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October 3, 2013

40th Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2013-Oct-03 (PDF)

L068 - Thu 3 Oct 2013 / Jeu 3 oct 2013

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Thursday 3 October 2013 Jeudi 3 octobre 2013

ORDERS OF THE DAY

WASTE REDUCTION ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 SUR LA RÉDUCTION

DES DÉCHETS

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

ORAL QUESTIONS

PAN AM GAMES

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

GOVERNMENT’S AGENDA

ELECTION ADVERTISING

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

HORSE RACING INDUSTRY

WATER QUALITY

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

PENSION PLANS

BEAR CONTROL

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

ABORIGINAL LAND DISPUTE

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

MINISTRY GRANTS

VISITORS

DEFERRED VOTES

TIME ALLOCATION

VISITORS

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

LEONARD PARTRIDGE

WINDSOR RESIDENCE FOR

YOUNG MEN

KOREAN NATIONAL

FOUNDATION DAY

NORFOLK COUNTY FAIR

EVENTS IN ALGOMA–MANITOULIN

COMMUNITY HEALTH SERVICES

HORSE RACING INDUSTRY

SENIORS’ FUN FAIR

CHRONIC OBSTRUCTIVE

PULMONARY DISEASE

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

PETITIONS

PHYSIOTHERAPY SERVICES

TAXATION

FISHING REGULATIONS

GOVERNMENT SERVICES

ONTARIO COLLEGE OF TRADES

HYDRO RATES

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

ALL-TERRAIN VEHICLES

AIR QUALITY

COMMUNITY HEALTH CENTRE

PHYSIOTHERAPY SERVICES

LONG-TERM CARE

PRIVATE MEMBERS’

PUBLIC BUSINESS

ARCHIVES AND RECORDKEEPING

AMENDMENT ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 MODIFIANT

LA

LOI SUR LES ARCHIVES PUBLIQUES

ET LA CONSERVATION DES DOCUMENTS

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

ELECTION ADVERTISING

TRANSPARENCY ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 SUR LA TRANSPARENCE

DE LA PUBLICITÉ ÉLECTORALE

DES GROUPES D’INTÉRÊT PARTICULIER

ENERGY CONSERVATION

ARCHIVES AND RECORDKEEPING

AMENDMENT ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 MODIFIANT

LA

LOI SUR LES ARCHIVES PUBLIQUES

ET LA CONSERVATION DES DOCUMENTS

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

ELECTION ADVERTISING

TRANSPARENCY ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 SUR LA TRANSPARENCE

DE LA PUBLICITÉ ÉLECTORALE

DES GROUPES D’INTÉRÊT PARTICULIER

ENERGY CONSERVATION

SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS

ELECTION ADVERTISING

TRANSPARENCY ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 SUR LA TRANSPARENCE

DE LA PUBLICITÉ ÉLECTORALE

DES GROUPES D’INTÉRÊT PARTICULIER

ENERGY CONSERVATION

ORDERS OF THE DAY

ORDER OF BUSINESS

VISITORS

GREAT LAKES PROTECTION ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 SUR LA PROTECTION

DES GRANDS LACS

The House met at 0900.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Good morning. Please join me in prayer.

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

WASTE REDUCTION ACT, 2013 /

LOI DE 2013 SUR LA RÉDUCTION

DES DÉCHETS

Resuming the debate adjourned on October 2, 2013, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 91,

An Act to establish a new regime for the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste and to repeal the Waste Diversion Act, 2002 / Projet de loi 91, Loi créant un nouveau cadre pour la réduction, la réutilisation et le recyclage des déchets et abrogeant la Loi de 2002 sur le réacheminement des déchets.

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

Mr. Jonah Schein: I’m pleased to stand again this morning and continue the remarks I was making yesterday afternoon when it comes to Bill 91.

Speaker, I’ll talk a little bit about what Bill 91 is. Bill 91 is, first and foremost, enabling legislation. It allows the government to set diversion targets and enforceable standards for producers to meet.

It creates the Waste Reduction Authority to enforce waste reduction activities. The bill will allow for the phase-out of industry-funded organizations like Stewardship Ontario, while still allowing producers to band together and form intermediaries to meet waste diversion targets. In this case, intermediaries are third party service providers or administrative organizations.

Bill 91 allows municipalities to register with the Waste Reduction Authority, thus obligating producers to pay municipalities for the collection and recycling of designated materials like paint, packaging and batteries. Under Bill 91, fees paid for municipal collection are negotiated by municipalities and producers. If a compromise between municipalities and producers cannot be reached, the new Waste Reduction Authority can arbitrate or set compensation payments.

Bill 91 prevents retailers from applying a separate eco fee to products. In other words, it requires all-in or integrated pricing, which is a good thing. It expands waste diversion to the institutional, commercial and industrial sector—called the ICI sector—to designate materials like printed paper and packaging, and it allows the government to put in place disposal bans on designated materials.

Before I get into the details of my impressions of Bill 91, it’s important to say that the Waste Reduction Act is a big piece of legislation. It’s pretty complex, and it is a complex issue that we have to address here. It’s a serious and complicated problem, but the complexities have been largely a creation of this government.

I want to recognize the many stakeholders who have taken the time to meet with me to discuss the legislation. Actually, at this moment, I also I want to take a moment to give special thanks to one of our researchers with the NDP caucus, Michael Polanyi, for the hard work that he’s done on unpacking this legislation with me. Everyone who’s had the chance to work with Michael Polanyi knows he is quite simply the best. We all appreciate his integrity, his brilliant mind and his dedication to make this world a better place through good public policy, and so I appreciate his help that he’s given me.

Speaker, this legislation is complex. No legislation is going to be perfect, but it’s clear to me that we can’t go backwards in this case, that we must work with all members of this House to send this legislation to committee, to hear from people across this province and the stakeholders across Ontario to work out the kinks in the legislation and get it right.

We must move forward. Bill 91 is a step forward, and so I do support it. I do wish the Tories would roll up their sleeves and engage in this debate and work on making improvements in committee, rather than simply voting against this bill; I’m hopeful that they will. I hope that the minister is committed to working with us to make it better, too.

But before we speak about its shortfalls, let’s talk about the benefits of Bill 91. One of the key benefits of Bill 91 is that it has the potential to increase diversion rates in our province by enabling the government to set strong material-specific targets for recycling and diversion. Obviously, this is the most important thing. Here are the environmental implications and our track record when it comes to waste diversion—and the fact that this province sits last in the country at achieving waste diversion goals. It’s clear that we need strong targets and we need real timelines to turn things around in this province.

In 2004, the Liberal Minister of the Environment announced that the government’s intention was to develop a strategy for Ontario that would divert 60% of the province’s waste from disposal by 2008. That was back in 2004. Speaker, that evidently did not happen. The concern here, however, is that there is some uncertainty over what these targets will be and what will be the timeline for their achievement. All of this will have to be set through regulation, which raises a few concerns that I will mention in a bit.

But clearly, without targets and timelines, we have not been able to progress forward, and so it’s important that, moving forward, the province does set these targets as part of the act.

Another welcomed part of this act is to finally focus attention on the industrial, commercial and institutional sector, because we all know it is a sector that is mired in very low recycling rates. Only 13% from this sector is recycled, and that’s shameful. Designating materials in the ICI sector will help elevate those diversion rates and get us going in the right direction.

Another benefit of the act, and one that we’re happy to see, is a move away from eco fees to insist that the real costs of dealing with products is integrated into the pricing. Strangely, integrated or all-in pricing seems to be something that the Conservatives disagree with, even though this is a key component of the legislation that will create competition and drive innovation.

My Conservative colleagues will likely categorize this as a tax, that an integrated price will be a tax on producers and a tax on consumers, but I’d like to know what my colleagues would say when they talk about the costs of transporting a product, whether that price should not be integrated into the price of an item when it hits the shelf. Is that also a tax, Speaker? Because the cost of properly disposing of a product should be no different than the cost of transporting it, producing it, packaging it and so on.

That’s why we’re focused on this legislation: to make sure that industry producers actually take responsibility for the full cost, the real cost, of the package and the product that they deliver. We must move to a model of extended producer responsibility. This means that producers must take the disposal cost into consideration when they create a project. It’s that simple.

Internalizing the cost creates a number of benefits that make the producers more responsible for the products they bring to market, leading to more innovation, more environmentally friendly products and less cost for consumers, municipalities and municipal taxpayers.

Speaker, the recycling council did a great job of outlining the benefits of extended producer responsibility in their submission. I’d like to read a bit from their document, and I would encourage my colleagues to do the same. They say that EPR, extended producer responsibility, “applies the responsibility of end-of-life management of a product and its packaging on the producer, who is seen to have the greatest ability to reduce its”—the product’s—“environmental effects.”

Extended producer responsibility creates incentives like the following:

“—selection of environmentally superior materials;

“—minimization of toxic waste throughout a product’s life cycle;

“—increase useful life of the product;

“—facilitation of reuse; and

“—maximization of the recovery of resources inherent to that product or package in order to give them another use.”

Speaker, the Conservatives would claim that integrated costs will be a burden on taxpayers, but at the moment taxpayers are the ones who are getting it worse. They’re getting dinged at the cash register by the eco fees, but their taxes are also covering the costs of diversion and disposal because municipalities have been left to manage the cost of managing waste.

Integrated pricing will help reduce consumer confusion and ensure that the environmental costs of products stay with producers and are not passed on to municipalities and taxpayers. That’s why it’s so important that Bill 91 actually acknowledges the municipal role in the collection of solid waste.

We are happy to see Bill 91 recognize the important role that municipalities play in waste diversion. As the Canadian Environmental Law Association has remarked, “Across Ontario, municipal governments are the ‘face’ of waste management for the general public, having built up years of experience and reputation. The Waste Reduction Act and strategy must recognize the value that municipalities provide in terms of public access to waste services and knowledge of public waste management.”

Municipalities have made significant infrastructure investments in waste collection over the years, and they are, of course, well placed to provide curbside and other convenient waste diversion options for households, and have shown themselves to be efficient collectors of waste. On the other hand, there is a legitimate concern amongst producers that a mandated municipal role could unduly hinder the individual producer responsibility framework that makes producers responsible for some costs that they can’t individually control; in this case, the obligated contracts with municipalities.

This is why the determination of collection fees by the new Waste Reduction Authority must be fair and must be transparent. This tension between producers and municipalities is something that will have to be dealt with, but we believe it’s important that Bill 91 recognizes the important role of municipalities in waste diversion.

Speaker, Bill 91 also encourages a greater shift toward producer responsibility by moving away from the current 50-50 cost-sharing arrangement between producers and municipalities and toward a new relationship where producers pay an increased share of the cost to run blue box programs and start to take the cost of these programs away from municipal tax rolls. This is helpful and moves us toward greater producer responsibility. But there is a lack of clarity about the time period over which the producers’ share will be ramped up to 100%, and there is also no clear timetable for producers to cover 100% of the cost of disposing of municipal household hazardous waste.

