings with the centres on four separate occasions. Some have cynically suggested that it was because she had hoped the House was going to prorogue two weeks ago.

The fact of the matter is, and I raised this question with her a month ago in this House, that several centres in Ontario are actually going to run out of money. Several ran out of money this weekend, several more are slated for running out of funds this coming weekend, and they still have to maintain their operations for a further two-month period.

What does the minister suggest these centres do? Should they close their doors? How does she propose that they cope, when she is on record as saying she will advance no dollars in order for them to keep their doors open? What does she propose that these centres do?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: I do not know where I am on record as saying I will advance no dollars. In fact, I have advanced money on a regular basis, over and above what was in the original ministry budget, to make sure that no doors were closed.

Indeed, we have expended extra money to keep these centres open until we can work with them to put in a long-term plan. In one sense, the funding is on a year-to-year basis, the same as all other such funding is on a year-to-year basis. There is no intention -- and they are aware of this -- that they will not be funded next year. They know they will be funded. The questions are will they be funded for new and different programs; will they be funded more than the rate of inflation and so on? Their funding is not in question, nor has any door closed.

Mr. Jackson: The minister knows that the numbers of calls are doubling and tripling. She knows that the mandate has broadened in terms of the amount of counselling and client load which these centres are being called upon to carry. She suggests that there are many facets to the problems of sexual assault that rape crisis centres have to cope with.

The minister will be aware that on December 15, 1988, Steven Bancroft Buchanan escaped from the cells beneath the old city hall. Buchanan had savagely raped three women and was subsequently recaptured. The minister will also be aware that New Zealand has a law which allows victims to request notification whenever a previous assailant has escaped custody, applied for a day pass or parole or otherwise been released.

Is the minister prepared to support a victim’s right-to-know law within areas of provincial jurisdiction?

Hon. Mrs. Smith: The question ranges quite beyond the ministry I am in charge of in so far as it goes into the Ministry of the Attorney General and other ministries. Many of the matters the member has raised are under constant consideration. I will be dealing with them and other questions with the groups when I meet with them.

I am pleased to note the member acknowledges that the scope and demand for this service is increasing at such a great rate that it is almost impossible to visualize how we can service this area. This is why we look to them to come together with us for new and creative solutions, because as I say, even if we funded the existing centres to all of their needs, that would still leave the vast majority of the province with no service at all. We have to address it on a much broader and more general basis so that we can be creative and thoughtful in our approaches.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr. Allen: I have a question to the Minister of Community and Social Services. On the weekend I was at the Federation of Women Teachers’ Associations of Ontario conference, Women and Poverty. Inescapably, as I attended workshops after plenary session, the question that kept arising and arising was not just poverty among women but poverty among children. The organization has become intensely concerned, as has group after group in Ontario, with the fact that somewhere in the order of 400,000 children in this province live in poverty. They have thrown themselves into the battle to secure some action from this government.

When group after group on the front line has come to the minister and his government with the problem of children in poverty, not just for months now but for years, why does he have to be dragged towards some kind of action on this crucial and fundamental question in Ontario’s social life?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: It is clearly stated in the Social Assistance Review Committee report that poverty has an impact on children well beyond their own families. It has an impact, as the teachers’ organization referred to, in the school system itself. The findings of Dr. Dan Offord for McMaster University in Hamilton suggested exactly the same thing, so that is known to us and that was one of the reasons we asked Judge Thomson to do the review.

I have indicated before, and I will indicate again, that the response to that review is under very serious consideration and within the next two to three months, probably less, a response will be given from the government.

Mr. Allen: Of course, the minister never commits himself fully to the first stage of the SARC report’s reforms.

I will remind him how severe the problem is in the light of an American study by the US Urban Institute which indicates that it is not just the poverty and children in general, but that Canada has the second-highest rate of children living in severe poverty. That puts it at the second-worst situation among western countries in that respect.

A recent study by an M. Smeeding for the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics indicates those countries that have resolved this problem have done it because their programs for single women, sole-support mothers and children are much better in terms of government action.

Might I then ask the minister again why, when his government has in excess of $180 million in the high-tech fund and when the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) has just discovered that over $360 million he was not expecting is sitting in the tax accounts of the federal government waiting to be transferred, has this government not made a clear and unequivocal declaration that it will act fully and completely on the first phase of the Thomson reforms, and at least give some hope to those families and children and teachers and others on the front line that there will be real action on children in poverty in Ontario in the very near future?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Like the honourable member, I too was very concerned to hear about the comparative position of Canada with the other western nations of the world. I believe we were second only to the United States at the bottom end of the scale.

However, let me refer to the $300 million the honourable member indicated. Naturally, he would not be at all surprised that when I found out about that I had a little discussion with the Treasurer, and he pointed out to me clearly that this was a one-time flow of money from the federal government and we could not count on that happening every year.

The honourable member will be as certain as I am that we want to be sure the kinds of money we need for this enhancement of social assistance to the parents of those children which then affects the children themselves, is going to flow every year from this point on, not just for one year. Therefore, I want more assurances than just that kind of money flowing from the federal government in order to enact this program over a long period of time, not just over a short period of time.

PROPOSED GRAVEL PIT

Mr. J. M. Johnson: My question is to the Minister of Agriculture and Food. As the minister is aware, the township of Puslinch in the county of Wellington is engaged in an Ontario Municipal Board hearing to defend its draft official plan, specifically its extractive industry policies and the preservation of farm land. Why did the ministry refuse to participate in this hearing?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: The honourable member knows it was his government that brought in the food land guidelines. The guidelines have never objected to developing or using land for aggregate purposes. The only thing is that there was never any mention made about extracting aggregate below the water level, so we have had to contend with that. Here again, as long as they are prepared to rehabilitate that land to the best of their ability, the guidelines would permit that type of thing.

We will be certain and we will be assured that there will be rehabilitation of that land wherever possible. That is the reason we have not appeared before the OMB.

Mr. J. M. Johnson: The minister knows you cannot rehabilitate below the water level. The University of Guelph, the leading agricultural college in Canada, is one of the participants in this OMB hearing as a proponent of having certain agricultural lands in the township of Puslinch designated to allow the extraction of sand and gravel. One would have thought the University of Guelph, dedicated as it is to achieving the best in agriculture, would not be taking this position.

Does the minister not understand that by failing to have his farm land preservation policy defended at this hearing, he is condoning the University of Guelph’s position and is sending a signal out to all Ontario that he has abandoned his ministry’s commitment to preserving agricultural land in this province?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: I disagree with that. We have to be realistic about this whole thing. We have to acknowledge the fact that various counties rely on gravel extraction for construction purposes and other purposes. Take a look at Essex; take a look at Kent. If the food land guidelines were to say there will be absolutely no extraction of gravel, then Essex and Kent would be in pretty dire straits when it comes to using that kind of aggregate for those purposes.

The same can be said in other areas of the province. The food land guidelines face reality, knowing that development of one kind or another has to take place on agricultural land. As I indicated, the food land guidelines also require that land be rehabilitated to its --

Mr. J. M. Johnson: You cannot rehabilitate it.

Hon. Mr. Riddell: Oh yes; we can rehabilitate a lot of that land. Sure, some of the land will not be rehabilitated, but we can move fill back into lands where gravel has been extracted under the water level and the rest of it can well be used for irrigation ponds to carry out some of the irrigation work that may be done in that area.

PUBLIC SECTOR PENSION PLANS

Mrs. Fawcett: My question is for the Treasurer. A number of teachers in my area have expressed concern about the management of their pension funds. Some members have said they would like the funds to be managed by the government. Others have wondered whether their funds could be better managed by their federation. Could the Treasurer advise this House whether this has been part of the negotiations with the federation and could he explain the thrust of these talks.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I thank the honourable member for notice of this question. It is certainly an important one since during the discussions with the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, our main proposal was for a joint trusteeship of the management of the teachers’ superannuation funds. This would have involved equal representation on behalf of the government and the teachers, with an impartial chairman.

