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March 24, 2015

41st Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Votes and Proceedings

Orders and Notices

Hansard Transcript 2015-Mar-24 (PDF)

L059 - Tue 24 Mar 2015 / Mar 24 mar 2015

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ONTARIO

ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L’ONTARIO

Tuesday 24 March 2015 Mardi 24 mars 2015

ORDERS OF THE DAY

Invasive Species Act, 2015 / Loi de 2015 sur les espèces envahissantes

Introduction of Visitors

Legislative pages

Oral Questions

Automotive industry

Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

Government’s agenda

Government’s agenda

Premier’s record

By-election in Sudbury

Ring of Fire

Skills training

Education funding

Labour dispute

Milton courthouse

Affordable housing

Consumer protection

Road safety

Government anti-racism programs

Services for the developmentally disabled

Introduction of Visitors

Members’ Statements

Agnes Macphail

Robotics competition

Community movie night / Soirée cinéma communautaire

Minister’s Award for Environmental Excellence

Intergenerational Day Canada

Greek Independence Day

Elmira Maple Syrup Festival

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Foodland in Ayr

Private members’ public business

Reports by Committees

Standing Committee on Government Agencies

Introduction of Bills

Intergenerational Day Canada Act, 2015 / Loi de 2015 sur la Journée intergénérationnelle au Canada

DSPT International (Canada) Inc. Act, 2015

Motions

Order of business

Statements by the Ministry and Responses

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Farm safety

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Farm safety

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

Farm safety

Petitions

Fish and wildlife management

Automotive industry

Wind turbines

Lyme disease

Trespassing

LGBT conversion therapy

Wind turbines

First responders

Hospice funding

Ontario Disability Support Program

Water fluoridation

Opposition Day

Government’s agenda

Adjournment Debate

By-election in Sudbury

By-election in Sudbury

The House met at 0900.

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

Prayers.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

Invasive Species Act, 2015 / Loi de 2015 sur les espèces envahissantes

Resuming the debate adjourned on December 8, 2014, on the motion for second reading of the following bill:

Bill 37,

An Act respecting Invasive Species / Projet de loi 37, Loi concernant les espèces envahissantes.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Further debate? The member for Timmins–James Bay.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Thanks for your humour and understanding, Speaker; much appreciated.

There are a few things I just want to say at the outset of this debate. First of all, we’re going to be supporting this bill. I think it goes a long way to addressing some of the issues that deal with having to control evasive species in the province of Ontario. But as with every bill, the devil is in the details in regard to what this bill actually will end up doing, what it will end up costing and how effective it’s going to be. That’s what I’d like to spend my time talking about because, as we know, this bill should pass second reading, and I would imagine it will.

The government’s proposing this bill, so it’s a government bill. More than likely this bill will pass second reading. It will go into committee and we’ll get a chance, when this gets into committee, to be able to get into some of the issues that I want to raise in this particular debate.

The first thing I just want to say is, I don’t think anybody in this House—and I think probably hardly anybody in this province—is going to argue that we don’t have a problem when it comes to evasive species.

We saw what happened with various evasive species that have introduced themselves into our ecosystem here in Ontario: everything from what was dragged in from the oceans through the Great Lakes in regard to zebra mussels and other species that have migrated here by way of attaching themselves to seafaring ships that end up inside our Great Lakes system to—what ends up happening is just products being shipped by air and by rail from around North America and around the world that end up here in Ontario and eventually end up in our environment.

What that could mean, quite frankly, to the ecosystem in those areas—we all see it driving down the highways, at least where I come from. Purple loosestrife is abundant and pretty plentiful across most ditches across Ontario. It’s actually quite a pretty flower, and I know the bees like it, but it is a problem when it comes to other species that it comes into contact with.

I guess the question becomes—and this is really the fundamental question—how effectively can any legislation deal with any of that? I think we shouldn’t delude ourselves at the very beginning. There’s no way in heck, if this bill was perfect, that you’re going to eliminate the threat of evasive species in the province of Ontario. Some of the ways by which evasive species end up coming into this province and are introduced into our ecosystem may be out of our control, to a certain degree.

Now, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t be doing something, it’s not to say we shouldn’t support this legislation; obviously, this legislation is a step in the right direction. I think the general point that I’m trying to make is that with all the plans of mice and men, at the end of the day nature will have its way. So let’s not pat ourselves on the back and walk away from this exercise to say, “Oh, my God, look at this.

The Legislature of Ontario, we have on such-and-such a date passed such-and-such a bill that is going to eliminate evasive species from being introduced in the ecosystem of Ontario.” Because the fact is that we will still have evasive species that’ll be introducing themselves into our province. No matter how hard we work at it and no matter how good we are it, we’re going to always have that problem.

So let’s be clear: What this is is an attempt in order to try to deal with those things that we can have an effect on, by way of good public policy and by way of being able to control how these particular species end up in our ecosystem. That’s just generally the first comment I want to make.

The second thing I want to say: As I read through this bill—and I encourage members to read this bill because I think it’s indicative of what is the problem in this Legislature to a great extent—much of what’s going to happen in this bill is going to be covered by regulation. We, as legislators who stand here today who are debating and eventually will pass a bill that will go into law, really have no idea what the bill’s going to look like in the end, Mr. Speaker, because the regulations that are to be drafted by cabinet are not subject to this Legislature’s approval.

We, for whatever reason, got ourselves down this path of delegating the authority of the Legislature to regulation and to cabinet to do what they want when it comes to regulation. I think that’s unfortunate because I think that regulations should reflect what it is that the legislators wanted at the very beginning. I would hope that we would go back to the day where regulation was done in such—first of all, delegating our authority for cabinet to make decisions about legislation by putting everything into regulation used to be not the norm, it used to be the exception, in this place.

When we were passing legislation in the House, the bills were thicker—no question, they were more voluminous—they took longer to draft because they were much more complicated, but the bill actually dealt with, “In the case of X, this is what the minister shall do; in the case of Y, this is what the minister may do.” It was pretty well spelled out in the legislation what the bill was intended to do and how it was going to happen. That’s the way that legislation was drafted in this House for over 100 years.

For whatever reasons—and we can all point to each other in this place because we’ve all been in government in the last 20-some-odd years in this place—we have more and more devolved the power of this Legislature to the corner office of the Premier and to cabinet. I think that’s unfortunate because what you end up with is the Legislature pronouncing itself on something, deciding to take a collective decision to do whatever that is, and then cabinet goes off and does what the heck it wants.

I will give you a bill as an example that orchestrates this, and I have raised this before. Back in the day there was a Premier by the name of Bob Rae. Bob Rae decided that he wanted to introduce casinos in the province of Ontario, to the chagrin of some. There were people in this province at the time, as there are now, who believed we should have never brought casinos to the province of Ontario. I’m not one of them; I was actually in favour of casinos being established in Ontario.

But the point is this: The Conservatives then, who were the third party, took the position that casinos should not be allowed to be established in a community unless there was a referendum where the public in that community has the say. So what ended up happening is that when the NDP was defeated and the Conservatives took office, they introduced a bill in this House, and the bill essentially said that in the future, with any casino to be established in the province of Ontario, there needs to be a referendum. This House debated that bill. This House passed that bill. Quite frankly, it was probably not a bad idea.

But all of the details as to what would be in the referendum and whether there was going to be a referendum was left to regulation. This House passed a bill that said, “There shall be a referendum any time a new casino is established in Ontario.” The House pronounced itself on that at second and third reading. The bill was passed into law and it was enacted. The difficulty: All of the detail was in the regulation. Then, some years later, when Dalton McGuinty became the Premier of Ontario, he decided by regulation that there would be no referendum at the establishment of any casino in the province of Ontario.

Well, Speaker, that is not what this House decided. What this House decided at the time was, “There shall be a referendum.” It seems to me that what should have happened, if we had not delegated our authority as we did on that particular bill, is that the government would have been forced to come into this House and to bring a bill to say, “We are changing so that there no longer needs to be a referendum,” and this House could have pronounced itself on that idea, either yes or no, up and down.

That’s the problem when you start delegating authority. If you look at this bill, Speaker, much of the detail—I would say about 90% of the detail as to how this bill is going to work—is going to be left to the minister and is going to be left to the cabinet to decide by regulation. They’re going to decide what is an evasive species. It’s not going to be some mechanism that we understand now at second reading; it’s going to be something that’s going to be established in regulation after this bill is passed. How is the evasive species strategy going to deal with trying to deal with the evasive species?

All of those questions are left to regulation. It just seems me that this is an issue that all of us have something to say about. The details by which this is to work should at the very least be inside the bill so that we understand clearly what it is we are trying to do by way of strategies to deal with evasive species.

How can the public comment on this bill in committee effectively if they don’t have what’s in—there’s nothing in the bill at this point, second reading, that deals with the specifics of how we are going to identify evasive species and what the strategies are going to be to deal with evasive species. The only thing we know for sure is what the fines will be: up to $250,000—is it $250,000 or $250 million? Is it thousand or million? It has to be thousand.

Ms. Teresa J. Armstrong: Thousand.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Yes, $250,000, and going to jail for a year. We know this because in the bill it’s prescribed what the penalties will be. I don’t believe you can delegate that to cabinet. I believe that’s something that still has to be spelled out in law, because only this Legislature can deal with those issues. But that’s about the only thing we’re certain about. We’re not certain as to the mechanisms by which we will identify and then deal with evasive species.

So when the public and those people interested in dealing with evasive species issues come to the committee, they’re going to be able to pronounce themselves generally on the issue, but they’re going to have a heck of a hard time trying to hone in on, how is the strategy going to work, what is the government really proposing, does it make sense, should it be adjusted, is it strong enough, is it too strong? You can’t pronounce yourself on any of that stuff because we don’t know. It’s essentially like holding up a bill that has a title and the inside of the bill is blank.

We know what the title of the bill is, we know the effect of what the government wants, but we have no idea of what the details are going to be.

Now, I realize that for most government members who sit on the back bench and most cabinet ministers and, I would argue, for a whole bunch of opposition members, we don’t think about the danger of delegating authority to cabinet. It’s not the top-of-mind issue that everybody thinks about—

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Until they cancelled the $1.2-billion gas plant.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Until they cancelled the $1.2-billion gas plant, as the member from Nepean says; exactly. But that was, again, a decision by cabinet.

My point is, if we end up in the situation that we are in now where we draft legislation and everything is left to regulation, it beckons the question, what is this Legislature doing, delegating its authority to cabinet? Legislation should be drafted in such a way that is more prescriptive, that describes what the government wants to do and how they’re going do it. That would be the first comment that I would make.

The other comment I want to make is—you look at the Ministry of Natural Resources. What this bill is going to do—which is a good idea—is they are going to take the myriad of ministries and the myriad of policies that exist out there, the different ministries that deal with evasive species, and put them all under one roof and have one authority to deal with it: one minister. Okay, I think that makes an ample amount of sense. Imagine trying to fight the Second World War and you had 15 generals trying to essentially lead the Battle of Stalingrad or whatever it might be. It wouldn’t make any sense.