Moving on, we are happy to see consideration of disposal bans in Bill 91. Disposal bans have been used in places like British Columbia and Nova Scotia. They can be an effective tool for preventing recyclable material from going to landfill, and they can promote the innovation and investment in waste reduction that we need.

CELA and other environmental groups have said, “Bans on designated waste from disposal in a landfill or incinerator are a welcome tool for quickly reducing waste disposed, and promoting innovation and investment in improved waste reduction, reuse and recycling. The use of bans must be done carefully and with full consideration that disposal alternatives and mechanisms are in place. The process should also include accessible and effective public engagement to ensure transparency and accountability in the process.”

It’s important that, if implemented, viable collection options exist for banned materials, and it’s important that landfill fees actually reflect the full cost of landfilling. It should not be cheaper to send waste to landfill than it is to recycle.

Speaker, having mentioned many of the benefits of this bill, I would like to speak to some of its weaknesses. Let me start by just stating some general concerns that I have with this legislation.

Like many other pieces of Liberal government legislation, Bill 91 is enabling legislation. It provides a legal framework but it leaves many of the details to be left to regulation. I mentioned this earlier when I spoke about the targets and timelines for this bill. While Bill 91 enables the government to set these, it does not mandate them to, and it doesn’t set them out in legislation. This is a concerning trend that moves government decisions out of the public realm. In the case of Bill 91, there are a number of problems with this approach.

The legal text of the bill is vague, and it’s unclear whether it will achieve the objective of waste reduction. There will be significant delays while regulations are developed. Considering that a significant amount of consultation has taken place before this bill, the rate of this transition seems to be quite slow.

Speaker, public input into governance is reduced since the many individuals and groups lack the resources and knowledge to monitor and engage in the process of regulation writing. The content of regulations will be a result of negotiations, and I fear that the folks with the deepest pockets—those best served by weak regulations—are those most likely to influence the content of regulations, and they’ll be more likely than groups with less economic power but who seek to advocate in the broader public interest.

Although this bill leaves much to regulation, the complexity and massiveness of this bill is somewhat shocking. All parties—municipalities, producers, consumers—need a simple and effective system. Producer responsibility is the right way to go. The government has a responsibility to make it as workable as possible for companies, and if not, they are setting us up for failure. As I said before, we need to make sure that Bill 91 works for producers, for service providers and municipalities.

One of the most clearly articulated concerns that I’ve heard is the concern that the framework created by this bill will put producers and municipalities at odds with one another. Municipalities have raised concerns about the complexity and burden of having to negotiate hundreds of thousands of agreements with producers and intermediaries, and producers are concerned that they do not have the freedom to choose a service provider and yet they must meet the designated material management obligations.

The Ontario Waste Management Association also recognizes the potential negative impacts of a mandated municipal role and has committed to bringing forward potential amendments with the goal of ensuring “the least impact on open and competitive markets for stewards and service providers, as well as accessible and convenient diversion options for residents.”

AMO has suggested the idea of a municipal clearing house that could facilitate this, and this is something that also deserves careful consideration. I’m looking forward to fully exploring solutions that are being proposed by municipalities, producers and service providers.

Another point of concern is the lack of vision for this bill. Bill 91 seems to have lost the vision of zero waste that the government has spoken about in the past. Bill 91 doesn’t mention the aim of achieving zero waste or the goal of protecting the environment and human health.

We should keep in mind that the longer-term goal of this act should be to move towards making this a province in which goods that are not safely recyclable are no longer sold in Ontario.

Bill 91 also doesn’t recognize the importance of the hierarchy of the three Rs: to reduce, reuse and recycle. As such, it doesn’t give priority to waste reduction, nor does it encourage higher orders of recycling that promote the best use of a material. Recycling a glass bottle into a glass bottle should be given priority over a glass bottle being crushed to use as a roadbed. It’s just common sense.

The bill also fails to encourage reuse—for example, through refillable deposit return container systems—and to prioritize these over recycling. If you look across the country, you’ll see that provinces with deposit return systems have far higher rates of diversion than those without.

The current act does little to encourage an expanded role for the LCBO or the Beer Store, which are huge successes when it comes to recycling. They’re also big job creators in this province. We should focus on enhancing the deposit return system for wine bottles. This is something that the Blue Green alliance has called for. This would create green jobs and reduce waste. And it could even provide a market advantage to the Ontario wine industry.

Adding clear

definitions of waste reduction, reuse, recycling and disposal would also strengthen this act. There is widespread concern about the lack of specifics in Bill 91 when it comes to monitoring and enforcing high standards of waste management and recycling services. Bill 91 does not clearly indicate that the Waste Reduction Authority has the authority to monitor or enforce standards in these services.

The Ontario Waste Management Association has highlighted this as a concern with Bill 91. They say:

“The lack of proper oversight and enforcement of recycling standards in stewardship programs has been an area of continued concern. Under the proposal, producers would provide much of the oversight and enforcement of the Waste Reduction Act through commercial and contractual arrangements....

“The new enforcement regime is fatally deficient as it fails to provide any oversight and compliance function relative to recycling standards for waste service providers for designated materials. Producers should not be made to be enforcers of waste reduction or waste service standards vis-à-vis waste service providers.”

Speaker, if these standards are worth enforcing, they are worth enforcing directly against all parties who are responsible for carrying them out, including waste service providers.

RCO, the Recycling Council of Ontario, has also highlighted this as a problem. They suggest that “the WRA include provisions that assign government responsibility to establish minimum operational standards for each of the targeted products/materials designated under the legislation through regulation and add a role for the Waste Reduction Authority to manage an auditing program that monitors compliance against those standards. The WRA should also establish a registrar of public and private service providers to track compliance and provide a directory to obligated producers to assist them in managing their liability.”

Speaker, it’s clear that it can’t be left to producers to both meet recycling obligations and certify and inspect recycling facilities. This just does not work. Not only is it burdensome, but they obviously lack the incentive to uphold rigorous standards.

If there are inadequate regulations and standards imposed on recyclers and waste processors, then the goals of waste reduction will not be met, and municipalities and taxpayers will end up continuing to subsidize the end-of-life product costs. If recycling standards are weak or unenforced, then batteries will simply be shipped to the United States to be smelted, reducing the jobs and the economic opportunities in Ontario. If sharps end up in landfills or recycling bins, they can cause costly jam-ups at municipal conveyor belts, adding costs to municipalities and municipal taxpayers.

As groups like the Canadian Environmental Law Association indicated in their submission on the act, “Regulations need to be set by the government of Ontario to outline operation standards and provide

definitions of recycling.”

Another concern that has been raised centres around the effectiveness and transparency of the Waste Reduction Authority. Is it the right approach for the Ministry of the Environment to transfer enforcement powers to a new authority that ensures compliance of producers and recyclers, or is this enforcement better done by the ministry itself? We know what the Conservatives have to say on this matter; they’ve spoken out about this. But I’m not sure about their solution, which is to get rid of the Waste Reduction Authority, scrap the act and go back to stage 1. I’m not sure that that is the correct one, that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Groups like the Canadian Environmental Law Association have raised concerns that transferring enforcement to the authority will reduce the independence and fairness of prosecutors under the act. Prosecutors in the Ministry of the Environment are accountable to the Attorney General to ensure that there is no political interference in prosecutions conducted by the crown, and the Attorney General is accountable to the Legislature. But, Speaker, delegating enforcement to this new agency could undermine this accountability structure and remove important procedural requirements, such as disclosure.

A look at the history of the Technical Standards and Safety Authority shows the risks and deficiencies of outsourcing inspection and enforcement to an agency. Therefore, the Canadian Environmental Law Association and others believe that enforcement of the law is a core government function and that it should not be transferred to a delegated administrative authority.

A further question is whether the Waste Reduction Authority will have the resources to monitor and audit compliance of waste diversion practices and have an adequate number of inspectors with sufficient authority to conduct inspections. We have seen in other sectors, such as unlicensed home daycares, for example, how toothless some government inspectors are, and we don’t want to see this repeated in this act. The Waste Reduction Authority needs real auditing powers and real capacities, and for that it needs to be adequately resourced.

The Ontario Waste Management Association has raised concerns that the Waste Reduction Authority is not empowered to fully oversee the Waste Reduction Act. The act is not clear as to whether the Waste Reduction Authority can enforce standards for all participants, and this must be made clear in legislation and should not be left up to regulation.

Additionally, Speaker, some observers have suggested that the Waste Reduction Authority, as constituted under Bill 91, is not sufficiently open or accountable. They suggest that it should be placed under the freedom-of-information act and that it should be subject to review by a parliamentary committee, the Environment Bill of Rights and the Ombudsman Act. This makes good sense to me; I think we’ve all seen what happens in cases like this.

The authority is open to assessment by the Auditor General, but we know that the auditor has limited resources to fully monitor every agency. We know how lack of accountability of government agencies like Ornge, eHealth and the Ontario Power Authority has cost Ontario billions of dollars during the current Liberal regime. This is a mistake we cannot afford to repeat in this legislation.

Bill 91 also does not seem to address the lack of uniformity of recycling services across Ontario. This challenges how governments will encourage the expansion of designated materials that are collected. Consistency of recycling programs is important for simplicity’s sake and for comprehensiveness. Residents across Ontario, including small and remote communities, should have access to waste diversion options for a similar range of products and materials as residents of larger urban communities. A confusing or fragmented waste management system will not allow us to meet our waste diversion targets.

Moreover, to reduce waste, there needs to be a clear timetable to designate additional materials province-wide. For example, new types of e-waste, durable goods and other recyclable materials that are not currently collected in blue boxes need to be designated.

Also, organic waste is one of the largest categories of waste, and there is an urgent need for the government to develop a strategy to support municipalities across Ontario to operate green bin programs. The government strategy calls for a four-year phase-in of organics collection, but I feel like that is just too slow. Government needs to play an active role to educate the public about diverting green waste, and government needs to provide incentives for industry to invest in the infrastructure that will allow the expansion of the green bin and the recycling of additional materials across Ontario.

Speaker, as you can tell, there is an extensive list of real concerns that relate to Bill 91. I’d like to mention just a few more, though. First, Bill 91 does little to work with other provinces or the federal government to set timetables that would reduce packaging. I’ve heard from a number of stakeholders who point out that our borders are open and that we need the province to harmonize with other jurisdictions. Instead, though, Bill 91 relies on the incentives of individual producer responsibility, which may not be enough, on its own, to push producers to reduce unnecessary packaging.

It should be remembered that packaging still accounts for 70% of the waste that goes to landfill, and we are far behind places like Germany when it comes to reducing packaging.

Another concern in this bill is that the government mentions the creation of new intermediaries. These are third party service providers or administrative organizations that allow producers to band together collectively to meet waste diversion targets. We need to make sure that we do not simply just recreate the problems that we have right now, where intermediaries have increased costs and fees for consumers and evaded accountability.

By introducing the role of intermediaries in the bill, there is a danger that individual producers may be able to continue to off-load responsibility to third party bodies, and there is also a danger that the recognition of intermediaries will lead us down the road to the privatization of waste collection services, that it will undermine standards, accountability and convenience for families.

