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December 14, 1978

31st Parliament, 2nd Session

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Hansard Transcripts

Hansard Transcripts

L150 - Thu 14 Dec 1978 / Jeu 14 déc 1978

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT (CONTINUED)

The House met at 9 a.m.

Prayers.

House in committee of the whole.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY ACT (CONTINUED)

Resumption of the adjourned consideration of Bill 70, The Occupational Health and Safety Act, 1978.

section 1:

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Chairman, I think the main concern or thrust of our amendment was pointed out by my colleague, but I too want to underline my concern. I would like to be told by the minister if indeed it does, but I don’t see that

section necessarily covering an operation such as the people who have been incarcerated and are working in the meat plant or the abattoir at Guelph. I understand there are one or two others; I think there is a blanket factory, if I am not mistaken, in connection with one of our penal institutions as well.

If I read all correctly some of the noises from the new Minister of Correctional Services (Mr. Walker), we are likely to have all kinds of people conscripted into services of one kind or another, and potentially a proliferation of such operations or such industrial undertakings. I want to make it clear that I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but I see that as a distinct possibility.

If, indeed, we are not going to allow these people to be covered and carry the amendment we have suggested from our party, then I think specifically there should be some changes by the minister that clearly indicate that these people are covered. I’m just not at all sure from looking at the language, it may be a sad state of affairs, but without something there giving a clear indication that they are covered I don’t have too much confidence in somebody’s plain good intentions.

I know what happens, in fact, when it comes down to an arbitration or a conciliation case, you have got to have something to base it on; and that’s not strong enough in that particular clause.

Also, just because we have an inmate population, and if they are going to be organized into productive industrial units, it’s not just a question of the province being responsible for them. They have every right, where they are engaged in an actual industrial installation, to have some input or some say in terms of the actual safety conditions, and the right to question them. I can really see nothing wrong whatsoever in suggesting that these employees have a committee.

Regardless of the type of operation we undertake in the penal institutions, if that coverage is indeed there, and I can be assured of it, then that’s one matter; but I’m not sure of it, looking at that particular clause. I would sure as blazes like to know, if we are going to run something such as an abattoir or a textile operation, or you name it, that those employees have the right to that kind of protection. I am not at all convinced that it’s there as it stands now. That, I suppose, is the main reason for the amendment we have moved.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I must, first of all, in my prefacing remarks, indicate that I reject completely the amendment presented by the third party. I ask the member for Hamilton East to accept the words I have said, although he has indicated he doesn’t always have confidence in certain aspects of life.

It is my clear understanding that -- let’s take, for example, the case of the abattoir; it is separate and distinct even to the point where the Ontario Labour Relations Board has recognized the inmates as workers for bargaining purposes; it is a separate bargaining unit. Therefore, it is clear from the information made available to me that in situations such as that, workers in that particular type of setting are covered by this act; and I ask members to support the amendment I have proposed, as worded.

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Minister, just what do you envisage as a rehabilitation program? It says here, “but does not include an inmate of a correctional institute or like institution or facility who participates inside the institution or facility in a work project or rehabilitation program.” Can you give me a little more clear definition of exactly what we’re talking about and what kind of undertakings we are likely to see under this particular section?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: The sort of things we are contemplating are projects within the institution being carried out by inmates at the direction of the superintendent of that institution.

Mr. Mackenzie: If I may --

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Excuse me, if I may interrupt -- that’s quite distinct from the situation, for example, in the abattoir where the workers in that setting, for the purpose of the work place are under the control of the individual who is in charge of the enterprise. Admitted -- there will be guards in the area, but they are for security purposes and not for purposes of work supervision.

Mr. Mackenzie: You indicate, Mr. Minister, that there’s no doubt in your mind in terms of an operation such as the abattoir, I suppose you could almost call it an industrial operation within the unit. What is the status of workers who may not be working in a specific industrial operation but in what you call a rehabilitation program? I’m a little bit unsure exactly what you mean by that. Is there any chance you’ll have a group of inmates working together on a project that’s not necessarily an industrial project? What have they got to look forward to in the way of coverage if they’re put on some particular program?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: As I indicated earlier, there are existing common law rights protecting inmates. Prison authorities in correctional institutions have certain custodial obligations to look after the well-being of their prisoners. If there are certain rehabilitation projects, such as a carpentry shop and so forth, that don’t constitute a separate industrial establishment, then they would be considered, as inmates and excluded under this section.

Mr. Haggerty: Along the thoughts of the member for Hamilton East, I raised a matter yesterday with the minister concerning the Correctional Services minister’s program to have inmates work in municipalities removing snow for senior citizens, et cetera. The question is, are these persons protected under this act? Are they protected perhaps under the Workmen’s Compensation Act? If not, if an injury occurs, who is responsible, the municipality or the Ministry of Correctional Services? I think that’s the point we want cleared up.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I thought I had referred to that matter yesterday. On specific work projects, for example a road project, convicts are wards of the Correctional Services ministry and as such are subject to the duties I have outlined that are owed to them by common law and under the existing legislation. They are still inmates. As I read to you yesterday from legal references for example where a guard orders a prisoner to perform

an act involving danger or risk of injury, there is liability; the liability is to the person who has that individual in custody.

Mr. Worton: In regard to the abattoir, Mr. Minister, I would certainly agree there would have to be some positive legislation to protect those prisoners. On my last visit there, which was in September, I think the staff/inmate ratio was about 60/40, about 40 inmates and about 60 staff. I may be in reverse there, but this is important in an operation such as that, where unskilled people are going in without any knowledge of the equipment. It’s quite highly mechanized now; I certainly see the need. As I understand the amendment, you have assured us that will be the case under this proposed legislation.

[9:15]

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I reaffirm at this time that in a situation such as we are talking about in the abattoir, inmates in the institution are not inmates for the purposes of this exclusion, they are workers. They have become part of a collective bargaining group and they would be covered by this legislation in that sort of setting.

Mr. Mackenzie: Let’s presume, Mr. Minister, that the member for London South (Mr. Walker) ends up with us having a series of modified chain gangs around the province. You have 15 or 20 workers out on a roadside project, as you yourself indicated, and some of those people have some expertise.

I think of two examples right off the bat: Supposing, for example, they are doing some tree-cutting -- some of the dead elms along a stretch of highway or something -- and one of them knows the chainsaw he has is defective, that the chain could fly off or he could himself receive serious injuries; or they are on a project where they are doing some spraying or using some chemicals along the side of the road, and one of them who may have some knowledge of chemistry knows those chemicals or that roadside spraying itself may be dangerous.

It is true the guard is responsible, but if that employee doesn’t have the right to say at that point: “I won’t use this saw,” or “I won’t use these chemicals,” and is ordered to do so by the guard, he could have a serious injury long before the responsibility finally comes back on that guard because he required him to do it.

I can see that kind of expertise being there in some of the simple but obvious tasks that might be assigned to such a group of workers, I just don’t think it is good enough to say: “It is the responsibility of the guard.”

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, I can’t recall if the member was able to take down the legal references that deal with this very issue, but if I could refer him again: “The duty owed by prison authorities is to take reasonable care for the safety of prisoners.” The reference, if the member wishes to review it, is Timm v. R., [1965] 1 Ex. C.R. 174. With regard to the duties of guards, I refer him to 12 Can. Abr. (2nd) 473. Inmates in situations such as you are referring to always have the common law right to refuse to work, that can’t be abrogated.

In terms of the responsibilities owed to them by their custodian, those cases and those references clearly outline the duties owed to prisoners by those who are holding them in custody.

Mr. Mackenzie: One of my colleagues has mentioned to me there is also the situation of inmates on temporary absence programs. I would like to know what your reaction is there.

Also, I want to carry the other argument just one step further before we leave this, Mr. Minister. That is, I was under the impression -- I hope not falsely -- that our penal institutions -- indeed some of the defence I have heard for the use of some of these work programs -- is that we are trying to pass on some skills or some useful knowledge or some contribution to society from the people who are these inmates. They should not be second-class citizens in terms of their rights to have some say in the safety of the conditions they work under, and I am wondering why they should not have some input.

What better opportunity can you have of not only teaching them some responsibility, but easing their entry into the work place if they have some say in at least the safety conditions they are working under? What really can be wrong with assuring that those people have some input? Why not involve them?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, first of all with regard to the situation referred to by the member for Hamilton East, where a prisoner might be on a leave of absence, there is no doubt that if he is on leave of absence and involved in the work project he is covered by this act; that is not an issue. In other words, it clearly does not exclude inmates who work outside the institution; in that sort of relationship they would be covered.