You have to have one person who is in charge, who at the end of the day listens to all of the advice but makes the decision. If we’re going to have a battle on evasive species—and I think the war example is a little bit harsh. But my point is, I agree you have to have somebody who is heading up the charge, somebody who ultimately makes the decision about how we’re going to do this and what we’re going to do and all of that kind of stuff, based on what’s in the legislation.

The problem is that the Ministry of Natural Resources is one of those ministries that has been targeted, over the next three years, to lose 6% per year. I repeat: The Ministry of Natural Resources, according to the last budget—the progressive Kathleen Wynne budget that the NDP voted against—has a 6% reduction over the next three years, that they lose each year over the next three years in their budget. How are they going to pay for this?

Here is the question: Who is going to be left at the Ministry of Natural Resources to shut off the lights as they walk out of the room? Who are going to be the inspectors? Who are going to be the field staff who deal with the science necessary to deal with what are the evasive species and what the targets should be and how we deal with the elimination of that evasive species? Who is going to do this work if you don’t have people at the ministry who are capable of doing that because they don’t have the staff anymore?

The MNR, the Ministry of Natural Resources, has shut down the entire scientific division of the MNR; it’s gone. That was under the progressive government of the Liberals. Remember those progressives? They talked about, “Oh, my God, we campaigned from the left.” But God, did they govern from the right.

Mr. Taras Natyshak: That’s an invasive species.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I was coming to that. You’re beating me to the line. You’re really good, Mr. Natyshak; you’re very good. I like the way he thought about where I was going. Really, the endangered species here is the progressive Liberal. That’s the endangered species, if we were talking about endangered species. I wanted to use that line. My good friend Mr. Vanthof came up with that this morning.

My point is, there’s hardly the capacity within the Ministry of Natural Resources today, and we know that the Ministry of Natural Resources is going to lose 6% funding each and every year for the next three years. Who is going to do this? Who is going to do the work that has to be done to deal with evasive species?

So here’s the situation—because we’re seeing it in other areas of the Ministry of Natural Resources, and I only use that ministry as an example. There are all kinds of legislative obligations that that ministry has. It administers the Public Lands Act; it administers a number of acts dealing with how we approach fishing and hunting in our province; it deals with the quarries act; it deals with a whole bunch of different legislation that they are legislatively obligated to carry out mandates of, given to them by this Legislature. They can’t do it now.

Mr. Speaker, if you went into your local Ministry of Natural Resources office and said, “I want to exercise my right as an Ontarian in order to get a land use permit from the Ministry of Natural Resources,” you wouldn’t even be allowed to apply. Why? Not because the legislation says that you cannot have a land use permit. Of course, legislation permits land use permits.

The Legislature decided some years ago that where there is crown land and somebody has a use for it and it’s not being sold, you can enter into an agreement with the Ministry of Natural Resources to have a land use permit to do whatever it is that you’re trying to do, provided it’s within the context of what makes some sense for us from a policy perspective in the Ministry of Natural Resources. But you can’t even get the permit today. Do you know why? There’s no money. There’s nobody in the ministry capable of dealing with the application for a land use permit.

In my part of the world, we get a fair amount of these kinds of requests: people trying to get land use permits for everything from trying to set up a place for people to be able to do some collective camping, to people trying to operate a business, let’s say a campground or something like that, and they need a certain part of land in order to do whatever. You can’t even get the permit anymore.

So they go to the ministry to apply for the ministry permit that they’re entitled to get, they go online—I don’t even know if you can still get it online; I know you could at one point—and nobody is there to process the application. They’re told, “We’re not taking any applications for land use permits.” So how in heck are this ministry and this minister going to deal with evasive species when we don’t even have the capacity to process the land use permit within the ministry? They don’t have the staff at the MNR to be able to do this.

There’s a whole

section in the bill—I forget what the

section number is—that deals with the minister having the power to name the people who will be responsible for doing the inspections and stuff. My question is, who is that? We’re going to give it to conservation officers? I think there’s, what, 250 conservation officers in the province of Ontario, who already have a whole bunch of work to do because they’ve been chopped greatly over the last number of years.

I was talking to somebody who used to work at the MNR, who is now retired, in Timmins. We were talking about how when I was first elected there were 60 MNR staff at the Timmins office and 57 MNR staff at the Gogama office. We’re down to 30 staff between both offices. Who is left to do the work?

We’re going to give conservation officers the job of enforcing the invasive species act legislation? God, they can’t even get gas to get in their trucks sometimes, as was the case when the Tories were in power. You couldn’t get gas in your truck to go drive in the bush to make sure that people were fishing and hunting according to the law. So I’m asking, who’s going to do this?

Again, it brings me to the other issue that I’ve raised in this house a number of times: Governments and, I would argue, private members have a habit of introducing legislation in this House without any thought of how we’re going to pay for it. In the case of the opposition and private members, we cannot propose a bill that costs money, so we’re kind of exonerated from any blame at that point. But every bill that the government brings forward has a financial implication of some type. This bill is one that’s going to cost money.

You have, essentially, a $12-billion deficit currently and a government that doesn’t seem to have a plan to deal with balancing the books by 2017-18, as they said they would, and we’re going to add costs to the Ministry of Natural Resources, if you were to actually do this bill right. You would have to add costs to the treasury of Ontario to be able to make this bill work.

Again, I’m not arguing against this bill. I’m just raising a philosophical point: When bringing legislation to the floor of the Legislature, you would think that cabinet would look at the Minister of Finance and say, “Hey, Mr. Sousa, do we have the money to do this?” If they didn’t have that conversation, I say, shame on them. If that discussion wasn’t had at the cabinet table, when it comes to whether you have the money to carry out the mandate of this legislation, then it tells me we’re in a lot bigger trouble than we think we are.

You wonder why you have a $12-billion deficit? Fourteen years of Liberal government doing this kind of stuff without the context of how you’re going to pay for it adds up after a point in time.

Listen, they’re not responsible for the entire $12 billion. I recognize the economy had a great part to do with that. Health care services, schools and roads still need to be maintained. Those services have to be given, and those costs are going up. I have sympathy for the government trying to deal with a pretty difficult financial situation. I don’t care who you are; you have to deal with that.

But my point that I’m making—okay, fine, you brought this legislation to the table. Nowhere did I hear in the minister’s speech and nowhere did I see in any of the literature that came out with this legislation how much this bill is going to cost the treasury of Ontario over the next number of years and what the strategy is to pay for that. I think that would be incumbent.

Imagine, in your own personal finances, if you decide: “Well, I just got a new policy that my wife and I are going to take a trip every year for two weeks to Europe.” What a great policy. Murielle and I will be dancing down the aisles thinking about all the great places we get to go for two weeks every year. But imagine if you did that without the context of saying, “Well, honey, it means to say that we have to put so much money away every month. It means we have to cut back on expenses here in order to make sure we have the money to take that holiday.

Then maybe we can afford to take that holiday.” Who, in their personal finances—unless they are living off their credit card, and that’s going to come to an end at one point—doesn’t say, “All right, we’ve made a policy decision in our household: two weeks to Europe every year. You better have figured out how you’re going to pay for it before you implement that decision”? That’s what most of us do in our families. That’s what most people do in small businesses. That’s what happens—not always in large businesses. Large business, I would argue, is a lot like government. You want to waste money?

The bigger the business, the more money you can waste. This whole fallacy that the private sector does it better—go take a look at large corporations. They’re not any different than government. They are like crazy cabinets that we have over here, and of a different stripe. They do bad decisions well.

My point is, any time that the government ever comes with any kind of declaration of how they’re going to pay for this—now, again, I want to say as a New Democrat that I support this legislation. I think this legislation is long overdue. I think we have to have a strategy to deal with evasive species. But I’m also a practical New Democrat who says, “Okay, how are we going to pay for this?”

I will remind you of somebody by the name of Tommy Douglas. When Tommy Douglas came to government back in Saskatchewan in the late 1940s, early 1950s, what was the first thing that Tommy Douglas did? Everybody says, “Oh, he did health care.” No, no, no, no. New Democrats back then, the CCF in Saskatchewan, did not do—

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Why don’t you ever talk about Bob Rae?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I’ve talked about Bob. I already did two seconds ago. You weren’t listening.

My point is, when Tommy came to power, everybody says, “Oh, the first he did was health care.” No. You know the first thing that Tommy Douglas did with his cabinet? They balanced the books. It took them three mandates to be able to undo the mess the Liberals had left in Saskatchewan; where they had left the Saskatchewan provincial government at that time virtually bankrupt. Tommy Douglas, for three terms, worked at balancing the books.

What was the second thing Tommy Douglas did?

Mr. Taras Natyshak: Electrified.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: He electrified rural Saskatchewan. He had to build up the economy of Saskatchewan to build the dollars needed not only to allow Saskatchewan rural farmers to be able to work more efficiently, but they had to build up the economy to have money to build for health care.

What I’m saying here is that as a New Democrat I understand that you need to be able to figure out how you’re going to pay for this stuff before you do it. I’m just saying up front here, my friends in the Liberal Party, very good direction as far as legislation. It’s not the way I would have written the bill, but good stuff. But please tell me how you’re going to pay for this. I hope that the parliamentary assistant for agriculture comments on this when he is back and gets a chance to respond to it, because I would like to know how they are going to pay for the protection under the evasive species.

The other thing in this particular bill that you’ve got to take a look at—first of all, we’re delegating the authority of the cabinet, so we don’t know what this bill is going to look like, other than the title says we’re going to deal with evasive species. How they’re going to do that, God only knows. Cabinet will figure out the details and we’re going to find out by way of a press release some time after the bill is passed. I want to come back to that, because I think it speaks to what we need to do legislatively here to fix that.

Not only have they not decided how they’re going to pay for this, or told us how they’re going to pay for it, but when you take a look at the legislation, the legislation itself is somewhat ambiguous when it comes to deciding who is going to be responsible for enforcing the policies made by cabinet when it comes to dealing with evasive species.

If you look at what the bill says, the bill doesn’t describe, “It’s going to be the Ministry of Natural Resources and these particular people who are responsible for carrying out what is established under the bill and the regulation.” It says the minister will decide that by way of regulation. This may end up becoming some private corporation, because we know that this government, God, they love the private sector. The Liberals, I tell you, are outflanking the Conservatives on the right. Everything is private sector.

Privatize hydro, backdoor privatization of wine and beer sales in Ontario, privatization of the building of capital in this province when it comes to—not capital, but infrastructure. How many billions of dollars did we waste on that?

Mr. Taras Natyshak: Eight billion.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Eight billion dollars. Everything that’s private is wonderful. This legislation allows for privatization by the back door of the people who are going to be dealing with whatever is done by way of regulation.

If you go and look at the bill, it essentially says that the minister will decide who it is who’s going to go out there and actually do the enforcement of whatever laws have to be enforced. That might be a conservation officer, maybe, or it might be—and I think more likely—somebody in the private sector who is going to be contracted to do this. They might go and decide to get a deal with a not-for-profit to do this. Maybe they’re going to go to the conservation authorities and have them do it—or maybe they’re just going to download it onto the municipalities like they’ve done with everything else around here.

That’s why they don’t have to talk about cost: Because it’s plausible that the municipalities and the LSBs are going to be responsible for enforcing what’s under this bill.