Speaker, this bill does not seem to do enough to ensure that producers are responsible for the waste produced by all the products in all sectors and to all clients in all regions of Ontario. Producers must be responsible for all the products and packaging that they sell, regardless of where it’s sold, who the consumer is or where it’s disposed. Producers who sell in remote markets must be responsible for the cost of collecting and recycling those goods. For example, a producer should not be allowed to meet their recycling quotas by only collecting in easy-to-reach urban regions.

We must ensure that all regions of Ontario are treated equally and fairly. Individual producer responsibilities should mean that producers are responsible not just for the reduction, reuse and recycling of products but also for the disposal of products that cannot be recovered. But what does Bill 91 do to prevent the cost of disposal from simply being dumped onto municipalities and taxpayers?

Many people have worked hard to improve our systems over the years and to reduce waste. I want to thank many of the stakeholders for their hard work and I want to encourage them to keep pushing to make the system work.

I hope it’s clear from my remarks that there is a lot of hard work ahead of us but that New Democrats are here and ready to get to work on this.

The NDP has a proven record on promoting waste diversion in Ontario. The NDP government played an important role in the advancement of recycling in this province with our comprehensive 1991 waste reduction action plan and our 1994 regulations governing municipal waste, ICI waste, composting and product packaging. By 1992, the NDP government had already met the 1989 targets of diverting 25% of solid waste from disposal facilities, and we passed the regulation in 1994 which required the blue box programs to be set up in municipalities across the province to recycle aluminum, glass, newsprint, plastic bottles and steel containers.

Since then, as we know, waste diversion rates have stagnated. That’s a long time ago. That’s going back to the NDP government. I was in high school the last time we had an NDP government here in Ontario.

Mr. Taras Natyshak: I was in diapers.

Mr. Jonah Schein: Taras was in diapers.

In 1995, the Conservative government ended provincial subsidies for the blue box program, dumping the costs onto municipalities and municipal taxpayers. I think this is one of the hypocrisies that has to be pointed out. The tax fighters—the Conservatives—are all too willing to subsidize their corporate friends and push those costs down to municipalities—and ultimately paid for by municipal taxpayers.

In 2002, the Waste Diversion Act imposed a 50-50 cost-sharing of the blue box program between producers and municipalities, but this didn’t end the fighting between municipalities and producers.

As I mentioned earlier, in 2004 Liberal environment minister Leona Dombrowsky announced the government’s intention to develop a strategy for Ontario that would divert 60% of the province’s waste from disposal by 2008. Again, this is going back to 2004. I don’t remember the announcement but I’m sure it looked good on television: a promise to reduce waste—and nothing has happened since then. It’s clear the Liberal government has failed quite spectacularly on this front.

I’m happy to see Minister Bradley introduce this legislation. We are happy to work on it, we’re happy to work to improve it, and I believe that the people of this province will be happy if we all get to work on this. As I had mentioned earlier, there’s no doubt in my mind that the people of this province care about our environment and they want to do their part to make it more sustainable. The problem is that the people are ahead of the politicians when it comes to this issue. The kids in my riding are ahead of the adults on this issue, and they’re definitely ahead of the politicians.

In my riding, there are a number of community groups and organizations that are doing remarkable work when it comes to environmental protection. Just recently, the Premier was actually in Davenport at an incredible organization called FoodShare that’s been working to try to make that connection from field to table. They have been strong advocates for more sustainable food systems and food access. I was excited just a few weeks ago to go to FoodShare for what I thought was a new announcement by the Premier, but in fact it was just a reannouncement of something that was in the budget.

Nevertheless, FoodShare is just one of these groups that have inspired the imagination of our community and are reaching out to people across the province to talk about food justice and food access. But they are largely doing this without any kind of support from the province or from any level of government. It’s organizations like FoodShare that are doing this work. If only they had the support of provincial and federal and municipal dollars, more of that support, think about the health impacts and the environmental impacts, the greater impacts that they could have.

Less formally organized groups are also doing this work. We have community gardens in schools across the riding and across Ontario, in Earlscourt Park and Dufferin Grove Park. Last Friday, I had a tour from a young man who wanted to show me the kind of urban farms that he has started on his own with his friends, to farm people’s backyards that are not being used right now, to put them into food production, to grow that food and intentionally share it around with the community.

We have organizations like Not Far From the Tree who are doing this work more formally, who are helping to harvest backyard trees for seniors and people who are no longer able to pick their fruit. They will voluntarily come and pick that fruit off the tree and share it with the owners in the house, but also share it among themselves and bring it to food programs across the city.

Speaker, every Friday at Dufferin Grove Park we have community suppers. These save energy by having people work together. We have community free stores. These are individual projects where people are meeting in the park to exchange goods free of cost. This means that things are avoiding the dumpster.

We have a ward 18 cycling advocacy group. A ward 17 cycling group is being formed right now. These are cycling advocates who are going out there and doing their part to try to build new cycling infrastructure in our city and across our province. They’ve been pivotal in trying to push the provincial government to actually take a position when it comes to building more active transportation. They have had work to do just to protect some of the existing cycling infrastructure that we have—cycling infrastructure on Dupont, on Rogers Road. Those are in place at this moment because of the work of individuals.

We also have, as I mentioned, a lot of young people who are interested in these issues. Last spring I had the chance to meet with students from St. Helen public school and speak to members of their environmental club. These kids talked to me for an hour about the benefits of just having a bicycle rack in their school. The debate in that classroom was better, often, than the debate here. They told me quite clearly about the economic benefits, the difficulties that students have affording transit in this city and why cycling would help them to get to school.

They talked about the impacts on their learning of getting some exercise each day. I volunteered to work with them to actually get the cycling infrastructure that they need, but I reminded them that just because they’re right doesn’t mean that they are going to get what they want. It’s going to take a fight, and we’re going to continue to work with those students at St. Helen to make sure they get a bike rack in their schoolyard, so that they have a place to lock up their bikes when they come to school in the morning.

It’s clear to me that people in this province want to be environmental stewards, but we also need governments to do their part to make this province sustainable. Many of us are New Democrats because of our concern for the environment, and we know that we have an important role to play when it comes to protecting our environment. Too often our governments gets their accounting wrong, and it’s not just about the kind of faulty math when it comes to power plants and so forth, but it’s the governments that forget to count our air and our soil and water as some of our greatest assets, and a source of our greatest wealth.

Unlike some governments in this country, the NDP doesn’t see our natural resources simply as stock that we can sell off the shelf as fast as possible. We understand the true costs and the true benefits of our natural environment, and we understand its precious value and the value of managing it carefully.

I have a lot of respect for the Minister of the Environment. He’s a strong environmentalist, and I’m happy that he has brought forward this bill—you know, 10 years after the government was formed, but I’m glad that he’s here now. I think it must be hard to be an environmentalist with the Liberal Party, because they like to speak about their green brand. I think they want to be green, they wish they were green, but at the end of the day, they’re always too beholden to their corporate interests.

Interjection: There’s a song about that: “Wishing and hoping....”

Mr. Jonah Schein: Exactly. So what kind of green do they want to be? What kind of green do they want?

As we’ve seen debate this last week around who gets their priorities put first in this Legislature, too often it’s the people with the most green, the most money. It becomes difficult for the Liberal Party, as government, to ever chart a clear environmental path, because they get taken off course. They cozy up with business, and that’s what they’ve done in the last 10 years when it comes to this file. And so they have left industry to regulate itself, to set the rules, and we’ve seen what the costs have been to the consumers.

Consumers are paying more and more for products, and some consumers would be okay to pay a little bit more for products, but what’s unacceptable is that they have done absolutely nothing to actually protect the environment, and so waste reduction targets have stagnated and have not moved forward.

But in the long run, when I speak to the producers and to businesses, they don’t actually enjoy this kind of governance that the Liberal government offers, because it’s unpredictable, too. The Liberals themselves, I think, are internally divided about how to approach things. They want to be green, but they also want to leave things driven by the market.

Hon. James J. Bradley: It’s like the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. Jonah Schein: I’ve got the attention of the minister.

When you talk to industry, they would rather know the direction that the government is going to move in, and they would rather know, “These are the rules,” and that there is a predictable future ahead of them. Business is okay with enforcement, they’re okay with having clear guidelines, but what they don’t like is moving targets. They don’t like to wake up and see that the government of the day is making a decision based on their own political interests. So they’ve changed the rules of the game, Speaker. They’ve stood up and created a good headline for themselves, but they have thrown business into chaos.

On the other side, you know, we have Conservatives in this country, and their approach is clear. Their approach is everyone for themselves; you know, come in, deregulate, plunder, and business obviously enjoys that for the time being, but this is not good for business in the long run.

An NDP approach is different. We support business. We want to make sure that this is a thriving place where people can make a living, but we also understand that we need strong rules in place to make sure that there are actually resources there in the future, and we have a role to see the big picture and to manage those resources. Business understands this too, and they just want to know what we expect and want to make sure that we stick to it. Rather than allowing business to run things themselves, we want to have a role. We want a say on behalf of the people of this province.

The people of this province want to make sure that we’re not landfilling everything, Speaker. They want to make sure that safe products are coming to market. They also want to make sure that they’ve got money left at the end of the day to take care of their families, and so they don’t want to be paying the costs of companies producing waste. We think we have to set the targets, and I’ve clearly heard from business that if we set the targets, if we let them know that these products must be recycled, they will meet those targets. They are willing to do that.

I think that this is the approach that we have to take. We’re blessed to live in this province. We’re blessed to live in this country. We’ve got tremendous natural resources, but we can’t just sell the store. Unfortunately that’s what we are seeing with the federal government right now, where the store is open for business and they’re selling it as fast as possible.

All of us are not going to be around forever. The government is not going to be the government forever. The opposition is not going to be the opposition forever. We won’t be the third party forever, and we won’t be on this planet forever. But we need to make sure that we’re protecting our resources in the long run.

When it comes to the environment, we need to make sure that we provide the opportunity for individuals to do the right thing. As I said, in Davenport, individuals do want to do the right thing, but it’s going to take more than individual action to protect our environment. It requires collective action; it requires a framework put in place by government that allows things to function.

I think that people would be absolutely dismayed; kids at St. Helen’s would be absolutely dismayed; I think that my parent’s generation, who have seen the introduction of blue box bins, would be dismayed to know that the work they do to take their recycling out to the curb and to buy more responsible products—that in fact so much of this is still going to landfill, and that even when they do their best, there has not been any regulation in place to make sure that industrial and commercial waste is being reused and recycled, Speaker. We are letting the people of this province down.

This bill—I’m really happy that we’re talking about this here. It is of critical environmental importance, but it’s also incredibly important to our economy. We will put seven people to work for every one person who’s currently employed to throw out garbage, to reuse it, to recycle it. We are going to put people to work, and that’s what we should be doing.

I think I’ve just about used up my time here today. I’m looking forward to debate on this. We’ve seen a number of issues take precedence here in this Legislature, and the ones that have been prioritized most have been ones that are most troubling to me, quite honestly, Speaker. Bill 115, which was horrible legislation, was forced through this House. That’s the fastest I’ve seen anything move in this Parliament until I saw this bill around supporting one company.

