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February 18, 2010

39th Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcripts 2010-Feb-18 (PDF)

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L'ONTARIO

Thursday 18 February 2010 Jeudi 18 février 2010

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PENSION BENEFITS

AMENDMENT ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 MODIFIANT LA LOI

SUR LES RÉGIMES DE RETRAITE

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

ORAL QUESTIONS

LOCAL HEALTH

INTEGRATION NETWORKS

HOSPITAL FUNDING

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

HOSPITAL FUNDING

RETIREMENT HOMES

FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

SPECIAL EDUCATION

AGRICULTURE PROGRAMS

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

HOSPITAL FUNDING

PUBLIC TRANSIT

LABOUR DISPUTE

PUBLIC TRANSIT

VIOLENCE FAMILIALE

VISITORS

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

AGRICULTURE FUNDING

LOCAL DEMOCRACY WEEK

LOCAL HEALTH INTEGRATION NETWORKS

FRANCES LANKIN

FAMILY LITERACY DAY

YVONNE MARTIN

TOWN OF RICHMOND HILL

SHELLEY-ANN BROWN

REUVEN BULKA

NOTICE OF DISSATISFACTION

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

AND RESPONSES

HEART MONTH /

MOIS DU COEUR

PETITIONS

CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES

DIAGNOSTIC SERVICES

SOCIAL SERVICES FUNDING

TAXATION

CEMETERIES

ELMVALE DISTRICT HIGH SCHOOL

CEMETERIES

HIGHWAY INTERCHANGE

CHILD CUSTODY

TAXATION

PRIVATE MEMBERS'

PUBLIC BUSINESS

BRITISH HOME CHILD DAY ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR LE JOUR

DES PETITS IMMIGRÉS BRITANNIQUES

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

SUSTAINABLE WATER

AND WASTE WATER

SYSTEMS IMPROVEMENT

AND MAINTENANCE ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR LA VIABILITÉ

ET L'AMÉLIORATION DES RÉSEAUX

D'APPROVISIONNEMENT EN EAU

ET D'EAUX USÉES

BRITISH HOME CHILD DAY ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR LE JOUR

DES PETITS IMMIGRÉS BRITANNIQUES

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

SUSTAINABLE WATER

AND WASTE WATER

SYSTEMS IMPROVEMENT

AND MAINTENANCE ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 SUR LA VIABILITÉ

ET L'AMÉLIORATION DES RÉSEAUX

D'APPROVISIONNEMENT EN EAU

ET D'EAUX USÉES

The House met at 0900.

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

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

PENSION BENEFITS

AMENDMENT ACT, 2010 /

LOI DE 2010 MODIFIANT LA LOI

SUR LES RÉGIMES DE RETRAITE

Resuming the debate adjourned on February 17, 2010, on the motion for second reading of Bill 236,

An Act to amend the Pension Benefits Act / Projet de loi 236, Loi modifiant la

Loi sur les régimes de retraite.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Questions and comments?

Mr. Lou Rinaldi: It's a pleasure to spend a couple of minutes to talk about Bill 236, and I just wanted to reaffirm what this act really does, if passed.

I know we've heard over and over again that we need to do more, and this is sort of the first phase. We need to do more. I think that sometimes–not in a selfish way—we need to do more with members of this House. Nevertheless, I think the folks out there are more important at this stage.

What does this bill actually propose to do? It provides for the restructuring of pension plans affected by corporate reorganizations while protecting benefits security for plan members and pensioners. Obviously, that's very, very important, because in the last few years we've seen enormous amounts of restructuring, and the workforce is sometimes the last one to be dealt with.

It will clarify the benefits of plan members affected by layoffs and eliminate partial windups. Of course, in the last couple of years we've seen an enormous amount of that.

It will increase transparency and access to information for plan members and pensioners. It will enhance regulatory oversight that, once again, we learned in the last couple of years is needed more and more. Once again, what was in place for the last number of years, previous to the last pension reform, is not good enough for today's economy and standards.

We'll improve plan administration and reduce compliance costs. Once again, that's a big piece of making sure these plans will stay in effect and help those mostly affected, especially under the circumstances of windup or restructuring.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Questions and comments? Response?

Mr. Norm Miller: Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the comments of the member from Northumberland—Quinte West. I did have an opportunity yesterday to speak at length about Bill 236. As I mentioned in my speech, the government has said they are going to bring forward two pension bills. This is the first, and the people I have met with describe it as kind of tinkering around the edges. The more difficult challenges to do with pensions are going to come in the second bill, which we're expecting sometime this spring.

This bill is dealing with the more minor issues; some, though, that are very important. I know that the member from Simcoe—Grey has brought up issues that he sees are favourably dealt with in the bill. I did make mention yesterday in my speech that my concern is that the grow-in provisions are becoming unique to Ontario. I note, in reviewing the pre-budget consultation notes, that Advocis, one group that came forward, pointed out that harmonizing provincial and federal regulations for defined contribution plans is something to be looking toward.

Ontario would be the only jurisdiction in Canada, other than Nova Scotia, that would have grow-in provisions. In Nova Scotia, they've been advised to do away with grow-in provisions. I'm hearing from the people who are involved with pensions that this would be a bad thing, that we should obviously have harmonized rules across the country, and that having Ontario unique and having grow-in provisions only in Ontario—something that makes the plans more expensive—would be a step backward. That is my major concern with this bill, which, as I mentioned, is highly technical and deals with the easier parts of pension reform.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further debate? The member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

Mr. Paul Miller: First of all, I would like to start by saying that I listened intently to the member from Pickering—Scarborough East's delivery yesterday of the government's plan for Bill 236, and I must say that it was a really good history lesson. He had a lot of information about what has transpired over the years. But I guess I have a different outlook on this situation, speaking from my experience as a lobbyist in Ottawa for the steelworkers.

I remember being there a few years ago; we had brought forth concerns about the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, which also interacts with provincial pension laws, so they're married, so to speak—you can't talk about one without the other. While I was in Ottawa, we met with great frustration from the sitting government, as well as the official opposition at the time. We had trouble even getting in to see them to talk about the situation of pensions and the decline of pensions in Ontario, and Canada for that matter.

Some of the members wouldn't even meet with us, and I remember a particular member from Alberta, Conservative member Mr. Ted Menzies, who is now the pension lead for the federal government. In fact, not only would he not see us; he wouldn't even talk to us at the time. I find it quite interesting that he's the lead for the Conservatives on pension reform.

I'd also like to talk about the demise of pension plans in Canada and of defined pension plans, which have been under attack for years. They've been underfunded for years. Nobody did anything at the time. We set off the alarm bells years ago, and now everything has come to fruition. I find that most governments are reactive, not proactive, and that's what is happening here again.

I'd like to talk about the situation of the elderly in the country. Elderly people are suffering. I don't know who in this room could live on a $600 old-age—

Interjections.

Mr. Paul Miller: Mr. Speaker, I'm having trouble hearing myself—and with the other $500 it comes to about $1,300 that a person has to live on in this country. That doesn't cut it. A lot of our elderly people are being forced into homes that they wouldn't want to be in, or into situations where they can't—especially if the spouse dies, that cuts their income in half and they're struggling. Then it becomes a burden to their families as to themselves.

These are the people that built this country, paid their taxes all their life, and at the end of their life they're almost being penalized because they're older and can't survive in the situation. Obviously something had to be done quickly, and I'm not sure it happened fast enough.

In reference to the Nortel situation, the Nortel people really were very proactive and demonstrated it in Ottawa on the Hill, brought their concerns forward and were speaking out loudly. With that amount of people involved, they finally got the ear of the government a little bit, as well as of Ontario, I see. Now the Minister of Finance has decided that they may come up with a plan to supplement them up to $1,000, even though the plan that exists in Ontario—the guaranteed pension investment fund—already says that, even though it's grossly underfunded. They're going to give them up to $1,000.

That, frankly, doesn't cut it. Some of these people are entitled to $3,000 or $3,500 a month for their 30 or 40 years of service, and they're going to be cut down to probably a third or less than a third of what they're entitled to. I don't know if this is a temporary fix or if it is a political move, but it certainly does not fix the situation for the Nortel workers. In fact, in my humble opinion, it's an insult to them.

Getting on with that, I'd like to say that we, the NDP, are in support of increasing CPP. Also, we'd like to see an increase to the old age security, which has been there for years and is grossly inadequate, to allow people to have some dignity in their retirement.

I'd like to get into the specifics of the bill and our position now, after getting that off my chest, the frustration that I've faced for years in Ottawa and here. I do recall that when I first got elected I was fortunate enough in the draw to get the first bill; that was two and a half years ago. When I got that, the first thing I did was try to help workers with severance and holiday pay, which they were being ripped off on all over this country and all over this province. Of course, it's still on the books.

It died—the government decided not to entertain it—and here we are two and a half years later and everybody's running around with their heads cut off because people are getting ripped off all over the country with pensions and severance pay and all that. It's just on and on. Every week we hear about a new company or a new group of people that are in trouble financially. Now all of a sudden, everybody has come out of the woodwork all concerned about this. It's amazing how these things happen.

I'd like to start on the bill itself with something from the Arthurs report. I think it nicely sets the stage for my remarks: "Ontario's system of occupational pensions—like ... systems in the United Kingdom and the United States—has been encountering difficulties"—that's putting it mildly—"especially during the present decade," with the demise of the markets and the demise of overall national incomes.

"The percentage of the Ontario workforce covered by occupational pension plans has been slowly declining, from just under 40% of the workforce in 1985 to just under 35% today.

"Increasing numbers of workers with pension coverage—but still less than one in five—are now enrolled in defined contribution ... plans rather than defined benefit ... plans, though the latter"—defined benefit plans—"are often seen as more attractive by workers.

"Many pension plans have failed in recent years, and many have been severely underfunded for extended periods for various reasons: financial difficulties encountered by sponsoring companies feeling the effects of global competition; declining long-term interest rates, equity prices and plan asset values; increasing numbers of retired members relative to the number of active members still contributing to their plan; and the rising cost of providing pensions to a workforce whose life expectancy has been increasing.

"The reconfiguration of pension plans triggered by the restructuring of Ontario's economy, as well as their actual or threatened failure, has given rise to considerable litigation.

"Other critical concerns include the rules governing the funding of plans; the ownership of surplus in plans when they are ongoing, wound up or reconfigured; and the protection of worker interests when sponsoring employers do not or cannot make good any deficiency in plan funding.

"Attempts to resolve these concerns by changes to Ontario's pension laws have faltered, either because they have been politically controversial or because they require legislation that only the federal government can constitutionally enact.

"These difficulties have also revealed shortcomings in the legal and regulatory framework governing pensions, in the agency responsible for pension regulation in Ontario, and in the architecture of plan governance.

"The cumulative effect of these difficulties has been to shake the confidence of employers, unions, workers, pension professionals and policy analysts in the future of the occupational"—workplace—"pension system in general, and especially in defined benefit pensions."