Unfortunately, the teachers felt there should be final, binding and obligatory arbitration associated with this. It is my view that because in the funds the Treasurer must guarantee there is about $20 billion involved, passing this responsibility off to a third party as an arbitrator was not something I cared to recommend to my colleagues.

I would say, and I am glad to have a chance to make this specifically clear, that I hope the legislation we are presently preparing will have the alternatives right within it, that the teachers may opt for the trusteeship we have already offered, or if they feel it more appropriate to move right out of the public system and manage their own funds. This of course would mean that the government and the taxpayers would no longer have the heavy responsibility of guaranteeing the benefits.

Mrs. Fawcett: I thank the Treasurer for that clarification. It has also been suggested by the Ontario Public Service Employees Union that pensions be negotiated as part of the total negotiated contract. Would the Treasurer please comment on this.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The negotiability of pensions is something I really have no personal objection to as long as the taxpayers, as represented by the Treasurer and the government, can in the last analysis make a balance on whether or not the tax base can withstand the value of the benefits in the future. Once again, our discussions got into difficulties -- I guess that is the appropriate word -- on the basis of final, binding and compulsory arbitration. I simply repeat for the honourable member that since these funds would together accumulate to $20 billion, we felt the public interest had to be represented directly by the government and not handed off to a third party by way of arbitration.

ALCOHOL AND DRUG ABUSE

Mr. Morin-Strom: I have a question for the Minister of Community and Social Services with regard to substance abuse problems being faced by young people in our province. The Addiction Research Foundation has reported that in Algoma, families of these young people cannot find proper treatment facilities, not only in Sault Ste. Marie but elsewhere in Ontario as well, particularly for children below the age of 16.

Will the minister give us his assurance that we are going to have programs established in Sault Ste. Marie and other residential treatment programs established in other communities across the province in order that the recommendation from the task force, from his own colleague the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black) is met, that the ministry provide “a high priority to a co-operative effort to establish additional programs and services for adolescents and teenagers in Ontario at the earliest possible moment”? When will this happen?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: For children below the age of 16, our ministry does not at the present time, as the honourable member has pointed out, have a specific range of programs for substance abuse. Rather, we use the programs available through our children’s aid societies or through our children’s mental health centres.

The honourable member will be well aware that both of those services are presently available in Sault Ste. Marie. I might add that the children’s mental health centre in Sault Ste. Marie has undergone some very positive transformation over the last two or three years, and more and more of the community is making use of that service now that it is producing the results the community wants it to produce.

The honourable member is also correct that the Black report clearly indicated that in consultation with other ministries, particularly the Ministry of Health, our ministry should look at the possibility of specific programs for substance abuse as opposed to the more generic programs. That is under consideration at the present time.

Mr. Morin-Strom: Certainly, the minister must recognize that there is a very serious problem with the extent of the programs and services being provided by other agencies when we have a situation in a community such as Sault Ste. Marie where last year 38 local youths had to be referred to drug treatment programs in the United States, in cities such as Minneapolis, St. Louis and San Diego, at an average cost of $20,000 per child. The bill for these kinds of programs amounts to nearly $1 million just for youth in Sault Ste. Marie.

When is the minister going to come through with programs that allow these young people to be treated in their own community in a much more effective and efficient way by the government of Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: As the honourable member is probably aware, the Premier (Mr. Peterson) has made it very clear to all ministries of government that are impacted by the Black recommendations, particularly the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and my own ministry, that we must come back to him directly with our proposals and plans to implement the recommendations of the Black report.

We have done that partially up to this point. The member is aware of the fact that the Ministry of Education has made some significant movements in that direction. The Ministry of Health and our ministry are presently co-operatively co-ordinating their response to it, because as the member knows, where significant treatment is involved our ministry has a lower capacity than the Ministry of Health. What is under consideration at the moment is whether this should be a joint effort and whether one or the other of us assumes full responsibility for it.

BEEF MARKETING

Mr. Villeneuve: My question is for the Minister of Agriculture and Food. In the minister’s recent announcement on the beef vote, eligible voters must have owned or raised a minimum of four head of cattle for at least 45 days during 1987 or 1988. I have been contacted by a young person who is currently a bona fide beef producer and recently got into the business, but did not own four head of cattle in 1988 for at least 45 days. Will this young person have the opportunity to vote, or what has the minister done to look after people recently involved in the beef business?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: The criteria have been established. If you did not own four head of cattle for a period of 45 days, either last year or the year before that, then you will not be considered an eligible voter.

Mr. Villeneuve: In the minister’s announcement on the same beef vote, one of the questions pertains to working towards a national supply management program. If a national program is not a realistic goal, and it may not be, how much extra income does the minister feel the agency or commission that regulates the sale of all cattle will put into producers’ pockets?

Hon. Mr. Riddell: That is really not for me to decide. I am sure that if the honourable member has cattle on his farm and is an eligible voter, he will be the one who will help make the decision whether there will be a beef commission and whether this beef commission will strive towards a national supply management system. That is what the voters out there will decide.

APPRENTICESHIP TRAINING

Mr. Offer: I have a question to the Minister of Skills Development. I have recently received a number of concerns from constituent electrical companies. Their concerns deal with the requirements, and in particular the ratio, of journeymen to apprentices under the Apprenticeship and Tradesmen’s Qualifications Act. I have been informed that there is an acute shortage of electricians at present in southern Ontario and I ask the minister what steps he is taking to address this problem, under apprenticeship, of the ratio of journeymen to apprentices.

Hon. Mr. Curling: The member addresses a concern many people have been writing to me about regarding the ratio of electricians’ apprentices. As the member knows, the active involvement of the construction industry over the past couple of years has caused a great demand on that profession. As the member is quite aware, the ratios are set by regulations. Any changes that are made to those regulations are done through a provincial advisory committee, which people make representation to. If such changes take place, we will look at it very carefully and adjust those ratios. At present, the ratio is one to three. For every journeyman there are three apprentices.

Mr. Offer: Regarding these concerns brought forward to the provincial advisory committee about the current ratio, can the minister give me some idea of the time period for which this committee will be looking at this issue of ratios under the apprenticeship act?

Hon. Mr. Curling: Maybe I turned the apprenticeship ratio around. It is one apprentice to three journeymen, if I can just correct the record. I thank the member for Scarborough West (Mr. R. F. Johnston) who seems to be on the ball in this respect. We have to be extremely careful that in the changing of these ratios we do not respond just to the moment where there is a demand, because the concern of the profession is that we may have a flood on the market itself.

To respond directly to the member’s question, as soon as we receive those reports from the provincial advisory committee we will look at them very seriously and make the necessary adjustment.

FRENCH-LANGUAGE SERVICES

Miss Martel: I have a question for the minister responsible for francophone affairs concerning the French Language Services Act. The minister will know that during the estimates for his ministry I raised concerns that there had been very little information given to the general public concerning the act. I raised the concerns because it appeared to me there was a great deal of confusion around what the bill entailed, who would be responsible, who would be affected, etc.

Two weeks ago my office surveyed most of the ministry offices in Sudbury to determine how the act was impacting upon them. We found some very wide discrepancies in a number of areas: how it was determined that the act would be implemented in the ministry; how many -- if any -- other positions would require bilingual staff; what provisions there were for French-language training, etc.

Given all of this, I would like to ask the minister if he would commit himself to ensuring that all of the French-language co-ordinators for all of the ministries located in Sudbury would meet with the staff in Sudbury to go through the act and all of the questions arising out of it.