Yet we have real issues that need to be brought forward, and this is one of those issues. I’m hopeful that this will be prioritized, that we’ll have thorough debate, that we’ll do our best to get this issue to committee, that we’ll continue to work with stakeholders, that these issues are not entirely left up to regulation, that people have a chance for input, and that we turn this around.

This is something that’s manageable. There’s no reason that our diversion rates should be stuck at 25%. There’s no reason this has not budged since there was an NDP government 20 years ago, Speaker. This is not a pie-in-the-sky idea; this is something that we can take action on and that we should take action on.

This is waste squared. This is a waste of time. This has been a waste of energy. This has been a waste of garbage and a waste of potential for us to do far better and for us to create good jobs in the province of Ontario.

I’m going to end my remarks there, and I look forward to hearing comments from other folks around the House, Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): Questions and comments?

Hon. James J. Bradley: I want to commend the member on the extremely thoughtful and constructive approach that he has taken to this legislation, where he has dealt with the provisions that are found within the bill. I certainly appreciate that approach.

As I mentioned yesterday, I think it’s an opportunity for all of us to work together as legislators on a specific piece of legislation, and where there is need for improvement, we will have that improvement.

Mr. Hargreave and Mr. Cook of the Ontario Waste Management Association are in the gallery today. They have been extremely helpful and constructive in their approach. I’m sure they don’t agree with absolutely everything that’s in the bill at this time, and they will make further presentation when it gets to committee.

I think, again, the approach that we want to take is one which is, at the same time, extremely effective and places the costs where they should be, in terms of those being on the producer as opposed to the grateful taxpayer.

One of the reasons that we chose a Waste Reduction Authority was that that authority, of course, would be financed by those who actually produce the waste in the first place, the products that eventually have to be dealt with in the first place. When you stick it with the grateful taxpayer—that is, if you have the Ministry of the Environment doing all of that—then you’ll find that it’s the taxpayer who is assuming that particular cost.

I think there are details that the member has appropriately pointed out that will be dealt with at the time of committee consideration. I’ll be interested in both the parties’ presentations at that time in committee, and their suggestions on how the bill can be improved, because I’m not aware of any legislation that has come forward that is absolutely perfect.

I think the approach taken by the critic for the New Democratic Party is one that we should have on much of the legislation that comes before the House.

I do want to challenge him on one part of it, and that was when he was talking about the NDP being environmentalists. I have noted, along with many in the environmental community, that there has been a right turn for the NDP towards allowing populism to trump environmentalism. I know the member, within his own caucus, would be trying to encourage his colleagues to once again put environmentalism first and populism perhaps second or third.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): Questions and comments?

Mr. Michael Harris: I too would also like to thank two important stakeholders who I know have been the driving force behind this: Rob Cook and Peter Hargreave, from the OWMA. I look forward to our continued relationship.

I do want to respond to the NDP’s critic, as I feel the member seems to be getting the strategy and the bill mixed up. The industrial, commercial and institutional sector is not in the act; it’s in the strategy. Disposal bans would be under the Environmental Protection Act, so the government doesn’t need Bill 91 to introduce bans. I just want to get that on the record.

I hear the member’s concerns about accountability and oversight. The member says that Waste Diversion Ontario is toothless and totally unaccountable. We agree with that. We agree that giving WDO a new name doesn’t change the situation.

But, as the member noted, what is most troubling to see is that the government wants to concede enforcement powers to WDO, which would be called the Waste Reduction Authority under Bill 91. It makes no sense to hand over enforcement powers to an organization that operates like Ornge and eHealth. That’s why we’ve called on the Liberals to establish a direct line of accountability between the government and producers. That means the Ministry of the Environment should regulate the industry, not an unaccountable agency.

In fact, the Canadian Environmental Law Association agrees with us. They don’t agree with the NDP. CELA says enforcement and compliance of the industry must remain in the ministry’s hands, because “enforcement of environmental standards is a core government function.”

The member also says he’s against eco taxes, yet he failed to notice that Bill 91 continues every single eco tax program. In fact, the member for Davenport didn’t even talk about winding down any of these eco tax programs. The member seems all too eager to force Ontario consumers to foot 100% of the bill for the blue box program while promising no property tax offset. That means Ontarians will get no relief on their tax bills while having to pay for new costs when they go to the supermarket or local department store.

I’ll conclude it there, and I’ll look forward to speaking to this again.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): Questions and comments?

Mr. Taras Natyshak: I want to applaud my colleague the member for Davenport, who is a passionate defender of the environment on all fronts and certainly within the context of Bill 91, the Waste Reduction Act. I think he spoke eloquently today about the need to actually put something forward that offers stability not only to industry and producers, but also to the people who have to deal with our waste every day—municipalities, citizens—who are looking for a government that actually leads and promotes recycling and reducing waste in our communities.

I think he indicated that Bill 91 had some positive aspects to it, and potential pitfalls, which of course we know should be melded out in committee. We look forward to the testimony of various stakeholders who will come forward and tell us what the real and potential impacts of this bill will be.

But, ultimately, we know that over the last 20 years, Ontario has become the worst in terms of its record in waste reduction. Despite many attempts and overtures to actually deal with it in a tangible way, that’s solely what it has become: overtures and sentiments. Kind as they may be, they have not had the positive impacts on our communities and waste reduction that we need to see.

I’m encouraged with, I guess, the producer responsibility aspect. In my area, in my riding of Essex county, there are some really innovative things happening with agriculture as it relates to waste reduction, using natural products that take the place of, I guess, the little Styrofoam popcorn things. I have a great friend, Joe Dama, who has invented a wonderful process that uses soy to make little what look like Cheetos to fill packaging. These are things that are innovative, that can be made right in our province here, and I hope this bill brings about that type of innovation and progress within our waste reduction strategy.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): The member for York South–Weston.

Mrs. Laura Albanese: I’m pleased to add my comments to Bill 91, the Waste Reduction Act. I want to thank the member from Davenport for his speech. It was the leadoff speech for the third party, so it was rather lengthy.

The cornerstone of this legislation is, as we know, making the individual producers responsible for recycling the products that they sell, and also to help consumers make sure there are no surprises or extra fees that are added on the products at the checkout. Basically, the price that you see advertised will be the price that you pay. I’ve heard many people in my riding of York South–Weston comment favourably on that. That is what they want to see. It would protect consumers from having these surprise fees at the checkout.

Additionally, diverting this waste from the landfill to recycling, as we’ve heard in the main speech, will create extra jobs. It will generate new factories, new jobs, new Ontario-made products, so that’s very important as well.

I’m very encouraged by the fact that the ministry has been consulting extensively with a wide range of stakeholders: environmental groups, municipalities, producers, retailers, consumers, service providers and industry funding organizations. I believe that consulting will lead to a better bill, and there is consensus, from what I understand, among the stakeholders on the need for a fundamental reform of Ontario’s waste diversion framework.

So thank you, and I hope this will improve as the conversation continues.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): The member for Davenport, you have two minutes.

Mr. Jonah Schein: Thank you for the comments from members across the House.

Speaker, this is not about populism. This is about doing the right thing and doing it properly. The environmental approach that the NDP wants to take is one that will actually work, so fewer press conferences, fewer headlines; we want to make sure that it works on the ground. That is the long-term, sustainable policy environment that we need to create, one that doesn’t change from election to election or month to month or scandal to scandal or day to day.

We want to make sure we have a clear framework in place that will protect our environment and that will set clear rules of the game so that industry knows what their obligations are and that they can take the steps that they need to innovate.

As long as we have fairness in place, then business can do okay. As long as they know that everyone’s playing by the same rules, then they can do just fine, Speaker. That will in fact create the innovation that we need to see.

But we need to make sure that people in this province have options. This isn’t environmentalism just for people who can afford it. We need to make sure that everyone has environmental options, and so we need to make sure that we set policy; that when it comes to transit, for example, we actually provide people with transit options. There are some people who would say, “Well, just toll everyone. Set road tolls for everyone.” You’re not going to punish people out of their cars when they don’t have any other option.

We’re looking at a government that has been here for 10 years; it has been 20 years since the NDP was here. We have seen no public infrastructure that will allow people to make a good environmental choice when it comes to transit, and yet we have the government scolding the third party as if it’s our fault, Speaker.

We need to make sure, when it comes to this issue, that we get this right, that we get the details right, that we make sure it works for commuters across the province and that we support individuals to make the good environmental choices that they want to make.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): Further debate?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I’m delighted to join in the debate this morning on a bill that I think is really important, and a bill—when you think about the fact that today many of us are celebrating our 10th year in election—I know, Mr. Speaker, you are, and many others are. Certainly, it’s our 10th year in government.

You look back over the last decade, and you look at how many incredibly important environmental steps we’ve taken through the years. We’ve had similar debates, like we’re having on this here today, because taking those steps is never easy. It’s easy to talk about it; it’s a lot harder to do it. This bill is another example of that.

What this bill is about is ensuring that we establish outcome-based individual producer responsibility for the recycling and diversion of waste from landfill and that the onus would go back to the manufacturer. I think that makes sense. I think Ontarians and consumers across the province and those who really care about our environment—and, frankly, others—would recognize the importance of doing that. The challenge is, as we make these changes, you can’t do it for free, and at the end of the day there is a cost to somebody in the system.

We’ve been trying to work very, very closely with our business community in this province on everything, because they’re very, very important to our economic future, and this bill is no different. We’ve worked very, very closely with our manufacturers. I think most of them recognize the importance of taking responsibility for ensuring that the products they manufacture end up, at the end of the day, where they belong: in landfill—not in landfill; to be recycled. Mr. Speaker, “out of landfill” is what I’m trying to say.

This is not just good in terms of environmental opportunities; it’s also good economics. When you look at it—and I was surprised to learn this—recycling generates 10 times the amount of jobs as disposal. So this is good economics; it creates jobs. Every 1,000 tonnes of recycled waste supports seven jobs.

Mr. Speaker, you’re from Scarborough, and you know very well Atlantic Packaging in Scarborough. Atlantic Packaging has been a leader in recycled material for over 60 years. The member from Davenport talked about the community being ahead of politicians on this, and I think, in many ways, he’s right. This company has been ahead of just about everybody on this with the technology they use. They recycle; 100% recycled paper is what they create, corrugated products that are very, very good—top quality. They take recycling to heart. It’s at the centre of everything that this company does.

Their recycling includes everything from old corrugated paper to plastics to office paper, boxboard and old newspapers. They’re a fantastic Ontario good-news story when it comes to environmental responsibility. On top of that, they employ almost 1,000 people. So this is a real-life, real-world example of why this kind of approach is really, really important. It is good economics.

But you’re going to get those who are in favour. You’re going to get those who are opposed, because it’s hard to do. In this Legislature, when things are hard to do, this government never walks away from those decisions. We, in fact, embrace the opportunity to bring that kind of change. But the debates in this place are very similar.