Before I get into the details of the bill, I'd like to talk about what the NDP will be looking for in terms of pension reform over the coming months.

First, with only 35% of Ontarians covered by an occupational pension plan, there is a clear need for expanded pension coverage for all working Ontarians. Ideally, the way this would be done would be to increase the benefit levels of the Canada pension plan. This would draw on existing economies of scale, risk-sharing and administrative efficiencies in the plan.

The Ontario NDP joins with the federal NDP and the Canadian Labour Congress in the campaign for an expanded national universal pension plan in the form of enhanced CPP. That said, the issue of expanding pension coverage is an urgent one. We in the Ontario NDP do not believe that the Harper government is going to move to expand coverage to a suitable level. Therefore, we believe there is an important role to be played by the provincial government in greatly expanding workplace pension coverage.

The Ontario retirement plan is the next topic. The NDP believes that Ontario should move ahead, as are other provinces, and develop an employment-based pension plan for all working Ontarians who presently lack occupational coverage. The NDP has proposed just such a plan. We are calling our plan the Ontario retirement plan. Before I get into the specifics of how such a plan would work, I'd like to talk a bit about the benefits of the Ontario retirement plan.

First, and most obviously, the Ontario retirement plan would deal with the roughly 65% of Ontarians who presently have no workplace-based pension coverage.

Second, in an Ontario retirement plan, the band of income that the contribution rate would be assessed against would be different from that of the current CPP. A broader band of income would allow for a higher benefit for plan members earning over $47,000. This responds to exactly the kind of replacement-rate issues that the pension expert Bob Baldwin identified in his report to the Minister of Finance, which was tabled in Whitehorse in December 2009.

Third, an Ontario retirement plan would be used to further the consolidation of a fragmented workplace-based pension plan and system. For example, Ontario has over 6,500 workplace plans. Many of them are very small. Many of these might elect to integrate into a large Ontario plan which has as its base two thirds of the Ontario workforce.

Fourth, an Ontario retirement plan could allow for the transfer of an RRSP which could be used to purchase past service credits for the basic benefits. This would allow older workers who would not ordinarily be able to earn the full benefit to receive more than they otherwise would.

An Ontario retirement plan would be a publicly run, targeted benefit plan, much like the Ontario teachers' plan, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan and the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology Pension Plan. In order to maximize participation, every employee not enrolled in a workplace pension plan would be automatically enrolled in the Ontario retirement plan. But the plan is not mandatory. If you have a better way to plan for your retirement, you don't have to take

part in the Ontario retirement plan. If, as your life changes, you decide that the Ontario plan is something you can use, you can opt back in.

Employees and employers would be expected to contribute equally to the plan. Contribution rates for employees should be phased in over a five-year period. Depending upon economic circumstances, a somewhat longer phase-in might be required for employers. Unlike a defined contribution plan or a group RRSP, the assets of the plan would be invested for the plan as a whole, not on an individual basis. The result is far more security for plan members.

The maximum benefit would be between $600 and $700 a month in 2010 dollars. Now, that amount may not seem like a lot to people, but I'll tell you that that $600 to $700 a month could be the difference between an elderly person being forced out of their home; that $600 or $700 could pay for their hydro and utility bills and maybe even some food, and the rest of their meagre income could be used for their everyday needs. I think that $700 a month would make a big difference to a lot of people in my riding, considering that 20% of them are living below the poverty level.

Because many current members of the workforce would not have sufficient years in the plan to receive the maximum benefit, plan members would be able to increase their normal benefit through a retroactive purchase of past service credits. In the new world of work, people are increasingly mobile. Many will work a number of jobs in their lifetime. We can choose to let them sink or swim, or we can step in with sensible solutions like the NDP Ontario retirement plan that will make their lives better. So that's the coverage issue.

But Harry Arthurs also came up with a number of good suggestions regarding strengthening the existing pension system. First, the NDP supports the Arthurs recommendation for establishing an Ontario pension agency. We believe that pooling, administering, investing and disbursing stranded pensions would be an important role for this agency. In our opinion, an Ontario pension agency would pretty much solve the problem that Nortel pensioners face. Nortel, AbitibiBowater and Canwest Global Communications could all benefit from an Ontario pension agency.

This agency would be able to take stranded pensions and treat them like an ongoing, active pension. Rather than winding up the plan, the agency would be very proactive, endeavouring to grow the plan to ensure a monthly pension closer to what a retiree expected before the plan became stranded or abandoned. I believe Quebec did that, and it's been very successful. Maybe—just maybe—we should follow suit.

Second, the $1,000 of monthly pension benefits eligible for protection by the pension benefits guarantee fund is completely inadequate. We believe that over time, the monthly guarantee covered by the PBGF should be increased to a maximum of $2,500, to reflect the effect of inflation on the original maximum of $1,000, which has been in place since 1980. I believe Mr. Arthurs recommended this to the government in his plan. After our discussions with him—we had a meeting with him, and we in the NDP suggested that $2,500 would be a good mark, and it sounds like he took our advice.

I wish the government would do that, but I haven't heard anything about increasing the PBGF to $2,500. In fact, that's not even mentioned. This is probably the main thing that would solve some of the problems of people in Ontario.

Pensioners and people who have lost their pensions, people who are going to lose their pensions and people's pension funds that are underfunded—it will not give them adequate money for what they've worked their life for. These are deferred wages that were negotiated by a lot of these people in contracts. Also, people without unions were hoping that this would cover them, and it didn't. Now they're saying, "Sorry, you're out of luck. The best we can do is up to $1,000."

So if a person was entitled to $3,500, that he worked for all his life and that the company put into the pension plan for him, thinking full well that he was going to get that at the end of his life, what happened? They pulled the rug out from underneath all these people. A lot of these companies have left the country: "Sorry, we don't have enough money to put in the fund. Sorry about your luck." Now you're 70 or 75 years old, and a steady income that has allowed you to stay in your home, take the odd trip, and buy gifts for your kids and grandkids has been removed.

While the NDP agrees that the basis on which the levy will be paid by plan sponsors is a complex matter and that a phase-in period may be necessary, we are extremely disappointed that this key Arthurs recommendation is nowhere to be seen in the first package of pension reform in this legislation.

Third, the NDP believes the existing grow-in rights that provide access to early retirement benefits for all qualifying single-employer pension plan members in the event of a full or partial windup should be extended to all such members who are involuntarily terminated. Qualifying members should continue to be those whose age and years of service add up to 55. We believe that it would increase equity and reduce the number of disputes about full or partial windups. I know there has been some progress on the grow-in rights issue in this package, but we also have some concerns about how it's being implemented in Bill 236.

Speaker, we should get somebody to turn down the heat in this place; it's like a sauna in here.

Fourth, the NDP supports the Arthurs recommendation that all active plan members should be immediately vested for all accrued pension benefits. As you know, as things now stand, if an employee moves on before two years is up, he or she loses their employer contribution to their pension plan. This is something we should have changed years ago, and we are glad that the government is finally putting this in as part of the present package they are offering.

But we also have real concerns with the package. I'm really looking forward to the public hearings on this very technical bill. Here are some of the NDP's initial concerns:

We are very concerned with the changes in surplus distribution on windups. This change in the act is a significant loss of entitlement for plan members. Currently,

section 79 requires both, and there has been agreement for surplus distribution and that the employer entitlement to surplus must be established. We acknowledge that there has been difficulty in the application of this

section of the act, but we still believe this wording makes things much, much worse. There would have been a greater basis for this change if the government had followed the Arthurs recommendation on vesting and grow-in rights, and if the PBGF recommendation for an increase of $2,500 a month were implemented. Only the vesting and grow-in recommendations were implemented in this bill; the PBGF recommendation was totally ignored. This is not the delicate balance Harry Arthurs wanted.

Putting it bluntly, the NDP believes that the surplus should only go to employers on windup if the employer has clear entitlement to the surplus. That has been another question over the years that has cropped up. We will oppose this provision as things stand now.

The NDP also has some problems regarding the transfer provisions. Transfer between plans needs to be made as simple and transparent as possible. The basic principle of preservation of benefits and commuted value is necessary to ensure fairness and impartiality. Individual choice needs to be preserved in this bill.

There are a number of problems with the way asset transfers are addressed in the act currently. Most significantly, current provisions require the predecessor and successor plans to provide the same benefits, and individuals are not given any choice with respect to their transfers. As a matter of principle, the legislation should incorporate individual choice as reciprocal agreements do now, so that plan members can make a decision, based on full information, to stay in the original plan or move on to the successor plan. The proposed changes to the act remove the requirement that benefits be identical. However, individual members still have no choice with respect to transfers.

In addition, in the private sector, the interest of the original employer in an asset transfer for past service is questionable. In the public sector, large, independently administered plans generally deal with voluntary transfers under a major Ontario pension plans reciprocal agreement that requires no employer expenditure of time or resources. We believe that this reciprocal agreement provides a better model for transfers in the public sector than the proposed agreements between the original and successor employers.

Last summer, I toured Ontario to ask the people what they needed in pension reform. The result of these consultations is the NDP's Ontario retirement plan. That is what Ontarians told us they need. They also told us that the PBGF is outdated and needs to reflect the current financial situation of pensioners.

There are some useful sections of this bill, but it is a technical bill. It doesn't address the major concerns of Ontario pensioners, nor does it provide the security that our future pensioners need.

I encourage the government to take our suggestions under careful consideration and make the necessary amendments to this legislation to provide the best protection for people from Ontario. We also encourage you to implement the NDP's Ontario retirement plan now so that 65% of Ontarians can look forward to a decent, livable retirement.

I don't have a lot of faith in the fact that the federal government is going to give us all the answers we require. There have been some pie-in-the-sky requests—doubling the CPP, doing these things. I have a strong feeling that that won't be doubled. If it is, it will take many, many years before that happens. It'll be a slow implementation.

Every little bit helps—I won't argue that—but we need an Ontario pension plan to supplement the CPP, to supplement old age, so that people in this province are not punished because they live longer, are not punished because they had contributed their whole life to the tax system in this province. They had, with honour, negotiated contracts which would provide them, from their employer, with the proper money instead of taking raises at the time, instead of taking money up front. They negotiated the deferred wages. It went to their pension so that their pension would be there for them when they retired.

As we all know, as we get older, things start going wrong. You start getting medical problems. You start getting financial problems because you haven't had a raise or you don't have the ability to get a raise because you're on a fixed income.

I'll tell you, Mr. Speaker: I've travelled my constituency. I can't speak for other members. In reference to the condition some of these elderly people are living in, frankly, it's a disgrace. Some of these people worked their whole lives and are eating peanut butter, are living in, I would say, less-than-good conditions as far as—they can't even afford furniture. They can't afford cleaning services. They're struggling. Some of them are crippled. Some of them are unable to take care of themselves. The hygiene is questionable at best in a lot of cases. This is totally unacceptable.