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: I want to thank the member for showing so much interest in Bill 8. I know she is faced with some problems in her area, and the Office of Francophone Affairs and myself have always been willing to offer not only her but her party or any member of this House more help. But I would like to remind the honourable member that a significant number of initiatives have been created by the Office of Francophone Affairs through videos and brochures.

Every ministry has an implementation manual. Every regional caucus has been shown these implementation manuals and videos. I have even offered the member, at the time of the estimates, to visit her caucus personally with members of the Office of Francophone Affairs and provide her with all the necessary information so that every co-ordinator, every public servant, will have the same real information that she is looking for. Yes, I will provide the member with all of the help necessary to provide information to all civil servants.

Miss Martel: I think the minister is telling me that yes, he will direct all of the co-ordinators to meet with the staff in Sudbury. I certainly hope that is what he is saying because that is specifically what I am looking for.

Also, as a result of the work we did, one of the big concerns I have arises out of the fact that there are some very different mechanisms for providing French-language training throughout each of the ministries. Because each ministry is responsible for providing French-language training to its staff, there is a wide discrepancy between who is receiving training and just how adequate that is. As a consequence, would the minister seriously consider developing a general policy which would apply to all ministries, so that all staff would have equal and adequate access to French-language training?

Hon. Mr. Grandmaître: An interministerial committee was set up some months ago and it is now working on a kit, on a program that will, as the member says, provide everybody with the same information. As the member knows, co-ordinators from every ministry have different ways of delivering the same information, but some co-ordinators do not communicate as well as others.

It is our responsibility to see that all co-ordinators receive and transfer this information and we will provide the member with all the assistance needed, instead of doing what some members of the Conservative government are doing at the present time -- using the press to misinform the public generally about Bill 8. At least the member stands up and asks a very perfect, legal question.

FUNDING OF SOCIAL SERVICE AGENCIES

Mr. Villeneuve: I have a question of the Minister of Community and Social Services. The minister is aware of a number of strikes involving local associations for the mentally retarded.

Can I get the minister’s attention?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Villeneuve: There are a number of strikes in the area involving associations for the mentally retarded. Sudbury, North Bay, Dufferin county and Dundas county in my own riding are affected. The minister should know that the associations and union locals involved agree that the problem is one of inadequate transfer payments. The strike is on now in Dundas county.

Does he agree that strikes are most disruptive to the mentally handicapped and service will suffer for as long as local agencies are unable to compete with the pay and benefits given to ministry staff and other public service employees?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Where a strike is in progress, arrangements have been made by the administration and management people of that organization to continue those necessary services that simply cannot be withdrawn; for example. residential services. Day programming, however, is stopped and the young people continue to reside with their own parents in that situation.

I do not like that any more than the honourable member does. The difficulty, however, is that the amount of money that we can flow to the agencies is roughly in the neighbourhood of the inflation rate, 4.5 or five per cent, as the case may be.

The individual agencies then have to decide how they are going to allocate that money for a range of services. Obviously, the biggest bill they have to pay is their salary bill, and that restricts them somewhat: I certainly agree with that. We constantly try to flow them as much money as we possibly can. It is not always what they would like to have.

Mr. Villeneuve: The minister realizes that a percentage across the board just compounds the problem. It does not solve anything. The poor get poorer and the rich get richer.

The starting salary, for instance, at the Rideau Regional Centre is $12.84 an hour. In Dundas county, after three years. a worker receives $9.50 an hour. How can the minister justify the withholding of funds to equalize pay levels across Ontario? At the very least, try to improve the transfer payments so some of the associations that are receiving the lowest salaries get looked after in a slightly better way than the rest of the province.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Over the last couple of years, we have reversed the ratio of the total number of resources going to institutions compared to those going to community agencies. About a year and a half ago we reached the point where more than 50 per cent of all the money in my budget for the developmentally disabled is now going into community settings versus institutional settings. I do not know what the figure is right now -- we have not done the final analysis for this current fiscal year -- but I am sure it is going to be that much more again.

As the honourable member knows, we are gradually and increasingly moving more people out of facilities and back into the community and providing community services so that people who already live in the community do not have to go into an institution. As we do that, we are able to move more and more of those resources back into the community, and as that process continues we will have more resources and we will be able to improve and to boost and to enhance the services we are offering at the community level.

Hon. Mr. Ward: The member will know, as will all members, that Bill 70 has been debated in this House, it has received second reading and I would expect it will shortly receive royal assent.

The purpose of Bill 70 was to create a contract for continuing education teachers. Prior to the establishment of this legislation, all certified teachers in the province could either have a permanent contract or a probationary contract. Those teachers who taught only continuing education classes were not being provided the opportunity for either one of these contract options.

Bill 70 has created a third form of contract for continuing education teachers. The legislation does not change any of the other existing provisions. A continuing education teacher of a credit course will, of course, still require a teaching certificate and it will be only those instructors who teach noncredit continuing education courses who will not require a teaching certificate.

Could the minister tell us what his ministry is doing with regard to the recommendations of this association?

WORKERS’ COMPENSATION

Mr. Mackenzie: I have a question for the Minister of Labour. The minister was over in Hamilton for an opening and some other events over the weekend. Following his visit, I had a call that I must confess disturbed me a little bit. It was from some of the injured workers who did some lobbying of the minister while he was in Hamilton.

One of the questions they were asking him was why everybody is not going to be allowed to appear before the committee that is looking into Bill 162, and they mentioned some of the delays in the hearings.

The minister, according to the injured workers who called me, told them he had nothing to do with that at all; if they had any concern they should be contacting the committee and that it arranged its own business. He also made what I thought was an uncalled-for and rather strange comment: that they might also be interested in knowing that the chairman of that committee was a New Democrat, the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren).

Can the minister tell us if he has been quoted correctly by these injured workers?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am glad the member for Hamilton East brought us back, during this question period, to last Friday in Hamilton, because he and I participated Friday afternoon in what I thought was a rather historic event: the opening of an occupational health and safety clinic in that community that I think is really going to make a difference to the working people of that community and be of great assistance to workers from the Hamilton-Niagara area.

He is absolutely right. The member for Nickel Belt is the chairman of the standing committee on resources development and he is doing a great job. The chair of that committee, along with the committee members, determines the

schedule for the hearings and it is inappropriate for me to take on the responsibility of determining the timetable for the hearings under Bill 162.

I think the member for Hamilton East would agree that any interference by me as to the scheduling of those who want to appear before the committee would he entirely inappropriate and that if people have concerns about the schedules, they ought to contact either the chairman or the clerk of the committee. That would be the appropriate step, so I was correctly quoted.

Mr. Mackenzie: I am pleased that the minister was honest enough to admit that is exactly what he said to these workers. I would ask him why the cheap shot, because is it not also true that when we tried to move that committee so that it could hear all of these people, it was the six Liberal members on that committee who voted solidly to deny us that right and it was the minister’s executive assistant who was running up and down the line telling them what to do in the committee hearings?

That was a cheap shot concerning the chairman of that committee, and the minister knows it. Let me tell him the workers know it as well.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Now we are getting into patent nonsense from the member for Hamilton East. I will tell my friend from Hamilton East that I do not think the member for Nickel Belt is embarrassed about being a New Democrat, and I do not think he is embarrassed about being the chairman of that committee either. I think he is proud of both of his marvellous characteristics.

Several weeks ago the standing committee on resources development determined that it would hold some six weeks of public hearings, long before the events of a few days ago that the member for Hamilton East describes. It decided, after due deliberation, that it would hold six weeks of public hearings. I am glad that it provided that much time.