When I think back to my days at city hall, one of the things I had the privilege of being involved in—Mr. Speaker, you were there too, and you were involved in that; Betty Disero was the works chair to get it going and then I had to be responsible for implementing it as works chair—was the green bin. I remember at the time everybody said, “It’s not going to work; it’s going to fail. People will never do it.” I’ll never forget the first day it was implemented, doing a tour of the city with our works staff and seeing something like a 97% or 98% compliance on the first day.

The member for Davenport is absolutely right on issues like that. Our constituents, Ontarians, the people, were ahead of us on that and ready to move into organic separation, and green bins are seen now across the province. We were the first, in Toronto, I believe, and we’re very proud of that. People embraced that right off the bat, and they still do to this day.

I remember the debate on the greenbelt. Today, everybody talks about the greenbelt as being one of the great achievements of our generation when it comes to the environment, and this government worked very, very hard to implement that. It’s going to make a difference for generations to come, not just the next generation but generations after that.

We had some support from the NDP, although they tried to poke holes in it every chance they got, but we welcomed that support. They worked with us a little bit on that. The PC adamantly opposed it as they are, I believe, opposing this bill. That’s very typical of their approach. If you think about it today, they’re not going to admit that they opposed the greenbelt today. They know how popular it is out there. It was the right thing to do, but we had to take some political heat for doing it. Mr. Speaker, it was the right thing to do. We soldiered on, and future generations are going to benefit from it.

I think about our efforts to eliminate coal. I think of how important that is to eliminating health care costs; it’s something like $2 billion in savings per year. You think of the smog days that have now been eliminated as we’re just about at that threshold of completely eliminating coal. There are very few smog days in the GTA these days. Prior to our efforts—I’m not saying it’s all about eliminating coal; there are other factors, but that’s one of the main factors: very few smog days.

I think of the jobs that have been created in the renewable energy field in a number of different sectors. I think to date 35,000 jobs have been created by those efforts. That’s a pretty good-news Ontario story, but it wasn’t easy. There were challenges. If it was easy, other jurisdictions around the world would have tackled it and done it. Ontarians are the first jurisdiction in the world to be able to wean ourselves completely off of coal, the single largest climate change initiative in North America.

The PCs, the opposition, have opposed us every step of the way. They continue to oppose us, as they oppose and try to make hay on the challenges of bringing forward new energy sources, new renewable energy of all sorts. It’s not easy to be environmentally responsible. It’s not easy to change your economy to the new realities of the world to ensure that, in fact, the things we’re doing are sustainable. But this government has had the courage to move forward with those initiatives. To this day the PCs, and in some cases the NDP, continue to talk about being environmentally responsible but stand in our way of doing that. I think the elimination of coal is a perfect example of that.

I think of things like public transit: how important that is to our environment, helping to give people the option of getting out of cars. Is that easy? No, Mr. Speaker, it’s not. It’s damned expensive. It costs a lot to be able to move to public transit, but we know we need to do that because the cost of gridlock is so much more than the investments we plan to make in the coming years and decades in public transit. But somebody in this Legislature has to be straight with the people of Ontario to tell them you can’t build public transit for free.

Everybody is for public transit in this Legislature but only one party is standing up for the fact that you need to invest to be able to build public transit. Only one party, only one leader of all the three parties is standing up and being straight with the people of Ontario to say, “You know, we’re going to have to find $50 billion over the next 15 or 20 years to be able to fund these public transit projects.” The other leaders and the other parties are pretending that you don’t have to do that and that it’s easy, that we can build public transit without paying for it.

It’s another example of the fact that being environmentally responsible requires leadership. It’s not easy, but it’s something that has to be done. Our government is up to that and our government will get this done. We will do what we need to do to build the public transit that the GTA and the rest of the province needs to be able to ensure that over the next five or six decades we are going to be environmentally sustainable and at the same time economically prosperous.

I think of things like conservation targets. We have the strongest, most aggressive conservation targets in all of North America. I know the member from Etobicoke—I’ll say her name, because I can’t remember which Etobicoke—Donna Cansfield, back 10 years ago when we started here, was an absolute advocate for conservation and pushed us very hard to ensure that we have those targets. We still have work to do in that area, but we’ve come a very, very long way. Demand has been reduced significantly, both in consumers’ homes and in businesses across this province.

Those initiatives weren’t easy, either. In fact, we took a lot of heat from the other side for every penny that we put into conservation. They support the outcomes, they talk about being in favour of conservation, but when the rubber hits the roads, Mr. Speaker, when you have to pay for these programs that actually, in the end, pay for themselves, when you have to bring that upfront cost into the programs to get them going, we had heat from both parties on the other side for taking those challenging decisions. Were they the right thing to do? Well, we’re a leader in conservation in North America; I’d say they were the right thing to do.

Today, there are not a lot of Ontarians who would disagree with the fact that while some of the stuff we brought forward was new, it was cutting-edge. In some cases we were the first in the world; for instance, to bring in smart meters. That’s reduced peak demand in this province. That’s enabled us to not have to produce as much power. That’s helped ensure that every Ontarian has the opportunity to be able to participate in conservation.

It was controversial at the time, tough at the time. Opposition parties were up in arms about the fact that we were trying to take these challenging and courageous decisions and move forward and be leaders. Well, Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, I think Ontarians can see it was the right thing to do. Conservation was the right way to go. We still have more work to do, and it’s still going to be challenging. And I’ll guarantee you that we’ll be the only party in this Legislature that stands up to keep moving on conservation.

The others will talk about it, but when it comes time to doing it, when it comes time to finding the investments to be able to put in it, they simply will not be there. They won’t be standing up to be counted.

This bill is exactly the same. It’s a hard thing to do because it’s new; it’s different. It does make some changes. There are adjustments that have to be made by some of the manufacturers in our province. We’re going to do the very best we can to continue to consult with the business community to ensure that that transition happens in a fair and reasonable way. But at the end of the day, this will end up creating jobs, just like all the other measures that we’ve taken that are environmentally friendly do, because it ensures we’re building our economy on a sustainable basis.

We’re seeing things for what they are, ensuring that when we produce waste, somebody has to be responsible for recycling it and making sure it is properly environmentally disposed of. Recycling is the best way to do that.

I talked about the Atlantic Packaging example. In the last few minutes I have here before this debate closes off for the time being, here’s a company of 60 years, owned by the Granovsky brothers, whom I know the Speaker knows well. They’re very quiet people, very responsible. Here’s a company that employs a thousand people in Ontario. They wouldn’t exist today were it not for this government and governments past that have dedicated themselves to ensuring that recycling of paper makes sense. At the time, I’m sure, it was controversial. At the time, I’m sure, there were challenges because it was new.

Today there are a thousand people working in this great company, Atlantic Packaging, recycling paper in this province and doing it in a way that I think is boosting our economy and helping to create jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I see you moving there. You’re starting to lean forward. I’m assuming that my time is up for now. I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate. I thank the members opposite for their contribution, but I do look for both parties to support this bill because, let’s be frank here, this is the right way to move, the right way to go forward. It takes us in the right direction.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bas Balkissoon): The time being 10:15, this House stands recessed until 10:30.

The House recessed from 1015 to 1030.

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I realize I don’t get an opportunity to do this often, because I represent a very far northern riding, but I’d like to introduce to the House the person who was the success in my campaigns and also my constituency office, Helen Gerteis, who is here with her friend Felicia. Helen worked for me for over 20 years—can you imagine?—and actually got to retire. Welcome Helen Gerteis, please.

Hon. Tracy MacCharles: He’s not here right now but he’s at Queen’s Park, and it’s Roger Anderson, the chair of Durham region. We call him the king of Durham. We’re just thrilled he’s at Queen’s Park today. Long live the king.

Mr. Todd Smith: We do have another visitor coming to see our great page from Prince Edward–Hastings, Ian Chapelle. His great-uncle Jack Chapelle is visiting this morning.

Hon. Michael Coteau: Joining us today at the Legislature is a school from my riding: Seneca Hill Public School. I’d like to welcome them to Queen’s Park.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): On behalf of the minister responsible for seniors and page Efua Mensimah Kwofie, her aunt Dorcas Forson. We welcome her to the Legislature today.

ORAL QUESTIONS

PAN AM GAMES

Mr. Rod Jackson: My question is to the Minister of Finance. Under the finance minister, the TO2015 CEO’s $552,000 salary was reduced by $75,000—only once we exposed this injustice. Similarly, the Pan Am Secretariat deputy minister was removed only once we exposed his $361,000 salary. And only once the news of unlimited entitlement broke did the Liberals agree to stricter expense policies and repayment.

You only act once you’re caught, Minister. Can you tell me exactly when the unlimited expensing will be remedied and the expenses in bad faith repaid?

Hon. Charles Sousa: I appreciate the question. I also appreciate the fact that the critic has long been apprised of the activities of the Pan and Parapan American Games since the outset, when we invited him back then to participate and to recognize what it is that’s being done.

He knows full well that Deloitte and others are reviewing the reports that we have, monitoring on a quarterly basis. He’s well aware that as a result of the outstanding work of Infrastructure Ontario and the work we’ve done establishing venues across southern Ontario and the province, we have now come in under budget by $50 million for those capital expenditures. This is going to leave a tremendous legacy for future generations in Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Rod Jackson: I am well aware that the Pan Am budget is disingenuous at best. The only time a Liberal is spurred to action is by holding their feet to the fire. Yesterday, I asked the Pan Am minister about the real cost of Pan Am. He told me about chicken nuggets.

Since you previously held the portfolio, and as finance minister, the buck still stops with you. Perhaps you can tell us why you hid multiple budgets off the record of Pan Am? The ones I’m talking about specifically, Minister, are the recently discovered $10 million for the secretariat party and paperwork, the $709 million for another legacy venue and, no doubt, millions more for security and transportation.

Minister, how many Pan Am budgets have you approved, and what is the grand total cost of the games to the taxpayers of Ontario?

Hon. Charles Sousa: I find it passing strange that the member opposite is now asking a question about Pan Am when, yesterday in estimates committee, they had two hours to ask the minister responsible for Pan Am what it is that he’s—the only question that the critic had to ask, the only question in those two hours, was the following. He said to the minister responsible for the Pan Am Games, “Minister, how are you?”

That was all they asked yesterday of the minister responsible for the Pan Am Games. The opposition are making a complete mockery of the committee process. They are using filibustering. They are delaying the issues. They had 10 senior officials of the ministry there yesterday to deal with the very issues.

He’s talking about budgets. We’ve been very open from the outset as to what we are doing. He should read the budget. Maybe they would know then.

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

Mr. Rod Jackson: Give me a break. They’ve had two years and more to get this right, and since we discovered the hidden Pan Am budgets, the minister has been dodging responsibility for the games. In estimates committee, he pointed at the board of TO2015, then the deputy minister clarified that the minister’s secretariat actually babysits TO2015. So the minister improvised and talked about the many Pan Am partners instead.

But at the end of the day, it is the Premier, you and the minister of the portfolio who are responsible, so why can’t I get an answer about why there are so many Pan Am budgets not included in the pretend $1.4 billion? Minister, how many budgets are there? How much will the Pan Am Games really cost the taxpayers of Ontario? What’s the number? Tell me now.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated please. Thank you.