In this province, with this much wealth, in this country, our elderly and our pensioners deserve better, much better.

I think that this Ontario plan would provide them with some—it wouldn't solve all the problems, but it would definitely improve their lives to a point where they might be able to stay in their residence with a little dignity, a little bit of comfort, and not have to rely on their grandkids to help them out, because that's not what they intended. They intended to help their grandparents and their parents stand up for themselves, and their grandparents provided them with the education and taught them the ways so that they could move on and not have to worry about them when they're starting their own families. Well, that's not the case.

A lot of elderly people are, not by their own wish, being forced to move in with their grandkids or their kids because they can't afford to stay on their own. It's a shame. People in this province have worked long and hard to build some kind of security for themselves, and they have to be forced with these kinds of conditions. I see it all the time. I see it every day—people coming into my office. How do I explain—even a young mother coming in with two kids, with nowhere to go, nowhere to live and can't feed her kids.

Then I see a government spending $1.5 million or $2 million a day on consultants on one file—the e-file—$388 million on one file. If we take the 20 agencies that they want to have accountability for, the major ones—WSIB and all the other ones that they want to have a forensic audit for—I think this would be a fair estimate—I'm sure you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars, that have gone out for consultants in the last few years—hundreds of millions; billions.

I'll tell you what I could do with that in Hamilton. I'll tell you what I could do for the people of Ontario. I could tell you that I wouldn't be laying off nurses. I'll tell you: The health system and education system would be in better shape—not perfect, but better shape. It's amazing—amazing—that the Ontario government has direct or indirect control over 368 agencies or municipalities in this province—368. So they're going to investigate 20. They're going to investigate 20 agencies out of 368.

So if you found $388 million of questionable spending and not a lot of bang for your buck on one agency called eHealth, if you take the other 19 major ones, I think that'll add up to quite a considerable amount. But if you take the other 340 agencies and municipalities in this province that are controlled by the Ontario government, I think you're going to see that it's going to be mind-boggling. Actually, it'll make Bernie Madoff look like an amateur. It really does. I think he was $50 billion. I don't even want to think about it. I'm sure it'll unfold over the next few years, all the waste of money.

But getting back to my original statement, how do I explain to a mother with two kids who comes into my office with nowhere to live, who can't put food on the table and can't get a job? What do I tell these people when they read in the paper about all the shenanigans that go on and the waste of money? No wonder some people have a poor attitude toward politicians. I can see it. I can see it. I can see it. I guess I'm a little naive to come here and think that—when I first got here, the Premier stood up in the House and said, "All the new members, welcome to Queen's Park. We're going to work together to better the lives of the people of Ontario."

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: He meant that.

Mr. Paul Miller: Well, I've had real trouble understanding that statement, because I know for one thing he sure doesn't work with me on committees. I'm sure he doesn't work with our party. He doesn't work with the opposition.

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: I heard you got invited to the Super Bowl party.

Mr. Paul Miller: Oh, yeah, I wish.

All I know is that you can stand up and put on the show for the public, but when the gloves come off, you're nowhere. You're out of the ring; you're out of the arena. So don't tell me that line. Don't stand up here and say these kinds of things in front of the people of Ontario. Because I want them to know, if they realized what goes on, there'd be a lot of unhappy Ontarians—and they probably are already. I really cannot believe what goes on. My eyes have been opened, and I have trouble sleeping now because of what I see goes on. If I've got bags under my eyes, you'll know why. It's really unbelievable, what goes on.

I guess I could go on and on about my unhappiness as to what goes on in this House and what goes on at committee level. I could go on forever. When I first got here, my Bill 6, which was to help people who were losing their severance, losing their holiday pay and losing all this—I was fortunate enough. I guess it was like a lottery: You get to pick your order on the order paper. I got number 1 and I was thrilled. I came into the House and I actually thought Mr. McGuinty, when he stood up, meant what he said, because it passed second reading. That's good for the people of Ontario.

They all stood up and everybody was happy, I thought, and my party was congratulating me and saying, "Yay. Good job, Paul. You got that past second reading. We've never been able to do that." I said, "That's good." Well, guess what? It fell. It fell at committee. All the Liberals voted against it. It fell. The Conservatives and the NDP voted for it. It fell dead—dead in the water. It's still sitting there. I said, "You might as well just put that bill in the washroom." It's absolutely ridiculous.

They talk a good game, but when it comes to actually doing something, they wait till the roof's caving in or there are 3,000 people in front of this building yelling at them before they'll do anything. And when they finally do it? "Oh, we're great. We're wonderful. We thought of this all by ourselves." Nonsense, absolute nonsense. They don't listen to any good suggestions from the opposition or the third party, they just do whatever they want, and when they get there, they claim victory and how wonderful they are.

Well, people, I'll tell you, the blinds should be taken off by the people of Ontario to really see what goes on and who's being productive and who's doing their homework, because it isn't them.

I'll end now—I could have gone on forever about this—but I think it says a lot. Once again, I challenge the government to listen to some good advice from the opposition and the third party, from people who just might have some good ideas to add to this pension reform. But most likely, they will do whatever they want and not listen, and we'll find ourselves in another pickle in about three years.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Questions and comments?

Mr. Rick Johnson: I appreciate the comments from the member from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek—he's always entertaining—but I appreciate also the amount of passion he brings to this file and this bill in particular. The background that he brought concerning his discussions with the federal government—I understand his frustration on that.

I've had the opportunity over the past year, since I was elected, to meet a number of seniors' groups. I've talked to seniors' groups in Fenelon Falls, Omemee and, most recently, in the hamlet of Glen Alda in the northeast corner of my riding. They've all expressed concerns about pensions, about living and going forward as we go through the next few years.

We know that our seniors population is growing—a number of us are approaching that ourselves and will be entering that area—and the concern about pensions is great. I know the current global downturn has had a significant impact on Ontario families and businesses. The government has been taking very proactive steps to ensure that when the economy returns, we will be well-positioned to lead the rest of the world in recovery.

We've provided support for low-income seniors, doubled the property tax support. We've been working on PST rebates, which will kick in this summer, and the tax cuts are coming forward. But that's why we've introduced the Pension Benefits Amendment Act. It is to get protection for our seniors. They've spent their whole lives getting to the point where they deserve to have a secure retirement, and I believe that this bill moves a lot towards getting there.

I'm very pleased that we're participating in the broader national discussion about improving the Canada retirement income system in this regard. I know that Minister Duncan, with his provincial counterparts, recently attended in Whitehorse to deal with this national problem.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further questions and comments?

Mr. Norm Miller: I'm pleased to add some comments to the speech from the member from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek on Bill 236, the first of the government's pension bills. I know he referred to the Arthurs report quite a bit in his comments. He talked a bit about the NDP plan to create a sort of supplemental pension system. Just briefly speaking about that, I would say, ideally, a supplemental system should be national, not provincial.

I know the NDP plan is kind of modeled after what's happening in the UK, the system that's been created by the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority, which is called NEST, which stands for National Employment Savings Trust. That is in the UK, a national program. So ideally, I think that is a better solution. I don't necessarily think it needs to be government-run.

I do like the idea of auto-enrolment, and I note there are others, including the Association of Canadian Pension Management, who support having auto-enrolment. In fact, they say expanding coverage should be job number one, getting more coverage for more people. Expanding coverage basically means getting more people involved with direct contribution plans. One way to do that is to have auto-enrolment systems. You could have an auto-enrolment system—I know that in the United States, they've brought about changes nationally to encourage more participation in defined contribution pensions and retirement savings. They've done it on a national basis there.

Many of the changes necessary are or should be national. As was mentioned at the outset, this bill is tinkering around the edges with some of the minor changes involved in pension legislation.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further questions and comments?

M me France Gélinas: It was a pleasure to listen to my colleague's comment on Bill 236, the Pension Benefits Amendment Act.

I think there is no doubt in anybody's mind that our elder years need to be well-protected. We need to be able to guarantee to the seniors of this province that they will be able to retire with dignity and with respect. The best way to do this is to have a defined benefit pension plan.

I can tell you that right now in my riding, there is a seven-month-old strike. One of the main issues of why all those more than 3,000 workers are on strike is they want to protect their defined benefit pension plan. The company, Vale Inco, has offered to change to a defined contribution. It is one of the three main issues that are keeping those more than 3,000 people on strike.

Because we've had a defined benefit pension plan for years in Sudbury, there is an entire generation—I would even say there are two generations of workers in Sudbury who are able to retire with dignity and respect. My 89-year-old father-in-law is an Inco retiree. He gets his little pension cheque. It's not a whole lot because he retired many, many years ago, but it gives them the certainty. They know that this little cheque is coming every month. They can plan, they moved into an apartment they can afford, and they do things that they're able to afford because they have the certainty of this.

That gives them peace of mind. That gives them happiness. This is something that is worth protecting.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further questions and comments?

Mr. Jean-Marc Lalonde: I'm delighted to be able to participate in this debate this morning. This debate of the pension act has been an issue that I've been looking at for many years, ever since I got elected here at Queen's Park.

Let me tell you, I can't believe those people could live on the seniors' pension plan. Even though today there are a lot of people who have a pension plan, there's no protection for them, like we see happening at the present time with Nortel and with different companies. Even with the car industry at the present time, there are some doubts there.

Let me tell you, way back in the mid-1920s, only a few companies and the public sector had this coverage or this protection of the employees. Today we only have about 30% of workers who are covered with a pension plan. Those who paid toward a pension plan who do not have protection—I say "protection" definitely, because we know what's going on.

But the McGuinty government said in March 2009 that we will take care of this, and we are. That's exactly what we are doing today. We want to protect our employees, we want to protect our employers, and the government of Ontario has a major role to play in this bill. This is why today, the McGuinty government will introduce a temporary solvency funding relief program to protect jobs and families.

We have worked to simplify pension division when a marriage ends. We have initiated the first-ever actuarial study to examine the future of the pension benefits guarantee fund.

This is, again, a very good bill and I hope the three parties will support it.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): The honourable member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek has up to two minutes for his response.

Mr. Paul Miller: I'd like to thank the members for their comments, and I'm quite pleased they went rather easy on me after my outburst, which was warranted, but it must be "Be nice to members week."

Interjection.

Mr. Paul Miller: It's Kindness Week; that's right. I appreciate the kindness of the members.

However, I must say that the member from Glengarry—Prescott—Russell made a point that back in the 1920s there were few pension plans, and in the 1940s, when unions were formed and things started happening, they started getting defined pension plans. That was a good thing. But it shouldn't take 80 years to set up a pension plan for Ontarians. They should have done it after World War II.

Maybe they should have started thinking about protecting pension plans instead of waiting until the economy falls apart, waiting until there's 5,000 people standing in front of Queen's Park or waiting until all the companies are leaving Canada and Ontario, and the erosion of our base industries—I could go on forever about the decline. To talk about history is okay, I guess, for information, but it does absolutely nothing to fix this situation.