The events of last Wednesday were to the effect that the committee should throw away its agenda -- and I think it is outrageous for that to be suggested -- and that it should just go on having hearings until every single person who wants to have an opportunity to make an oral submission be heard. If my friend the member for Hamilton East can show me one occasion in this House where a standing committee -- and I know, Mr. Speaker, I am taking a long time -- decided to have hearings until every single deputant was heard, then I will be terribly surprised.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The member for Leeds-Grenville is waiting very patiently.

LONG-TERM PLANNING

Mr. Runciman: My question is for the Treasurer. It deals with a demographic study that his ministry released a couple of weeks ago -- I believe it was his ministry -- indicating that the population of Ontario would increase by approximately three million people by the year 2011, believe.

I am just wondering if the government has any concerns with respect to that projected population growth, its impact on the province and various regions of the province. If so, what kind of long-term planning is it involved in?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The office of economic policy releases that demographic study every year and it forms the basis of whatever long-range planning occurs. The honourable member is aware that we also make an economic projection year by year, the so-called grey book, which was presented to the House in December just passed, giving us the basis of the economic changes for any plans that we bring forward during that year.

I cannot tell the honourable member that I have reached any conclusions about what the projections are to the year 2011. Although I certainly hope and expect to be assisting the government of the day with its economic policy, I have not got around to any definitive recommendations in that connection at this time.

Mr. Runciman: Perhaps that response should be cause for concern in some quarters.

If we take a look at the current problems that the government is facing with respect to health care, education, the consumption of prime farm land, congestion in our major urban areas, waste disposal problems, increases in terms of street crime, housing prices in Metropolitan Toronto and other areas of southwestern Ontario, traffic problems which we are all familiar with, highway infrastructure concerns, I wonder if it would not be prudent for the government to consider perhaps a royal commission to engage in long-term planning with respect to population growth in this province, measuring its impact on a variety of services we have come to take for granted that now are under some severe strain, and perhaps even proposing targets for this province which we could work towards achieving.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: I think the member is aware that the ministries of the government are in a planning mode at all times. Our responsibility as ministers is to see that we make projections by way of budget and development that are going to meet the needs of the community.

I think it is quite possible, particularly from the honourable member’s point of view, to be depressed about the future; perhaps he has every reason to feel so depressed. But when we step back from the immediate problems of the day and see what has been accomplished in the past by the honourable member’s colleagues and also see the quality of life we have achieved here, with the provision of opportunities for ourselves and our children by way of good education, by way of the improvements of the environment and opportunities on a very broad basis, we feel nothing but optimism as we look to the future. That probably is the basic difference between our party and his.

PETITIONS

NATUROPATHY

Mr. Kanter: I have a petition on the subject of naturopathy, signed by some 20 or 21 people who attend a practitioner in my riding. The petition reads as follows:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of the province of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“Whereas it is my constitutional right to have available and to choose the health care system of my preference;

“And

whereas naturopathy has had self-governing status in Ontario for more than 42 years;

“We petition the Ontario Legislature to call on the government to introduce legislation that would guarantee naturopaths the right to practise their art and science to the fullest without prejudice or harassment.”

I have attached my name to the petition, and I will now submit it to the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. There are a number of members who would like to present petitions if they could be heard.

TEACHERS’ SUPERANNUATION

Mr. Tatham: I have a petition which reads as follows:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“We request the government of the province of Ontario to recommence negotiations and direct the parties to the negotiation process to work towards a reform of pension arrangements which will serve the legitimate needs of both the government of Ontario and the teachers of this province. As Ontario educators, with full participation in the teachers’ superannuation plan, we have a direct and vital interest in these negotiations with respect to both our current and continuing status as contributors, and to our retirement security.”

It is signed by 230 people and I have also affixed my signature.

MOTIONS

ESTIMATES

Hon. Mr. Conway moves that the standing committee on social development consider the estimates of the Ministry of Education before the estimates of the Office responsible for Women’s Issues and that the estimates of the Ministry of Consumer and Commercial Relations be transferred from the standing committee on administration of justice to the standing committee on general government, to be considered there before the supplementary estimates of the Ministry of the Environment.

Motion agreed to.

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ PUBLIC BUSINESS

Hon. Mr. Conway moves that Mr. Ferraro and Mr. Smith, and Mr. Black and Mr. Elliot exchange places respectively in the order of precedence for private members’ public business and that, notwithstanding standing order 71(h), the requirement for notice be waived with respect to ballot items 65 and 66.

Mr. Harris: I would like to take just a couple of moments to talk about this motion. This type of motion has come forward from this government on a very regular weekly basis. There has been a sense among House leaders that private members’ business is for the private members and that in spite of the rules and regulations that are there, which I point out are there for a good reason, we would, none the less, attempt to accommodate private members’ wishes as best we could when changes come forward.

Normally it has been that a member wanted to debate his bill and perhaps because events have overtaken the necessity or urgency of that bill or motion, he has to change it, or through sickness or illness or some other unforeseen event the member is away. Then we allow members to exchange places and we have always done that.

The motion deals with standing order 71(h). It says, “At least two weeks’ notice must be given for any item to be considered in the private members’ time and all bills to be debated must be introduced or notices of resolutions tabled not later than the Tuesday of the second week prior to the week in which the item is to be debated.”

The reason for this is to alert the critics of all parties, and indeed to alert the caucuses of all three parties that “this is the motion or bill that I wish to have debated.” I think all members require some time to take a look at it, to decide whether they support it or not, do a little research and contact the various interest groups that may be interested in that particular resolution.

From time to time, we have waived these notice periods for all caucuses: some in my caucus, some in the New Democratic Party, some in the Liberal caucus. We do so most generously, I believe, in the very spirit of nonpartisanship, on behalf of the private members themselves, regardless of which party they come from.

However, time after time now, for a period of the last five or six weeks, we have seen this motion come forward consistently at this particular time, and always on behalf of the Liberal caucus and the Liberal members. I suggest that this is an example, particularly when we look at the actual content of the motions.

They appear to be not so much motions that members would normally come for and that they would be interested in, but motions that are developed in the ministries and handed to a member. They say: “Please move this. It says what a great job I and my ministry and our government are doing in an area.”

I guess every once in a while a government likes to have somebody take some time and do that, although I find it strange that a private member would use up the one opportunity he or she may have every two or three years to really stand for something and be known for something, and use it in such a partisan way. None the less, that is what has happened.

I think we are seeing that this government is really, truly devoid of any and all direction in the front bench, as well as now in the back bench. Recently, a management consulting firm released a report that suggested that the government lacked any vision at all, all the way up through to the Office of the Premier. It seems that the government back benches are also lacking in ideas and concerns.

Last week, my colleague the member for Simcoe West (Mr. McCague) pointed out during private members’ time that one hour of valuable House time was wasted because none of over 30 Liberal backbenchers left with outstanding ballot items was prepared to proceed last Thursday, so only one ballot item was done instead of two.

I wish to reiterate my commitment to try to accommodate the government so that we may get on with the business of the House that is apparently so important that we are still sitting here at the end of February to try to clean up business that is normally attempted to be done by the end of December, which was two months ago. But I have to ask myself if the compromises that our party and the New Democratic Party have made and continue to make are really of any value in light of this particular motion.

I suggest that perhaps the answer is: I think not. The compromises we are making do not appear to be helping the government find any sense of direction. Private members’ business should not be punished for the clumsiness of this government nor for its lack of vision or direction, this occasion today being another fine example.

Our party will allow this motion to go ahead. We will have to look at two different motions and the ones we had planned and started to caucus last week. We will recaucus the two new ones this week and will attempt, in the few days available to us, to be ready to participate in a meaningful way this Thursday.

I think it is fair for me to point out that the government House leader and the whip may want to take a look at what is happening among their backbenchers, particularly at a time when one would think that they must at least suspect that there are probably 10 to 15 cabinet vacancies that will occur, if not immediately, then certainly in this next year.