As to why I feel this

section is necessary, I think I went into that in great detail in my initial remarks. Let me say once again, with due respect, that we are dealing with people who are in conflict with society. They have rejected the regulations and so forth that apply to all of us in society. They have rebelled against it. We have to acknowledge this is a particular situation and it requires this sort of legislation.

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Minister, two wrongs don’t make a right. Sure they are in there, they are paying the penalty of being incarcerated, but when we then specifically put them into programs, as the Minister of Correctional Services is now suggesting, we should at least do it with the protections that are there in law as well, or that we are passing legislation for, in terms of their health and safety on that particular operation.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, I can only again repeat, as I have outlined quite clearly now, that in no way are their common law rights to refuse to work abrogated in any sense of the word. They do have that common law right. The custodians also have common law obligations as well as legislative obligations. Frankly, I can’t see why that should cause any problem.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Mr. Elgie has moved that paragraph 29 of

section 1 be struck out and replaced by the following:

“29. ‘Worker’ means a person who performs work or supplies services for monetary compensation but does not include,

“(1) an inmate of a correctional institution or like institution or facility who participates in said institution or facility in a work project or rehabilitation program; or

“(2) a patient who participates in a work or rehabilitation program in a psychiatric institution, mental health or retardation centre or home, or rehabilitation facility.

Mr. Mackenzie has moved an amendment to the amendment, that paragraph 29 of

section 1 be amended by deleting “but does not include” in the third line, and substituting therefor “and includes.”

Those in favour of Mr. Mackenzie’s amendment to the amendment will please say “aye.”

Those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion the nays have it.

Amendment stacked.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: If the amendment to the amendment does not carry we will then, in the stacked vote, take the amendment.

Section 2 agreed to.

section 3:

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Mr. Elgie moves that

section 3 of the bill be struck out and the following substituted therefor:

“3(1) This act does not apply to work performed by the owner or occupant or a servant of the owner or occupant to, in or about a private residence or the lands and appurtenances used in connection therewith.

“

(2) Except as may be prescribed and subject to the conditions and limitations prescribed this act or a part thereof does not apply to farming operations.

“

(3) Except as may be prescribed and subject to the conditions and limitations prescribed in this act or a part thereof does not apply to,

“(

a) A person who is employed as a teacher as defined in the Education Act, 1974;

“(

b) A person who is employed as a member of the academic staff at a college of applied arts and technology as set out in

schedule 1 of the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act, 1975, or a person who is employed as a member or teaching assistant of the academic staff of a university or related institution.”

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, do you wish me to speak to each subsection or to one subsection at a time?

Mr. Foulds: On a point of order, I believe Mr. Mackenzie has some amendments to the

section the minister has just moved. In terms of procedure, should he move those amendments now, before we begin the debate on this new clause as put in by the minister?

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Technically he should move his amendment when he is called on to speak. If the committee would rather have all amendments to each clause before them before any speeches, I would recognize honourable members who wish to make amendments to that amendment without speeches, and then revert back to the honourable minister, if that is acceptable.

Mr. Foulds: Is that acceptable?

Mr. O’Neil: Yes, we have an amendment.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Mr. O’Neil moves

section 3(3)(

b) of the bill, as amended by the Minister of Labour be struck out.

Mr. Mackenzie moves that

section 3(1) as amended by the minister be further amended by deleting in line 2 “or servant of the owner or occupant;” that 3(2) be deleted and that 3(3) also be deleted.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Do you wish me to speak on one subsection at a time or to cover the whole section?

Mr. Deputy Chairman: In light of the amendments to the amendments, I think we should do it subsection at a time.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, in the case of domestics employed by the owner in a private residence, the employer is really asking no more than he or she asks him or herself in that residence. Thus an exclusion is based on this practicality: the home is not considered a work place in the usual sense of the word, and indeed in my view it would be an invasion of privacy to allow checking or inspecting of homes.

I might also add that I am advised by my legal advisers that a search warrant would be necessary to enter such a private dwelling in order to carry out such an inspection. In any event, municipalities have bylaws already in place requiring certain standards, and in that sense that aspect is being covered.

I would also like to refer to the status of domestics in other jurisdictions in this country. Domestics, that is servants employed by private households, are not covered by health and safety legislation in any other jurisdiction in this country; however, those performing domestic duties but employed by private agencies are covered in Manitoba and they would be covered as well in this act.

With regard to the comment just made by the member for Erie, I would like to point out that in Saskatchewan, although the act itself makes reference to the permissive right of the Legislature to pass regulations covering domestics, they have not done so. I would therefore give those reasons, and they are very valid reasons, for not including domestics in this particular act. It’s for no other reasons than the ones given.

Mr. Bounsall: Did the minister say those domestics provided by private firms have coverage under this bill in the province of Ontario or was that Manitoba?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: It’s my advice that such domestics employed by an agency and sent to the home would be covered by this legislation.

Mr. Bounsall: I would like to ask the minister how that would be so. Is there a different definition of servant and domestic? Are they defined in such a way? I could not see an adequate definition that indicates that would be the case. The way this clause is written clearly indicates that the servant of that owner or occupier would not be given any coverage at all under this bill.

I can’t understand why this most maligned group in the province of Ontario is exempted from every act in the province of Ontario. The exclusions for those described as homemakers under the Employment Standards Act run on and on. I don’t see why we should continue to exclude these people in a new piece of legislation. The statement by the minister about having to have a search warrant if one were to enter the premises may be true; so what, when it affects the health and safety of someone employed in the province of Ontario?

[9:30]

The clause also says “in or about,” which means that with those people who would be employed mainly in the category of servant and mainly inside the house, but from time to time are performing services on the property outside the house, no search warrant would be at all required if an inspector was called in, as would be the situation under this act if there was a dangerous situation where their employer was arguing and pointing out what they should do.

I would suspect, because of the organizational state of servants and homemakers and other domestics in this province, that the right to refuse would be exercised very infrequently, as would any of the conditions under this act, because of the difficulty of those persons even knowing that such

an act existed. As a result of that the right to refuse, or any other of the aspects of this bill, would seldom be used.

But what if, let’s say, the owner of a house employing one or two servants assigned to one of those servants some particular outside job, such as a minor repair to a roof, or asked him to hang a very high storm window, for example, using a ladder which was unsafe and insisted that the work be done and the servant agreed? The only alternative the person would have in saying no, he didn’t want to go up there, would be the standard one which applies in this particular field: to be fired.

It is going to happen so seldom and there are going to be so few problems by including them under the bill that I just don’t see why we excluded them, except for the general feeling of everyone that I have, that the ministry’s attitude to this bill is that you will exclude any groups of workers that you possibly can. With this group excluded from everything else in the province of Ontario, I just don’t see any really valid reason for your position. So what if an inspector needs a search warrant to come into the premises of a private home if a domestic servant has exercised the right to refuse?

What is more important, the health and safety of workers in the province of Ontario or the probability that you might have to get a search warrant?

It is for that reason that we can’t see why it should stay in this, being an amendment in addition to what we passed from the committee stage last January.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I would just like to reassure the member that agency domestics contracted by the owner or occupant from an agency are covered by this legislation. The wording is “a servant of the owner or occupant,” in other words, employed directly by the owner or occupant. Thus, it is very clear that domestics, should they be employed from an agency, are covered.

I can only reiterate to the member, the reason why we feel this should be excluded, as indeed other jurisdictions have felt, is the situation with regard to privacy and, frankly, the extreme administrative difficulties in managing such a situation. Above and beyond that, let me reiterate that there always remains the common law right to refuse, and it is therefore my view that this amendment, as proposed, should pass.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: All those in favour of Mr. Bounsall’s amendment to the amendment to

section 3 will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion the nays have it.

Amendment stacked.

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Chairman, I’m still a little confused on the procedure we’re following. The discussion had been basically on

section 3(1). Is that exactly what we have now?

Mr. Deputy Chairman: The amendment by Mr. Bounsall to

section 3(1) has not carried and has been stacked. We will now move on to

section 3(2). The honourable minister to speak to his amendment on

section 3(2).

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, I’d like it to be clear that this is not intended to mean that farming operations should be excluded, but rather that inclusion should relate to areas of hazard. To my knowledge all farming organizations accept that premise, i.e. the premise that areas of hazard should be included.

Farming is an industry that is unique and encompasses everything from a private family farm to purely commercial farms, and there are clearly hazardous areas. These will be identified and they will be included. I would also remind all members that the Farm Safety Association of Ontario has been working on safety matters and will continue to do so.