If you look at this bill, there is absolutely no money attached to this bill—zero. It's technical and administrative changes. Sure, there's accountability in there, but not a cent is going towards the PGB fund. If you want real results, if you want to really help the people and pensioners in Ontario, don't talk about flair and administrative changes and say, "We care," and "We feel for you." Let's get the cheques out there.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further debate?

Mr. Bob Delaney: It is good to be back in the Legislature, and as my lovely other half was saying to me as I was going back, "I'm sure you'll enjoy being around your playmates again."

I'd just like to begin by congratulating a truly outstanding member of this Legislature on a new position: my colleague from Peterborough, who is the new government whip. He is one of the hardest-working and most effective members of this Legislature. It's awfully hard not to be a Peterborough Petes fan when Jeff Leal is sitting near you.

My colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek referred to, and let's use his words, "an outburst." You get to know your colleagues sometimes in different ways. My colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek is one of my defencemen when we play hockey. This is a hard-working guy who came up the hard way, and when he talks about retirement, like many of us in the Legislature, he's looking at retirement and thinking, "Those days are now a lot closer to me than my 40s were," and you think to yourself: "What exactly have we done?"

He asked a rhetorical question, and wondered why after World War II we hadn't thought of protecting pension plans. That gave me cause to think as he was saying those words because it occurs to me that in the time I was growing up, you'd be sitting there, in the 1960s and even the early 1970s, and you'd be reading your newspaper and there would be somebody's obituary with a picture of him or her and a listing of their life's accomplishments, and it would say, "So-and-so passed away on such-and-such a date surrounded by friends and family. He lived to the ripe old age of 72." And that wasn't uncommon.

Yet today, the baby boom generation, of which I'm one, begins to turn 65 next year. That's an interesting thing to think about. The biggest demographic bulge in North American history is just going to begin to hit retirement age, or what used to be considered retirement age, next year, in 2011. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who are looking at that and thinking to themselves, "My goodness. That's me."

As we move into retirement, as that big demographic bulge begins to drop out of the workforce, we're looking at an age in and around the middle of the century in which for every retired person there'll only be about one person in the workforce.

That tells us, as legislators, that it's very important for us to do our work properly, because it's the work we do here that's going to determine whether or not the men and women who have worked hard, who have taken the torch passed to them by the generation that fought the second of the great wars of the 20th century and have built the peace—when we retire, do we intend to be a burden on the generation that comes behind us? Clearly, we don't.

And very clearly, for those of us who are in good health and active as we move through our 50s, our late 50s, our early 60s—we're in much better shape than people were a generation and two generations ago. We're going to live longer. That makes it incumbent on us in government to make provisions for our seniors and those who will become our seniors, to ensure that we have a chance to live a life in comfort and dignity and to do it by being responsible from the vantage point of how we set aside our own money and what our government does with our tax money.

That's a lot of the impetus behind this bill. This is a bill that does something that—I think I can ascribe the quote to the first American President, George Washington, who said, "If I had four hours to chop down a cherry tree, I'd probably spend the first two or three hours sharpening my axe." That is part of what is going on in this bill here.

What the bill says is that we're going to take the time and the process to do this job correctly. What we don't want to have to do is engage in a knee-jerk reaction or panic, because at this point we don't have to panic, but we are going to get it right. At this juncture of time, we're going to act with the best knowledge that we have and the best thinking that we have and lay the foundation for a long-term, sustainable, responsible means of providing for the men and women who are retired now and those who will retire in the generation to come.

We have to do that in the light of a global economic downturn which, in one way or another, has governed almost everything that our government and other provincial governments and the federal government have done for most of the last two years.

That's the impetus behind this act, the Pension Benefits Amendment Act. It implements long-term reforms to strengthen the pension system for Ontarians and, most importantly, to increase Ontario's competitiveness.

If one looks at other jurisdictions, you think to yourself, "Okay, western Canada: What drives the economy? Natural resources." What's our natural resource in Ontario? Agreed, we have forest resources, we have rich minerals in our ground, but our real, true natural resource here in the province of Ontario is the people who live here. When companies come here and set up high-value jobs, they're looking for raw materials, not in the ground, not in the Great Lakes, not in our forests. They are looking for them in our secondary institutions; they're looking for them in our universities.

So what we do to ensure that good-quality people come here, work here and stay here governs the degree to which we're going to prosper here in Ontario. That's part of what this Pension Benefits Amendment Act, 2009, aims to achieve.

What are the principles behind it?

The easiest one is transparency, ensuring that mechanisms are in place for stakeholder feedback and also for posting proposed regulatory changes. You've got to know what's coming up, and that's one of the things this Pension Benefits Amendment Act is going to implement.

Another is balance. We've got to consider both benefit security and also plan affordability. We can't have one without the other, and I think just about everybody will look at it and agree with that.

There has to be co-operation. We've got to collaborate productively between our federal and provincial partners. I believe my good friend and colleague from Parry Sound—Muskoka said, and I'll use his own words, that many of the changes should be national, and that's true. Each and every province is going to have to work with our federal government, and that is regardless of who is running the show in any province or who is in power at the federal level, because we're looking at a series of measures that are going to be implemented over a fairly extensive period of time. So we've got to co-operate, and co-operate productively, among the provinces and with the federal government.

That includes harmonizing our rules with other jurisdictions wherever possible so that if you decide for whatever reason that, after a career spent working in Ontario, you're going to live in Victoria or retire in Atlantic Canada, you shouldn't have to go there and find that all of the things that you did are done completely differently in another jurisdiction. Harmonizing those rules is something that ensures that, as a Canadian, if you pack up and move to another region in Ontario or another province in Canada, your pension and its benefits will still make sense and still apply to you there. That's one of the things that this legislation does.

Another is going to be coverage. One of the things that my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek touched upon—and I think it's a very good point—is that we've got to ensure we expand pension coverage for Ontarians. The benefits should strive to be universal, strive to be fair and strive to apply to everyone everywhere in Ontario. That's going to be one of the objectives of this legislation and how we go about applying it in the workforce.

Another is going to be competitiveness. In the long run, Ontario companies have to grasp that, just like anywhere else in the world, the people who work for them, their greatest asset, are not pieces of machinery that they can put on the junk pile after they leave. Their responsibility is to treat the human beings who dedicate their careers to working for them with dignity after they've left. Similarly, our companies have to remain competitive in world markets, in the way that they provide for their people and in the way that they maintain their cost structures in a global world where you can buy just about anything, anytime, anywhere at something like a comparable price.

Finally, one of the principles guiding this legislation is going to be flexibility. We know what happened yesterday. We know what happened in decades past. We can probably take a fairly decent guess at what's going to happen in the next year and the next two years, but we're not sure what's going to happen in the next five years or the next decade or what the world is going to look like in the 2020s, the 2030s and beyond. One of the things in designing legislation today that's still going to be in force decades from now is ensuring that it's flexible. That's one of the principal goals of the Pension Benefits Amendment Act.

Since March 2009, Ontario has actually taken a number of very important steps to modernize our employment pension system. In the some of the time remaining to me, I'd just like to quickly cover a few of those.

The province introduced a temporary solvency funding relief program, which is designed to protect jobs and families. The overriding concern that Ontario has as we emerge from this particular recession is jobs. This is a measure that does protect jobs.

The province also worked to simplify pension division when a marriage ends. "Till death do us part," is what we pledge at the moment of marriage. God willing, many and most of us will in fact live out those vows, but things happen. When a marriage does end, one of the goals of this legislation and legislation passed by the province last year has got to be the simplification of pension division.

Ontario initiated the first ever actuarial study to examine the future of the pension benefits guarantee fund. This is a very important measure, because the pension benefits guarantee fund hadn't been properly funded, and the actuarial study had to look at what is necessary to ensure that the pension benefits guarantee fund, which is the rainy-day fund if a pension should end up in peril through circumstances that certainly no one foresaw at the time that the pension got going and people were contributing to it—how do we deal with a pension that has gotten into trouble? That's a very important part, and that actually got under way last year.

The province has also established an advisory council on pensions and retirement income. We need to know, to the limit of our ability to foresee the future, what people need in the future. What is their future likely to look like? How will society, technology and other jurisdictions evolve forward so that the legislation that we craft here is to the limit of our ability as legislators—because I'm not speaking in partisan terms here; this is something that all three parties are trying to get right and trying to make work for all 13 million of us, who are all one extended Ontario family when it comes to looking after one another in our elderly years.

Finally, Ontario is participating in a broader national discussion about improving Canada's retirement income system. This has been something that our Premier has pushed very hard for in the Council of the Federation, which are the meetings of provincial Premiers. In this regard, our Minister of Finance recently met with his provincial counterparts in Whitehorse, where they had some productive discussions about the future of pensions for all Canadians. We plan to continue these discussions this summer.

On that note, I think I'll wind it up for today. I thank you very much for the time to discuss something that's very important to me, to the generation of my parents and to my entire baby-boom generation.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Questions and comments?

Mr. Norm Miller: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to comment on the speech from the member from Mississauga—Streetsville on the pension bill, Bill 236.

In his speech, he talked about the concern with—I don't know his exact words, but the burden on future generations, on our kids or grandchildren. I would say to the member that rich public sector pensions are a concern for being a burden for future generations. However, also, the $25-billion deficit that this government is facing right now is a very obvious burden on future generations. The fact that the McGuinty government is on pace to double the debt of the province of Ontario by 2012 is a very clear burden on future generations in this province. It's something that the government has not tackled satisfactorily to this point.

Another point: When we look at the public sector pensions—I think I'll refer to my comments yesterday—one of the experts talked about public sector pensions where 34% of wages are going towards the value of that pension and how that is not balanced with the fact that those people who don't have these defined benefit pension plans can only put 18% of their wages toward an RRSP. It's just not a balanced situation right now, and that's something that needs to be rectified.

It's not necessarily a provincial responsibility. It would involve changing the tax laws, perhaps, instead of just 18% of pay for those trying to contribute to an RRSP or other system, allowing no limit, but a lifetime limit on what you can put towards your retirement income.

There is a lot that needs to happen in pensions. As I've mentioned previously, quite a bit of it is at the national level. I'm still concerned about the unique features that make us unique in Ontario, so we aren't having a harmonized system, particularly the grow-in part of it.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further questions and comments?

Mr. Paul Miller: I'd like to thank the member from Mississauga—Streetsville for his kind words on our hockey prowess. He made some good points about doing it right and taking your time to do it right. I think that's important also because this is a major undertaking in the last—well, I guess in the last 30 or 40 years, nothing has been done to improve the situation, like the governments taking a good, hard look at pensions throughout Ontario, and Canada, for that matter.