Minister?

Hon. Charles Sousa: Mr. Speaker, here he is again, asking questions, and he should have been asking those questions yesterday in committee. He chose not to. More importantly, he knows the answers, because we gave them to him two years ago.

The budgets are very clearly stated out. We have over $50 million in under-budget capital expenditures to date. We recognize the challenges that we face, and we have put it to the 2015 committee. But more importantly, I quote the following from today’s editorial, and this speaks to the essence of why we have taken, and we do take, responsibility for bringing these games to the province of Ontario.

It’s as follows: “When properly done, such events energize cities—and a lot is being handled well here. Pan Am site construction is in progress and, so far, running about $50 million under budget. That’s to be commended.” It further states, “Instead of fanning fake ‘scandals’ and tarnishing Toronto’s games, critics should take comfort in knowing that existing problems are”—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Prince Edward–Hastings will come to order.

New question.

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Mr. Monte McNaughton: My question today is for the Minister of Labour. Recently, Minister, your Premier met with our leader, Tim Hudak, to seek support in passing nine hand-picked bills. One of the bills that your Premier presented was my bill, Bill 74, but yesterday your government acted like a coward, bowed to union pressure and announced you would no longer support this important bill.

Minister, why do you value your friendship with one union leader more than the thousands of good jobs, both unionized and non-unionized, that you have now put at jeopardy with your weak leadership and flip-flopping?

Hon. Yasir Naqvi: I thank the member opposite for the question. As I referenced yesterday in the House during question period, late last Friday a decision was rendered by the Ontario Divisional Court as it related to the decision of the Ontario Labour Relations Board. The Divisional Court decision was on a judicial review application by EllisDon, and it’s the subject of the same issue that is part of the member’s Bill 74.

The Divisional Court, in its very thorough analysis, quashed the decision of the Ontario Labour Relations Board, which means that the company can operate under the status quo. The Ministry of Labour lawyers have advised us that this essentially achieves the same outcome as was intended by the private member’s Bill 74.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Monte McNaughton: Back to the minister: EllisDon is a London, Ontario, company that is widely regarded as a community leader, including being named 2013’s number two best employer in Canada and a platinum member of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies. Minister, EllisDon is also an employee-owned company, with employees that number in the thousands.

Yesterday, your Premier said that my bill is no longer needed and that you would not be supporting it. Will you and your government resume your support of my important bill that stands up for Ontario, or does Pat Dillon call the shots around here?

Hon. Yasir Naqvi: Speaker, the Divisional Court has issued a very thorough decision. I’m sure the member opposite has read the decision. Essentially, what the decision does is, it maintains the status quo. It essentially does—and that’s the advice that has been given to us by the lawyers at the Ministry of Labour—what is intended in Bill 74. So it’s basically the status quo.

I also want to inform the member opposite and all parties that if a party wishes to appeal this decision, they must file an application with the Court of Appeal, seeking leave to appeal, by October 15 at 4 p.m.

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

Mr. Monte McNaughton: Back to the minister: It is unfair to expect an Ontario company to live by one set of rules while foreign competitors undercut them, putting at risk thousands of good jobs. My Bill 74 will settle this issue once and for all, but your colleague Pat Dillon has asked you to oppose it, and clearly, Minister, you have listened.

Minister, Pat Dillon has several government appointments, including as a member of the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, as a member of the board of Infrastructure Ontario, as a member of the board for the College of Trades, and is also your key adviser on transit taxes. Coincidentally, Pat Dillon is also an ally of this government’s influential Working Families Coalition, which spent $10 million electing the Liberals.

Minister, do you think it’s right to put an Ontario company and Ontario jobs at risk in favour of one union leader?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

Minister.

Hon. Yasir Naqvi: Speaker, our government has a plan for the economy that builds people up and invests in things—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): I’m going to keep you guessing as to when I’m going to act.

Minister of Labour.

Hon. Yasir Naqvi: Stable labour relations is very much part and parcel of building a productive, healthy economy that attracts investment and creates jobs in our economy.

Speaker, I don’t think this side of the House here, the government, is going to take any lectures from the members opposite, who have done nothing but bring our economy in Ontario down by proposing policies that are going to cut jobs in our province, that are going to reduce wages for both unionized and non-unionized workers by promoting policies like right-to-work-for-less. They are going to create havoc in the province. Even John Tory, their former leader, has given them advice not to—

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

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the government House leader. The government House leader has tabled a motion that will allow speedy passage of a bill designed by Liberal and Conservative lobbyists to help EllisDon, one of the Liberal Party’s biggest donors. Yesterday, the Premier spun a very confusing tale about Liberal plans for the bill.

I have a pretty simple question: Is the government proceeding with their programming motion, or are they backing off plans to ram this bill through the House?

Hon. John Milloy: I don’t know where to begin in correcting the facts. I’ll begin with what was put forward. The fact of the matter is that no one is ramming through anything. We came forward with a motion to this House, which has eight bills as well as the formation of a Select Committee on Developmental Services. All the motion does is outline a reasonable

schedule for debate, discussion and votes by this House on these bills. In some cases, they will be going to committee, and in other cases they will be coming here for third reading. That is the extent of it.

When I sat down with my fellow House leaders and showed them a draft of the bill, I certainly said that we would be willing to entertain any changes if people want a little more debate here or a different way of dealing with it in committee. The NDP did not want to have that discussion, so we came forward with this programming motion. Yes, we do intend to pass it and then go on to have serious consideration of these important bills as well as the formation—

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Yesterday we heard a lot of spin from the Premier, but what we didn’t get was a clear answer. We’ve put forward an amendment to the government motion that would take the EllisDon bill off of the fast track. Will the Liberal members support that amendment?

Hon. John Milloy: I think that the Premier was very clear yesterday. She was speaking to one bill on that list of eight. That bill is intended to remedy a ruling by the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Since the discussions amongst the parties, we have had a court ruling which quashed the Ontario Labour Relations Board ruling, and the speaker made the very obvious point that the bill was no longer necessary. That is our position, under the assumption that there won’t be an appeal. I think that the Premier put forward a very straightforward situation. That is our position at the moment.

Over here, we look forward to debate and discussion in front of the committee. There will be an opportunity for hearings. There will be an opportunity for amendments and an opportunity, should it proceed through committee, for a final vote here.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The Liberals can play hot potato with this bill as much as they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that their hands have been all over it. Yesterday, the Conservative sponsor of this bill told reporters that they weren’t the ones who put the bill on the fast track. He claims it was the Premier who made the “delivering for EllisDon act” a priority. Will the government House leader confirm that it was in fact the Liberals and not the Conservatives who asked to fast-track this bill?

Hon. John Milloy: The bill in question is a private member’s bill that was drafted by the member for Lambton–Kent–Middlesex.

What I find unbelievable is that the NDP, last spring, were all in favour of programming motions when it came to the Financial Accountability Officer and the passage of the budget. We worked very closely on it, and when it came to the issue of closure, they stood and voted with the government in terms of closure.

What I find incredible is that when it’s a programming motion that they support, they’re all in favour of it. When it’s a programming motion with a number of very important bills that all parties in this House support, all of a sudden they’ve changed their tune. Let’s have consistency in this Legislature. All we are doing is putting forward a motion which will allow for further debate and discussion on a list of bills that are important to the people of Ontario and in which there is a lot of interest here in this Legislature.

GOVERNMENT’S AGENDA

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My next question is to the Acting Premier. The people who make this province work every day have been looking for some help—help for their aging parents who are waiting for home care, help for their kids who are looking for jobs and help for their pocketbooks when it comes to their bills at the end of the month. But they’re still waiting. Can the Acting Premier explain how the EllisDon bill which the Liberals are now scrambling to back away from became a priority?

Hon. Charles Sousa: The leader of the third party talks about something extremely important, and that’s the work that we’ve done as a party for the last 10 years to help working families here in Ontario. I’m pleased to say that we’ve cut taxes for 93% of Ontario taxpayers. We’ve established a co-operative securities regulator, signed just recently with British Columbia. We’ve introduced a financial transparency and accountability act so that no other government can hide deficits as they did in the past.

We reformed the Pension Benefits Act to modernize rules to assist employers and protect workers. We’ve reduced high business education tax rates. We introduced property and sales tax credits for seniors and low-to-moderate-income families. We’ve harmonized the sales tax, which none of them had the courage to do. We eliminated capital tax for business. We reformed the property tax system so that it’s predictable for homeowners by phasing out property taxes, and more importantly, Mr. Speaker, we supported the auto sector and many others who have over—

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, Speaker, here’s what people see when it comes to their needs, their health care, their jobs and the cost of their everyday lives: The government delivers a lot of conversation but not much result at all. But when it’s time to move a power plant to win some seats, or deliver for a well-connected donor, the government can spring into action at a moment’s notice. What does the Acting Premier think that says about the government’s priorities?

Hon. Charles Sousa: As mentioned, Mr. Speaker, we’ve been working very hard for hard-working Ontarians, and we will continue to do so, regardless of what the others say they will do and never do. We have taken the initiatives to bring forward jobs strategies for working Ontarians that no others—that’s why we’ve had over a 180% return of those jobs since the recession. That’s why we’ll continue to support and make transformations to health care, so that we’re able to supply even more services to those who need it at more affordable rates.

In the end, it’s about helping everybody. The member opposite is talking about one issue; we can deal with more than one issue at a time on this side of the House.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: People are waiting for government to make their challenges a priority. Instead, they see insiders expensing parking fees while they collect six-figure salaries, hundreds of millions spent moving gas plants, and well-connected insiders getting results in the Legislature while everyday people are stuck waiting. When is this government going to start delivering results for the people who make this province work each and every day?

Hon. Charles Sousa: So let’s talk about those results. Since February of this year alone, we’ve increased investment in home care and community care by 1% annually. We’ve invested $260 million in home and community care, $185 million in home care for approximately 46,000 more seniors. We’ve made reforms to physiotherapy that will double the number of clinics and provide 200,000 more supports for seniors. We’ve invested $2.5 million for enhanced breast-feeding supports and many other things to help families and their infants get a good start in life.

But more importantly, since 2003 we’ve done a tremendous amount of work to help reduce wait times, to provide for more hospitals, more nurses, more doctors, more medical schools, more youth employment, more support to bring forward a positive economic growth in our province, a province that all of us are very proud of, and we’ll continue to work alongside those hard-working Ontarians who make it a success for us all.

ELECTION ADVERTISING

Mr. Rick Nicholls: My question is to the Acting Premier. Later today, we will be debating my bill, Bill 101, to put a cap on third party advertising, but we know why your government won’t support my bill—because the Working Families Coalition spent $9 million keeping you in power. But what truly surprises me is this government’s complete change in position.

On April 8, 2013, when the Premier was asked about changing the rules around third party advertising, she said, “I’m very interested in looking at the recommendations and open to looking at changes that could be made.” Moreover, the Attorney General John Gerretsen said this: “The notion of putting a spending limit on third parties certainly strikes me as something that’s well worth looking into.”