I would also point out that at this time Ontario and the federal jurisdiction have legislation regulating pesticides. The Pesticides Act of Ontario sets out provisions respecting pest extermination operation in Ontario. The Pest Control Products Act, Canada, regulates the manufacture, storage, display, distribution or use of any controlled product. For that reason I would ask the support of members for this section.

Mr. Bounsall: Here again by the minister’s amendment, which we are moving to delete, we are leaving uncovered an entire category of workers under this bill. If you intend to cover them at some future date, or some portion of them, then let’s see it in the bill with the dates in it -- as it was with the bill that came from the committee last January which stated when all workers in this province should be covered.

There is no way, having the experience which took place from last January until now, that we can trust anyone over there in terms of who and what might be covered some time in the future under this bill, absolutely no way. If there is any way you’re going to do it, then get it written here in the bill. Your legal draughtsmen have had since January to do it. We’ll accept no sort of statements at their face without an amendment right in this act as to when they are to be covered, because of the history with respect to this bill in particular.

Getting to the heart of the matter, Mr. Chairman, as to whether or not farmers and the farm place should be included, even some of the Conservative members on the committee that sat last January voted for inclusion of farmers under this section. Eighty per cent of the farm workers are employed by 10 per cent of the farmers in this province; and those agrifarms, as they’re now quickly becoming, give no health and safety protection for those workers.

We could run through all sorts of statistics and so on. I don’t particularly want to take up the time of the committee this morning to do that on the situation as it relates to farm workers in this province, except to point out the one statistic which I find very interesting, farmers and farm workers in West Germany are covered, but in the year prior to their coverage, in 1969 or 1970, there were 170 deaths in the farm community in West Germany. Last year there were 50. That is the difference which a health and safety bill of this kind can make, and will make, to those engaged in farming in this province and there is no excuse for their not being included.

We know full well there are various members of this House, not this Minister of Labour, nor I think the former one, but other members who went around the farm community in this province, trying to spread stories of what type of coverage one might have and what might occur if farmers were covered under this bill, talking in terms of everyone walking out of the cherry orchard at fruit-picking time. They certainly didn’t want that, and all kinds of concerns came in last spring. The Minister of Agriculture and Food (Mr. W. Newman) was engaged in some sort of similar exercise himself in which he raised that sort of spectre to the farmers of the province.

This was not the way in which the farm groups were expected to be covered, nor the type of action they would take. Forgetting completely that the right to refuse is an individual action, among farm workers in particular one would never see a collective action being taken with respect to health and safety, yet there are so many unsafe conditions on farms in the province of Ontario in terms of the safety of a not very well paid, overworked group of people in the province of Ontario who need the protection of this particular bill.

When we come to exclusions this government seems to often pick the most defenceless people to not extend coverage of good legislation to. Here we have legislation which could make quite a difference to health and safety in the farm work place and we exempt them. The spectre has often been raised that with every sort of minor repair which the farmer may want to do on his farm, put one board or two on the chicken run, a construction inspector would have to be brought in in order to see whether it was safe.

That was not what was ever intended by the inclusion of farmers in this bill. The government has had almost 11 months since the legislation emerged from the committee to write any particular and different regulation that would apply to the farm community, and any way which those unreasonable situations which were being talked about in the farm community by some members of this House could be rectified by regulation, and the ministry has failed to do so.

I won’t go on at any greater length on this, Mr. Chairman, except to say that with the emergence of agribusiness in this province this is one group we feel very strongly should most certainly be covered by all of the health and safety provisions that are here in this act with whatever special set of regulations would be required for the bill to operate for those whose work place often looks different from the work places of most other workers in this province. A regulation speaking to the kind of work place and perhaps difference in the wording with respect to posting might be required in a few other areas, but in no way should this group of workers be left uncovered.

[9:45]

Mr. Gaunt: I just want to make a few very brief comments with respect to this particular matter, coming as I do from a rural and agricultural riding. I know my colleague from Huron-Middlesex (Mr. Riddell) will be addressing this particular matter in greater length, but I just wanted to say that I happen to agree with the provisions of the bill as it currently stands. Farming, I think we have to recognize, is a very different kind of industry. I am not saying that farm workers should be excluded permanently from the provisions of this bill.

What I am saying is there are problems peculiar to the farming industry which do not apply to any other industry. I think we have gone through the arguments with respect to the problems as they apply to the farming industry if farm workers were included under the provisions of the bill.

As I understand it, there’s a committee being set up -- or perhaps it’s already constituted, I don’t know; in any event, the committee would study the best methods whereby farm workers could be gradually brought under the terms of the bill. I believe the Ontario Federation of Agriculture is going to have membership on that committee and I support that approach. But to do it at this time without full consideration of all the unusual circumstances that apply to farm workers would in my view be wrong. So I would take the position the work of the committee should be done first and then farm workers could be brought under the terms of the bill in a gradual and staged fashion.

Mr. M. Davidson: Mr. Chairman, in supporting the amendments put forward by the member for Windsor-Sandwich, I would like to say a few things with regard to this. I, too, have some rural area in my riding and I know there are people working out there who are not farmers themselves; they are employees of farmers. I think basically this is the major concern.

I can well understand the difference. I think both a farmer and his wife are in a position where they are both an owner and an employer, and they work probably as hard or in some cases harder than the employee. Those I can understand not wanting the coverage. However, by the same token, we do have in the province many persons who are employed as farm help. Certainly they should be getting the kind of protection this bill offers to the other workers in the province.

In 1977, there were 2,100 claims laid before the Workmen’s Compensation Board as a result of farm accidents, and these are not my figures. These are figures that have been quoted by Michael Starr, the chairman of the compensation board. That amounted to a total payment of $5.5 million from the compensation board to persons who had been injured while employed as farm help in Ontario.

Mr. Starr says: “I suggest to you the farming industry is far too important to this province to permit such an accident rate and such a bill in terms of human suffering.” I would suggest to you, Mr. Minister, that by leaving farm people out of this bill you are in no way offering them the kind of protection that would reduce the number of accidents within the farm community and reduce the cost to the people of Ontario.

I suggest to you most strongly that you reconsider your position on this section. Give it some very serious thought, and if you do intend to do something with the people in the farm community, do it now, not sometime down the road. I never know where that road is going to end, nor do they, so I would suggest you take some action now and accept the amendment from the member for Windsor-Sandwich.

Mr. Haggerty: Mr. Chairman, I want to direct my question to subsection 2: “Except as may be described and subject to the conditions and limitations described in this act or part thereof, does not apply to farming operations.” I too am concerned about when you are going to bring it in by regulation. I would like to know specifically when we can expect the regulations to cover farming operations.

My main concern is that while we talk about farming operations, there are other types of industry within farming communities that are classed as farm operations and shouldn’t be. For example, we have two businesses in the township of Wainfleet exporting peat. It is considered an agricultural process, but the safety protection in that industry does not apply today. It does not come under the Ministry of Labour; it comes under no government agency whatsoever. That is one area.

Another example is golf courses across the province of Ontario. The employees in golf courses are considered under agricultural farm land operations, which shouldn’t be. It is a different type of operation altogether. Golf courses are a big operation today.

I suggest these persons should be included in this bill and not considered as farm operators whatsoever. It is a business. I don’t have to tell you about the risks on the golf course. If any of those persons are working on the course, they are liable to get hit with a golf ball. There is quite a risk there. I suggest this should be taken into consideration under the present act.

Mr. Riddell: I want to speak briefly to this

section of the act, although maybe in a little more detail than my colleagues. I disagree with my colleague the member for Erie, but I do appreciate the concern he and the NDP have over the safety conditions under which employees of farm owners work. There is no question there are a number of farm accidents, but as my colleague from Huron-Bruce indicated, the problems that face farmers are entirely different from the problems that face those in other industries.

We were just discussing this a few minutes ago and my colleague to the left said, “Let’s hear what some of these peculiar problems are.” I will indicate some. The new act, Bill 70, would force farmers to submit plans for all construction to the Ministry of Labour for approval. If the farmer had help in the construction and did not do this, he could be fined up to $25,000, face imprisonment of up to 12 months, or both. Now who in the world is going to do the farm work --

Ms. Gigantes: What are you reading from?

Mr. Riddell: -- if somebody can come along and find a farmer repairing his fence -- his cattle are running down the road and he is repairing his fence -- ask him if he has submitted plans in order to do so; and when the farmer says, “No, I didn’t have time to do it,” he can end up paying a fine of $25,000 or spend 12 months in jail.

Mr. Cassidy: It’s a ridiculous argument.

Mr. Riddell: Maybe it is a specious argument, but --

Mr. Martel: Specious is not the word, that doesn’t describe it.