Once again, if you can do window dressing and say that we're going to tighten up the rules, we're going to tighten up the regulations, we're going to tighten up the accountability, that's good; that's all good stuff. But I get very frustrated about the financial aspect of it, and as the member from Parry Sound pointed out, with a $25-billion or $26-billion deficit, it's difficult to commit funds to the pension guarantee fund. That could create a problem, and the only answer, the real answer to the people's dilemma in this province, is financial restitution.

That's the only way to solve their problems out there in the real world. You can talk about a perfect scenario, you can talk about improving a situation from an administrative point of view, but as we all know, money talks and you know what else happens. So until you actually are committing to improve the fund that exists now or to create a new Ontario pension plan, I don't really think the results that you're going to get are going to be sufficient.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further questions and comments?

Mr. Yasir Naqvi: I'm very pleased to be commenting on the comments made by the member from Mississauga—Streetsville.

I've been hearing this debate and the speech earlier from the member from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek and the member from Mississauga—Streetsville, and I heard comments yesterday as well on this very important issue. Clearly, pensions are a very complicated issue, and I think the complexity of the issue is even more highlighted because of the economic downturn. That theme has come up a few times, and a point I made yesterday when participating in this debate—and I think it's still very much valid—was that what we need to do in Canada is take a national approach to this issue.

We need to have a bigger dialogue as to the future of pensions, both in the public pension system and the private pension system in Canada. I don't think any one province really can accomplish much. It would result in a piecemeal solution, maybe short term in scope, and what we really need to do, moving forward—we owe it to our seniors, we owe it to my generation and the future generation—is to come up with ideas and plans which are national in scope. That's why it's extremely important that all provinces, including the federal government, sit down together and look at the issues around pensions.

We have Canadians who have pension plans, but we have a majority of Canadians who don't have a pension plan. We need to make sure that we have a system in place which covers both, not to mention that we have to look at the affordability of the system as well. It's important to talk about pensions, how they should be defined and how they should operate and work; it's a whole different thing as to how we are going to pay for them. That issue is even more highlighted in today's economic circumstances, and we cannot forget that.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): Further questions and comments?

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: I'm pleased to take

part in the debate this morning on pension reform and to comment on the speech that the member from Mississauga—Streetsville delivered a few minutes ago.

One thing he mentioned—and the radar went up quickly when he talked about how we didn't want the government or our generation of people to be a burden on our children and our grandchildren. I just immediately thought of the $25-billion deficit, and that's last year's deficit. In the current year, we're looking at a new budget sometime, I believe, in March. It will be very interesting to see what the projected deficit is for this year. If it's $25 billion this year, you know that it's going to be at least $22 billion, $23 billion, $24 billion next year.

So by the end of this term, we'll likely have accumulated another $75 or $80 billion onto the provincial debt, and you think that's not going to be a burden on our children and grandchildren?

I think that debt is even more important than pension reform. I would love to see governments actually come and deliver balanced budgets. I know this government went completely crazy when they took over in 2003, and they found that after a summer of SARS, the blackout and mad cow—all those sorts of things were happening—that there was actually a deficit at that time. They made it out to be $5.6 billion. However, they went crazy over that. Now they've made Bob Rae look like an economic genius because he had an $11-billion deficit, and now we're at $25 billion and counting. Good God, what's going to happen to this province if we keep going down this path of mismanagement?

Those were my comments on pension reform, but I would be happy to take

part in the 20-minute rotation later on and speak a little more on debt and pension reform.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): The honourable member for Mississauga—Streetsville has up to two minutes for his response.

Mr. Bob Delaney: Speaking to the comments by two of those who provided comments to me, the member for Parry Sound—Muskoka and the member for Simcoe North, both of them slammed public sector pensions. Let's remind them that in the last days of a Premier that I very much admired, Bill Davis—whom I get to see in Brampton every now and then—the Ontario public service had 105,000 employees. Today it's 65,000, and that number is headed for 62,000.

We, in Ontario, have the lowest per capita number of public servants anywhere in the country, and I don't think that we're going to be throwing out public sector employees any more than our government plans to throw out private sector employees in a panicked attempt to balance a budget, because we have a plan. We have a plan that's going to create some 600,000 new jobs, that is going to attract $47-billion worth of new investment, $7 billion of which has already walked into the province, and raise average annual incomes by something like 8.8%.

We're going to work that plan because it's the right plan for Ontario and it's the plan that has been justifiably called Ontario-friendly. That's going to be the key to Ontario to continue to thrive and prosper in the years that come.

To my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, I'll say much the same thing: A deficit that was brought about by a global economic financial collapse that began outside Ontario is not going to end by what we do or don't do in Ontario. That's not going to cause Ontario to panic and to abandon our seniors, because this is a good plan and it's a good forward-looking plan. I think my colleague from Ottawa Centre has the right solution when he says we should take a national approach to pension reform. Thank you.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Jim Wilson): It being past 10:15 of the clock, this House stands in recess until 10:30 a.m.

The House recessed from 1017 to 1030.

INTRODUCTION OF VISITORS

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I'd like to introduce Ellard Beaven, father of Amy Beaven, who is here as a page, and all the way up from Timmins to watch his daughter today.

Mr. Yasir Naqvi: I want to welcome Paul Di Ianni in the members' gallery, who is an OLIP intern in my office. Welcome.

Mr. Joe Dickson: I'd like to take the opportunity, on behalf of page Matthew Kostuch from Dr. Roberta Bondar Public School in Ajax, to welcome his father, Jim Kostuch, and his grandfather, Mitch Kostuch, who are watching from the public gallery today.

Mr. David Zimmer: I'd like to introduce John Jansen, who is the health and safety inspector for district 12 of the Toronto secondary teachers' bargaining unit and a constituent in Willowdale. Welcome, John.

ORAL QUESTIONS

LOCAL HEALTH

INTEGRATION NETWORKS

Mrs. Christine Elliott: My question is for the Premier. What test do you apply when you override decisions of bureaucrats and political appointees at LHINs?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I'll refer this to the Minister of Health.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I actually want to return to a question that was asked yesterday regarding Barry Monaghan and the drive-by smear by the Leader of the Opposition. I think it's important for members of this House to actually know the truth.

Before taking on the position of the CEO of the Toronto Central LHIN, Mr. Monaghan was the president and CEO of West Park Healthcare Centre for 18 years. Before that, he was the CEO of the Orthopaedic and Arthritic Hospital for five years. He was the chair of the pediatric Cardiac Care Network of Ontario and is also a past chair of the Ontario stroke strategy. Under the Conservative government, Mr. Monaghan served as chair of the Cardiac Care Network for seven years.

The member opposite dismissed him as a Liberal friend. We did a donation search, and the only time—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I would just remind the honourable member that it's important to—stop the clock, please. The question that was asked pertained to an issue that was asked today and not answering a question from yesterday. So I would ask the member to deal with the question that is asked as of today.

Supplementary?

Mrs. Christine Elliott: In January, the Premier said that bureaucrats at the Niagara LHIN advised him to close the emergency rooms at Fort Erie and Port Colborne. During the Toronto Centre by-election, Minister Matthews said that Grace hospital's future lies with the LHIN, but just a day later, the Premier showed he'll interfere when it's politically convenient. He swooped in to help the member from Winnipeg by handing out $15 million to Grace hospital on the day before voting began in the by-election.

Premier, why didn't you step in to save the emergency services at Fort Erie and Port Colborne?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I'd just remind the honourable member that we refer to members by their riding names—and riding names here in the province of Ontario.

Minister?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I think the question is about LHINs, so let me just complete on Barry Monaghan. We did a search. You referred to him—

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I just reminded the honourable member that she's answering a question that was asked yesterday in this chamber. I would like the minister to deal with the question that is asked within the chamber today.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: When it comes to Toronto Grace hospital, I can assure you that we have always supported the services at Toronto Grace hospital. They provide an extraordinary and very special service for people, some of whom are quite vulnerable.

It seems to me that actually all parties agreed that the services should remain at the Grace. I was very pleased to meet with members of the Salvation Army and talk to them about how we could continue to provide services at the Grace. It is a very special place. It needs a little bit of help, and I think all parties agreed that it was the right thing to do.

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

Mrs. Christine Elliott: No one would question the merits of supporting the Grace hospital. Of course we all recognize that they provide exemplary service. But the Premier's defence of Courtyard contracts and exorbitant bureaucrat salaries at the LHINs shows he's not about to give up the farce that LHINs operate at arm's length.

Two days ago, you said that these LHINs are an effort to ensure that decisions about health investments are being made by the local community. But the vice-chair of Grace hospital gets it. He was quoted as saying, "Thank God for by-elections." Even the minister admitted to the media on the night of the by-election that your office responded to political pressure. So why did you take $15 million away from Fort Erie and Port Colborne and hand it to the member from Toronto Centre's by-election campaign?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: Not one hospital has been closed under our watch. And trust me, we would not have started with Toronto Grace, because of its very special place in the health care that is provided here. I deeply regret that the NDP candidate in that by-election chose to make a political issue of it, created a phony issue. The patients at the hospital, the staff at the hospital, the family members, had to deal with anxiety that was a complete fabrication of the NDP candidate.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mrs. Christine Elliott: My question is for the Premier. On Boxing Day, Reilly Anzovino was in a car accident. Despite the heroic efforts of first responders, Reilly died before she even reached the Welland Hospital, even though the Fort Erie and Port Colborne hospitals were closer. In 2008, your government closed emergency room services at Fort Erie and Port Colborne. Premier, do you regret that decision?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Health.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: The first thing I want to do, of course, is express condolences to the family. As a mother, I cannot imagine the loss they are feeling, and I sincerely express that sympathy to them.

We are building a health care system in Ontario where every person in Ontario has access to the very best possible care as close to home as possible. Having said that, the reality is that sometimes people will have to travel to another community to be able to access the highly specialized care that is part of today's health care system. I think people understand that we cannot provide highly specialized care in every community hospital. When it comes to emergency care, it's vitally important, absolutely essential, that people get to where that specialized care is available as quickly as possible.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mrs. Christine Elliott: In 2008, the McGuinty Liberals directed the Niagara LHIN to cut $50 million in services. This resulted in the closure of emergency services in Fort Erie and Port Colborne. The Liberal member for Niagara Falls believes this decision had an impact on this tragedy.

Reilly's father, Tim Anzovino, grew up with our leader. He and Reilly's mother asked us to call on you for a coroner's inquest into their daughter's death. Will you respect their wishes and ask the coroner to examine whether the closure of the emergency room departments in Fort Erie and Port Colborne played a role in this tragedy?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: The member opposite understands that calling an inquest is not a decision that is made by members of government. It's a decision made by the coroner.

I do want to emphasize that in the case of trauma, it is absolutely essential that the victim gets to the best possible place as quickly as possible, without stopping first at a hospital that is not able to provide the care that's required in that emergency.

We asked Dr. Jack Kitts of the Ottawa Hospital to take a look at the situation in Niagara. I've read his report carefully and I would urge members of the opposition to do the same. It's a very thoughtful report on why the changes are the right changes.