This group, collectively, might want to be better prepared; might want to demonstrate a commitment to a cause or a concern and not be whipped around by the current administration, which appears to be shoving these things at them and saying: “Look, we are in serious trouble here. Please do this instead of what you might be interested in.”

Once again, we will support the motion, but I thought it was important that I get those few comments on the record.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I have just a couple of brief comments. First of all, I want to indicate that I support the comments that have been made by the House leader for the Conservative Party. I think these types of motions have been occurring too often -- perhaps on occasion they have also happened with opposition parties -- and I think that we are going to have to make sure that all members take responsibility for upgrading the importance of private members’ public business in this House.

I think over the last couple of years, especially since private members’ public business has been switched to Thursday morning, it has not been receiving the attention it did in the past, or the attention of the individual members. The turnout for votes at private members’ time is particularly disappointing. Very few members, especially members from the government, attend to vote on these important matters.

But I think that this motion in particular is a further diminishing of the importance of private members’ public business. The fact of the matter is that the Liberal government and its backbenchers did not expect that the Legislature would be in session at this time. As a result, they did not give any planning to private members’ time.

I do not think it is fair to the opposition members and other members who want to participate in these debates, since there is no real opportunity to research them and therefore little opportunity to have real, meaningful debate in the Legislature.

I also think it is important to note that there are two opposition members who are on the list who are ready, willing and wanting to debate private members’ ballot items. The new member for Welland-Thorold (Mr. Kormos) and the Conservative member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham), I am sure, would like to debate private members’ resolutions. They are on the list but they are at the bottom of the list because they were elected in by-elections.

If the government members cannot come up with ballot items to debate on time, I wish the government House leader would let us know and I am sure the member for Welland-Thorold and the member for London North would be more than willing to put forward their items and have them debated on a Thursday morning.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want to briefly respond to the interventions of my friends the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) and the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke). I regret that other business has called the third party House leader to another place, but I have to agree with him that this is a very routine motion that we have done, as he rightly indicated on a number of other occasions, to facilitate the business of private members in all three of the caucuses.

Notice has been given. I think the member should look at the Orders and Notices paper because, for the members in question -- I think of the member for Lambton (Mr. Smith), who wants to engage a debate about speed limits, something I know I have a particular interest in -- it does not in any way indicate the kind of deficiency that the member for Nipissing seemed to be suggesting. I think it is a routine motion. I do not think there is anything untoward about it.

The member for Windsor-Riverside knows well, of course, what the protocol is with respect to the lottery list. It is true that while the very sterling member for London North and the member for Welland-Thorold are actively involved, they, like the rest, have to take their place in this lottery.

I can remember the frustration years ago of being further down the list than perhaps my friend the member for Oshawa (Mr. Breaugh), who, I remember, always seemed to do particularly well in drawing an earlier, as opposed to a later, card.

I repeat that it is a routine motion. I am pleased to put it forward today because I know I will be putting one forward at some time in the future to perhaps accommodate the squire from Mount Forest, who, unlike me, is always ready to proceed.

As a final observation, I want to say, though the member for Nipissing is absent, that I know the member for Simcoe West will communicate to him that my colleagues on the government benches do not say to me any of the sorts of things that were being suggested by him.

They really just ask me, “How is it, government House leader, that the member for Nipissing could have been so outfoxed by Tom Long in the setting up of the criteria to choose the next leader of the Tory party of Ontario?” They say to me: “The member for Nipissing seems to be a very shrewd operator, tough-minded in matters of legislative debate. How is it that he could have allowed the president of the party, so youthful and so inexperienced in other matters, to have so completely taken charge of the criteria that will determine the next leader of the Tory party?”

Mr. Speaker: Is that referring to the motion?

Hon. Mr. Conway: So I say to my friends from Mount Forest and Alliston, if they want to report to the Tory House leader what it is my colleagues are wondering about, they can convey that wonder and wonderment, because we do not know how the member for Nipissing could have been so completely outfoxed in something so important.

Mr. Speaker: Usually, I allow the proposer of the motion to make the final response. Is there agreement to hear the member for Simcoe West?

Agreed to.

Mr. McCague: I just want to say to the House leader that his response to the points that were raised by the House leader for the Conservative Party and the House leader for the New Democratic Party was completely irrelevant to the point they were making.

It is important that everyone knows that we are supposed to have the matters to be debated before us two weeks ahead of time. Here it is three days ahead of time. That follows a booboo of last week in the absence of the House leader, who was ably replaced by the government whip. It is one booboo after another.

I think everybody in this House felt there would be some adjournment or whatever at about this time, and here the government has so much urgent business to do that it cannot tell us on Thursday what it wants to do next Thursday. I think that is a shame.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I believe we have heard the motion. We have had considerable discussion on it.

Hon. Mr. Conway: If the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) wants to make an intervention, I certainly wouldn’t deny him.

Mr. Speaker: Well, I will have to ask, is there unanimous consent?

Agreed to.

Mr. Laughren: I want to follow up on the government House leader’s comments about the Tory leadership race and talk about the reasons why Tom Long is leading in that race over the member for Nipissing, even though personally I think the member for Nipissing is more in tune with the ideology of this province than is Tom Long, whom I have never met.

I really was very interested in hearing what the House leader had to say about that, because he is a student of Ontario political history, and when he talks about it and even ruminates about why a particular candidate is doing better than another, I think most people in Ontario listen to him. I just want to say to the government House leader that I do not agree Tom Long should be the front runner in that race; I think it should be either the member for Nipissing or John Tory, although there are others in that caucus who could emerge as dark horses.

I do not want to take up the time of the House in an unfair way. I really did not intend to get into this debate this afternoon until I was provoked by the government House leader, who insisted on this diversion in our deliberations, but I do think it is important to note that the government House leader is staking out his position as to whom he is going to support in the Tory leadership race.

Mr. Speaker: That is pretty good proof the Speaker will have to be much firmer in the future.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

House in committee of supply.

ESTIMATES, MINISTRY OF HOUSING (CONTINUED)

Mr. Chairman: Would the minister like to move to the front?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: Yes, and I would also like to request permission to have staff join me on the floor. May I do that?

Agreed to.

Mr. Chairman: The member for Oshawa would like to start.

Mr. Breaugh: First, I want to thank the members for rearranging schedules. I was called away last week. My father is having kind of a rough winter and I do appreciate that other members were kind enough to allow us a little latitude in how we go through these estimates.

I read the minister’s opening comments, and because we rebroadcast the proceedings in the evening, I had the opportunity to watch them. I was struck as I watched the speech. As you read it, it is like a lot of other things written by the Ministry of Housing these days. There is kind of a pro forma agenda at work, of things the government wants to say about housing and the kind of initiatives it wants to take in that regard and the way it functions.

As I watched the speech, one of the things that struck me was how sad it is and how unfair it is essentially to take someone who has good intentions and a fair amount of background in other life experiences and plunk her in the middle of the political process in this kind of position. Without being patronizing at all, I have said for some time that it is very difficult, because the way the political process works is very different from anything that I have ever experienced before.

There is a natural tendency, I suppose, on the part of many ministers, to gather around them people who are friendly, who are knowledgeable in their field and who will advise them to use them a lot in terms of, “How do I respond to this question?” because it might well be in a field where they have no real personal knowledge. It is unlikely they have ever worked in a field quite like this before and so they rely on people within the ministry to write speeches for them, to provide them with information and to provide them with answers to oral questions.

There is, somewhere in there, a dividing line between the minister who takes hold of a ministry and establishes a direction and does things -- it is not to pretend for a moment that any human being can know what 15,000 or 20,000 people are all doing at any given moment in time. He or she cannot. Those of us who are in politics know that.