Mr. Deans: Are you going to answer this or not, because that’s not what the bill does.

Mr. Riddell: Under Bill 70, construction includes, “the erection, alteration, repair, dismantling, demolition, structural maintenance, painting, land clearing, earth moving, grading, excavating, trenching, digging, boring, drilling blasting or concreting, the installation of any machinery or plant and any work undertaken in connection with a project.” Everything is included there. If a farmer decides he wants to go out and put an addition on his building because he has some extra sows that are going to be farrowing and he has to get them into a building right away, what does he do?

Does he submit plans and wait for approval and in the meantime the sows have farrowed out in the snowdrift and he’s lost all his pigs? We have to use a little bit of reason here.

Mr. Deans: What’s the alternative? Does he have someone working in unsafe conditions?

Mr. Riddell: Let me carry on. Further concern is voiced over the regulations drafted to accompany the bill, however there is disagreement over their

interpretation. One regulation reads: “Rubbish, debris and other materials shall not be permitted to fall freely from one level to another.”

Mr. Deans: Well, why should it?

Mr. Riddell: If that is taken literally, hay could be “other material” and could not be dropped freely from the mow to the first floor.

Mr. Martel: They have really scratched the bottom of the barrel, I want to tell you.

Mr. Riddell: How in the world do you get your hay from the second floor of the barn down to the first floor of the barn where you have to feed your cattle?

Mr. Deans: People like you carry it in their arms.

Mr. Riddell: Another regulation reads:

“Where a fall into water or other liquid that is deep enough for a life jacket to be effective may occur, a life jacket shall be worn.”

“The generally accepted depth for a drowning to occur is four feet” says Grant Wallace, director of the field service for OFA; so be realizes that if the farmers come under this bill and they happen to be working around their farm pond or around their manure pit -- and most farmers these days do have manure pits of some kind -- they are going to have to be wearing a life-jacket. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous in all your life?

We could go on and talk about some of these problems that are peculiar to the farming industry. I hope I have convinced my friends to the left here that we made the right move in getting this

section out of the bill.

Mr. Deans: So that is what you were going to do, eh?

Mr. Riddell: We shouldn’t even have to be discussing this. The reason I say that is, when this bill was down in committee --

Mr. Cassidy: We wouldn’t be if you hadn’t backed away.

Mr. Riddell: -- the Liberals moved to exclude the farming industry.

Mr. Pope: After you moved to include it.

Mr. Riddell: We know we weren’t going to get the support of the NDP, because they just don’t understand farming. That’s understandable because there is not a member over there who has probably even been on a farm, let alone worked on a farm.

Mr. Deans: I beg your pardon.

Mr. Martel: I’ve got a stone farm in my front yard.

Mr. Riddell: I had hoped that Conservative members, particularly the member for Middlesex (Mr Eaton) who happens to live on a farm, would have supported our amendment. But no, he voted against it. In other words, he wanted the farmers included in the bill.

Mr. Watson: Come on.

Mr. Sterling: Come on, that is the biggest bit of rubbish I have ever heard.

Mr. Pope: Tell the truth.

Mr. Sterling: Tell the truth, you put it out.

Mr. Riddell: I am. After the farmers --

Mr. Pope: Never mind taking cheap shots at the member for Middlesex. You have been playing games with it all the way through.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Riddell: After the farmers approached Mr. Eaton and said, “Look, what are you doing, trying to get us into this bill?” He tried to make excuses. You know what he was going around saying? He was saying the reason he voted to have the farming industry included in the bill was because the former minister wanted some of the other industries out. So unless we went along with getting some of these other industries out he wasn’t going to support us in getting the farming industry excluded from the bill.

Mr. Pope: Put it on the record what really happened.

Mr. Riddell: Isn’t that kindergarten mentality?

Interjections.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Riddell: That has to be kindergarten mentality.

Mr. Pope: You ought to know.

Mr. Riddell: It takes me back to my days when we used to play marbles. I would say, “I’ll give you one of my marbles, if you give me one of yours.” Surely this isn’t the way government operates.

Mr. Pope: You know what I said about your positions?

Mr. Riddell: All right, let me get down to more serious matters here.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I am glad you said that.

Mr. Riddell: I am pleased the minister listened to reason when we in the Liberal Party --

Mr. Pope: Oh, come on.

Mr. Riddell: -- and when the farm organizations -- particularly the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, the Ontario Farm Safety Association and the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association -- explained to the minister the fallacy of including the farming industry holus-bolus in this bill.

Mr. Pope: They explained to you first and you changed your mind.

Mr. Riddell: Mr. Chairman, I’ve got a good speech here if they would only listen.

Because of the complexity of the farm work place, weather conditions, the seasonal nature of agricultural work, extended hours during peak periods, machinery and equipment designed and manufactured to different standards for agriculture than for the same equipment used in industry; and the fluctuating number of workers involved with the inherent job training problem --

Mr. Martel: That is why they need protection.

Mr. Riddell: -- agriculture requires special consideration in the development of occupational health and safety legislation.

Mr. Cassidy: So let’s see a commitment to get it.

Mr. Riddell: We in the Liberal Party do not think that occupational health and safety legislation should not apply to the agricultural industry, but for the reasons I have mentioned we believe the legislation should make provisions for standards of safety by regulation. Alternatively, we believe separate legislation should be developed which is exclusive to agriculture.

Mr. Sterling: Exactly what the former Minister of Labour wanted to do.

Mr. Riddell: Why didn’t she proceed?

Mr. Sterling: Because you changed it.

Mr. Riddell: Oh no; I tried to get it out of there. It was my colleagues to the left who were adamant about getting farming included.

Mr. Sterling: It was your motion.

Mr. Riddell: No, no; it was our motion to get them out of there. Let’s face the facts.

Mr. Sterling: It was your motion.

Mr. Handleman: What a champion flip-flopper you are.

Mr. Pope: Now you have flip-flopped; now you are obscuring it all.

[10:00]

Mr. Riddell: Such legislation in its initial stages at least should cover only such things as personal protective equipment, guarding and shielding of machinery, and rollover protection for tractors. The request of agricultural operators was that agriculture, the largest primary industry in Ontario, must accept one of the six public seats on the council which management and labour are allocated. In other words this is the advisory council which I understand is going to be established, am I right?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: We are going to have discussions about it.

Mr. Riddell: It was my understanding there was some order in council setting up an advisory council, and I was just going to mention a little bit about the --

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, there already is an advisory council to the minister on occupational health and safety which has farm representatives, and there is an agricultural advisory council, and it may be necessary to establish a committee to review other matters related to the needs of the farming industry, if that is what the member is referring to.

Mr. Riddell: Then agriculture requires an educational development approach to the application of any Occupational Health and Safety Act, and from this point of view, and again I may be wrong, we support the order in council providing for an occupational health and safety advisory council, provided that agriculture is assured of a continuing seat on the advisory council, and provided that an advisory committee is established to assist and advise the minister on agriculture matters.

I believe the OFA request, along with the Farm Safety Association of Ontario and the OFVGA, the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, was that agriculture, the largest primary industry in Ontario, must accept one of the six public seats on the council, while management and labour are allocated 12 seats. This one public seat, now filled by an agricultural person, must continue to be filled by an agricultural person and further, that a person with technical expertise, along with an agricultural background, be allowed one public seat.

Regarding advisory committees, I appeal to the minister to move quickly to appoint an agricultural advisory committee on occupational health and safety.

Finally, I must say that there is a growing need for research in agricultural safety. Considerable research is and has been carried on in other industries regarding occupational health and safety, and I believe the Minister of Labour must immediately initiate research in order to effectively implement any agricultural occupational health and safety act.

The fact of the matter is, we believe that there should be some kind of occupational health and safety legislation for farmers, but they cannot be included in this bill, and I certainly commend the minister for excluding the farming industry for the time being, and hopefully bringing it in either by regulation or by completely separate legislation.

Please pass my remarks along to the member for Middlesex. I am sure he will support me in my endeavours this time.

Mr. Deans: I never heard so much nonsense in all my life.

Mr. Riddell: Okay, you tell us all about it.

Mr. Deans: No, I am not going to tell you all about it. I have been trying for as long as you have been here to help you and I haven’t succeeded yet. I am not going to waste my last two days on you.

Mr. Riddell: I am pretty selective when I take my advice from somebody.

Mr. Deans: I want to tell you something though. I have never heard such eloquent pleading of special interest in my life. The points you make are absolutely nonsense. You are assuming, to begin with, that people don’t understand their responsibilities and that they are not going to do their job properly. You can’t draw a distinction between employees of one group and employees of another group. The farm industry is a hazardous industry; a very hazardous industry. It is hazardous not only in terms of the machinery that is used, it is hazardous in terms of all of the chemicals that are used.