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Question.

Mr. Rick Nicholls: And oh, by the way, the leader of the third party also advocates changing the restrictions.

Acting Premier, why—

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

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. When I stand, you sit.

Acting Premier.

Hon. Charles Sousa: It appears to me that the member opposite just doesn’t accept the results of various by-elections and the rejections that many have placed on the PCs and their activities. What’s important, though, and as a result of past performances by that party, is that we on this side of the House have introduced transparency and more accountability. In 2005, we introduced real-time disclosure rules. This allows political parties and leadership contestants to file with the Chief Electoral Officer within 10 days. It also requires the Chief Electoral Officer to publish information about the—

Interjections

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member for Renfrew, come to order.

Hon. Charles Sousa: —contributions made on the Elections Ontario’s website—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Excuse me. When I mention the member from Renfrew’s name, it should be the signal that says stop, not continue.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I never heard you.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): You never heard me? You know why?

Finish, please.

Hon. Charles Sousa: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And, of course, we introduced more legislation in 2007. We introduced third party advertising rules in Ontario for the first time. All of these are encouraging and ensuring that we have more transparency and more openness, and the opposite party voted against those items.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Rick Nicholls: To the Acting Premier: The influence that the special interest groups have over this government is obvious, and quite frankly, it’s quite alarming. A few months ago, the Premier and senior members of this government made it clear that you were open to changing the rules surrounding third party advertising, and today you have completely flip-flopped. How could you possibly go from being open to something just a few months ago to being completely opposed to something today? It just doesn’t make sense.

Is there a reason why you’ve changed your position? Or did the Working Family Coalition boss, Patrick Dillon, write another letter to you, telling you not to support this bill?

Hon. Charles Sousa: Well, I think the member opposite is not accusing this side of the House inasmuch as he’s insulting the public.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): I question why I have to get to this point where, every time the person stands up, I have to threaten people to be thrown out, and they just start yelling. It doesn’t make sense to me, truly, and it’s going to stop. If you push it, I’ll throw you out.

Hon. Charles Sousa: The member opposite, in many respects, is underestimating and insulting the very intelligence of voters in the public.

Under current rules, third parties that spend $500 or more on election advertising are required to register with the Chief Electoral Officer. We put that in place; they voted against that. Registered third parties must also report to the CEO on election advertising expenses. If election advertising expenses are $5,000 or more, these reports must be audited. These rules ensure that there is transparency and free speech. These guys don’t want to have free speech in this public democracy.

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE

Mr. Percy Hatfield: My question this morning is to the Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure. Good morning, Minister.

The independent report on the Herb Gray Parkway has made it clear that the girders installed by Freyssinet are not up to standard. To quote one portion of that report, “The only option is to replace deficient and non-compliant girders will new ones that are constructed in accordance with all the applicable requirements for design construction.”

Minister, why are you not listening to the recommendation of the report and choosing, instead, to salvage instead of replacing these girders?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: I again want to thank the member for his very sincere concern about this. I think it’s a concern we both share.

Mr. Speaker, I want to be very clear about this, because I was somewhat disappointed when I read some of the reporting on this, and I think a fundamental fact is missing. The independent expert review looked at this in detail for two months. The committee is still working today, and testing is continuing.

I made two very clear commitments, which I intend to keep. The first one was that we would not open a single structure until the chief engineer of the province, who always makes these decisions, in whom trust in his competency is placed by the people of Ontario, signs off on them. The second thing I said is that this would not be a political decision. Whatever the chief engineer decided, based on his expertise, based purely on engineering—

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

Mr. Percy Hatfield: Minister, you mentioned the reporting. I don’t know if you saw the editorial cartoon in the Windsor Star today that has the girder with band-aids slapped all over it, and that’s an editorial comment unto itself.

The report says that the test results around salvaging the girders did not address all the concerns related to durability of the girders made by Freyssinet. On July 22, in a press release, you said, “The girders in question will be removed unless the safety and durability can be assured and any compliance concerns are addressed.” Minister, what made you change your mind?

Hon. Glen R. Murray: Mr. Speaker, the one thing I’ve gotten in Ontario is a much thicker skin. I don’t think we should allow cartoonists to be making engineering decisions.

Second, who should make this decision? Should it be the Minister of Transportation? Should it be the member opposite? Should it be the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing? No. The decision must be made by the chief engineer.

The condition of some of those girders at this point is not adequate. If any of those girders are not up to the high standards of the highway code and the bridge code and cannot meet that threshold to be as safe as any other girders, they will not be installed, but they will be removed. That determination will not be made by politicians; it will be made by engineers, specifically the chief engineer of Ontario.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr. Shafiq Qaadri: I rise on behalf of my constituents of the great riding of Etobicoke North with a question for the honourable Minister of Community and Social Services.

Speaker, the mark of a just society is how that society treats its most vulnerable. Investing in people, their opportunities and their future is important to the conduct of any government. I know first-hand from my community that constituents who have relied on social assistance in a time of need appreciate that support for their loved ones. Even those members of society who do not avail themselves of social assistance value the fact that such a system is in place, on call, as it were, for those who may need it.

I recall that a part of our government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy was to initiate the first review of social assistance in more than 20 years. The Commission for the Review of Social Assistance in Ontario published recommendations to better the system for all Ontarians. With the guidance of the commission, the government envisions a more improved system that is more accountable and delivers services and supports. I ask the minister—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. The Minister of Community and Social Services.

Hon. Ted McMeekin: I want to thank the member for his question. I know from conversations with all members of the House that we’re all committed to working towards a fairer society. I’m pleased to report that our government will be investing some $400 million-plus over the next three years to help make the prospects of some 912,000-plus people in Ontario just a little bit brighter.

Social assistance rates have been increased by 1% for families on Ontario Works and individuals with disabilities on the ODSP program. As well, single adults without children will receive a top-up of $14 a month, for a total increase of $20. These increases are kicking in this week.

Is there more for us to do? You betcha. But you know what? These changes are going to help.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Shafiq Qaadri: I thank the minister not only for his answer today, but for his ongoing commitment and sincere efforts on these files. The much-needed targeted rate increase will be welcome news for those in my riding and across Ontario for people who depend on Ontario Works and ODSP.

However, learning from recipients in my riding, I know that such supports, though important, are nevertheless not all that there is to social assistance. Social assistance, they tell me, is about more than a cheque. Other benefits include employment supports and skills training; child care support, so people can work and earn a better life for their families; and job placement supports for people with disabilities to achieve greater financial independence.

I ask once again, Speaker, through you to the minister: Can he inform the House what other changes have been made to social assistance, and what the plans are going forward?

Hon. Ted McMeekin: Again, the member is right, and I’m delighted to respond. New rules now allow social assistance individuals to keep up to $200 of the money that they earn. This, of course, is going to allow them to gain a quicker foothold in the economy and affirm their efforts.

Ontario Works clients can also keep more assets so they won’t have to give up everything they own before they’re eligible for assistance.

As part of the Ontario government’s economic plan to invest in people, invest in infrastructure and support a dynamic and innovative business climate, we’re committed to helping more people find jobs.

In the past few months, my cabinet colleagues and I have been seeking input from people all across this province on what could be done through a renewed poverty reduction strategy. We have been listening, we have been learning, and we’re committed to further action. I look forward to working with all members of the House to make things just a little bit better for—

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

HORSE RACING INDUSTRY

Mr. Randy Pettapiece: My question is to the Minister of Finance. At the Fort Erie Race Track, people are losing their jobs, all because of this government’s deliberate destruction of the horse racing industry. The minister sat at the table when that callous decision was made. It was made without warning, without consultation and without even so much as an economic analysis.

Will the minister apologize today to the people of Fort Erie and the people of rural Ontario for not speaking up when he had the chance?

Hon. Charles Sousa: The Minister of Rural Affairs.

Hon. Jeff Leal: Mr. Speaker, our government believes in a strong, sustainable future for the horse racing industry in Ontario. Our plan is guided by the work being done by the Horse Racing Transition Panel. The panel is made up of three very distinguished people: John Wilkinson, John Snobelen and Elmer Buchanan. Premier Wynne has asked the panel to develop a comprehensive five-year plan for the industry. Their plan will present a road map for sustainability for the industry, including grassroots and larger tracks.

I’m confident that when the panel reports on its recommendations for the five-year plan, the industry will have the confidence it needs, and every track that wishes to conduct live racing will have the opportunity to do so.

The horse racing industry is vital to rural communities across this great province. Our government will continue to work with Ontario’s great horse racing community to ensure that racing remains vibrant in this province for years to come.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Randy Pettapiece: Speaker, I did not hear an apology. Neither have we heard an apology from the leader of the NDP for her

part in passing the budget that has already cost 9,000 jobs. Because of that deal with the NDP, the future of the 100-year-old Fort Erie Race Track is uncertain at best.

Fort Erie has suffered some devastating blows at the hands of this government. You’ve shut down their ER, and you’ve closed their tourism office, and now this.

If the minister won’t apologize, let’s put it this way: Why is it more important to hang on to a few dozen jobs for Liberal and NDP politicians than it is to hang on to so many thousands of jobs in the horse racing industry? Not even the priciest of panels can excuse him for that.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

Minister.

Hon. Jeff Leal: Our government is committed to a vibrant and sustainable future for horse racing in the province of Ontario, and it is central to our plan going forward. As part of our future, our government commissioned a panel to develop a five-year plan for the racing industry that’s accountable, transparent, customer-focused and a net benefit for the taxpayers of Ontario.

Our friends across the floor can’t have it both ways. They can’t bluster one week that the Slots At Racetracks Program should be reinstated, then come here two weeks later and say it wasn’t accountable. As we say in Peterborough, Mr. Speaker, that dog doesn’t hunt.

I’ll repeat again for the member across the way, because it seems he wasn’t listening on any occasion—on three occasions. We’ve got a plan. We’re going to bring a plan forward, and horse racing will be vibrant in the province of Ontario.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Be seated, please. Thank you.

WATER QUALITY

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est pour le premier ministre par intérim.

Today it was reported that water bottled in Ontario and sold at restaurants in Ontario was found to contain bacteria at levels that constitute a threat to public health. The ministry found out about this risk three months ago.

My question is simple: Why did the Ministry of Health not warn the public when it first learned about this health risk?

Hon. Charles Sousa: Yesterday, Dr. Arlene King issued a warning to consumers and businesses not to consume or serve bottled water manufactured by the Blue Glass Water Co. Ltd., also known as Caledon Clear Water Corp.

It is a federal issue, as the member opposite knows, but we take steps to protect our public. Samples of water taken from the company’s products have been found to have some contamination with bacteria. As a result, we feel there is a potential health threat posed by these products. So, in accordance with Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act, Blue Glass Water Co. Ltd. was ordered to cease operations related to bottling, processing and distributing water.