But there is such a thing as a direction being set and there is also such a thing as ministers being taken prisoner by ministry staff. I regret to say I think that is what has happened here. I hear the minister when she responds and it is almost as if there is a record going here. There is a standard response to whatever the question is. It does not really matter. There is a ministerial answer that has to be put out.

Those of us who are fond of a British television program called Yes, Minister watch that television program in great agony, because it is too close to the truth and we know it. While everybody else watches that British television program, hilarious in the knowledge that this is just humour at work, those of us who have been in politics for a while know that there is much more than humour at work in that program. There is a whole lot of truth flooding out.

Even a casual observer who sits in the gallery in these chambers for an afternoon like today will soon see little pieces of paper flowing back and forth. The Premier (Mr. Peterson), in answering a question today, got one from underneath the gallery. It gets to a point where it does not really matter who wrote the note. As long as the note says something reasonably coherent, it gets a minister out of a difficult situation.

As I watched the minister give her opening remarks, I was struck by the unkind feeling that there was something gone wrong here. I have had an opportunity, mostly while driving these days, to think about what has gone wrong and I think I have identified some things that we ought to pursue and that she ought to pursue.

The first is, it really strikes me that here is someone who knows what to do, who has the intentions and the political will to do it, and if she were allowed to do it, good things would happen. She is not the problem. The problem is those around her. She cannot, as the Minister of Housing, build enough housing units to ever do any good so long as we have a Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) in Ontario who is the biggest land speculator in the province. That is impossible.

We cannot possibly supply enough affordable housing for our people when our efforts as governments are long and difficult and require co-operation from a lot of other people, and the private sector is out there playing in a field that it sees, quite rightly, as a business. So as a business decision, if there are 100 units available on the market over the weekend in Mississauga, why would one not sell them off for the biggest buck one can make? That is precisely what they are doing.

If the law says one can buy an apartment building here in Toronto or in any other community in Ontario and flip it over in six weeks or eight weeks and make a few million dollars, why would one not do it? It is legal and it is being done. Set aside, there is nothing particularly evil about that, except that in the middle of a housing crisis the evil comes about when people are evicted, when tenants pay the increased rent, and when governments write laws that start out to try to be fair and reasonable to both sides, to recognize that there are costs incurred by landlords and that we want to acknowledge those and somehow work those into a fair rent review system.

But what we wind up with is a rent review system that is hated equally by both sides. It is hated by landlords who say, “This is the worst form of bureaucracy I have ever seen,” and particularly by the smaller landlords who do not have their own bureaucracy to go to war with these folks, who do not have accountants and lawyers on file, who do not have a whole lot in the way of paperwork and who do not have a whole lot of documentation.

A small landlord is as much a victim in this system as a tenant, and the larger landlords who can afford to hire the accountants, lawyers and bookkeepers, the people to do renovations whether they are needed or not, and the companies to supply them with new stoves and new microwaves whether they are needed or not, can find a way through the system quite nicely. In fact, for those folks, the government in Ontario has given them what is tantamount to a situation where they cannot lose money on an investment. That is a scary thought, but that is what is happening in the housing field.

For those who, like many members here, have worked for a long time with nonprofit housing of various sorts, have tried to get senior citizens’ housing in their community, have tried to see that there is housing available for low- and moderate-income groups in the community, it is very difficult for us to stand back and watch this happen.

We know how long it takes and how much work is involved in getting even, say, a small co-op of a couple of hundred units actually built. That is a long, difficult, bump-and-grind process of trying to get governments to co-operate, one level with another, of trying to get human beings who have very different agendas in the same room talking about what they want, making their decisions about what the building should look like, seeing what an architect can do, seeing what a builder can do, going through all those aggravations in a field where that is not their normal work experience. It is a strange and difficult thing.

At the end of it, people who are involved in nonprofit and co-op housing are immensely proud of the kind of things they build. Part of that pride comes from the fact they had to overcome a great deal of adversity, but that runs against the norm in Ontario and they know it and they soon find out how difficult it is to gather all of that up and push it in one direction and stay there long enough to make it happen.

It does happen and we should all be proud when it happens, but it happens so infrequently. One looks at the struggle that is involved in making that occur as opposed to the ease with which the private sector sells a building in an afternoon. People we do not even know, people who do not even live in this country can invest in land, in property in Ontario and flip it over in an afternoon, and the tragedy is not their investment; the tragedy is that the ministry itself can work until it is blue in the face and have all of its work undone in an afternoon by someone we do not even know.

I would bet that in an afternoon of real estate investing in the city of Toronto, they will have more units change hands than the ministry could build within a year. I do not think I am wrong on that. I think it is quite simple to have that happen.

I want to spend a little bit of time on some of the things I think are right about housing and some of the things where I think we are off course a bit.

Like most members here, I am subjected to an immense flow of paper from people all over Ontario who bring their problems to Queen’s Park, who write to members in all three parties and expect us to offer an opinion on a matter or assist them in some way or who simply want to vent a problem.

Here is one that came in this morning. It is an example of the kind of thing I was just talking about. This is from 3380 South Millway in Mississauga; 100 low-rental units financed by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. were sold off over the weekend to prospective individual buyers at a $150,000 price range. The one I have is $157,700.

It is an example of where our system has gone wrong, clearly. These particular units in fact were financed by the federal agency that offers mortgage money in the area, CMHC, so there is that kind of involvement. These units were also involved in the Cadillac Fairview flip scenario, if I can describe it that way, that has been the subject of a great deal of investigation about speculation and about whether it was done properly and legally and all of that. So these units have a bit of a history.

The pertinent fact, though, is that there are now about 100 families who were paying rather substantial rents, it is true: about $890 a month for three-bedroom town-house units. They are now going to get evicted and that is fairly clear, too, because when people bought this, they were told by the people doing the selling: “There’s an easy way to get possession of the unit if you don’t like these tenants. You simply say you want to occupy these premises for your personal use and they have to leave.”

I do not think there would be a riding in Ontario that does not have a similar kind of situation. It compounds itself. It gets worse as the situation turns over; in my riding, for example, on Glen Street. I had some tenants in to see me about a week ago. They brought in file folders that made a pile about three feet high on my desk, file folders full of information about the units where they live.

They happen to be ones like this one in Mississauga that have a long and complicated history. They were built by one person, put on the rental market, then pulled off the rental market and sold as condominiums. They then continued to be rented as condominiums. They have multiple owners; about 150 people own that building. They are all rented at different times to different people. They are all subjected to different sets of rent review.

Nobody in the building has a clue what the legal rent is for that building. Nobody in the building really knows who the owners are. There is no one there to do maintenance work. There is no one there to whom to complain. When they go to the rent review process, they are faced yet again with what they see in very real, personal terms as an evil thing at work.

It is evil for two very good reasons. First, nobody on this earth can understand rent review in Ontario; that is an unfortunate fact, but it is true. Second, it produces all the wrong results. It is supposed to provide a mechanism whereby the landlord gets a fair return on his dollar and the tenant gets a reasonable rent.

People get confused when they see the Minister of Housing stand up and say, “Rents this year are going to increase by 4.7 per cent,” and then the Rent Review Advisory Committee says, “Yes, but for you, it’s 13.” People have little messages going in their minds, saying: “What is this? Didn’t somebody official and important at Queen’s Park say they would be 4.7? Then how could they be 13 per cent, or 11, or 12, or 50 or 62? How in the world can that happen?”

It happens in part because of the process. If you have read the newspapers lately, you know the Treasurer has had a lot to say about housing matters. He is not the Minister of Housing, but he is, I would contend, one of the main crosses she has to bear, because I think the Minister of Housing knows full well -- as she would say on her own, as she gets another little piece of paper from her staff -- that most of what she is trying to do is thwarted by the person who usually sits in that seat.