The government, in this bill, is essentially being pretty vague not only about how they’re going to pay for this—they’re pretty vague about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it—but they’re also being pretty vague about who’s going to carry out the mandate of this bill. This could take the form of privatization and it could take the form of downloading on municipalities. That’s just from my reading this bill a couple of times, what I’ve been able to come up with as I read through the bill.

It came back to the point of, why do we draft bills in this way? Because it’s to the advantage of the government. The government can go off and do what it wants to do.

Speaker, I would argue that what’s needed in this Legislature are probably two things in order to deal with these types of bills, where everything is left to regulation. I think the first thing is that we should stop delegating the authority of this House to the cabinet. Yes, there are times when we need to do that. I understand that. I’ve been around here long enough to know that cabinet does need to deal with some of these things, because the ministry has got to go off and work out some of the details. But at the very most, that should be the exception to the rule, not the rule. So we should, first of all, very much diminish our reliance on putting everything in regulation.

The second thing I think we need do is to make some changes at our committee level when it comes to dealing with regulation. Currently, we are very limited as members. Even the government is limited, with their members, in being able to call any regulation before the committee for review.

For example, there should be a mechanism that says: If the government is going to draft regulations for this bill, once the regulations are done, they should come back as a package to a committee of this Legislature where, at least, the committee has to approve or turn down the regulation. At least this way, the committee would be able to say, “You know what? No, we don’t want to approve this and we’re kicking this back to the House.

Let the government deal with coming back and bringing a better product than the regulations they’ve put forward.” In that way, at least the will of the House is maintained—the idea of Parliament being the place by which we not only decide on the authority to spend money, but how money is spent, is dealt with in the Legislature.

I don’t argue that any member of this House, including a cabinet minister, should ever micromanage a ministry. I know my good friend Madeleine Meilleur—I’ve known her for a lot of years—is not a micromanager. I don’t believe micromanaging how our civil servants do their jobs is what we have to do in this Legislature. But I do believe that we have to set the general policy direction. The problem now is that once the cabinet has decided what’s going to go into the regulation—we need to have a mechanism so that the regulation comes back to us in some form so we’re able to see what the government has done.

Oh, yes, the government will get up and say, “Oh, but Gilles, it’s not a problem. You’ll be able to get all the regulations on the Ontario Gazette the Monday after they are filed.” Yes, I get to see them, I get to read them, but do any members of this House have any say on what is in those regulations? Should the regulations stand as done under what’s printed in the Gazette?

For those people who don’t know what I’m talking about, every week the Ontario government puts out what they call the Ontario Gazette. There is a requirement for cabinet: that any time they pass a regulation, the regulation be posted in that Gazette so that everybody can see what’s happened. I encourage all members to read the Gazette on Mondays, especially under their ministry portfolios, in order to keep an eye on what’s going on with regulation.

My point is, there has to be a mechanism, I think, at the very least, so that where we decide in legislation to delegate the authority in some bills—and maybe we don’t have to do it with all bills—once the regulations are written, the regulations come back to a committee so that the committee can decide what the next step is. Do we need to do more public consultation? In other words, these would be draft regulations that would be sent to the committee.

The draft regulations that would be created by cabinet would come to the committee. The committee would say, “Okay, you know what? We need a couple of weeks of hearings here,” or “We need a couple of days of hearings”—so that the stakeholders who came and spoke to us have a chance to look at this and give us their opinion—and actually fix the regulation so that it does what it is supposed to do.

I’ll give you an example of why that is so important.

When Mike Harris was elected Premier, back in 1995, they decided that they wanted to change the assessment system in the province of Ontario.

Ontario had, up until about 1993, a system of assessment that had been around for a long, long time. It was pretty simple. The value of a building in 1957 had been established. They took the value of the building—I think it was 1957—and they would essentially value what that building in 1957 was worth today. So the assessment was a frozen assessment, in 1957. A whole bunch of people pointed out, correctly, the problem is that the house may have been renovated since 1957, and you need to have a mechanism to be able to properly show the value of the house as of today, when dealing with the assessment.

The government of Ontario, then under Bob Rae, passed legislation in this House that went to market value assessment. The assessment was based on what the house was worth when the house was being valued at whatever date the evaluation happened, every two years.

The government of Mike Harris was opposed to that and voted against it when we were in government and they were the third party, and rightfully so. When they became the government, they decided—

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: What’s that? I didn’t read that. Sorry, I don’t have my glasses on.

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I thought it was 1957—he pointed out that in some communities, it might have been an evaluation in 1970. But I know that for us in Timmins, it was 1957. Why do I remember that? Because I was born in 1957. That’s why that number—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Me too.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: You too?

Mr. John Yakabuski: Yes.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: That’s why that number always stuck in my head. Hey, we’re like brothers, you and I, born in 1957.

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Yes, that’s a few things about you and I.

I digress for a second. A wonderful thing happened some years ago: They decided to do a 1957 birthday party when I turned 50, which was kind of fun. It wasn’t for me; it was for everybody who was born in 1957 who was turning 50. It was a great party, but that’s a whole other story. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen that done. I just digressed. It was in Schumacher, at the hall—anyway, it will come to me in a minute. Anyway, I digress.

My point is, the Conservatives took office, and they decided to not go to market value. They decided to go to actual value. So they took market value, they morphed it into actual value, and they drafted a bill to move to this model that they preferred. Fair enough. They were a majority government; they had the right do that.

The problem is, I remember sitting on that committee and reading the bill and seeing that they were delegating authority to regulation. I was noticing that, the way they were drafting the bill, there were actually going to be problems. I was lucky enough to sit on the original committee, back in 1992-93, that dealt with this the first time, so I had a gross understanding of the issue. I was by no means an expert on it—I still am not—but I pointed out to the committee members of the day, “Listen, there’s a problem with the way this bill is drafted, because you’re leaving all of this to regulation, and some of this doesn’t actually jive.”

It took five bills, after the actual value assessment bill was passed at third reading—four other bills were introduced into this House and had to be passed in order to fix the problems with the initial bill that had been put in place by the Tories in 1996.

I say that just as a warning of what happens when we don’t do our jobs effectively by way of drafting bills. If the bill had been drafted the way that bills normally are drafted—which is that the details are in the bill, not in the regulation—those who came before the committee would have been able to see what the problems were and point out, “Well, no, this doesn’t work, for this practical reason.” The government—rightfully so—could have amended their bill in order to be able to deal with it. But they didn’t.

That’s why I’m saying that if you’re not going to stop the delegation of authority to cabinet, you at least have to have a mechanism where draft regulations come back to a committee, and that committee is allowed to look at and decide what the next step should be.

The other thing I just want to touch on—I’m just taking a look at my notes here. There was another point I wanted to make. Oh yes, that was the one. I knew there were four points and I’d hit three of them, and I was spinning around there, trying to remember what the fourth one was. Now I finally remembered.

One of the things under

section 27 that this bill does which is problematic is that the bill essentially says—and I’m just going to read here.

Section 27 says that if an area has been designated an evasive species control area or declared an invasive place, and efforts to address the significant threat have so far failed, the minister can use whatever means necessary to remove the eradicated species, whether or not resulting in damage to property or something is moved or destroyed. That means to say we’re giving the minister pretty strong powers. You, Mr. Speaker, own two acres of land somewhere in your community. There’s an evasive species somewhere around the area. The government has a strategy that doesn’t effectively deal with the evasive species, and they decide—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Invasive.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Yes, evasive species.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Invasive.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I’m just trying to help.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Yes, I know. We were both born in the same year.

My point is, there’s still a problem with the—invasive?

Mr. John Yakabuski: Invasive.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: —invasive species. Thank you for pointing that out.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Evasive is those guys over there.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: That’s the Liberals, evasive.

Mr. John Yakabuski: That’s the issue: The evasive species is over there.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Got it, okay. Evasive over there; invasive. Okay, gotcha. I really appreciate you doing that for me. That clarifies a couple of things.

Anyway, I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, you have two acres of land. They’re trying to deal with this invasive species. The government is not successful in doing so through whatever mechanism they’ve established to deal with it. The minister gives them the right to say, “I’m going to go on your land and I’m going to burn down the crop,” or, “I’m going to turn over the ground,” or, “I’m going to spray it with something.” They can do whatever, and all they’ve got to do is give you five days’ notice and they’re on your ground. Holy jeez, that touches property rights pretty seriously.

Now, I’m not one of these people who believe in—what do they call themselves? The Lanark Landowners Association?

Mr. John Yakabuski: The Ontario Landowners Association.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Yes, the Landowners Association believes everything is a protection-of-property right. Listen, there is a collective part of this province and we do need to work together, and there are good reasons why we have public policy. But to give the crown the ability to go on your land and decide on their own what they’re going to do, then talk about compensation after they’ve done it, seems to me a little bit draconian. Who knows?

I would hope that no future minister would ever do something crazy like go on your land and do something that is wholly against what you would allow to happen on your land, and do it without your permission, but this bill allows that. Some will argue, “Well, you have to stop the spread of the disease, the invasive species.” I get it. But I’m sure people will come to this committee who are going to speak to that particular issue.

I understand why the minister is doing it; I get it. But again, this comes down to my point: All of the details of this are left to regulation. What is cabinet going to do when it comes to the regulation around

section 27?

Mr. John Yakabuski: Who knows? That’s the evasive part of it.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: The evasive people over there, right? I think that’s a good point. I’m having a really good debate with you, by the way. I love Yak.

Anyway, my point is that

section 27 is going to give the minister pretty extraordinary powers. Do we really want to have a situation where we delegate the details of what’s going to be in

section 27 to cabinet? No. The last time we looked at some of cabinet’s decisions—they’re currently under four OPP investigations; they were found to be in a prima facie case of contempt when it came to the gas plants. You just take a look at the litany of things this cabinet has done and it doesn’t leave you the warm and glowing feeling in your heart that these people are going to do the right thing.

I would argue—and you know what? I would argue for whoever is on that side of the House; I don’t care if it’s these evasive Liberals or it’s New Democrats or it’s Tories who are there. I think you have to have a system by which you don’t delegate that kind of authority to cabinet. At the very least, you don’t have a way of being able to bring that back to the committee so that the committee can decide what those regulations are going to be. It just seems to me—I understand why they’re doing this; there’s an argument to be made. I’m not saying that there isn’t a reason why this is in the bill. I get it. But we need to spell out, I would argue—

Mr. John Yakabuski: We need some clarification.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Exactly. We need to spell out

section 27 a little bit more clearly so we don’t end up in a situation where you’ve got somebody coming on somebody’s land and doing things contrary to the property owner’s permission or benefit.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Then the government would be the invasive species.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: They’d be evasive, because then the government decides what the compensation is going to be. You come to my land, you do something on my property and then tell me how much I should be compensated? I don’t have a lot of confidence.

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I heard the people across the way saying municipalities do it. Just because somebody’s doing something wrong doesn’t mean you should repeat it. That would be my only argument. I just say that.

Again, I think the general gist of what the government is trying to do in this bill is not a bad one. I think the government is actually trying to do something effective here. I don’t think anybody in this House disagrees with what the government is trying to do.