I'm going to quote from Dr. Kitts: "Critically ill patients would best be served by direct transport to a definitive treatment centre."

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mrs. Christine Elliott: What adds to this tragedy is that after the Premier ordered the LHIN to cut $15 million, he handed $15 million to the Toronto Central LHIN the day before the by-election began.

This is a tragedy that even a member of your own caucus believes resulted from the decision to close emergency services in the region.

The Premier used to call for coroners' inquests on a regular basis when he was in opposition. He has ducked responsibility in this chamber with respect to this question today by deflecting it to the Minister of Health. But it's time to start asking yourselves the tough questions. Will you start leading the call for a coroner's inquest into the death of Reilly Anzovino?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: We have actually ended the political influence when it comes to coroners' reports, and that's the way it should be.

What I can tell the member opposite is that we will co-operate in every way possible if the coroner chooses to investigate. The Niagara Health System has made the same offer.

I think it's important that the member opposite understands that all of us want to understand what happened in this situation. We do leave it to the coroner to make the professional judgment on an inquest.

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. The Premier insists that his short-sighted cuts to front-line health services haven't impacted patient care. I'd just like to ask him if he would like to take a little time this morning to once again repeat that claim.

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: My honourable colleague is nothing if not consistent—and wrong—on this particular issue. She continues to maintain that we have made cuts to our health care system and to hospitals in particular. That is absolutely wrong. It is without foundation in fact. Every single year, we have increased funding for health care generally and hospitals specifically. During the course of the past six years, it's gone up some 42%. We think that it's significant. We think it is important. We think it's in keeping with the priorities and the values of the people of Ontario.

Again, in the upcoming budget, notwithstanding our difficult economic circumstances, we will find a way to once again invest still more money in our treasured and precious health care system.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: I want to take this opportunity to read the Premier a letter that I received recently from a Hamilton man whose surgery had been cancelled:

"Although it is not necessary to correct a life-threatening situation, [my operation] is necessary for the condition to be treated ... before it progresses to a point where more invasive or aggressive treatments are required....

"Why have we been paying more to the Ontario government by way of the 'Ontario health premium' only to have less service than ever before?"

It's a good question. Will the Premier answer it?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: First of all, I want to sympathize with the individual involved and all of our families that are affected by illness and disease and looking to get treated at the earliest possible opportunity.

But I do want to correct the record. The fact is that we have, for the first time, measured wait times and we can now demonstrate that our wait times are actually getting shorter.

We have more nurses and doctors, and more Ontarians who have now become attached to or have access to a family doctor. We're exploring new opportunities—the first of its kind in North America, for example, when it comes to having nurse-practitioner-led clinics. And we're funding more drugs than ever before.

So I think, by any objective measure, we continue to do more for health care in order to do more for Ontario families, and they are benefiting from the progress we're making together.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: While the Premier insists that patients aren't affected, patients continue to disagree, and hospitals are siding with patients.

In their response, Hamilton Health Sciences wrote: "Even though we're recognized as one of the most efficient hospitals in the province, we have been forced to make some changes that will impact patient care.... In 2010-11, we will do 1,200 fewer surgical procedures."

Why does the Premier insist that patient care isn't affected when hospitals state, and I quote again, "We have been forced to make some changes that ... impact patient care"?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I'm glad that my colleague corrected herself, and I understand that the hospitals are, in fact, making some changes. Hospitals are required to make changes on an ongoing basis as they adjust to patient demand and other things that influence their activities.

Something else I want to say that I didn't mention before, insofar as the progress that we're making together with Ontarians: We have in place now these new family health teams. I think we have 150. We're going all the way up to 200. There is a network of nine family health teams in Hamilton, consisting of more than 130 doctors who have hired more than 100 new health care professionals serving almost a quarter-million Hamiltonians, including more than 8,000 who previously did not have a family doctor.

There is always more work to be done, but, again, any objective assessment will tell you that we continue to make progress.

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

HEALTH CARE FUNDING

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Well, 1,200 fewer surgical procedures certainly is nothing for this government to brag about, but nonetheless, back to the Premier.

The Premier continues to claim that patients are not being affected, but we keep hearing from patients who are. Marita Devries, a cancer patient in London, may lose the cancer care nurses who provide her support: "Until your own family is touched by cancer, you do not understand how valuable these dedicated professionals are to the health care system."

This patient says she is being affected. Is she wrong?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I appreciate that my honourable colleague is going to want to raise individual cases. That's probably fairly within her responsibilities. I can't speak to the individual cases, but I can speak to you about the general progress that we make, and I want to talk just a little bit about wait times.

Angiographies down by 63%—that's 35 days; angioplasties down 14 days; cataract surgery wait times reduced by 208 days; hip replacements in Ontario down by 195 days; knee replacements down by 263 days; CT scans down by 39 days; cancer surgery is down by 23 days; MRI scans down by 13 days; general surgeries down by 21 days; pediatric surgery is down by 21 days.

Those are objective. They're measurable. They have been measured. They're transparent. We are making progress.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: Doctors are also raising concerns. Dr. Alan Drummond is a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. After the closures of ERs in Fort Erie and Port Colborne, he's sounding the alarm bells: "Let's not make health care decisions based on budgetary constraints within regional health authorities."

I ask the Premier again: Why are emergency room doctors raising concerns if patients aren't being affected?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I just want to take this opportunity to thank all of our health care partners—the doctors, the nurses, the health care support workers, the pharmacists and everyone. They have, I would argue, a very heavy responsibility to express their opinion and demonstrate their judgment on a daily basis about what's going on in their own particular circumstances. But our responsibility in government is to keep an eye on the big picture, and the big picture is to ensure that there is always a sufficient level of funding available for our hospitals, particularly for our doctors and our nurses.

I think we can argue objectively, again, that the salaries have gone up, that funding levels have gone up, that there's more technology than ever before and access to more drugs than ever before. We're building hospitals like never before, expanding existing hospitals like never before and building cancer care clinics like never before. All of those are objective, and in the grand scheme of things we continue to make real progress.

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: This recession was not caused by Ontario families. Ontario families didn't drive Ontario into a deficit, and Ontario families didn't choose to give away billions of dollars to Bay Street in tax cuts. But this Premier has made that choice. Now he's asking the people of this province to pay more for health services. Instead of investing that money in their health care, he is giving it away.

Why does the Premier keep putting the health care of Ontario families last?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Of course I'm going to disagree with my honourable colleague. I want to remind her about the $10 billion in tax cuts for people.

I also want to take umbrage with what my colleague says about families. Of course they want us to continue to find ways to invest in their health care. They want us to maintain the quality of services that we're providing to them today. But at the same time, they want us to take into account what has happened to our economy, to our revenue base. They want to ensure that we put in place a plan that addresses our deficit. They want to ensure that we don't burden their children and their grandchildren with a deficit for which we should have taken responsibility.

So we're going to, through the budget, continue to find that responsible balance, one that is informed by the values of Ontarians and that will ensure we continue to invest in important programs like education and health care and, at the same time, begin to address the deficit.

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Mr. Gerry Martiniuk: My question is for the Premier. Recent media reports quote members of the Liberal caucus saying that morale over there is lower than a garter snake in a puddle on a backcountry road. I'm not saying that came from the member from Niagara Falls, but no one would blame him if it did.

You, Premier, have handed out to a foreign country billions of dollars, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to settle embarrassing lawsuits, used $15 million to help elect the member from Winnipeg, and they're offering millions more to help your candidate in Ottawa—West Nepean.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I do not need any help from the armchair Speakers on the government side.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): No. I'd just remind the honourable member of the warning I provided to the honourable member from Whitby—Oshawa. We refer to members who are here in this chamber.

Mr. Gerry Martiniuk: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Did you really think that taking $15 million from emergency services in the member for Niagara Falls's riding wouldn't matter to the safety of that community?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I just want to take this opportunity to speak to what is fundamentally an important issue. It's part of a bit of trickery in which my colleagues opposite are engaged.

The member for Toronto Centre, newly elected, spent some time outside the province of Ontario in another Canadian province. I think there are members in all our parties who have spent some time in another province and who are now representing Ontarians in our province. More than that, I think there are members in this Legislature who have spent a bit of time in another country before living in our province and representing people.

If they have something against people living in other provinces or something against people living in other countries, they should have the guts to stand up and say that. We're open to all Ontarians. We don't care where they come from. They are representing Ontarians here, and we're proud of that.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): The member from Nepean—Carleton should be in her seat, as she knows.

Interjections.

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

Hon. James J. Bradley: "Outsiders not welcome."

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister of Municipal Affairs.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister of Finance and Minister of Economic Development.

Start the clock. Supplementary?

Mr. Gerry Martiniuk: One day I hope to see a question answered in this Legislature.

The decision to rob $15 million from the Niagara Health System says a lot about how little you care about listening to your own caucus, or maybe unelected political staff in your office is telling you that the member for Niagara Falls didn't try hard enough to see you. But recent Toronto Star reports suggest he's not alone in feeling like Dalton McGuinty has left him on the outside. Several members of the Liberal caucus must be taking note of how Dalton McGuinty picks winners and losers.

What does it take for you to admit you made a mistake in forcing Fort Erie and Port Colborne to close their emergency rooms?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I would be very proud, and I will be proud, to put our record up against the Conservative government's record when it comes to health care. I recall those days when they closed hospitals. I recall the day when they closed hospitals in my riding. I think Ontarians recall those days very well—not fondly, but they certainly recall those days.

I think they understand the experience they're living when it comes to their health care today: more hospitals, more health care, more doctors, more nurses, more family health teams, more nurse-practitioner-led clinics, more medical school spaces, more drugs, more technology, more of everything for Ontario families when it comes to their health care.

RETIREMENT HOMES

M me France Gélinas: Ma question est pour le premier ministre. The Ottawa Citizen reported this week on the needless death of an elderly woman let down by a system that should have been able to care for her but didn't. This woman was transferred to an unregulated for-profit retirement home in spite of her complex medical needs. New Democrats, health care workers, experts in the field and now the Ontario chief coroner have called for the regulation of retirement homes.

After years of broken promises, is the Premier finally willing to protect Ontario's frail and elderly and create a strong system of regulation for retirement homes?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the minister responsible for seniors' issues.

Hon. Gerry Phillips: Thanks for the question. I am proud to now be the minister responsible for seniors. It's an area of intense interest, obviously, to all members of the Legislature.

We have made a commitment to regulate retirement homes. We've had a fair bit of consultation across the province. I think we've made the statement that we will be introducing legislation in the spring session. We are on track to do that. It will make sure that we have the proper balance to protect residents of retirement homes and to ensure that they are adequately regulated.

The matter that I think she's talking about is also very much a health care matter, and retirement homes will not be the only part of the solution to the issue that she has raised.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

M me France Gélinas: Yes, you did make a promise. That was in 2006. Yes, you did do extensive consultation. That was also in 2006.