As a matter of fact, if the government wants to change the cabinet around this afternoon, this might not be a bad time to do it. I think she knows it does not matter a hoot how many units she announces. If the Treasurer does not take some steps to slow down speculation, all her efforts, all the money she spends, all the staff time she puts forward are going to go for nothing, because in a housing situation where there is surely a supply problem for certain kinds of people, if she is not able to produce those houses at the same instant other houses are flipped over, we have a major problem.

Are people going to stand around and wait for houses to be built? They do not seem to have much choice these days, do they?

The Treasurer has this mindset. He is being very fiscally irresponsible, in my view, because he knows there is a housing problem. He knows the problem centres on affordability. He knows speculation causes much of this problem and he continues to look at it from the point of view of how much revenue he can gather into the trough.

In normal circumstances, one would expect the Treasurer to think along those lines. But in the middle of a housing crisis, at least he should have the good grace and dignity, once in a while, to pause and consider the misery he causes the Minister of Housing. He seems not ready to do that yet; in fact, quite the opposite. Every time I see the Treasurer of Ontario talking about the price of housing, he is trying to figure out some new angle to get more tax money from it. He is proposing lot levies now, more of them, for different purposes, collected by the school boards to ease the strain on the provincial budget, to finance education.

He is talking now about perhaps increasing the land transfer tax. That does nothing except fatten the old provincial coffers again. I do not deny for a moment his financial problems, but I think he ought to have mercy on those who believe, foolishly perhaps these days, that they have some reasonable expectation, at some point in their working lives, of actually owning a home.

He gives us all of the nonsense about how lovely it is to live in St. George. I am sure it is. I would be interested to hear the Treasurer’s reaction if we took the 3,000 people or so who are on the waiting list in many of our communities and bused them all to St. George tomorrow morning and said: “Here they are. Now we are going to put up low-income housing right here in downtown St. George and we want you, who invited them all to come and live here, to turn the sod.” I wonder what his reaction would be. Maybe he would love it. Maybe he would come back from overseas long enough to actually attend. It would be wonderful.

That is the heart of what I see as the problem here, the conflict, perhaps personified by the Treasurer, who wants to rake in the money and who sees, in his mind, every justification in the world for indulging in land speculation himself as long as a portion of the profits that are derived from that goes back into housing somewhere else. I think that is a crime. This province owns better than 90 per cent of the land mass itself, so land for housing is not the difficulty. It really is not.

It is a question of whether the federal government, the provincial government and a lot of municipal governments are going to be speculators in land or attempt to use a resource which they already own to resolve a social crisis. That is going to take some guts, but I do not see very much evidence of it happening anywhere in Ontario, to tell members the truth. That saddens me.

Let me talk a little bit about some of the other problems that have come up in a little while. I must say I find the points of agreement between different groups quite fascinating from time to time, and here is one which fascinates me. I do not agree very often with the Toronto Home Builders Association, but I do now.

When they did their little press release a little while ago and the new president of the association, Frank Giannone, made his maiden speech, so to speak, he noted that a study conducted for the association shows that 11 per cent, $26,103, of the $237,545 price of a new home in Brampton was attributable to fees, taxes and other levies imposed by the municipal, provincial and federal governments.

Without spending a lot of time on whether lot levies are good, bad or indifferent, I think the point made there that has to be considered by all of us is, are we not supposed to be having a crisis in housing? Should governments not be helping instead of taxing? Should it not be an occasion when governments at all levels say, “We cannot resolve all the problem by ourselves here, but one of the things we could do is take a look at how much we contribute to the cause of the problem, the price of a home”?

I have to say I am in full agreement. When governments dip into the price of a house for more than $26,000, something is radically wrong. How did we get to this position? For those of us who are observers of what is happening in housing, this is barely the tip of the iceberg. The fact is that today this house in Brampton probably has gone up another $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000, and the percentage of taxation rises accordingly. Ontario is thinking about at least increasing the land transfer tax and it is talking about letting school boards collect more lot levies off this.

The problem is not that $26,000 is obscene. I think it is, but that is not really the point; the point is that is the trend line. That is where it is going, and it is going up. The real problem is that for most people their reasonable expectation of buying a home is no more.

There is not a member of this assembly, supposedly fat and healthy, overpaid politicians, who could qualify on his own for the mortgage for this house in Brampton, not one of them; and there are no young people out there, supposedly the first-time home buyers, in any community anywhere close to Toronto who, on one salary in a family, could qualify for the mortgage.

Not in my community; none of my well-paid, unionized, strong industrial workers at General Motors of Canada on their own could qualify for a mortgage in my own community. That is a crime. That is taking my community away from the people who built it, and that is wrong.

It is true that if you own a home, as I do, you can be happy about this. Sometimes I think this government is kind of banking on that a lot, that anybody who has real estate now of any kind -- in my own community there is a place called Olive Avenue which is one of the great places in Oshawa. It is great because I live on it, among other things. I live at one end and Mike Starr lives at the other. It is kind of a political spectrum.

Traditionally it has been a working-class neighbourhood with a variety of housing. There is good substantial housing stock there. It was at one time considered to be about the cheapest place in Oshawa that you could buy a home. It is not any more. I know of places on Olive Avenue that do not have basements, never mind R-2000 insulation. There is nothing underneath that house except cold air, and it is selling for $100,000, $110,000, $115,000. That is truly ridiculous.

When one looks at the new subdivisions in Oshawa, and this is something I think we should pay a little more attention to: I remember last week when the Toronto Real Estate Board survey of the price of houses in Ontario came out that in North York the average price was $800,000. The first thing I thought was: Who would pay of their own free will $800,000 to live in North York? Apparently it was because there are not many new homes coming on the market there and the ones that are coming on are all big, huge and luxury. They are now called in the trade superhomes.

It is unreal to think that in this society a house of any proportion goes for that. It is unreal to think that in this society, people who are well paid -- not the poor -- people who are teachers, people who are well-organized industrial trade union workers do not have a reasonable expectation of being first-time home buyers.

I heard the Treasurer and the Premier mumbling out in the hall. They were suggesting, “Well, if you don’t want to pay $800,000 for a house in North York, don’t.” That is a lot of sympathy from people who are supposed to be our political leaders. They say, “Well, go east, go west, go north, go anywhere.” They did not suggest going south, but it is a little cold and wet out there these days. “Just leave. Go somewhere else.”

When I bought my first home, for example, I was working here in Toronto. We started to look at where we could afford to buy a house, and that is pretty much what we had to do: by the Woodbine Race Track, took a look at homes in Barrie, found a very nice place in Oshawa and bought there. It was viable for us, because at that time in the teaching market you could trade teaching positions fairly readily, as you could now. Resettling in that way was a viable option.

For a lot of people this is not much of an option. Those who would advocate that people who live in Toronto ought to go to Courtice, Newcastle, Uxbridge and places like that ought to go out there and hit that road for a couple of weeks every day and see just what it is like to commute back and forth and see the kind of stress and strain it puts on them and their families.

Try to find a parking spot in the Whitby GO station; it is real fun. The judges in the Durham region tell me they can always tell what is going on in the GO parking lots by the number of assault charges laid. Things get kind of hot and heavy out there on a morning when there is one spot left and three guys want it; even some very dignified people get into some most undignified arguments about who is going to park in the spot.

Mr. Campbell: Like yourself?

Mr. Breaugh: I would never do that.

The traditional option is: “Look elsewhere. Go a little farther east.” Members should come out and see what it is like in places like Courtice and Newcastle. They would be amazed that we have wall-to-wall housing now from Newcastle right into Scarborough. You really cannot tell the difference from one municipality to the other, even though the initial concept behind regional government was to see that there was a distinctiveness kept about local communities.