If there was to be a group of workers that deserves to be given immediate coverage then surely people in this industry deserve that more than any other that I can think of. I don’t know how you can say that some people in the province of Ontario are entitled to protection and other people aren’t. I don’t know how you draw that kind of a distinction; how you say that some people are class triple A and others are only A. That is what you are saying.

You are saying that employees in the farm industry are somehow of lesser importance, that theft protection is not as important as the protection of other people.

Mr. Riddell: Tell your story to the farmers.

Mr. Deans: No, I’m telling you the story, because you were pleading the case.

Mr. Martel: You should have some guts.

Mr. Deans: I don’t have to tell my story to the farmers. The farmers are no different from any other employers and the farmers don’t want to have to cover their employees under

an act like this. Neither does the mining industry.

Mr. Martel: No, they didn’t beg to get in.

Mr. Deans: They don’t want to cover their employees in the Steel Company of Canada, I’m sure, under this legislation -- or anywhere else for that matter. They don’t want to be bothered with this kind of legislation. If governments hadn’t forced this on employers people would still be working in the most disgusting, dangerous conditions that existed a 100 years ago.

So you should not start telling me now, in 1978, that somehow or other there is some unique set of circumstances applicable only to farmers, and that they somehow or other are to be given special privilege and allowed to have their workers work in other than safe conditions because we’re not able to come up with a regulation or legislation that adequately protects them. Such would be an abdication of our responsibility.

I don’t understand how we can stand, in December of 1978 -- given all the time this legislation has been before not only the committee, but before the government, the cabinet and all of the other interested bodies -- and say we are unable to come up with a suitable wording to cover these employees in the province. If you want to tell me that somehow, if the person who works in the farming community loses his hand it’s not as important as someone who works in a machine shop losing his hand, then get up and tell me that.

The example you use of the fixing of the fence, and the cattle trotting off down the road -- honest to God, you don’t really expect me to think that makes sense.

Mr. Riddell: I thought it was a fine example.

Mr. Deans: You tell me that there you are looking at your building and you discover all of a sudden in a flash that you’ve got to put an addition on today because you’ve got some sows that are going to run out into the snow, you don’t -- oh come on, come on.

Did you really believe that farmers were going to have to wear life-jackets?

Mr. Riddell: That’s what the bill says.

Mr. Martel: Jesus, you’re sick.

Mr. Deans: I mean that kind of argument is not worthy of the Legislature.

What I’d like you to tell me is this: how do you in the ministry make the decision that some people’s lives are worth less than others? How do you make that distinction? How do you determine that one employee working for this sector of the economy is somehow of less value than some other employee in terms of the protection that should be afforded to him? I don’t know how you do that. I don’t know how you can claim such a thing.

There’s no question the farming community, unique as it is, does different things from other segments of the economy. But they are still employees, they are still required to operate machinery, they’re still required to work outside, they’re still required to lift and to haul, they’re still required to deal with any number of chemical processes that can be harmful to their lives. How the devil do you draw the distinction between them and say they don’t need protection because somehow or other the farmer will treat them fairly?

My colleague just a moment ago was arguing that the farmer will take advantage of his employees; because the farmer is not required to do what other people are required to do he was saying the farmer will take advantage of his employees. I don’t believe that. Neither do I believe the farm employees will in one way or another be vindictive or stupid in the way in which they go about their work.

Mr. Minister, please tell me if you can, how you propose to explain to the widow of the dead farm worker that we didn’t really have to cover him in his circumstances because after all that was a unique job.

Mr. Riddell: On a point of privilege: I used some examples about which my colleague who has just spoken made rather light. I simply want to indicate that those examples were the very same examples used by the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture in his many speeches across this country. So if you think they are light examples you talk to him.

Mr. Deans: On the point of privilege, let me tell you this, that if the Ontario Federation of Agriculture president used those, he is as stupid as you are.

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Language unbecoming.

Mr. Gaunt: Unfair shot.

Mr. McGuigan: Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of leaving farmers out of this particular regulation. I would certainly like to say to the House, and to the member for Wentworth in particular, that as a farm employer representing quite a number of farmers, and having gone through quite a few chairs in the agricultural political field, I can say there isn’t a farm leader I know of, and I know most of them, who isn’t concerned about his farm workers or who does not wish to see them at the appropriate time included in a farm safety situation It’s just not fair to say that we are not concerned about our farm workers.

Mr. Young: Nobody said that.

Mr. Deans: I didn’t say workers.

Mr. McGuigan: It sounded that way to me.

Mr. Martel: You should have wakened up a little earlier and listened carefully.

Mr. McGuigan: I employ about 30 farm workers and I am probably one of those in the group that was referred to, the 10 per cent who employ 80 per cent of the farm workers. I want to point out to you that most of those hired farm people, seasonal people, are hired in the labour intensive fruit and vegetable industry and most of these people are not in a machinery situation. They are mostly fruit pickers, thinners, harvesters of fruits and vegetables and the associated crops, and you can verify this by looking at your Workmen’s Compensation Board rates where they put a much lower rate on people working in that industry. Most of these people are in the non-dangerous situations.

When you come to the dangerous situations -- and there are many, I certainly admit this -- largely the farmer and his family who have the experience and the ability do these jobs and they simply do not trust the spraying of very dangerous chemicals or the operation of very dangerous equipment to inexperienced people. They love their farm workers as much as you love industrial workers. They do.

Mr. Deans: Don’t do that. That was the argument they used in the 1800s. For Christ’s sake, we love you, we love you.

Mr. McGuigan: They depend upon these people and they respect them and they work with them year after year after year. When you come to the business of chemicals, and I am certainly involved in the business of chemicals being in the fruit business, we wear protective clothing. We wear masks. We wear gloves. We wear boots. We follow the instructions in the booklets from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food which tell us under what conditions to use these and they tell us the number of waiting hours or days that must be in the interval between the use of the chemical and the harvesting or working within the orchard situation or the vegetable field situation or whatever it may be.

[10:15]

We follow those things because we know just how dangerous those chemicals are and, to get down to the legality of it, if one were not to follow those instructions you lay yourself open to very dire and I must say deserved consequences. When it comes to the matter which my friend from Huron-Middlesex was speaking about, the practicality of working on a farm, we just do not want people from an industrial setting under a largely industrial act, coming in and telling us how to operate our system. This happened in the United States under the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The example that we used was a particular booklet or instruction sent out to people working in cattle barns. Somebody wrote instructions for people to watch where they step. It may sound like a pretty good piece of advice to watch where you step in the cattle barn, but farmers found it pretty amusing and pretty ridiculous.

Mr. Young: The minister would never do that here.

Mr. McGuigan: No, I don’t think so. They found it pretty ridiculous and one of the results of all of this was that it set back farm safety. People said, “This is so ridiculous, we won’t pay much attention to it.” It set farm safety back a number of years. I would say to you, Mr. Chairman, and to our friends on the left who share our concern and with whom we share concerns about farm workers, we are not opposed to bringing farm workers into a safety act, but we want an agricultural workers safety act and we want to see it administered by people who know something about the subject.

Mr. Martel: I have listened very carefully this morning to find out why you don’t want farmers covered. I am still waiting. I want to remind you when we started the push for safety in 1968 or 1969 that precipitated the Ham royal commission in Elliot Lake, we heard all the claptrap we have heard this morning.

We heard it all, I tell you, we heard it all: Bastiani from Denison loved his workers. You wouldn’t believe it. They were dying of cancer but he loved them, and he and the government of Ontario hid the fact. They hid the facts on us. We couldn’t get the data, we couldn’t get a thing. It was a disaster, but they loved their workers and they were doing the proper thing.

I tell my friend, I recall getting a letter in a brown envelope one day. It involved a number of representatives from the Ministry of Labour; they had been with the ministry involved with mines. It said: “You had better lay charges this time, because the minister will have difficulty answering if Martel finds out.” That was a reference to the then Minister of Mines and Northern Affairs. That was the letter one of his staff wrote to the office here in Toronto. They loved the employees too.

An hon. member: Who was the minister then?

Mr. Martel: Leo Bernier. They loved the employees. They all loved them but then they wrote and said they had better do this, not because the act was violated but because the minister would have difficulty answering in the House. You see, I am cynical. I could show you files a foot thick on this sort of nonsense over the past eight or nine years.