Inspections by public health units have identified the product in food establishments in Hamilton and Niagara, as well as the continued presence of some of the product in food establishments here in Toronto. The ministry is carefully investigating and monitoring the situation with public health units to ensure public safety.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

M me France Gélinas: Something is wrong when the Ontario Ministry of Health finds out that a product sold in Toronto, Niagara, Hamilton and elsewhere in Ontario is unsafe for consumption, yet it fails to warn the public. To protect the health of Ontarians is the Ministry of Health’s primary mandate. Is it really ministry policy to wait until somebody gets sick or maybe even dies before letting the public know about contaminated water?

Hon. Charles Sousa: I appreciate the question and I know the member opposite shares the same concerns that we all do in this House, and those are public safety, people’s health and people’s well-being, and to suggest otherwise or to infer that we are putting people’s lives at risk is not, I believe, your intent, because I know that we all work together to do just that.

We rely on the advice of Dr. King. We have taken the steps necessary to work with our partners through the Ministry of Health, and we will continue to press and make those decisions as we find them out.

But, please, we’re all in this together and we’re fighting for the benefit of our public. No one has been hurt at this point. We intend that not to occur.

YOUTH EMPLOYMENT

Mr. Steven Del Duca: My question today is for the very hard-working Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities.

Applause.

Mr. Steven Del Duca: Absolutely; well-deserved kudos to the minister.

The parents and families in my riding of Vaughan are concerned about youth unemployment, the rate of youth unemployment in our province and the future of their children. As young people struggle to find good opportunities for employment, it is important for our government to listen and it’s important also that we take action.

I am delighted to hear that the province has taken up the challenge and implemented the Youth Employment Fund to help youth find good jobs and experience in our growing economy. Can the minister please update the House as to how young people across our province and in my community of Vaughan can benefit from the Youth Employment Fund?

Hon. Brad Duguid: I want to thank the member for the question, obviously, but I want to thank him as well for his leadership in Vaughan, standing up for young people in that community, a fast-growing community; lots of youth in that area.

The member knows that our government has risen to the challenge of tackling youth unemployment in the creation of the Youth Employment Fund, and we’ll continue to ensure that helping our young people is indeed a top priority.

I’m proud to report that after just one week, 535 youth have had active job placements—after just one week—with 126 more young people beginning placements that will happen in the very near future. Mr. Speaker, we’re off to a very, very good start.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the hard-working people at Employment Ontario and our service providers for putting this program out there in a very short period of time, getting it up and running. They are out there for our young people. I encourage all members from all parties, when young people approach them in their constituency offices, to refer them to their local service provider to help them find work.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Steven Del Duca: I thank the minister for his outstanding work on this file. The people of my riding and the people of our province are very lucky to have him on the job.

I am thrilled to hear that this particular fund has been a huge success across this province. The unemployment rate amongst our youth is an issue that certainly deserves our government’s attention. I’m pleased to hear that this program is accessible to youth across the province, although my primary concern is with the youth in my riding of Vaughan and in other important communities in Ontario like Niagara Falls. Youth unemployment is very apparent in communities, and many of our young people face great barriers each and every day.

Speaker, through you to the minister, I’d like to know exactly how the youth of Vaughan and the youth of Niagara Falls can benefit from the Youth Employment Fund.

Hon. Brad Duguid: That’s an interesting question, Mr. Speaker. The Youth Employment Fund provides up to $7,800 for each eligible youth for a flexible range of supports, including training and financial assistance, and to cover costs like transportation and tools. Youth and employers can apply for this fund by reaching out to their local Employment Ontario service providers.

I know for a fact, for instance, that youth in Vaughan can benefit from two Employment Ontario service providers: Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology, which is located at 1490 Major Mackenzie Drive, and the Toronto District School Board, located at 4585 on Highway 7.

These service providers are out there in places like Niagara Falls, but are right across the province to ensure that our young people have access to this very important program. Putting young people to work is a priority for this government. We’re going to ensure this program is delivered on time, on budget, and ensure that our young people get—

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

New question.

PENSION PLANS

Mr. Jim Wilson: My question is to the Minister of Finance. Minister, on September 18, I asked you in question period what the government is doing to resolve an outstanding split pension issue that has been unresolved for years concerning public sector employees who have been affected by past public sector divestments. Your response two weeks ago did not answer my question and was some nonsense about pensions in general, retirement planning and what your government was doing, all stuff we already knew.

I’m not sure if then you couldn’t answer my question or what the problem was, but thousands of public sector employees want and deserve an answer. Minister, again today, I’ll ask you the same question: What is your government doing to help thousands of paramedics, thousands of MPAC employees and thousands of other public sector workers who are affected by the split pension issue? And why is it taking your government so long to fix this injustice?

Hon. Charles Sousa: I appreciate the question and I appreciate the concern the member opposite has in regards to pension and reform and the benefits necessary to protect workers, as well as employers. That’s why we’ve taken initial steps, and they’re outlined in our budget as well, around enhancement to CPP, for example. We recognize that’s a broad-based initiative to help our workers in Ontario. We also included PRRPs, pooled registered retirement plans, to help those who aren’t saving.

But to the point that the member opposite requests, we recognize that regulations are coming soon in the fall. We will continue to do our utmost to try to resolve issues going forward.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Jim Wilson: Back to the minister: I really don’t think you give a damn at all about these people. I mean—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): I would ask the member to withdraw.

Mr. Jim Wilson: I withdraw, Mr. Speaker.

Minister, I don’t understand. I’ve been at this issue for five years. Thousands of public sector employees are starting to retire. Their employer changed, through no fault of their own, because ambulance services moved to upper-tier government from hospital-based services. MPAC employees used to be property assessment people in your ministry, or the Ministry of Revenue, and they moved to MPAC, and yet their pensions didn’t follow them, and they’re adversely affected by this. Many of them will be out thousands and thousands of dollars that they paid for. This doesn’t cost you money; this is their money.

Now I know the unions run the pensions. Are they running this government on this issue too because they don’t want to take the time to transfer the money to the other pension plans run by other unions? I have learned over time, these unions don’t get along. Are you in the unions’ pockets again—

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Thank you. Stop the clock. Before any other members get themselves into water that they don’t want to be in, I’m going to just tell the member that I’m not happy with his last part and that I would hope we would race to the top and not to the bottom with the kinds of comments that I’m hearing. I’m going to offer the minister an opportunity to answer the question.

Hon. Charles Sousa: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s unfortunate that the premise of the question now is about bashing labour and bashing the very people who are hard-working Ontarians in our province, who are in need of support with their pensions, and that’s what we’re doing.

Many public sector employees whose pensions are affected by past government-initiated restructuring want consolidation with their split pension entitlements in a single plan. We get that. We’ve made reforms to the Pension Benefits Act. We’ve taken regulatory provisions that are necessary to be initiated before those reforms are implemented. We posted draft regulations in February 2013, consulted up until April 15, 2013. On July 12, 2013, we posted draft regulations on the regulatory registry regarding asset transfers, and we’ve made consultations that closed in September.

After comments are received and appropriate changes are made, both regulations will be presented to cabinet, and that will happen in the fall of this year.

BEAR CONTROL

Mr. John Vanthof: My question is to the Minister of Natural Resources. Last weekend, a Peterborough woman was out walking her dogs when she was attacked by a black bear. Thankfully, due to the actions of her dogs, she survived. This is the latest in a series of human-nuisance bear encounters across the province. Will it take a tragedy before this government reconsiders its short-sighted decision to scrap the Bear Wise program?

Hon. David Orazietti: I appreciate the question from the member opposite with regard to this particular issue. I think we’re all very relieved that the incident in question that we’re speaking about, and that the member is speaking about, didn’t result in something more serious. Obviously, our thoughts are with the individual.

As the member pointed out, there has been a number of nuisance bear issues this spring, in particular, and throughout the summer that have been particularly challenging in many northern communities. As a northerner, I take this issue very seriously. Public safety is paramount when it comes to the safety of individuals in northern Ontario and throughout the province of Ontario, for that matter.

We are working with our ministry officials to develop a plan that will see a more effective response when it comes to nuisance bear issues in the province of Ontario, as this issue has been raised by members opposite as well as members in our caucus. There are members on this side of the House, as well, who are very passionate about the issue and that care—

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

Mr. John Vanthof: My supplementary is also to the Minister of Natural Resources. The people of Ontario, including northerners, need more than a plan. We need action. The government didn’t seem to have a problem with ignoring the safety concerns of northerners or downloading the responsibility of dealing with rogue bears onto the police and northern municipalities. But this latest attack happened just east of Toronto.

Bear attacks are getting harder and harder to ignore, as the minister has acknowledged. Will it take a bear on the south lawn of Queen’s Park to force the ministry to do its job and manage wildlife?

Hon. David Orazietti: As the member knows, when the bear hunt was cancelled in 1999 by the party opposite in the Conservative government—our government took action by extending the fall hunt for bears, and in fact helped to increase the harvest numbers of bears in the province of Ontario. We know the numbers are relatively stable, but we did help to increase the number of bears harvested across the province by increasing and expanding the fall hunt.

But I certainly take the member’s point. This is not an issue that we have been neglecting. This is an issue that we take very seriously, and we are developing a plan. I look forward to the member’s support on the plan that we bring forward that will help to more aptly address nuisance bear challenges.

I have to say, Speaker, that with the communities in northern Ontario, the member is well aware that there are not incidents occurring all—

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

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Kevin Daniel Flynn: I’ve got a question this morning for the Minister of Research and Innovation. Our government recognizes, and I think all members would agree, that our capacity as a province to compete in the global knowledge-based economy depends in large part on how well the province is able to harness its resource strength. Our track record is quite good. As a country, Canada ranks sixth in the world for the quality and the impact of its research; Ontario comprises nearly half of that expertise.

Supporting research and innovation is fundamental to a competitive economy. Ontario businesses invest $6 billion in research and development every year. That’s almost half of Canada’s total. Through you, Speaker, to the Minister of Research and Innovation, what is the provincial government doing further to support and advance research and development in our province?

Hon. Reza Moridi: I would like to thank the member from Oakville for that question. Mr. Speaker, Ontario’s research and development initiatives have always been in the forefront and a most important priority for this government. Research and innovation creates good-value jobs and also it’s the engine of the economy for tomorrow.

Our government has committed $557 million to recent projects through the Ontario Research Fund—Research Excellence program. This program and the recipients of this program have leveraged $1.2 billion in funding from private and institutional sources. We have also committed $760 million to Ontario Research Fund—Research Infrastructure program. This program has leveraged $1.4 billion of investment from other sources. Through this program we are funding 1,600 research projects across the province for their infrastructure and equipment costs.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud that our government’s investment in research and innovation has kept us at the—

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

Mr. Kevin Daniel Flynn: I’m glad to hear that our government is continuing to invest in the research and development initiatives right here in the province. I think we’d all agree in this House that we know that’s going to help create jobs and spur the economic growth that we all want. It’s going to allow us, if we do this, to continue to build an economic climate that offers the right conditions the businesses are asking for to grow and create those jobs.

We provide the necessary resources and support for researchers. We know that that’s critical to the economic prosperity of this province, in both the short term and the long run. We know we want to support world-class research and we need to commercialize those technologies from the research stage, but thro