In November 2008 I asked, "When are the regulations going to come out?" Let me quote what the minister responsible for seniors' issues said at the time: "We will announce in months ahead, and the member will be pleased with the outcome of the work and discussion." That was in 2008.

In 2009, I asked the same question again and got fed the same answer that the regulation was coming. Meanwhile we have people dying. You'll have to excuse me if "the regulation is coming" is not the answer we want. We want action now.

How many more times will I have to stand in this House and ask before this government takes action and creates a province-wide regulatory system to protect the frail and elderly in retirement homes?

Hon. Gerry Phillips: Again, I would hope that the member would listen carefully to my answer. What I said was that the solution to the problem that she is talking about may not rest with retirement home legislation; it may rest with ensuring that we have in place the proper procedures for when individuals are released from a hospital to another facility. The issue that she is talking about does require addressing; I just repeat that it may not be that it is in retirement home legislation that the solution to that problem rests. It may be that, in terms of the solution, it is how our other health care facilities deal with release of individuals.

The Minister of Health, I know, is aware of these issues. We'll work together to find those solutions. I just repeat: It may not rest in retirement home legislation—

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

FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN

Mr. Yasir Naqvi: My question is for the Minister of Education. Minister, yesterday I was pleased to see Bill 242 introduced in the Legislature as Ontario moves toward implementing full-day learning for four- and five-year olds. It is clear that enhancing the earliest years of a child's education will pay dividends far into the future. In our competitive global economy we need to prepare the most educated and skilled workers that we can, and full-day learning will begin to prepare our youngest pupils for the challenges ahead.

The extended-day portion of the proposed act is also good for working parents who want to know that their children will be well looked after and have quality educational programming.

Minister, as this is a major undertaking in our education system, can you tell us how this program will be implemented across Ontario and when we will see our four- and five-year-olds in a full-day program?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: We are very proud, as a government, to make this commitment to four- and five-year-old students in the province of Ontario. As has been identified, when we provide full-day learning it does enable students to be more successful in reading, writing and math. When they are more successful in those early years they will be more successful throughout school and more likely to graduate. We are providing the well-educated workforce for the new economy.

What I can also say is that we have worked very closely with school boards across Ontario. They have identified for us those schools in their communities that have the capacity, where we can begin to roll this program out and where the need is most important. We are looking forward to, in the days ahead, the excitement that's going to come in our communities when four- and five-year-olds can—

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

Mr. Yasir Naqvi: Minister, it is clear that this is the right policy for strengthening our education system and enhancing our future workforce, but this policy also helps children from families who are in high-need communities right across this province. We, as a government, have committed ourselves to a poverty reduction strategy in Ontario, and the introduction of full-day learning for our youngest students will assist parents and children who struggle every day for a better life.

In my riding of Ottawa Centre there are neighbourhoods that could clearly really benefit from this program. I'm hopeful that this kind of programming for kids and families will go a long way to undermining poverty in a meaningful way. Minister, can you tell us how this policy will help those in high-need communities across the province and what this program will mean for those in need in my community of Ottawa Centre when it is implemented?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: There's a great deal of excitement about this announcement and there are many questions about it, so I do appreciate the member, who is focused on the needs of his riding.

As he has indicated, poverty reduction is going to be impacted by this investment. We know that more than one half of the phase one schools are in areas where local boards have identified that there are high needs. In the member's riding, actually, I am able to say that there are two schools that have been identified: Cambridge Street Community Public School and W.E. Gowling Public School. They are located in high-need areas. We thank the boards and we look forward to continuing to work with boards as we roll this very important initiative out.

Parents want this. This is good for our kids and this is good for our economy going forward. This is an investment in our future. We are absolutely committed to it and it will be successful because of the partner—

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

GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: My question is for the Premier. I appreciated his comments earlier about those of us from different parts of the country.

What are you afraid Ontario families will learn from a public inquiry into eHealth, an auditor's review of the Samsung deal, and a coroner's inquest into the tragic death of Reilly Anzovino?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I'm not sure I caught a question there, but I did hear reference to the word "Samsung."

I just want to reiterate how important this new industry is that we are building together here in Ontario, and that is green energy, energy from renewable sources: the wind, the sun, biomass and the like.

We have just secured the largest investment of its kind in the world, and it's happening here in Ontario. It will lead to 16,000 jobs, four manufacturing plants and 2,500 megawatts of clean, renewable, green energy. Most importantly, it's going to give us the capacity to export our products—wind turbines, solar panels and the like—south of the border to a burgeoning green industry in the United States of America. We're going to position ourselves as the leading green-energy cluster in North America, ready to meet that capacity.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Mr. McGuinty knows who got rich off the untendered contracts in the eHealth scandal, because he did the deals. He knows the secret details of his mother-of-all-untendered-contracts to Samsung. And he had a hand in cutting the emergency services from Port Colborne and Fort Erie.

We have been the ones calling for a public inquiry into eHealth. We've called for the auditor's review of the Samsung deal. We have called for the coroner's inquest. The only thing standing in the way of all these accountability measures is Dalton McGuinty. What makes you think you are going to get away with it?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Premier?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I know that my honourable colleague very much supports the new rules that we have put in place. They require that expense claim information for all cabinet ministers, parliamentary assistants, political staff and senior management within the Ontario public service be posted online on the government's website.

What the Minister of Government Services has asked of the leader of the official opposition is his agreement to also post online the expense claim information of the official opposition's office. We're wondering: If we agree to this transparency and accountability, why won't they as well?

SPECIAL EDUCATION

Mr. Rosario Marchese: My question is to the Minister of Education. Minister, I congratulate you and I hope it's the job you really wanted.

Ten of the province's largest school boards have asked you to change the way special education is funded. There are still 36,000 elementary and 4,800 secondary students waiting for special education services. The boards have asked for a timely, transparent process to address growing demands, demands that the Liberal government has so far disregarded. What is your government going to do to clear up this growing mess?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: Ensuring that we have adequate resources to meet the needs of our students in schools who have been identified with special needs has been a priority for this government. I can say that, and I can also say that we have increased funding for special education in our schools since coming to government—

Hon. James J. Bradley: How much?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: Thirty-nine per cent. So I think that demonstrates very clearly that we do want to continue to work with boards.

When we arrived, there was a funding formula that was not working effectively. Now we have a special education funding model. There are five components in the way the support for special education is delivered to schools. We will continue to work with boards to understand how we can improve the direction of those dollars. But I do think it's fair to say—

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

Mr. Rosario Marchese: I say that there are 36,000 students waiting for services at the elementary level and close to 5,000 at the secondary level waiting for services. Your answer is, "We've increased funding by 39%." It doesn't jive; it doesn't make any sense.

According to the senior superintendent of special education at the Toronto District School Board, "The province's funding model underestimates the count of special needs students and the complexity of their needs." The Peel board claims that a shortfall in terms of special education can leave students waiting for months for special education assessment—in some cases, years. This problem is but one example of your ministry's indifference to the needs of Ontario students.

You promised a review in 2003, and then you repromised that review in 2010. Will you tell us when this much-needed review will actually take place?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: What I think is very important for the people of Ontario to understand is that we have increased support for special education by 39%, and we have done that in the face of declining enrolment. Our commitment to our special education students is actually very firm.

I would also say to the honourable member, with respect to how those dollars are delivered, that the former parliamentary assistant on this file, the member from Guelph, did a consultation with all of our partners in education on the grants for student needs. The grants for student needs are the vehicle that delivers dollars to school boards to support students. We have had some very good consultations. I am in the process of reviewing that feedback at this time.

Since coming to government, we have continually improved the—

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

AGRICULTURE PROGRAMS

Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: My question is for the new Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. I want to congratulate the member from Huron—Bruce. I know she'll do a great job for Ontario's farmers.

I know, Minister, that as one of your first official duties, you attended the federal, provincial and territorial agriculture ministers' meeting, which was held here in Toronto. These meetings, of course, are an excellent opportunity for ministers from across Canada to discuss the opportunities and the challenges that are faced by our farmers.

Minister, as the agriculture and agri-food industry is the second-largest economic driver in this province and for most of our rural ridings the primary driver, could you tell the House what issues you raised on behalf of Ontario's farmers in order to ensure the long-term future and the economic viability of this very important sector?

Hon. Carol Mitchell: Thank you for the question. I just wanted to share with the House how proud I am to be the Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. It really is a proud day for me.

This meeting was an important opportunity for me, as the new minister, to meet with my federal and provincial colleagues. The FPT meetings allow for discussion of the key issues facing agriculture and food sectors in a national context. The meetings provided an opportunity to review progress on the key commitments that were made in 2009 at the annual ministers' conference, specifically relating to the strategic review of the business risk management programs and national initiatives such as food safety and traceability.

My priority was to ensure that the national BRM strategic review moves forward aggressively. Ontario farmers are dissatisfied with the suite of programs that are available to them, and I made that clear to my federal, provincial and territorial colleagues—

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

Mrs. Maria Van Bommel: Minister, I know that you've been pushing for a national business risk management strategic review since before becoming minister, and it's certainly something that Ontario farmers have been asking their federal members for.

I'm also aware that you've been asking our farmers to support your efforts to push the federal government to come to the table as partners, and that has been consistently brought up to me as I've gone from farm meeting to farm meeting this winter, so I know it is a priority for the farmers of Lambton—Kent—Middlesex and for all Ontario farmers.

Farmers have been telling me the same thing they have told you; that is, they are dissatisfied with parts of the existing suite of programs. They say it's not working for them, and they don't want to wait until 2013 for that review.

Minister, I understand that you presented the Ontario agriculture stability coalition's proposal at the FPT meeting. Can you share with us how that was received and what the next steps will be?

Hon. Carol Mitchell: I did raise the fact that Ontario has already started a dialogue with our provincial producers in relation to the business risk management strategic review under way. I want to reinforce the need to address the producers' concerns. They want complexity, bankability and predictability in the programs, and the suite of programs, quite frankly, doesn't meet that test any longer.

The coalition of Ontario stakeholders has developed a draft proposal which I presented at the FPT meeting, and I expect that that proposal will be considered as the national review process moves forward by the national government.

The federal government laid out the next step of the review specifically targeted toward business risk management, on which I am thoroughly speaking out and saying, "Get engaged. Provide your input. This is your opportunity."

I encourage all Ontario producers to participate. I expect that the dialogue we have started will continue, and I look forward to participating in the—

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

ANTI-BULLYING INITIATIVES

Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: My question is for the Minister of Education. As you know, bullying remains a very serious issue and a frequent occurrence in our schools. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, approximately one third of students are bullied and almost one third have indicated that they have bullied others. So today I've introduced a resolution for debate, calling on the Ontario government to officially recognize the third week of each November as bullying awareness and prevention week.

I ask you today, can we count on—can I count on—your support for our resolution?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: Of course you can.