Don’t tell me that farm workers are a unique group. None of us worked on a farm; hurrah. I wasn’t a miner either; but I know about health and safety there. I wasn’t a miner so I couldn’t understand the problems encountered by miners, could I? I could just isolate myself and ignore it, and I didn’t have a right to say anything about it. I wasn’t a miner. What a lot of drivel.

A member shouldn’t get up and speak on half the bills in this Legislature, because he or she doesn’t work in that field. Is that what you are saying to us? We don’t understand?

I have heard absolute garbage, but let me read what your literature is in the Sault for today’s election. I just happened to pick it up when I was there the other day. You talk about chutzpah. It says here, “The Liberal member has moved a number of major amendments designed to strengthen the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The amendments are” -- get this one -- “the expansion of coverage to include all non-agricultural employees.” How’s that for a good line? Because how are you going to vote today?

And then the other line, “including public servants.” That’s your literature last week. And you know whose picture is on the front? The leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario, Stuart Smith.

You guys are the phoniest, most hypocritical group of characters I have ever come across in my life.

Mr. O’Neil: Settle down now, Elie.

Mr. Gaunt: Elie, you must have been out late last night.

Mr. Martel: There’s your literature; you are going to include all non-agricultural employees and the civil servants. Can you imagine that?

Mr. Sterling: Don’t be so easy on them.

Mr. Mackenzie: Watch how they vote today.

Mr. Martel: Watch today how they vote. As I said several weeks ago in this House, they’re going to suffer hernias before the day is over. They are going to have to straddle the fence and they’re going to slip.

Mr. Pope: I like the other one better.

Mr. Martel: This is without a doubt the craziest group I have ever seen. I couldn’t change that frequently.

So let’s talk about agriculture.

Mr. Gaunt: It takes one to know one.

Mr. Martel: It’s your literature, it isn’t mine, Murray. It is your literature. You used it in the Sault last week and you’re using it in the Sault this week. And now you’re saying we’re going to cover everybody but agricultural workers. That’s a great piece of literature, isn’t it?

Mr. Riddell: We’re still in second place and soon to be in first.

Mr. Martel: You won’t even get 10 per cent of the vote today.

Mr. Riddell: You wait and see, we may surprise you.

Mr. Martel: You would. I want to go back to the --

Mr. Riddell: With that nonsense you can’t make an impact there now.

Mr. Martel: No, I just want to throw on the record the hypocrisy of their position, depending on where you’re at. Include all workers; we’ll see before the day is over.

Mr. Laughren: Stop hedging, Elie. Tell us what you really think.

Mr. Martel: I want to know from the minister, first, how many people were killed in the agricultural industry last year. I think it was 14. I could be wrong, but maybe he could confirm that for me. I think it’s important.

Mr. Riddell: Tell us whether it was employees or farm owners.

Mr. Martel: It doesn’t matter, a life is a life. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the owner or the employee, you have only got one life.

Mr. Riddell: The owners aren’t covered under this.

Mr. Martel: And if you have your way neither would the employees be covered; because they are second-class citizens as far as you are concerned. You love them, but you don’t believe they’re entitled to protection.

Mr. Riddell: Yes; they still have to get up at five o’clock in the morning and do the chores.

Mr. Mackenzie: That’s why you love them, they get up at five for you.

Mr. Riddell: Well they have to.

Mr. Martel: I also want to know how to protect them against chemicals. I want to know immediately how that is going to be done. We have talked over the years about new types of chemicals and exposure to those chemicals. I want to know how, come this spring, all workers in the agricultural industry are going to be protected to ensure they are not exposed to chemicals. We’re going to protect workers who produce those chemicals but are not going to protect the class of people who utilize them, in many instances. I want to know how we are going to protect those people from over-exposure to chemicals.

Mr. McGuigan: They are protected by law at the present time.

Mr. Martel: What law?

Mr. McGuigan: The law governing pesticides.

Mr. Chairman: Will the honourable member please address the chair and disregard interjections.

Mr. Martel: Yeah? Well, how are we going to protect people in the chemical industry? How can we be assured? You tell me they’re protected, I want to know how you can be so sure that all workers are protected. We had assurances from the former ministry of mines over the years, before they were transferred to the Ministry of Labour, that they were protected. The guys I knew, the 47 or 48 who died, who contracted cancer in the sintering plant, thought they had protection too. My friend from Erie knows that.

Mr. McGuigan: There hasn’t been an agriculture person killed in the history of pesticide control.

Mr. Chairman: Order, order.

Mr. Mackenzie: What was that again?

Mr. Martel: But my friend from Erie knows, as he has had some of the problems in Port Colborne, as I have, that many people died. We weren’t aware that some of the things that were going to kill them would in fact do that -- the old sintering plant, the problems he has.

Who protects the agricultural worker? That’s what we’re concerned about.

So we don’t understand all the unique problems. Every industry has got its own unique problems. Every one of them, it doesn’t matter what it is. There are going to be problems unique to each type of industry, so to say that we don’t understand is garbage.

Maybe we don’t understand the intricacies but we know a hazard is a hazard and one protects people against the hazard. It’s as simple as that.

As my friend from Wentworth says, if you lose your hand in agriculture or you lose your hand in a shop, what’s the difference? you’ve lost your hand. Someone there should get up and give me a decent example of what you’re really frightened of. Don’t give me this stuff about building a barn in winter.

Mr. Riddell: There is a lot of building construction in winter.

Mr. Martel: I’m sure they have, but it wasn’t on the spur of the moment the day that the mother was giving birth. Was that the day you decided to build the barn? Jesus, give me one example that makes sense. As for wearing a safety belt while you’re shovelling manure, there was a lot of that shovelled around this morning already, and none of you had safety belts on.

Mr. Riddell: And it’s still coming.

Mr. Martel: I don’t know how you were entitled to stand there in your place without your safety belt on.

Mr. Riddell: If I’d known when you were going to speak I would have brought a shovel along.

Ms. Martel: I want to tell you I’ve heard it all. You haven’t put forth a solid reason yet why agricultural employees should be excluded from the act. If you are so much concerned about their health and you love them so much, you’d want them protected. You’d want to guarantee them the protection of the act so that they too would have the same sort of protection and coverage that other employees in this province would have.

I am sorry. I am a little more cynical maybe than my friend from Wentworth. I don’t think it’s all you’ve suggested it is. I think the agricultural community is resisting any change as did the mining industry and as has every other sort of industry. No one wants the act; no one has come willingly. I don’t know anyone in industry who came forward on its own and said; “Look, we’ve got to have this kind of act in the province of Ontario.”

I tell you I was involved in the cancer stuff in Sudbury. I was involved heavily in Elliot Lake. My colleagues and the former leader of the party have been involved with the asbestos problems. I don’t know one place where anyone came forward on their own to volunteer to be part of a health and safety scheme. They all resisted. They all came kicking, screaming and dragging their feet. None of them wanted it.

So you know what it’s going to do? Five years from now we’ll look back on it, I suggest to you, once we put health and safety in place in this province so that the employees and the employers together work out health and safety programs, we’ll look back and see that the number of accidents will be greatly reduced in this province. What we’re seeking to do by this act is to ensure wherever possible we minimize or reduce the incidence of accidents. That will only come about when people work together. I started saying that when I started criticizing the mining companies when I first came in in 1967.

When we get this act in place; when workers, with their employers, formulate policy whereby they will work under conditions which they haven’t in the past, we will start to see accidents reduced; then and only then. That’s the purpose of the act, really.

To exclude people, I’m sorry to say to my friend the minister, is nuts. Our intentions should be to cover everyone; and by regulation if you want. I worry about doing it by regulation, but we have a statutory instruments committee now that will look at the regulations to ensure that regulations don’t violate the intention of

an act. By regulation we could put into this act, or as part of this act, regulations to cover every special interest group in terms of what the policy should be. You could hire agricultural people to look after that part which could come in under regulation to look after the farming need. There is no need to exclude anyone if one really wants to include them.

[10:30]

They are self-centred interest groups who want to remain out, and I am not talking just particularly of agricultural groups. I would include everyone in

an act, and then I would work on regulations -- for firemen, that they can’t leave the scene of a fire, and a similar regulation regarding policemen. I could put together various parts of regulations that would cover every group of employees in the circumstances that are, as my friend might say, unique to their own particular field. We shouldn’t exclude them. We should involve them, and then bring in regulations which cover their unique situations.

Mr. Riddell: What’s wrong with having separate legislation for them?

Mr. Martel: What is the difference? We can separate down the road two years from now or we can do it now, with regulations that could be brought forward in six months and designed and looked after by agricultural people.