I think, however, it really does come down to those key issues that I’ve raised: Why are we delegating our authority to cabinet? Why aren’t we hearing how they’re going to pay for this, in the sense of what it’s going to cost? And who in the end is actually going to carry out these particular responsibilities that we describe in the bill? We certainly know the Ministry of Natural Resources, as they are now, lack the capacity to even do what they’ve got under their current mandate, without throwing another one at them. Nobody in this House, as far as the minister, the PA or any other member of the government, has told us how much they figure this bill is going to cost.

I would think, in a day—especially as this government is on an austerity kick these days and trying to say that they’re going to balance this budget somehow or other. I’m not sure how they’re going to do that, but that’s a whole other thing. You would think that the government would at least come forward and say, “Okay, we estimate it’s going to cost us X. This is how we expect to be able to pay for it.

This is what we think we can do, given the current fiscal room that we have or the fiscal realities of what the province of Ontario has to offer.” I think most of us here would then be able to say, “Okay, we get it. You’re trying to bite off a problem this big, but you can only afford to bite off this much of the problem, and that’s because of resources and how much money you’ve got. We understand that.” We can at least look each other in the eye and be truthful to each other about what we’re actually going to be able to accomplish with this particular bill.

I just want to also bring a couple of local points on this particular bill, just to say that in northern Ontario we are seeing—I’m seeing in my riding, as I’m sure you guys are in yours—that there is an issue with evasive species. We don’t have many of the problems that you have down in the Great Lakes, but we’re seeing the migration of evasive species from southern Ontario—invasive species—starting to move their way north further and further. We’re seeing the slow creep as they start moving their way northwards.

For example, one of the things that we’ve seen is people who ferry boats to go fishing or to go boating from one lake to another don’t do a very good job cleaning off the bottom of their boats. They take the boat from lake A and they move it 100 miles or 200 miles north, south, east or west and they drop it into another lake somewhere else. As a result, they’re moving a species or they’re moving something that may be natural in the other lake but is not sustainable in the lake that they’re going to. So things like that have to be dealt with as well.

It’s a hard one to deal with, because what do you do? Most of the lakes I come from, when we go fishing—there’s no pump there, there’s no pressurized water system to be able to wash off the bottom of your boat as you pull it off the Mattagami River or you pull it off Rufus Lake or wherever it is that you might be going.

It really is incumbent upon the person who owns the boat to say, “Okay, I know that I’ve pulled this thing off Rufus and I’m going to be going to Lake X in a couple of weeks, so I’ll bring the boat home and I’ll wash it off.” I think there needs to be a bit more education done as far as campaigns on the television, on radio, whatever, to let people know that you do have a responsibility as a boat owner to make sure that, in fact, you do clean off the hull of your boat when you’re moving it from one lake to the other.

Listen, we’re all guilty. I’ve got probably around three or four boats and I’m one of those people who moves it from Kamiskotia Lake to Round Lake to Winter Lake, and I probably very seldom have done that. As I look at this bill, it reminds me that I have a responsibility, as other people have a responsibility, to make sure that we, in fact, don’t contaminate other lakes as we move from one lake to the other in the area.

Now, I would argue, moving from Kamiskotia to Round Lake is probably not a big deal, because it’s pretty well the same—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Same watershed.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: —the same part of the watershed, the same part of the ecosystem. But I think if I were to pull the boat off of Kamiskotia Lake and move it to down to God knows where, who knows what I’m bringing with me.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Where is God-Knows-Where Lake, anyway?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: God-Knows-Where Lake is in Wandering township. That’s in Wandering township. There are many fishing holes that I have that are called No-Name Lake in Wandering township. That way there, if you can try to find it, you’re doing quite well.

Mr. John Yakabuski: That would be a good place to trap those invasive species.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: That’s right—evasive species, in that case.

I just want to say, on the local level, we do have a responsibility to be able to do the right thing.

Again, I just want to echo some of what the Environmental Commissioner was saying. I noticed a release by him the other day, where he’s, what, at the end of his third term now?

Mr. John Yakabuski: Yes, it would be his third term.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: He has announced that he’s not going to be seeking reappointment, which I think is kind of sad, because I believe that he has done quite a good job as the Environmental Commissioner of Ontario.

Gord and I go back a long way. For some of you who don’t know, Gord was the candidate who ran against me in 1995 up in Timmins–James Bay, at the time Cochrane South. I’ve got great respect for Gord. I can call him Gord, because he is a friend, and I think it’s a mutual respect.

I just want to take the chance, as we’re talking on something that he has been pretty passionate about, to say that he has done a good job as our Environmental Commissioner. I was one who was sad to see that he wasn’t again going to be standing for office.

Now, I heard—and I don’t know if this is true or if this is just rumour—there was pressure coming from the government to him that they didn’t want him. They didn’t want to keep him. That’s one of the things that I was hearing. I don’t know if it’s true. It may just be rumour.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: It’s probably time to move on.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: But, at the end of the day, it was unfortunate that that’s the case, because I do believe he did a good job.

Some people will say it’s time to move on, that somebody else after three terms should take it on. I don’t know about that. We’ve had a number of officers of the House who have stayed here a fairly long period of time who have actually done quite a good job, because they understand and know their portfolio in depth. They’ve done a good job and they’ve proven themselves. The best system that we have is a system that we have established in this Legislature where each officer of the House has to reapply after their four- or five-year term. You don’t get an automatic reappointment once you’re appointed the first time or the second time or the third time. You have to reapply.

I think that officers of the House should understand that when this Legislature puts that policy in place, it’s one that says even though you’ve done a great job, and even though you have been doing the job for some time, you need to be able to, because it is an appointment—it’s not a job that you’ve been given; it’s an appointment. Just as we stand for office and have to get re-elected every four to five years, officers of the House are similar and have to be reappointed by this Legislature.

My argument would be that if somebody has done a really good job, such as our Ombudsman, such as the Environmental Commissioner, I think chances are they would get reappointed, because who else can do the job better than them?

Interjection.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: There might be some who feel different, but I’m just making the point that, in fact, if they have done a good job, they probably have a pretty good chance of being reappointed.

So I just want to say that the Environmental Commissioner has raised a number of concerns in regard to the government’s direction on this particular bill. Unfortunately, I think some of the issues that he has raised have fallen on deaf ears, but the government has seen fit to bring back a similar bill to what they had introduced in this House in the minority Parliament. This is a bill that I believe will get passed in this House, and I believe it is going to be a bill that will have the support of all three parties.

Je veux finir sur le point, monsieur le Président, de rappeler qu’un des gros problèmes avec ce projet de loi fait affaire avec la question de la capacité dans l’intérieur du ministère des Richesses naturelles, qui n’est pas là, de faire ce qu’ils sont demandés à faire présentement avec les différentes législations pour lesquelles ils sont responsables. Quand on a le gouvernement qui introduit encore une autre responsabilité au ministère, il faut se demander comment ils vont être capables de rencontrer les demandes mises sur eux par cette législation qui est légiférée ici dans l’Assemblée législative.

Je pense que ça va être intéressant que le gouvernement pourra indiquer exactement ce qu’il veut faire quand ça vient aux détails du projet de loi. Tout est laissé à la réglementation.

Deuxièmement, je pense que le gouvernement a besoin de démontrer combien ça va coûter pour être capable de mettre en place cette législation, mais aussi qui va être responsable de livrer les services dans ce projet de loi, parce que quand tu lis le projet de loi, c’est pas mal clair qu’on donne au ministre l’autorité de nommer n’importe qui pour être responsable de faire respecter la loi qui sera établie une fois qu’elle a passé à travers cette Assemblée.

Ça peut être quelqu’un du ministère des Richesses naturelles, ça peut être quelqu’un dans les municipalités, ça peut être quelqu’un dans le secteur privé, ça peut être quelqu’un dans le secteur à but non lucratif. On va voir avec le temps, mais ce n’est pas décrit dans la loi autrement que le ministre va avoir le droit d’établir qui va « enforcer » ce projet de loi.

Donc, je veux dire au gouvernement qu’ils ont besoin de clarifier certains points avec ce projet de loi.

The bill is going to go to committee. I don’t think there need to be extensive hearings on this bill; I think we need to have some. I’m trying to remember, and maybe the whip for the Conservative Party will remind me. I don’t remember if we did public hearings on this bill. Did this even get past second reading last time? I don’t think it did. I don’t think it got to second reading.

Mr. John Yakabuski: Oh, it got to second reading.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: No, but I don’t know if we actually got hearings.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I don’t think it got hearings.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I don’t think we got the hearings.

Anyway, my point is: I don’t think it’s a bill where you’re going to have to do months and months of hearings, but I think there needs to be some adequate time given to public hearings, which brings me, I think, to my last point, which is the way that we pass legislation through this House.

It used to be—and I think it was a good way of doing it—that a government would decide, if it wanted to pass a bill in the fall session, to bring the bill in and have the debate at second reading, and the government would indicate: “At the end of the fall session we’d like to have second reading so that we can put the bill into committee in the intersession.” The committee then took a week, two weeks, three weeks—whatever it needed—in the intersession to go out and to travel Ontario in order to meet with people on the subject matter at hand in the bill.

What that allowed was sufficient time for second reading debate. Sometimes it wasn’t a lot. Sometimes it was just part of the dealing that goes on with House leaders where you’d have a bill like this and you’d say, “We all agree so we’ll each do our leads. I’ve got two speakers; he has three.” You would do that. The bill would then go off to committee.

But the important

part is the committee was given the authority to travel in the intersession and to be able to travel to those people interested and able to give comment on the bill. And so the bill would go in the intersession. It would do one, two, three weeks. It would travel around the province. You would hear from the experts. You’d hear from the citizens on the bill.

And then you actually took some time in clause-by-clause to thoughtfully go through what you had heard in order to be able to deal with it as far as how you amend the bill—so that when we went to clause-by-clause the government of the day would sit there, along with the opposition parties, and you would try to actually deal with the amendments in a way that made sense for the bill.

If the government is smart, I would argue, it looks at all amendments, no matter what side of the House they come from, and says, “Is this an amendment that helps or is this a political amendment?” And I understand if the government says it’s a political amendment and this is an amendment that’s fraught with politics of the opposition.

Mr. John Yakabuski: They can’t be against them just because it came from someone else. That’s what happens too often.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: That’s my point. That’s where I’m going with this. If the government sees the amendment as a political amendment, I’ll understand why they’ll do what they’ll do. But a lot of times—and, I would argue, a majority of times—there are amendments that are put forward by members because they actually listen to the public and they say, “You know what? I think that person is right, so I asked my legislative people to draft up an amendment in order to fix that part of the bill that is flawed.” You need some adequate time in clause-by-clause—not time-allocated—so that you can actually deal with amending the bill in such a way that clarifies the bill doing what needs to be done.

I would argue that in this particular bill we’d be able to actually deal with some of the regulatory issues ahead of time by saying what the intent of the regulation should be, at the very least, and not just leaving it blank for the minister to be able to do.

For example, under

section 27, I wouldn’t mind an amendment that says that some official within the MNR is going to be responsible for policing this bill and making sure there is enforcement. I don’t want to see it privatized. I don’t want to see it downloaded. But then what would happen is that the bill would come back in the next session—in that case, the spring session—it would have a little bit of time at third reading and it would be passed.