I think it's important for everyone in this House to understand that we all come here for the same reason. I agree with the honourable member that any time and every time we can act co-operatively to address very important issues like bullying, particularly in our schools, I think you have the goodwill of everyone in this place.

I would also like to say that the honourable member would be aware that on February 1 of this year, the keeping our kids safe at school act came into effect, and as part of that we now require at schools that parents of students who have been victims of bullying must now be recognized. It requires, as well, that school staff work directly with all—

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

Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: Thank you very much, Minister. I know that the families who are gathered in the gallery today, who appeared at a press conference with me to share their stories, will be pleased to hear that you are prepared to support the recognition of the third week in November as raising the awareness of bullying and focusing our efforts on preventing it.

I ask you: Can we all then be assured that Ontario schools will officially recognize this week, the third week of November, this year, in 2010?

Hon. Leona Dombrowsky: I think it's also important to remember and recognize the good work that has been going on in our schools by our schoolteachers and all members of staff to address the very serious issue of bullying. They very much have appreciated the regulations that have come to assist them and support them to deal with these important issues.

I want to say in this Legislature as well that we are providing professional development around this very important piece of work: training for 7,500 principals and 25,000 teachers. We do want to make very clear the statement to parents and to students who come to our schools that it must be a safe place for them to be. We are going to do everything in our power to ensure that the information around our commitment and the processes that will protect children—

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

HOSPITAL FUNDING

Ms. Andrea Horwath: My question is to the Premier. As employees at the Brockville Mental Health Centre are handed layoff notices, we know there are plans to transfer a 24-bed acute care unit from the mental health centre to Brockville General Hospital. There is just one problem. The hospital's president says there is a $1.5-million shortfall to make the transition actually work.

Given this Premier's penchant for by-election bailouts, can the citizens of Brockville expect a cheque from the government soon, or is this by-election race not quite close enough to warrant another 11th-hour spending spree to keep vital services where they're needed?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Health.

Hon. Deborah Matthews: I met with the now Senator Runciman shortly before he left this place to go to the place of eternal love about issues facing us in Brockville and I committed to him that we would look carefully at the proposals that he had laid out for us.

What I can tell you is, when it comes to hospital funding, our hospital partners are doing really tough work right now. We've asked them to take on some challenges, and they're working closely with the LHINs. They're going through their budgets line by line, trying to find places where they can actually save some money so we can reinvest that in better patient care.

We've increased hospital funding by 42% since we were elected in 2003. This year alone, we increased hospital funding by almost—

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

Ms. Andrea Horwath: In a community where health sector layoffs are widespread and the future of the mental health centre remains in doubt, people are rightfully worried when they hear that an acute care unit is to be transferred and then find out that there's not even enough money in the bank to actually do it.

A government spokesperson told reporters a few days ago that the Ministry of Health is committed to a "smooth transition" of the acute care unit. If the government's "smooth transition" doesn't mean a $1.5-million cheque will arrive a day before voters go to the polls, can the Premier instead tell us today exactly what his government will do to ensure there will be no cuts to health care services for the people of Brockville?

Hon. Deborah Matthews: The leader of the third party has a level of cynicism that I just can't accept.

We're working very hard to protect the progress we've made in health care across this province. There are cases where we do understand that a hospital needs more funding in order to continue to provide the services in that community. This is part of the work we do in the ministry all the time.

The hospital is working with the LHIN. It should not come as news to anyone that we're committed to keeping our health care system strong. These are difficult times. Hospitals are working hard to find the savings without impacting patient care, and that is happening across the province as well as in the great riding of Leeds—Grenville.

PUBLIC TRANSIT

Mr. David Zimmer: My question is for the Minister of Transportation. Minister, strong transit systems are a key to a vibrant economy. In my riding of Willowdale, a huge number of my constituents rely on public transit to get to work, to school, to visit friends and family, and to take advantage of everything the GTA has to offer.

Our government delivered on a major platform commitment by creating Metrolinx and by tasking it with making it easier for folks to get around the GTA and Hamilton by public transit. This fights congestion. It creates jobs. It helps to build Ontario's economy.

Minister, what is Metrolinx doing to help Ontarians use public transit effectively and efficiently?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Thank you to the member for Willowdale for the question.

Last year, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimated that congestion on our roads cost us about $6 billion. Metrolinx is doing great work to improve transit. This is not an option; this is something that must happen—reduce congestion and get people out of cars and into transit.

I've had the opportunity to meet with Metrolinx leadership on several occasions already, and I look forward to working with them as we implement the plans.

As you know, our $11.5-billion MoveOntario 2020 funding commitment is the foundation of the Metrolinx regional transit plan. Last year, the Premier announced that we're moving ahead with $9 billion for priority transit projects, including the York Viva bus rapid transit, Scarborough rapid transit line, Eglinton crosstown light rapid transit and Finch West light rapid transit.

As I said, these aren't optional. These must go forward if we're going to remove the congestion on our roads that both the member from Willowdale—

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

Mr. David Zimmer: Minister, my constituents in Willowdale need reliable and affordable public transit, whether they're travelling within Willowdale or trying to get to the downtown Toronto core. Public transit in Toronto is essential to making Toronto a livable and prosperous city, but we know that the challenge is that municipalities are struggling with this $6-billion cost of congestion. In my opinion, it's critically important that our government continue its investment in support of municipal transportation needs.

Minister, what has this government done to support public transit in Toronto, and more importantly, how will we maintain our level of commitment in these very, very tough economic times?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Despite the tough economic times, we are moving ahead. We estimate that the Metrolinx project will create more than 429,000 jobs over the next 25 years, so it's a significant investment. It goes without saying that I share this keen interest in transit because my constituents are also dependent, as are all of our constituents, on an effective GTA transit system. We've committed $12 billion to fund transit projects in Toronto. So if we think of Toronto as the hub of those needs, we've already committed that $12 billion.

That includes $3.5 billion to the city of Toronto and $8 billion to Metrolinx for projects for rapid transit, as I said, along Eglinton, Scarborough, Finch West and Sheppard East. We've also delivered on our commitment to provide two cents per litre of provincial gas tax. That's something no other government has done, and that's $164 million a year to the city of Toronto—

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

LABOUR DISPUTE

Mr. Toby Barrett: A question to the Premier: Well over 1,000 steelworkers at US Steel in Nanticoke have been laid off and locked out since last March. They've been out in the cold for almost a year now.

My question to you, Premier: Have you or has your minister met with the company? Have you met with the steelworkers? Have you taken any steps whatsoever to save these jobs?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Labour.

Hon. Peter Fonseca: To the member's question, the Ministry of Labour has an experienced, knowledgeable mediation team that is always there to work with the parties. I mentioned yesterday a labour dispute that is happening—not this one, but I'll speak to this one in particular. My focus and the Ministry of Labour's focus is always to work with the parties so that they can put their differences aside, so that they can come back to the table and find that common ground where they can get a collective agreement done.

We respect the collective bargaining process. It has worked very well for Ontario. Our labour relations record today is the best it has ever been in 30 years. Over 97% of all collective agreements are done without any work stoppage. But we always encourage the parties to—

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

Mr. Toby Barrett: Back to the Premier: I don't think you've done anything. It has been almost a year. Families are being split apart; people are losing their homes. This is a foreign-owned company. Have you met with the federal government? Do you have a policy for primary industry? You haven't met with the mayors of Norfolk, Hamilton and Haldimand. I'll make this very clear: You don't have your mediation team working 24/7 on this one. What have you personally done in the past year to get a thousand steelworkers back to work?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: The member is wrong. This is an active file, and what I can say is that our mediation team is always looking for ways to assist the parties to get them back to the table, to work through those differences. Unlike the member here who looks at divisive ways of separating groups, we look at bringing them together.

As I said, our labour relations system is one of the best in the world and the mediation team there works as hard as they can to do all that they can to assist the parties. That is the right thing to do. The wrong thing to do is what the member is doing here, and that is dividing the parties, dividing the community. We do not agree.

PUBLIC TRANSIT

Ms. Cheri DiNovo: My question is to the Minister of Transportation. It's well-known that Metrolinx has been subjecting residents in west Toronto to deafening pile-driving. In the fall, the pile-driving was condemned by the Canadian Transportation Agency as being unreasonable and having caused undue harm.

Within the last two weeks, a federal court denied Metrolinx leave to appeal the Canadian Transportation Agency's decision. Yesterday we learned that Metrolinx plans to appeal that decision of the federal court.

Why is this agency wasting valuable public dollars to litigate, rather than complying with the CTA ruling?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: First of all, let me just say that the member opposite has information that I do not have, because my understanding is that that decision has not been made. But that is, in a way, beside the point.

First of all, I want to say that I have visited the site. I have looked at Hook Avenue. I've looked at the site. I've listened to the pile-driving. I understand that there has been a disruption in people's lives and I'm very sympathetic to that. But that's also why I'm pleased that Metrolinx has complied with the order in terms of shrouding the piles and using the equipment that is much less disruptive to people's lives.

The point here is that we must complete these projects. We must deal with the congestion that the member from Willowdale was just speaking about. We must move ahead and build the next era of transportation in the GTA. We have to do that. In 25 years, when my—

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

Ms. Cheri DiNovo: The fact is that Metrolinx is more interested in dragging this issue through the courts than in dealing with the residents and responding to their complaints.

The solution is clear. The CTA has given them a solution. Metrolinx's pile-driving must use quieter technology. Rob Prichard was in my office promising to do the same, before he turned around and appealed the decision. Why won't the minister intervene to stop Metrolinx from using taxpayers' dollars to fight taxpayers?

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Minister?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Let me be clear: The decision has not been made. Let me also be clear that the compliance and the mitigation orders have been complied with, and the noise has been reduced.

Let me also be clear: We're talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs. We're talking about jobs that will drive our economy and will create a transit system that will be functional for this region.

In 25 years, when my granddaughter wants to come downtown, I don't want her to say, "Grandma, what were you doing? You were the Minister of Transportation and you didn't push ahead a transit system that works for this region." That's what we have to do.

I would have hoped that the member opposite would have been interested in those jobs, would have been interested in the economic driver, and would have ultimately been interested in a functional transit system for the GTA.

VIOLENCE FAMILIALE

M. Phil McNeely: Ma question est pour la ministre des Services sociaux et communautaires.

J'apprécie le travail qu'a fait votre ministère dans toute la province pour soutenir et protéger les femmes et les enfants qui sont victimes de la violence domestique. Pourriez-vous informer cette Assemblée de ce que le gouvernement a fait dans ce domaine, et notamment dans la région de mes commettants?

L'hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Je voudrais remercier mon collègue pour la question. Permettez-moi de vous donner quelques exemples récents.

Notre gouvernement a récemment annoncé un financement de 3 $ millions à Ottawa pour la Maison Intervalle, pour la construction d'un nouveau refuge. Cela fait

partie du plan gouvernemental d'investir 50 $ millions dans les infrastructures, et avec ceci, nous créerons 450 nouveaux emplois, don