There was all kinds of funny talk about buffer and park space and distinct communities and that kind of stuff. If members go into any of the new subdivisions in Oshawa, they will find people who probably do not know where Oshawa is, because they work in downtown Toronto. They drive back and forth; they leave the house at six in the morning and they get back around 7:30 or eight o’clock at night. It is really tough to develop a sense of community when that is your lifestyle; but for many people, that is really what it is all about.

What about people who traditionally are now renting accommodation, thinking: “In another year or so we will take advantage of OHOSP, the Ontario home ownership savings plan. We will go out on the market and we will save up some money and buy something”? People are looking at that and saying: “This is nuts. So what if we save a few thousand dollars under this tax exemption? The few thousand dollars that we save are used up in a week in house prices. We would be crazy to sit around and wait 12 months to save $5,000 when the prices of units go up that much in a weekend.” And they do.

They just fall farther and farther behind in their real expectations of whether they can actually buy something. Can they afford to pay out $900 to $1,000 a month in rent and reasonably be expected to save very much money? Probably not. So a lot of those people who would normally be entering the housing market as buyers are excluded just because of the reality in which they live.

As you travel around places like Metro Toronto, you will see different phenomena. In my community, for example, we are actually having a boom in rental accommodation being built. It is kind of remarkable and I do not think government would lay much claim to it, but it is happening.

The value of land in Oshawa is escalating to the point that where we have a single-family home on a big lot -- and we have a few of those left around the community because they were built before there was a sewer and water system in Oshawa and they needed big yards for septic tanks -- the economics of that has turned around to the point where somebody can go in and buy three or four of those, get the land rezoned and put up an apartment building.

We have some going in that regard. I think that is kind of defensible, in that it is intensifying the use of the land, increasing the density a bit, but it meets two things. First, we need rental accommodation of any kind in our community, so it is good from that point of view, and second, from a land use point of view, it makes some sense.

I see the same phenomenon being used in other communities. Here in Metro, in North York, for example, I see good, substantial housing stock. It is 30 or 40 years old, that is true. It is not the most glamorous thing in the world, but I have been in a lot of those houses and people are proud of them. They are well kept and they are being bought five or six at a whack now. What springs up in their place is the superhouse again. They take down three good single-family houses and put up one huge sucker.

Some of them I do not understand. I have driven through parts of this city. If I made friends with the home builders’ association a little while ago, this will put it offside. They build some of the ugliest monstrosities behind huge brick walls, and why anybody in his right mind would pay half a million dollars for a jail like that is really beyond me. But people do. The market is there, and I see a few out my way. They are mostly in Whitby, where the market is a little more upscale than in Oshawa. There is no sense to this.

My wife and I were looking at model houses over the weekend, because she is trying to convince me to put some paint on the walls. We looked at one that was a very nice home. But I will tell the truth: If I am paying that kind of money for a house, I want an estate. I want a place for the dogs to run and the horses to gallop and a huge pool. I cannot afford any of this, so this is all theoretical to me, but I would not pay half a million dollars for a home that has a four-foot setback, and a lot of the homes that we looked at on the weekend do. The house completely fills the lot three times over. I do not know that that is really good planning by anybody ‘s standards.

I guess the point is that essentially what was seen not very long ago as normal, reasonable expectations of home ownership is not there any more. We should start to say that. Whether that is world class or not and whether that is fashionable or trendy or whatever, that is true. But people in many parts of our province do not have a reasonable expectation of buying a home of any kind.

It used to be said: “Okay, if things are getting a little pricey in your neighbourhood, stop thinking about single-family homes. Start thinking about town houses. Start thinking about condominiums and concepts like that.” Take a look around at what is available even in that type of housing. Take a look through the Toronto Star on a weekend. See the price of the condominiums and tell me whether you qualify for that mortgage either. You will not.

Most of our population is being precluded from purchasing a house of any kind. Find me the town houses that are being built to form a higher and better land use concept here in Metro Toronto. They are not. Find me the condominium that is on the market anywhere in Metro for less than $100,000. There are not any.

I have a friend who just paid something like $180,000 for a very fashionable broom closet down by the lake, and that is essentially what it is. For that kind of money, what he got was two and a half rooms, I think, one of which could be either a sunroom or a bedroom, depending on your mood, I guess. But that is all that is there. That is atrocious.

It is true, and I think I would agree, that not everybody should or wants to live in downtown Toronto. A lot of people should live somewhere else, but the problem is that they work here. They have to be here. They have to live within commuting distance. We are not really doing anything about assisting the commuting process at all.

I know all about GO trains and I know all about highways and I know who does not want highways and expressways and all of that. But if the argument is that they will work in the downtown of a big, urban centre like Toronto and live 50 miles away, this country is not set up for that. Other countries are, but this nation is not, and we had better be prepared to have governments pay for the infrastructure to transport people at high speeds over that distance because we sure do not have it now.

Even my beloved GO train is discussed in here a lot, and I have ridden on a few occasions lately. If I had to get up at six to have the great pleasure of riding the GO train for a couple of hours and the TTC and standing around in the stations for another hour or so, so that my travelling time in the course of a day were three and a half to four hours, I do not think I would be loving my GO train quite as much as I do now when I ride it periodically.

If that is what the government wants to do, if that is the plan of action, then it has to get with it. It is going to have to start talking about some kind of high-speed train service and there is not any. It will amaze me if this government or any other in Canada can get approvals for such a thing.

I think we have some major problems here. They have to do with the price of houses and the kind of speculation that is going on in housing of all kinds these days and the fact that this government seems quite content to do nothing about it. I want to conclude this little part of the recording by saying that I understand how tempting it is to just do that, to sit back.

I often fantasize; every once in a while a real estate agent drops a little something into my mailbox. I cannot believe there is some fool out there who would pay that much money for the house that I bought for $97,000. More than double that price is the going rate in Oshawa for that kind of a home. I keep thinking: “I actually live in a home. I and a mortgage company in London have this tremendous piece of real estate in beautiful Oshawa. Couldn’t I do a whole lot with this kind of cash?” Then I think: “But I do have to live somewhere. Where would I go?”

Even in Napanee -- I was there in the last week or so -- the average selling price of a house is upwards of $100,000. Good God.

Mr. Keyes: No, Goodyear.

Mr. Breaugh: The member may say “Goodyear.” My father lives there. This is a little aside, but my father gives me all the scoop on what is happening in Napanee and it is really true. People in Napanee have very mixed feelings about Goodyear coming to town.

Initially they thought: “This is great. Here’s an industry coming to Napanee.” Now they are getting down to: “That’s nice, but who puts the road into the plant? Who puts the sewer into the plant? Where do these people live and what does that do to the price of housing?” My dad is really worried that the parking meters in Napanee have just gone up to a dime. He thinks they might actually hit a quarter. So the ravages of inflation are marching on Napanee and they know it.

I think they would all like the Goodyear plant to stay and grow and develop and all that, but $100,000 as the average price for a resale house in Oshawa is cheap; in Napanee, it is just plain nuts. We sometimes think of this as a Toronto problem, but it is not. It is everywhere in Ontario.

Let me go on to some other things that I think need to be covered a bit.

Let me move to something that happened last summer, just to show the way governments work. At the beginning of this session, whenever it was, last May or June, we discussed some changes to the Planning Act. One of the members had put forward an amendment that said we should stop exclusionary bylaws. Everybody I heard said: “That is a great idea. Let’s do that.”

That has not happened yet either, even though I have, interestingly enough, a confidential draft of the Rental Housing Protection Amendment Act from the Ministry of Housing which essentially steals the amendment of the member for Burlington South (Mr. Jackson) and puts it forward as a government amendment. This is interesting, because this did not come to me in the normal flow of things. This is a copy of a top-secret government memo. It is even stamped “Conf