I would hope what the government is going to do here with the bill, when it’s done second reading this spring, is that we actually allow the bill to travel in committee in the summer. It may not need long. As the critic, at this point I’m not being overwhelmed by a whole bunch of people writing in, saying, “You know, I would really like to present to this bill,” but I’m sure we’re going to get some.

But we have some sufficient amount of time given to being able to hear what the public has to say on this bill—and that we have sufficient time at clause-by-clause to be able to deal with whatever amendments need to be done in order to make the bill stronger. In the end, if we do our jobs here as legislators and if we do our jobs in committee well, this bill actually can be written in such a way and amended in such a way that it actually does what the bill is saying to do in the first place; that is, to find an effective strategy to deal with evasive species.

I’ll just say, Mr. Speaker, the bill is a step in the right direction. Our caucus is going to vote for this particular bill. I think I’ve laid out fairly succinctly, as best as I could in the hour that I had, what I see are the major problems with the bill. I look forward to the public coming to us and letting us know what we can do by way of amendment to this bill that would actually let it do what it has to do.

I just want to thank members for taking the time and listening to what I have to say, and I’m looking forward to their comments.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Questions and comments?

Ms. Eleanor McMahon: Merci, monsieur le Président. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank the member for Timmins–James Bay for his thoughtful articulations on this important piece of legislation.

Just by way of response, I’ll say a couple of things. The member opposite talked about the fact that there is no invasive species listed in the bill. In fact, our government is going to put forward regulations to list those invasive species. In cases where a threat requires immediate action, the minister would have the authority to temporarily designate a significant-threat invasive species. But in terms of broader consultation, this is going to occur via the EBR, the environmental and regulatory registries, before any species would be listed—this further to already significant consultation that has taken place.

That consultation, which has already taken place, coupled with the EBR responses-—which I know will be significant, and that the member opposite will encourage his constituencies to participate in—will serve to guide us. Both those things will be strengthened by the scientists—numerous, I’m happy to say, in the ministry—extremely knowledgeable, that will serve to guide this legislation as it moves forward. I look forward to the constructive debate in the House on this important bill, given its importance to our economy, our social fabric and our day-to-day lives.

In my own riding of Burlington, we have the Cootes to Escarpment right next door, which has the largest number of endangered species anywhere in the country. That, of course, is right next door to the Hamilton harbour, which is in the midst of a very significant cleanup. We have the greenbelt just next door. I’m surrounded by provincial parks and significant green space. Tackling invasive species is going to be a very important issue for all of us to be thinking about and looking at.

Again, I thank the member opposite for his constructive comments. I look forward to discussing this further in committee.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): Further comments and questions?

Mr. John Yakabuski: I listened intently to my colleague from Timmins–James Bay on his hour-long address. That’s a long time to be talking about something in this House, but he does it as well as anybody. He does like to talk, which I am not opposed to myself. But—

Mr. Gilles Bisson: You’re not exactly shy on that point.

Mr. John Yakabuski: I do want to say that I agree with the member from Burlington that this is a very important piece of legislation. I wish the government had moved more quickly on this because this is a serious threat to, as she said, our environment and our economy. When your economy is threatened, you have to move quickly.

The world has shrunk. Trade has changed a lot of things. Most of it is very, very positive, but one of the things that has happened is that our world has shrunk, and species from other parts of the globe that have no natural predators here can be transferred to our environment, and they run amok because we don’t have the natural predators that keep those populations in check. It’s happening all across the globe. It’s not just happening here; it’s happening all across the globe. So some kind of legislation that gives us some teeth to deal with these invasive species is very, very necessary.

We do need to have the debate to make sure that we’re covering the bases and that we’re doing it right, and we get it right the first time. That is why this bill needs to get through to committee, so that we can get the input from those stakeholders and those people that understand the implications and ramifications of this, or any other piece of legislation, better than we do ourselves, because they’re on the ground every day. We may write the legislation and we may pass it here, but I think it’s very important that we get the input from those stakeholders that understand it, quite frankly, better than we ever would.

We need to get this bill to committee. As my colleague from Timmins–James Bay said, the government has to have an open mind when we get to committee, and if there are constructive elements that can be addressed through amendment, don’t be against them just because they’re coming from the other side.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): I thank the member.

Further questions and comments?

Mr. Taras Natyshak: I’m pleased to comment on the one-hour lead that our House leader, Monsieur Bisson, gave on this bill. He brings a lot of institutional knowledge to this place and certainly has dealt within the realm of environmental protection throughout the years, so I would advise members of the government, particularly new members, to really heed some of his counsel and particularly some of his warnings.

The effectiveness of this bill is not guaranteed, there is no question. Whether it’s a 100% locked-tight, well-nuanced bill, it will not eliminate invasive species as an entirety. We have to recognize that.

We also have to recognize that the provisions of constructing this bill through regulation really don’t allow members of this Legislature to provide oversight. So as Monsieur Bisson suggested, when those regulations are finally drafted, they should come back to committee for us as members to be able to comment on them. It’s something that should be a regular course of action in here, but unfortunately, it has not been so for quite some time through the measures that the government has enacted or used to push bills through this House.

He talked about

section 27. I wasn’t aware of that. That is quite frightening. It gives the minister extraordinary powers, should they designate a certain area with a threat of invasive species, to take any action: burn a plot of land, use chemicals that we may not even know of. This is far-reaching—overreaching, I would say—and something that we should take a very close look at, something that could potentially end up being a slippery slope and set a precedent for other areas or other jurisdictions.

Then something that he mentioned which I think is quite reasonable, something that I think Ontarians would appreciate, is that we travel this bill, that we would do wide consultation, broad consultation. It’s something that affects the entire Great Lakes basin, as we see a continued presence of invasive species. They have lots of voice, they have concerns, and we should certainly give them the opportunity to do that.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): I thank the member from Essex.

Further questions and comments?

Mr. Yvan Baker: I’m pleased to speak and respond to some of the comments that have been made on this important piece of legislation. When I think about my community and how this touches Etobicoke Centre, I think about something called the lamprey eel which, back in the 1960s, we began to address as an invasive species. It really devastated a number of the fish that populate the Great Lakes, trout as an example. Key tributaries are where they were most prominent. We’ve been able to control that, and the impact of that not only for our wildlife but for our economy has been a positive one.

So when I think about this piece of legislation, I think about things like that. I think about the fact that this is a bill that will ensure that we do a much better job of assessing and preventing these types of species from ravaging our economy and ravaging our green spaces.

If this legislation is passed, Ontario will actually be the only jurisdiction in Canada that has stand-alone invasive species legislation. I mentioned the lamprey eel, but there are others that we need to be concerned about, like zebra mussels and the emerald ash borer. This costs our economy tens of millions of dollars each year. When we think about the Asian carp, they have the potential to do long-lasting damage to our environmental systems, impacting our $2.2-billion recreational fishing industry in Ontario.

This is really a critical bill. I think it takes important steps to make sure that we address some of these invasive species. We know what the impact of invasive species can be on our communities, on our green spaces and on our economy. I would urge members from all sides of the House to come together and let’s pass this bill so that we can enact it, move forward with it and reap the positive benefits as soon as possible.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): I thank the member from Etobicoke Centre.

Back to the member from Timmins–James Bay for final comments.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: I want to thank all members for their comments. I just want to speak to the original comment by the member from—

Ms. Eleanor McMahon: Burlington.

Mr. Gilles Bisson: —Burlington. She talks about how the ability to comment will be by the EBR. The EBR and a legislative committee are two different things. The EBR is an opportunity for people to comment on the drafting of regulations, and then cabinet can decide whether to take those comments into consideration when doing the regulations. It’s quite a different thing than an actual legislative committee that has the ability to have public hearings and actually put forward amendments that the government has to deal with, either by voting for or voting against.

I don’t want to have to rely on the EBR as a way to deal with regulations. The point that I was trying to make in my speech was that there’s a real problem here when we leave all of the details to regulation. It makes us vote on a bill that has a title and we really don’t know what it’s going to do in the end, as far as its effectiveness and how it’s going to be done and how it’s going to be paid for.

That’s why I argued that we should either put the details of that in the bill or, at the very least, we have to have a mechanism that, once the regulations are drafted by cabinet, those regulations have the ability to be called by a committee—to take a look at the package and, if necessary, re-engage the public in some way; that we’re able to then, as a committee, vote on any amendments that are necessary when it comes to the draft regulations as presented.

It just seems to me that in that way it’s a much more transparent system and we actually end up in a way in which we engage the public, where they could have an opportunity to have a real say when it comes to the outcome of the legislation.

It’s unfortunate that we find ourselves in this situation, because over the last 20-odd years, we have moved more and more towards the delegation of the authority of this House to cabinet. I just think it’s a bad thing, considering the evasive species that lives on the other side of the House.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): That ends the debate for this morning. I’d like to thank all members for their contributions.

Second reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Rick Nicholls): This House stands recessed until 10:30.

The House recessed from 1012 to 1030.

Introduction of Visitors

Mr. Jim Wilson: Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate page Aiden Campbell for being a page captain today and welcome his mother, LeAnne Campbell, who is with us in the public gallery.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Welcome. Further introductions?

Mr. Peter Tabuns: It’s my pleasure to welcome back to the Legislature Bud Wildman, Ross McClellan and Richard Johnston, former inhabitants of this place.

Mr. Harinder S. Takhar: It is with great pleasure that I welcome Rachel Mathews from my riding of Mississauga–Erindale. She is seated in the members’ east gallery. Rachel is the mother of Sarah John, who is a page captain today. Welcome to Queen’s Park, Rachel, and congratulations to Sarah.

Ms. Sylvia Jones: Speaker, I would like you to join me in welcoming Chris Hamilton, Mark Broadhurst, Leslie Brams-Baker and Michelle Lefler to Queen’s Park today. They all represent Mars Canada.

Mr. John Vanthof: I’d like to introduce Frances Cockburn. She’s the mother of one of our page captains, Jessie Meanwell. She’s joining us in the public gallery this morning.

Mr. Han Dong: It’s my pleasure to welcome the family of today’s page captain Caleb Woolcott: mother, Lynne Woolcott; father, Kevin Barrett; and grandfather Peter Woolcott. Welcome.

Mr. Ted Arnott: I want to welcome grade 10 students from Christ the King secondary school in Georgetown who are with us here today as well.

Mr. Taras Natyshak: I’m happy to welcome some family members who are here today in the members’ west gallery. From Amherstburg and LaSalle I have Monsieur Alfred Roy; son épouse, Lorraine Roy; and my nephew Carson Reaume, who is starring as Jethro in the Mirvish production of the Heart of Robin Hood. I encourage everyone to go and check it out; I know a minister has.

Mr. Monte Kwinter: There’s a group that’s already in the building but they’re not in the gallery yet. I would like to welcome Stephen Adler, the associate director from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs; and the Diller Teen group from Israel. The Diller Teen Fellows Program is a UJA Federation of Greater Toronto premier leadership development program for Jewish teens in grades 10 and 11.