We should bring them in now and, by regulation, tell them what it is that is expected in their community. Let’s get rid of all that garbage my friends gave us this morning, that you must have a master plan to build a fence. It is so irresponsible to talk like that; it really is.

Mr. Riddell: It’s under the bill.

Mr. Martel: No, that’s nonsense. I say to my friend, that is how you do it. You don’t exclude people; you bring them in, give them protection and cover the unique situations my friend talked about by the regulations which would apply to them. You don’t try to do what my friend is doing. As I say, in the literature that the Liberals put out in the Sault they are trying to pretend they are covering everybody except agricultural employees. They have even stated in there that they are going to cover civil servants; but today they will waffle and change their position, and they will vote to exclude a whole series of people in the civil service. It is unbelievable of them and it is dishonest.

Mr. Hennessy: Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that there are people in institutions about whom I am concerned also, and some people who work in the civil service --

Mr. Chairman: Order. The amendment actually before the House is in regard to agricultural workers.

Mr. Hennessy: With all due respect, the member for Sudbury East said the same thing, and I think more people should be included than there are now.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment to

section 2 --

Mr. Chairman: I don’t have a copy of anything in front of me.

Mr. Sweeney: Do I have to write it out?

Mr. Chairman: Indeed.

Mr. Nixon: Mr. Chairman, while you are waiting to get that straightened out. I want to rise on a point of order.

I was very concerned at what the member for Sudbury East said, particularly in connection with statements by the leader of the Liberal Party as a part of the by-election campaign in Sault Ste. Marie. I felt that the connotation he put on the words from the election pamphlet tended to be misleading, and for that reason I want to bring it to your attention further.

Although he did not table it, and I am quite prepared to table the pamphlet from which his reference came, it is a pamphlet signed by Stuart Smith, and it says as follows under “Occupational Health and Safety”: “Liberal members moved a number of major amendments designed to strengthen Bill 70, the Occupational Health and Safety Act. The amendments are (1) the expansion of coverage to include all nonagricultural employees, including public servants . . .” I stop quoting at this point to bring to your attention, Mr.

Chairman, that this does not mean all of these groups have safety committees, which would mean hundreds of thousands of useless committees in offices, but it does not withdraw the people referred to in that

section from coverage by the act.

Mr. Foulds: Safety conditions are useless, are they?

Mr. Cassidy: Useless safety conditions? What kind of attitude is that.

Mr. Nixon: “Compulsory health and safety committees where 20 or more workers are employed in industries, mines and construction projects -- ”

Mr. Cassidy: Why shouldn’t workers have a voice in their own environment?

Mr. Nixon: “ -- pretesting of new chemical substances prior to use in the work place; the removal of provisions which would have permitted employers to intimidate employees exercising rights under the act.”

I submit that our position has been consistent and strong. When we vote on the basis of those statements there will be no hypocrisy and nothing misleading --

Mr. Martel: We will see. We will see before the day is over.

Mr. Nixon: -- which I submit we approach very closely in this House today with the statements from the member for Sudbury East, a disgusting example.

Mr. Martel: We will see where you vote before this day is over.

Mr Nixon: You are prepared to do anything.

Mr. Foulds: To the point of order, Mr. Chairman, I’d like to point out the only thing consistent about the Liberal Party is its inconsistency.

An hon. member: Is that the best you can do?

Mr. Nixon: This is a great time for your contribution. Do you support the statement by your colleague that the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture is stupid? Are you going to put your signature to that too?

Mr. Chairman: Order.

Mr. Foulds: The comments that he made on that --

Mr. Nixon: It came from one of your major spokesmen.

Mr. Foulds: It was a comparative statement.

Mr. Nixon: If you are not going to deal with the issues in the bill you are going to have to be prepared to defend yourself a little more effectively.

Mr. Deans: Point of privilege, if I may. My good friend from Brant-Oxford-Norfolk seems to think I said the president of the federation of agriculture was stupid. I didn’t. What I said was that if he made the statements attributed to him by the spokesman for the Liberal Party from Huron-Middlesex, they were both stupid.

Mr. Chairman: Order. The member for Kitchener-Wilmot has an amendment to the amendment.

Mr. Sweeney moves that in

section 3(2) as amended, in the first line, the word “may” be deleted and substituted with the word “shall.”

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, in both subsections 2 and 3, the intent as I understand it is that the agricultural workers in the one case and the teachers in second case clearly are going to be covered by subsequent legislation or subsequent regulations. I am concerned that the word “may” is a little bit too loose and the word “shall” is certainly the intent, as I understand it. So why not use the word which more precisely describes the intent?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: If it will save time, it is quite agreeable to me to have the word “may” substituted with the word “shall” in my original amendment.

Mr. Mackenzie: Mr. Speaker, speaking in favour of the amendment we have moved to

section 3(2), I want the member for Huron-Middlesex to understand I acknowledge his expertise in both falling hay and manure pits.

Mr. O’Neil: What a thing to say.

Mr. Mackenzie: I also want to make it clear I think one of the unfortunate things about the debate over coverage of agricultural workers has been what I consider some of the dishonest statements that have gone around this province during the course of the past few months.

No one I know of in this party, and I suspect no one in the House, really thought the intent of the coverage of agricultural workers was to somehow or other -- as I saw in one release -- cause problems for a farmer who wanted to add a $6,000 extension to his pig pen or something else. It just didn’t make sense; it wasn’t the intent. Nor, in my opinion, was it the intent to interfere with the family farm operation.

I don’t know how the member can heap abuse on some of the regulations he was reading and then tell us that what protection we’re going to give farm workers should be done by regulation. That doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Mr. Foulds: And his colleagues make those regulations mandatory in this amendment.

Mr. Mackenzie: Maybe I’m still too naive, but I’m a little bit disturbed by the comments I heard from the member for Kent-Elgin (Mr. McGuigan).

I think he speaks with sincerity about his own knowledge in his own area, and certainly he’s got expertise I don’t have in terms of the farm community, but considering most of us have worked a good deal of our life, as he has, and especially if you have gone through, even peripherally, any of the organizing battles or battles for protection my colleague mentioned at Elliot Lake or the steel mills or back in the General Motors days when they were trying to organize here in Ontario, to use the argument that workers really don’t need the coverage because we love our workers is almost sickening.

What he is doing and what he is saying is we can’t give them the coverage because they would misuse it, they would make frivolous use of this kind of privilege.

Mr. O’Neil: He didn’t say that at all.

Mr. Mackenzie: And sure as blazes, you are putting down farm workers as far as I’m concerned. If he’s worried about some kind of an industrial safety inspector interfering or telling a farmer what he’s got to do on his farm, it makes sense to me, too, that you wouldn’t want that. I have already passed on a note to him, although at the time I did it lightly and I’ll do it a little more seriously now, that what in blazes would be wrong, in the course of setting up the inspection machinery that’s needed, to appoint two or three people who maybe worked as ag reps or have some background, as the inspectors.

There is nothing at all wrong in at least giving the group knowledge, understanding and ability to work.

Mr. Martel: By regulation.

Mr. Mackenzie: By regulation; but connected with the farm community, I understand all of that. My problem, and I guess it is because I am a non-farmer, is I have difficulty understanding how you separate people as people and workers as workers, whether they’re in a farm operation, a store, a bank, or an industry factory. I really do have difficulty in separating them as workers.

My clear concern is why do we have to exclude the workers per se? We can get more specific than that. We can talk about some of the commercial farms, and there’s a growing number of them. We can talk about set periods of the year when you may have 20 or 30 or 40 employees in. Are they not entitled to this kind of protection, whether it be in orchards or tobacco farms; or you name it? Why should the workers who are involved in large numbers as workers, as employees in these operations, not have the same coverage as somebody else should have?

The intent is to get to these people who are working as employees, not to get to the family farm or some of the stupid and ridiculous arguments that have made about how we’re going to interfere with an addition to a barn or something. That’s so much bloody hogwash it almost makes you want to puke. When are we going to get back to coverage for workers?

Mr. Kerrio: Some kind of style you have.

Mr. Mackenzie: Let’s get back to coverage of workers rather than some of these phoney arguments, because that’s what they are. You’re confusing a very serious issue in terms of employees with a lot of phoney arguments; it’s time we got away from that and got back to the coverage of working people. When you tell me they’ve got to go in at six o’clock and put in long days, surely you’re not telling me they’re not working people. I think they are.

If you want to go the regulation route, exclude some of the things that are strictly the responsibility of the individual farmer or the small operator, do it that way; but don’t automatically exclude all the thousands of people who are involved. There have been sizeable numbers of deaths and injuries over the last two years in the agricultural community of Ontario.