Hon. Jeff Leal: I have the great pleasure of introducing—they’re going to be in the members’ east gallery—representatives from a great Canadian company called Mars Inc.: Chris Hamilton, Mark Broadhurst, Leslie Brams-Baker and Michelle Lefler. I want to invite all members to a reception they’re holding this evening in the legislative dining room between 5 and 7:30 p.m.—a great Canadian and Ontario company.

Hon. Reza Moridi: It’s a great pleasure to welcome Felix Wagenfeld, a senior expert with the German Academic Exchange Service. Felix studied abroad here in Toronto 10 years ago. Please join me in welcoming Felix.

Mr. Arthur Potts: It’s my pleasure to introduce Joseph Tilley from New Westminster, BC. He’s in Ontario doing research for a book on Agnes Macphail. Today is Agnes Macphail Day, proclaimed in 1993. I’m delighted to have him here.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): I have a little bit of housekeeping. In the members’ west gallery, we have Ross McLean from Bellwoods in the 30th, 31st, 32nd and 33rd Parliaments; Richard Johnston, from Scarborough West, in the 31st, 32nd, 33rd and 34th Parliaments; and Bud Wildman, from Algoma, in the 30th to 36th Parliaments. Welcome and thank you for being here, gentlemen.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Sorry, Ross McClellan. I wasn’t here yet.

Also, a small piece of housekeeping: One of our members has had a significant birthday. I would like to congratulate the member from York Centre, Monte, celebrating on Sunday his 84th birthday.

Applause.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): As he has reminded me from time to time, every day that he is here he sets another record.

Also, we have with us today—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): We have with us today—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): I’ll try for a third time.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): All right, let’s get it all out now.

We have with us today, in the Speaker’s gallery, Mr. Roberto Ubilla, the newly appointed consul general of the Republic of Chile at Toronto. Welcome and thank you for being here.

Legislative pages

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Finally, I would ask our pages to assemble to be introduced. They are our new, freshly minted pages.

We have with us Demily Bello Thibodeau from Algoma–Manitoulin; Alycia Berg from Cambridge; Aiden Campbell from Simcoe–Grey; Max Ciuffetelli-Parker from Etobicoke–Lakeshore; Thomas Dubois from Brant; Joe Fast from Ottawa South; Alysa Haji from Thornhill; Ian Harvey from Etobicoke Centre; Sarah John from Mississauga–Erindale; Cameron Johnson from Perth–Wellington; Japneet Kaur from Brampton–Springdale; Jessie Meanwell from Hamilton Centre; Ranen Oomen-Danckert from Dufferin-Caledon; Rahul Pandya from Huron–Bruce; Marin Papulkas from Oakville; Emma Patterson from Parkdale–High Park; Natasha Pelletier from St.

Paul’s; Kari Peltonen from Thunder Bay–Superior North; Danielle Peters from Don Valley East; Jade Proulx from Ottawa West–Nepean; Connor Tomashewski from Wellington–Halton Hills; Cynthia Wan from Welland; and Caleb Woolcott from Trinity–Spadina. These are our pages.

Applause.

Oral Questions

Automotive industry

Mr. Jim Wilson: My question is for the Premier. Premier, as you know, as of last week General Motors confirmed that the Camaro will no longer be built in Oshawa. Ontario lost out to Lansing, Michigan just across the border. In response, all we’ve heard from your Minister of Economic Development are talking points about optimism. Premier, optimism alone doesn’t secure jobs.

Can you tell us what your plan is to keep GM in Oshawa?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I know the Minister of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure is going to want to speak to this, but I would say, first of all, we’re not going to apologize for being optimistic about the economy in Ontario. We are optimistic. We know the fact that our government has invested over $850 million in the auto sector has leveraged $11 billion in private sector investment. That’s a very, very good thing. Since the summer, Ontario has seen nearly $4 billion in new auto investments.

What’s happening is that the decisions we made in terms of the auto sector—decisions that the party opposite did not support—have actually borne fruit. The auto sector is recovering and we are very much a part of that recovery.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Jim Wilson: Back to the Premier: I’m a little baffled by that response. Maybe you haven’t got it straight. Some 3,700 jobs hang in the balance.

Your economy is doing so well that you lost the Camaro. You didn’t win a new contract with GM; it went right across the border to Lansing, Michigan. So I wouldn’t be bragging about the economy, and I wouldn’t be babbling on about the past either. Some 3,700 people—workers at GM—are looking for an answer about their futures and their future job prospects.

I’ll give you an opportunity again: What concrete steps are you taking, other than being optimistic, to secure those jobs in Oshawa?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: As the member opposite full knows, this is not a new decision. Obviously, we’re concerned when there’s job loss. Every time there is a job loss in Ontario, we’re concerned about that.

But we’re also pleased and optimistic when there are job gains. March of this year, a partnership with Toyota Boshoku Canada to expand the Elmira manufacturing plant will create and sustain over 450 jobs; February 2015—just last month—Ford Oakville, 400 new jobs for the Edge facility; and last month as well, GM—the same company that the member opposite is talking about—$560 million for the Ingersoll facility, which will sustain 3,000 jobs.

I think we do have to look at the overall auto sector story in Ontario, and it is a good one.

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

Mr. Jim Wilson: Back to the Premier: As you know, the GM commitments that were made during the bailout are set to expire in the next few months, right as production at the Oshawa plant comes to an end. GM hasn’t committed to staying in Oshawa and, by your answers today, you’re not committing to stay in Oshawa, but I’ll give you a chance to do so.

Have you given up on Oshawa, or can you promise that they will be there for many years to come?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Economic Development.

Hon. Brad Duguid: Unlike the member opposite and his party, this government has been there to support the auto sector every step of the way. We’re talking about a party that, during the depths of the recession, wanted to completely kiss off the auto sector. The quote from them is, “Let those plants close.” They would have cost us 500,000 jobs across this province.

We’re working hard with GM. We’re working hard with our partners in labour. We’re going to do everything we can to land a future mandate in Oshawa. We’re optimistic and we won’t apologize for that. After $4 billion of investment in this province since November, our auto sector is going in the right direction because we supported them during the recession. Thank God we didn’t take your advice, which would have cost us 500,000 jobs directly—

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

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock, please. Be seated, please.

New question.

Workplace Safety and Insurance Board

Mr. Randy Hillier: My question is to the Premier. I ask you this question today because in the last five years your government has gone through five labour ministers. I’m sure you have a far greater grasp on the WSIB portfolio than any of them, given that your chief of staff was once employed there.

Premier, are you aware of the existence of any slush funds at the WSIB, specifically ones that have existed for many years, despite explicit recommendations to shut those funds down?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Labour.

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, I think all members know, plays a huge role in this province in ensuring that the workplaces and those workers who are injured at work get treated in the way they should.

The member’s question—I don’t know where it’s going, Speaker. Certainly slush funds are not something that I deal with, and that I hope no member of this House deals with when it comes to any aspect of government in the province of Ontario, but I think that the people—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock, please. Order.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The next comment will get warned.

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: I think all members of this House understand that the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has undergone some changes in the recent past. Those changes have all been positive. They have moved this board from a previous position where they were perhaps not able to fulfill their obligations to a point right now where they’re extremely healthy, serving the workers of the province of Ontario and the employers of this province.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary.

Mr. Randy Hillier: Well, maybe they just don’t want to talk about it.

Premier, there has been a fund that has handed out over a million dollars to the Ontario Federation of Labour every year. From what I can tell, there has never been any oversight of this fund whatsoever—no applications, no reporting and zero value for money. Since 2003, the OFL has received $12.3 million from this fund.

Premier, why does your minister hand over more than a million dollars a year with zero oversight and no transparency?

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: The member will know that it’s a partnership that exists in the province of Ontario. This government treats injured workers very, very seriously. This government treats accident prevention very, very seriously.

What that means in the province of Ontario is that we deal with a number of health and safety partners. We deal with business organizations. We deal with labour organizations. We treat them in a financially responsible manner, and also we treat them with respect.

Injured workers in the province of Ontario are served very, very well by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, and I’d be prepared to back them up any day of the week.

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

Mr. Randy Hillier: Well, it’s good to hear that the minister wants to back them up, because nobody else does.

My question is very simple. This grant to the Ontario Federation of Labour has been audited, and it has explicitly been recommended by KPMG to be shut down, as it has absolutely no value for money for the taxpayers of Ontario.

Premier, it hasn’t been shut down. I want to know why it hasn’t been shut down. KPMG has told you that this program is worthless. It’s just a slush fund for the OFL, and it’s political pressures from your ministry that is keeping that slush fund going.

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: Speaker, I’ll let our partners decide what they think about that question.

What I can tell you about the financial operation of the WSIB is that, under Mr. Marshall’s leadership, this board has made significant improvements to its unfunded liability. It was $9 billion—

Interjections.

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

Finish, please.

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: The WSIB unfunded liability has decreased by $1.6 billion since December 31, 2013. What I would say is that we’ve done that as a result of working with business, working with labour and working with injured workers’ groups in the province of Ontario to ensure that we’re leaders in this regard.

The premise behind the honourable member’s question is something that I simply do not agree with. I would ask him to bring me any other facts he has.

But, certainly, from my perspective, the relationship that we have with organized labour, and that the WSIB has with organized labour—

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

Government’s agenda

Ms. Catherine Fife: To the Premier: Last June, Don Drummond, the hand-picked Liberal cutting czar, went on TV to say that the Liberal plan would mean firing 100,000 people. How many people will the Premier be firing in this spring’s budget?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Let me say to the member opposite that when she has an opportunity to read the budget, she will see that we are continuing to invest in the people of this province, to invest in their talent and their skills, to invest in infrastructure, to work in partnership with business and to create a dynamic business environment, and to set up a retirement security plan that will allow people to have more security when they retire. In fact, the plan that we ran on—in fact, the fiscal assumptions that that party ran on—are exactly what we are implementing right now.

Yes, we are being responsible and, yes, we have committed to eliminating the deficit by 2017-18. But we are not doing that by cutting and slashing. That’s what the opposition party said they were going to do. We are making the investments that we know are going to lead to—

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

Ms. Catherine Fife: The Liberals seem to think that Mike-Harris-style cuts and privatized hydro is the only way to invest in Ontario. The Premier seems to think that you can either have public hydro companies or public transit. She doesn’t believe that you can have both. But I know that she’s wrong.

Just last year, the Auditor General found that $8 billion was wasted on P3s. When the budget is introduced, the Premier will be insisting she needs to privatize hydro to pay for transit, but will she miraculously be able to find billions to waste on more sweetheart P3 deals?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Let’s just step back from the premise of this question and make it clear that the reason we are able to make the investments we are making in transit, in roads, in bridges is that we have made some decisions, one of which is to review the assets that are owned by the people of Ontario and to make sure we can leverage those assets in order to invest in the infrastructure that is needed for the 21st century. Underlying that decision is the need to invest in transit and transportation infrastructure.

In fact, the plan that the party opposite ran on—the third party—was the plan that we had constructed, that we had developed, and it’s the plan that we are implementing, including a review of—

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

Ms. Catherine Fife: Last April, the Premier of this province said, “We won’t cut education, health care or social services,” and yet somehow, here we are. The Liberals are cutting education, they’re cutting health care, and they’re cutting services.

Liberal incompetence and corruption shouldn’t cost Ontarians. Can the Premier explain why she can always find the chequebook when she needs to bury a Liberal scandal, but that same chequebook is mysteriously missing when it comes to schools or child care?

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): It’s dangerously close to unparliamentary, and I’m going to remind you, in any other questions coming up, it better not get that close again.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I’ve known the member opposite since she was a school community adviser in Toronto. I know she understands how much money we have put into education. I know she understands that we continue to increase our education budgets. I know she also understands that school boards have to make local decisions.

In May 2014—I just want to make a comment on the member’s quote—she said—

Interjections.

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

Finish, please.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: In terms of the decisions that we’re having to make and the plan that they ran on, I’m going to quote CBC News from May 28, 2014: “Catherine Fife, the Ontario NDP candidate for Kitchener–Waterloo, says her party’s proposed savings and accountability minister would look to find efficiencies in the health care and post-secondary education sectors in order to find $600 million in annual savings.”

That’s more than we’ve chosen to do.

Interjections.

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

New question.

Government’s agenda

Ms. Catherine Fife: Again to the Premier: I don’t have to find that money. The Auditor General found that money for you, and it’s $8 billion.

The Liberal government claims that the cupboard is empty, and the only solution is to fire people, cut services and sell off even more of the hydro system to Bay Street speculators.

I think we can agree that there is a problem with the books. It’s Liberal incompetence, pure and simple. Wasting $1 billion on gas plants, $1 billion on eHealth, hundreds of millions on Ornge and a whopping $8 billion on sweetheart deals for private developers will do that. That’s what happens. It will create a problem with the books. But the good news is that there are solutions, Premier, like stopping P3s, closing HST loopholes or cracking down on millionaire CEOs in the public sector.

Is the Premier going to keep cutting schools and firing nurses so that she can afford to blow billions on P3s and corporate HST giveaways?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: You know, Mr. Speaker, what’s interesting is, if we look across the world really, we look at jurisdictions that are building infrastructure, we look at jurisdictions—

Mr. John Yakabuski: Look across the world. No other government is under more investigation.

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

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: —making sure that they have the ability to upgrade the infrastructure that will allow them to compete in the 21st century. You will see governments that are working with the private sector.

Now, I know the NDP basically doesn’t want to change anything. They don’t want to review the assets. They don’t want to change the alcohol distribution system. They don’t want to build transit and transportation infrastructure. They basically want to maintain the status quo, as though that will make us competitive in the 21st century. Well, it won’t, Mr. Speaker.

We’re going to be competitive, we’re going to move ahead and we’re going to do that by making the decisions that will allow us to invest in this province.

Interjections.

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

Supplementary?

Ms. Catherine Fife: Last June, the Premier of this province said, “Will we implement a program of layoffs? Absolutely not.”

Fifty nurses are being fired at CHEO; 42 nurses in Sudbury; 22 nurses in Cambridge; 15 nurses in Leamington; 18,000 nursing hours in New Liskeard; 15 PSWs in Guelph; 38 full-time equivalents in Timmins; seven full-time equivalents in Ottawa. I would call that a program of layoffs. What does the Premier call it?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I call it not even half the story because, as those changes are happening, there is hiring going on. We are investing in the health care system; more than $21 billion in health care infrastructure; 23—

Interjection.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Twenty-three new hospitals have been built or are under way since 2003; 5,000 doctors since 2003 and 24,000 nurses.

Is the health care system in a transition? Absolutely. Are we moving more care into the community? Absolutely. Have the funding formulas changed for hospitals? Yes, they have, but that doesn’t mean there are fewer people in the system. That means we’re delivering services in ways that people demand and need, and improving service in health care.

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

Ms. Catherine Fife: You know, Premier, the people of this province aren’t interested in your stories. They’re interested in services. When a senior wonders why they can’t get care from a nurse, the Premier will say it’s because the well is dry. When a student is wondering why their neighbourhood school is closing, the Premier will say it’s because the well is dry. When a parent has to quit their job because their affordable child care space is cut, the Premier will say it’s because the well is dry. But when a Liberal-friendly construction firm shows up looking for a P3 contract with plenty of fat, the Liberals get out the chequebook, and when there is a Liberal scandal—

Hon. Brad Duguid: Give us one example of that ever happening.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Minister of Economic Development, come to order.

Ms. Catherine Fife: —let the good times roll.

Will the Premier do the right thing? Will she clean up the corruptions and scandals—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Stop the clock. The Minister of Economic Development chose to continue heckling after I said to stop. So now he’s got two.

Please finish.

Ms. Catherine Fife: So the question: Will the Premier do the right thing? Will you clean up the mess that is this government, address the scandals and start putting the people of this province ahead of Liberal friends?

Interjections.

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

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Order.

Premier?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Underpinning the question that the member of the third party is asking is, will we stop changing things? Will we stop transforming government? Will we stop building? Will we stop investing in education so that we can have a 21st-century education system for our kids? Will we stop investing in transforming the health care system? No, Mr. Speaker, we won’t. We are going to continue those investments. We are going to continue to work with our health care providers, with our educators, to make the changes that are necessary.

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Deputy House leader.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: The third party doesn’t believe we should be investing in transit. They don’t believe we should be investing in transportation infrastructure. They don’t believe we should change anything. We do not ascribe to that belief system. We believe there must be change, and we believe that the investments we are making right now are necessary for the 21st-century economy.

Premier’s record

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: My question is to the Premier. Good morning, Premier.

Yesterday, her government called anti-SLAPP legislation for debate. Ontarians do see through this, in the face of a SLAPP suit initiated by the Premier herself against myself and the member for Niagara West–Glanbrook. She’s suing me—

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Order.

Please finish.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: She’s suing me for comparing her to Richard Nixon.

But Richard Nixon’s tapes had an 18-and-a-half-minute gap. The Pat Sorbara and Gerry Lougheed tapes in the Sudbury by-election scandal are there for the whole province to hear or listen to. In fact, the Sorbara-Lougheed tapes are the subject of not one, but two criminal investigations.

Now that the Premier has outpaced the former Premier, Dalton McGuinty, in criminal investigations into her office, the Premier’s office, doesn’t she think it’s time to stop muzzling the opposition and withdraw that lawsuit?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: The lawsuit to which the member opposite refers is the one in which I have obviously—

Interjections.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I have kept it in place, Mr. Speaker, because the comments made by the members from Niagara West–Glanbrook and Nepean–Carleton were untrue and they were without evidence.

I am always, and have been, willing to debate the truth. I was always willing to debate the relocations of the gas plants. That’s fair, but absolutely unfounded, baseless allegations are not.

All I’m saying is that I’m always willing to debate the truth, but not unfounded allegations.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Let’s debate the truth right here. The biggest threat to the Premier’s reputation is she herself. Her debt-bed conversion to selling off Hydro, selling beer and wine in grocery stores, and eliminating 100,000 public service jobs, like nurses at CHEO and education workers at the Toronto District School Board, are everything she campaigned against, everything she told this assembly she would fight against if she became Premier.

Her support for anti-SLAPP legislation flies in the face of everything she has done in the last year. There are now four criminal investigations into her government—two into her own office—since she initiated this latest SLAPP suit. She has two new scandals in SAMS and social housing. All of that is fact.

All I’m saying here today, Premier, is do the right thing. Allow the opposition to question you without any repercussions. Withdraw that suit and do the right thing for the people of this province.

Interjections.

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

Premier?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Mr. Speaker, when I took that step, I did not take it lightly. My only contention is that we should be dealing in the truth—

Interjection.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Member from Leeds–Grenville, come to order.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: The member opposite knows full well that I spent day after day after day—

Mr. Steve Clark: You didn’t want the truth.

Hon. James J. Bradley: I’m calling Tony Clement.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Leeds–Grenville, too, continued after I asked him to stop. He’s got two.

The deputy House leader is now warned.

Interjections.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Who’s next?

Premier?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Mr. Speaker, I spent day after day here in this House and in front of committee, answering questions about the gas plant relocations—

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: Good old Watergate Wynne.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Nepean–Carleton, come to order.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: All I’m suggesting is that we should deal in the truth and not in allegations.

In terms of the decisions that we have made since the election and the plan that we’re implementing, it’s exactly what I ran on. It’s exactly what I said I was going to do. We said we were going to review the assets. We said we were going to balance the budget by 2017-18. We said we were going to invest in transit and transportation infrastructure—none of which they agreed with, Mr. Speaker, but we are implementing the plan that we ran on.

By-election in Sudbury

Mr. Gilles Bisson: My question is to the Premier. Premier, it’s pretty clear and categoric when you listen to Pat Sorbara on the tapes with Mr. Olivier what it is that she was doing. She was offering Mr. Olivier a job or an appointment in order to have him stand down so that he could nominate the chosen candidate in Sudbury.

So my question is this: Was the Premier in the room when Pat Sorbara made that phone call?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: There’s an investigation going on. That investigation is not going on in this House. That investigation is happening outside of this Legislature. I will work with the authorities, Mr. Speaker. I have said that all along. I will continue to say that and I will do that. That investigation is taking place outside the Legislature.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Well, 135 questions and we still don’t have an answer to the basic questions. So I ask the Premier the question. Pat Sorbara made a phone call to Mr. Olivier. She was categoric in saying, “Please stand aside and nominate our chosen candidate, and if you do that, we’ll give you a job or an appointment.” My question to you was a simple one: Did you or did you not be party to that discussion by being in the room when Pat Sorbara made the phone call; yes or no?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: When I say that I am going to co-operate and have been co-operating with the authorities, I’m talking about the authorities whose responsibility is to conduct the investigation. And with all due respect to the member opposite, he is not one of those people, and that investigation is not taking place in this House. It is taking place outside this House, and that is where I will be working with the authorities, Mr. Speaker.

Ring of Fire

Mr. Glenn Thibeault: My question is for the Minister of Northern Development and Mines.

Mr. Speaker, over the past—

Mr. Gilles Bisson: Is it about Pat Sorbara?

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Timmins–James Bay is warned.

Carry on.

Mr. Glenn Thibeault: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Over the past year, there was news of Cliffs resources moving away from their investments in eastern Canada as they restructured their operations and planned to sell assets. Some of those assets are in the Ring of Fire.

Yesterday, we heard that Noront Resources had entered into an agreement to acquire Cliffs resources’ assets in the Ring of Fire. The news that the company’s assets are being purchased to be developed is big news for northern Ontario and for our province as a whole.

Can the minister please inform the House of this recent news coming out of the Ring of Fire?

Hon. Michael Gravelle: I want to thank the hard-working member from Sudbury for that question.

Certainly, Mr. Speaker, I think it’s very good news that Noront Resources has entered into an agreement to acquire Cliffs’ assets in the Ring of Fire.

Applause.

Hon. Michael Gravelle: Thank you very much.

As everyone knows, Noront has been working continuously for some time to develop their Eagle’s Nest nickel project in the Ring of Fire. We, quite frankly, expect that they will do the same with these chromite properties that they will be acquiring. And with Noront now acquiring those, obviously when the court approval has to go through—when they do acquire those properties, essentially they’ll be affirming their commitment to the Ring of Fire and validating this government’s commitment to developing this region. We very much recognize the tremendous potential of the Ring of Fire, and now it’s very, very clear that industry does as well.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Glenn Thibeault: Thank you to the minister for his response.

This investment by industry affirms the message that I and this government have been sharing with my community on the incredible mineral potential right here in Ontario. I know we’re a world leader in mining, but what is just as important to understand is that Ontario is a world leader in mineral financing—

Mr. Victor Fedeli: We used to be a world leader in mining.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): The member from Nipissing.

Mr. Glenn Thibeault: Anyone who spent time at PDAC this year wouldn’t be surprised to know that more global mining projects get financed in Toronto than any other financial centre in the world.

I understand that Noront has worked to secure these assets with the support of another company, Franco–Nevada. Having these two companies investing in northern Ontario holds very exciting potential for northern Ontario and Ontario. Will the minister explain what this investment means to the province?

Hon. Michael Gravelle: It’s very well put by the member for Sudbury in terms of Ontario being such an attractive destination for mining investment. There’s no doubt about it. This particular proposed acquisition confirms what we’ve been saying all along: that the business case for the Ring of Fire remains incredibly strong.

This investment by Noront Resources—I should say, I recently joined Noront at the Prospectors and Developers Association conference when they received the 2015 environmental and social responsibility award, a pretty special award for them as well.

When they joined in a partnership with Franco-Nevada—Franco-Nevada being one of the world’s top mining royalty firms—that demonstrates that the significant potential of the Ring of Fire continues to be a very attractive investment.

It’s important to note as well that there’s interest from many companies. Over 20 companies have got claims in the region to develop the significant resources in the Ring of Fire.

We continue to be very committed to it. We’re excited about this investment.

Skills training

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: My question today is for the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities.

Minister, for many months now, Durham College has been trying to partner with the construction industry to build a multi-million dollar tower crane training program facility and achieve training status at Durham College. I understand that MTCU staff, Durham College, RESCON and other partners are all prepared to go ahead. Only your office has not signed off.

When can we expect you to make a positive decision and support a private-public partnership that will train additional tower crane operators for our construction industry?

Hon. Reza Moridi: I want to thank the member for that question. Our government is committed to skills training in the province of Ontario. That’s why we created the College of Trades a few years ago, and the college is making great progress in terms of serving the public as well as serving the tradespeople.

In terms of the question, we are working very closely with the training service providers. We have a number of training service providers across the province where they train skilled people for our province of Ontario in 152 areas of skilled trades. We will continue to monitor the supply of skilled tradespeople in Ontario and we will continue to work with the training centres across the province of Ontario.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Garfield Dunlop: Thank you very much. You really didn’t dwell on my question very much, Minister.

Minister, we know you are under pressure from the hoisting engineers not to grant Durham College tower crane training status, but look at the facts: The proposal will cost MTCU no additional money and it is supported by your own staff. No one should have a monopoly on training, including labour groups.

The private-public partnership will create competition. It would increase qualified operators working under safer conditions. Durham College has a remarkable record on all of its training programs.

Everyone is onside to get started on this facility, including the PC caucus. Will you do the right thing, immediately show leadership, approve the Durham College proposal and quit playing politics with a decision that is actually a no-brainer decision?

Hon. Reza Moridi: I thank the member for that question.

We have 24 community colleges across the province of Ontario. They are great partners in terms of skills training in the province of Ontario, along with a number of training centres which are run by various groups across the province of Ontario.

Actually, this afternoon, I’ll be meeting with the president of Durham College to discuss this matter.

As I said earlier, we keep a very close eye on and monitor the supply and training of skilled tradespeople for the province of Ontario, not only in that particular field but in every one of those 152 skilled trades areas in the province of Ontario.

Education funding

Mrs. Lisa Gretzky: My question is to the Premier. Yesterday, your Minister of Education said that funding cuts to schools were “preposterous,” but behind closed doors the Liberals are saying the exact opposite. Internal documents show that schools face cuts of up to 2% under the Liberals’ next budget. That means cuts to special education and ESL programs for the most vulnerable kids. It means more school closures and it means job cuts for education workers.

When will the Premier stand up and finally admit that she wants to cut 2%, or up to $500 million, from schools across the province?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Just to repeat what the Minister of Education has said repeatedly: Our government has increased school funding to about $22.5 billion this year. We continue to increase funding. That’s a 56.5% increase since 2003.

That’s in the face of declining enrolment. Not only have we increased funding, but we’ve actually increased per pupil funding when there are fewer students in the system.

We have done that. We will continue to increase funding to make sure that boards have the resources that they need, but those local decisions are just that. They have to be made locally. That’s why school boards exist. I believe in school boards. I believe that trustees have a very important role to play, and that role is to make those local decisions that are in the best interests of the kids in their communities.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary.

Mrs. Lisa Gretzky: Premier, I’d like to point out that, because of Liberal waste and scandal, and because of chronic underfunding of education, you’ve forced trustees to close schools.

Under the Education Act, the minister has a responsibility to close the gaps in student achievement, but Liberal cuts to education will only make those gaps grow even wider. The TDSB is already cutting 50 special education teachers and support staff because of Liberal cuts. That means larger class sizes and less support for the most vulnerable kids.

Across the province, $500 million in cuts will pull the rug out from underneath students in every community. How can this government defend cuts to education that fly in the face of its responsibility to students?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: As we continue to increase funding across the province, we will work with boards to make sure that they are able to make the decisions that are in the best interests of students. That includes decisions around consolidation of schools.

The fact is that we have built 725 new schools in this province—

Miss Monique Taylor: Yes, but how many did you close?

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Member from Hamilton Mountain.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: —and more than 700 additions and renovations.

If the member opposite from Hamilton, I think, who was heckling understood—the fact is that populations change, and that school boards have to adapt to those populations and have to make decisions to deliver the best program to students. Sometimes that means renovating a school. Sometimes it means consolidating two schools. Sometimes it means closing one school and building a new school. All of those options are things that school boards look at, and that’s how you get the best program delivery at the local level for students.

Labour dispute

Mrs. Laura Albanese: My question is for the Minister of Labour. Speaker, the workers of Crown Metal Packaging have been on strike for 18 months, walking the picket line for two winters now in the bitter cold. Many of these workers live in my riding of York South–Weston.

The last time I asked the minister a question on this issue, he made it clear that the ongoing labour disruption at Crown Metal was concerning to him. The minister stated here in this House that the dispute does not follow the norm in terms of labour relations in our province, and he strongly urged both parties to go back to the table and negotiate a fair deal.

Mr. Speaker, through you to the minister: What are you doing as the Minister of Labour to get to the bottom of this matter?

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: Speaker, on this side of the House we believe—and I think all members do—that the best deals we can get in this are negotiated at the bargaining table through collective bargaining. The Ministry of Labour provides assistance. We provide conciliation assistance. We provide mediation assistance when the parties ask us to intervene in that regard. We have excellent conciliators and excellent mediators.

Sometimes, though, the relationship between those parties breaks down and we need further action. This is what I think has happened at Crown Metal. We supervised the last-offer vote, by request of the employer, just last year. The employees overwhelmingly rejected that offer.

Now, after very, very careful consideration, I’ve taken the rare step of announcing that we’re appointing an industrial inquiry commission, led by the very well-respected Morton Mitchnick, to inquire into how to resolve the current work stoppage that we’re seeing at Crown Metal. I think this is an unusual move; under the circumstances, though, I think it’s the right move.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary.

Mrs. Laura Albanese: I want to thank the minister for that answer, but the employees at Crown Metal need answers sooner rather than later. They’ve been out on the lines, as I mentioned earlier, for 18 months. They are tired of walking the lines and chanting when no one seems to be listening, so we need to let them know that we are listening. It’s time that the workers know that our government has their backs, and that we won’t let their struggle go unnoticed.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Labour has said that he has appointed Morton Mitchnick as the head of the industrial inquiry commission. Will the minister please explain to this House what the industrial inquiry commission is and what he plans to accomplish through it?

Hon. Kevin Daniel Flynn: Thanks to the member for that very fine question. The Labour Relations Act in this province grants few special powers to the Minister of Labour to intervene when we’re having a labour dispute. Under

section 37 of the act, I’ve appointed an industrial inquiry commission.

As I said, it’s being led by the very well respected Morton Mitchnick. He’s going to look into and report back on the dispute. He’s going to bring forward some recommendations as to how he sees us being able to move forward. He has previously served in the role as chair of the OLRB. He has been a panel arbitrator in a wide variety of sectors across this continent. The industrial inquiry commissioner will have three weeks to consult with the parties involved. He’ll report back to me within 14 days of completion.

Speaker, I’ve got full confidence in the abilities of Mr. Mitchnick. I think he’s going to provide sound, reasonable advice. It’s essential to understand the best deals are made at the table. I remain very hopeful—

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

New question.

Milton courthouse

Mr. Ted Arnott: My question is for the Attorney General. Why is the government dragging its feet on the approval of a new courthouse in Halton region?

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: I thank you for this question. I know that you have been asking me, and many of the members on my side too, about this new courthouse. It’s a priority for this government.

I have been to Milton to visit the courthouse there. I know that we need a new courthouse. It’s a priority, again I’m saying, but we’ll have to wait and see, with the next budget.

The Speaker (Hon. Dave Levac): Supplementary?

Mr. Ted Arnott: The urgent need for a new courthouse in Halton region was covered in a big

article in the Toronto Star on January 23. I actually toured the Milton courthouse last September to see for myself, and simply put, the existing court facility in Milton is aging, overcrowded and inadequate in terms of security and privacy.

I’ve written to the Attorney General numerous times and spoken to her numerous times about this problem. I also asked for a briefing for the Halton-area MPPs from the AG’s staff on the process for new courthouse approvals. We attended that briefing on December 2, and we were led to believe that a new Halton courthouse was indeed a priority, as the minister just said today. But just weeks later, the government announced an addition to the courthouse in Brampton, and no mention was made of the need in Halton region.

My question for the Attorney General is quite simple: When will you announce approval for a new Halton courthouse?

Hon. Madeleine Meilleur: Again, yes, there are quite a few requests on this side of the House. The members on my side are asking me on a regular basis about the new courthouse. Yes, I am working with the judiciary. I’m working with the lawyers’ association. I’ve been there, visiting. There is need.

The number one priority that is going forward is here in Toronto, but the next one, Milton—it’s a growing area, and the decision on where the courthouse will be built is not made yet. But I know that there is much need there, and thank you for asking the question again.

Affordable housing

Ms. Cheri DiNovo: My question is to the Premier. The Liberals have decided to ignore families in the city by cutting $86 million from social housing this year alone. That’s what the Liberals are telling Toronto. They’re telling them: Forget about fixing the backlog for repairs, forget about easing the strain on emergency shelters, and worst of all, forget about the 87,000 families who are desperately waiting for affordable housing—the worst in Ontario’s history.

Speaker, does the Premier have any clue what her cuts to social housing will actually mean for struggling families in Toronto?

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

Hon. Ted McMeekin: I appreciate the question from the member opposite. She has a well-earned reputation for being a great advocate in Toronto, especially on the social housing front. So, thank you for that.

I just want to go and correct the impression, though. There has been no cut to social housin