I’d like a little more clarification on the point raised by the member for Erie. I don’t have expertise in this area, but I understand there are some operations and he mentioned one that should definitely be covered. I would like to have an answer on this. For example, the tobacco curing operations or some of the poultry plants; are these covered as factories or as plants, or are they under agriculture? What kind of coverage do we have in areas like the one that was mentioned? I’m not sure that you responded to that question from the member for Erie.

Mr. Riddell: I’d like to speak to the point of privilege because --

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Are you raising a point of privilege?

[10:45]

Mr. Riddell: Yes, I’m on a point of privilege. The implication was that I was stupid inasmuch as I was using some stupid examples. I’m not going to refute for one minute the fact that one does tend to lose his sanity in this Legislature after having to listen to some of the claptrap to which we have been listening.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Will you speak to your point of privilege?

Mr. Riddell: I do take offence, Mr. Chairman, to the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture being called “stupid.” I would simply like to draw the attention of the people who made those statements to an

article in Farm and Country, dated March 28, entitled Safety Bill Sparks Revolt. I just want to read the first paragraph:

“‘If new occupational health and safety legislation is passed, there would be a riot in the countryside,’ says Ontario Federation of Agriculture president Peter Hannam.” Then he went on and used the very three examples I used this morning.

Mr. Bounsall: You fed them to him.

Mr. Riddell: So I would think you would endorse your statement --

Mr. Kerrio: Asphalt farmers.

Mr. Riddell: -- that the president was “stupid.”

Mr. Kerrio: Asphalt farmers; what do they know about it?

Mr. Deputy Chairman: The member for Kent-Elgin.

Mr. Deans: No, I’m afraid I have to rise.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order. Are you rising to speak, or is this a point of privilege?

Mr. Deans: On a point of privilege: Let me be perfectly clear so no one misunderstands. I consider the arguments that have been made by the member for Huron-Middlesex today to be quite ridiculous, He attempted to say, and now is saying quite clearly, that he was quoting the president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture. I still consider the arguments to be ridiculous.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: May I ask you what point of privilege are you raising?

Mr. Martel: What was his point of privilege?

Mr. Deans: I am answering my colleague who raised a point I raised earlier. All I am saying is this, if the federation of agriculture president believes those arguments are valid, then what I said about him and his colleague is true.

Mr. McGuigan: I would like to reply to the message from the member for Hamilton East. I don’t think there is anyone on this side of the House saying we would resist an agricultural labour safety act. We would not. We would, no doubt, have something to say about the provisions of it, but we would certainly not resist

an act to cover agricultural people.

I think some of the arguments that have been made verify our point. The member talks about cancer in the mines, and we think it was deplorable that those people did not have protection. I would like to know what cancer situation we have in agriculture? We look at the chemicals which are used in agriculture and the very severe tests they are put to; the fact we have lost a number of very useful chemicals, the prime example, of course, being DDT. Under the federal Food and Drug Act these items are screened for their carcinogenic effect. They take a level, one-tenth of which produces some effects in animals.

They then multiply that by 10 again to get a figure of one one-hundredth of the figure that has even the least effect upon test animals.

As far as I know, and I think I am reasonably accurate in this, there has not been a recorded case in Ontario of a farm worker or farmer being injured or killed by the use of farm chemicals. Certainly it is true they have to have very stringent safety regulations in the factory where these materials are used in their concentrated form and where the workers are exposed to them in long-term situations, but as we use them on the farm we use them in diluted solutions and at very infrequent intervals.

I mentioned earlier in debate one of the new programs of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. We have heard some threats that money will be withdrawn from that. It is the pest monitoring program whereby we only use chemical to combat an immediate threat, we no longer use the chemicals on a preventive basis.

Years ago, when we had poor materials and they were cheap, we used them on a preventive basis on the chance the pests might be there. Today when we use them in agriculture they are directed at a known target. I would like to see the members come up with examples of where people are being endangered in agriculture through the use of pesticides. It just illustrates the point that we are trying to make, that when you talk about the mine you simply don’t know what you are talking about when you are referring that experience to agriculture.

Mr. Van Horne: They won’t listen now, they are busy talking.

Mr. McGuigan: I know they are not going to listen, but their arguments illustrate our point. Quite naturally and as humanitarians, you are interested in the miners. We take our hats off to you, you have done great work. I think your party and your former leader will be known for great accomplishments in the matter of mine safety and the health of workers, particularly in the matter of respiratory-type diseases. But I tell you this situation doesn’t exist in agriculture, or if it exists it is well protected under the Food and Drug Act and under the Pesticides Act. I certainly want to dissociate myself from some of the remarks that have been made by the member for Hamilton East.

Mr. Kerrio: I hope he is a better fireman than a farmer.

Mr. Laughren: Because of this bill there is an expression going around the trade union movement these days. It’s in the form of a question. It asks: “What happens when you cross the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association with the new minister?” The answer is: “What you get is Bill 10 with these amendments.”

That’s what’s happening. We should make no mistake as to whose bill and whose amendments these are. This is a government bill with government amendments. The fact that the minister took legislation that was amended by committee and decided with his cabinet colleagues that in their collective, infinite wisdom it was not acceptable for the people of Ontario, despite the democratic decision of that committee speaks volumes to the arrogance of that cabinet.

From time to time in this chamber there comes before the members legislation which lays out in very stark terms the reality of the class system in Ontario. We need look no further than occupational health and safety legislation for an example. We have seen this for many years. The legislation that’s still in the province of Ontario in 1978 referring to servants is further evidence of that.

There are those who would refuse to admit this. They object to references, even, to the fact that there is a working class in Ontario in 1978. The people who object to that are people who either are in the upper class or aspire to be. Those are the people who object to the realization or the acceptance of a working class in the province of Ontario.

Surely it makes no difference whether a worker is in an unsafe condition in a mine, on a construction site or on a farm. There are administrative problems, and for that reason you decide to exclude farm workers. That’s simply, fundamentally and profoundly wrong. What I find particularly offensive about it is that you have excluded the group of people who are least able to mount an offensive against your act.

If there is any group of people in our society who are least able to organize, it’s the farm workers of this province. You have very carefully selected the people you could isolate, haven’t you. You would not do this to an organized group of workers in Ontario. You have decided that even among the working class there are levels; there are levels which you can isolate even among the working class, and that says something about your position as well.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: You know that is a lot of bunk.

Mr. Martel: He’s a country farmer himself.

Mr. Laughren: I do not like to personalize debates, but I want to tell you, despite what --

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Watch it now; I might have to respond.

Mr. Laughren: -- you may think, I spent all my life on a farm until I left home. My father was a farm labourer almost all his working life, and I personally have seen some of the circumstances which require this kind of bill applying to farm workers and to farms. So I know a little bit whereof I speak. As a matter of fact, the reason I am a democratic socialist today is because of the way farm labourers are treated, and the way I saw my father treated. That is why I am a democratic socialist and I am proud of it.

The problems farmers face are different, as my colleague in the Liberal Party said; but so are the problems that farm workers face. You can’t have it both ways; if the problems that the farmers have are unique, so are the problems the farm workers have; that is no reason to exclude them from coverage.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Times have changed since you were a boy.

Mr. Laughren: I find it reprehensible and offensive that you have decided to isolate this group of workers. You knew they were easy pickings; that is why you did it.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: That’s nonsense.

Mr. Laughren: That is what I find so offensive. It is very clear too that you knew, despite what happened in the standing committee, you could count on others in this chamber to support these offensive amendments.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: You want air conditioning in the barns.

Mr. Laughren: That, too, is further evidence you realize that when it is to your advantage you can exploit the fact there is a class system in Ontario and isolate those people. It has been a very clear decision on your part.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: I feel sorry for you.

Mr. Villeneuve: You don’t understand farming; all phases of farming.

Mr. Laughren: I understand very well the problems of the farmers; and I understand the problems of the farm workers, despite what you might think.

Mr. Villeneuve: No, you don’t understand all phases of farming.

Mr. Laughren: I don’t expect I am going to convince you --

Mr. Villeneuve: You better live amongst them; don’t try to sell your ideas to them.

Mr. Laughren: This bill is designed to exclude people who need coverage, it is as simple as that; yet you tell me that the problems farmers would face in administering the act are sufficient reason to exclude farm workers.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: They don’t want any more legislation than this.

Mr. Laughren: Make no mistake about it, you have clearly picked your target and you have done it very cleverly.

Mr. Riddell: You are the one who is making the class distinction. Farmers are farmers are farmers, it doesn’t matter whether it is farmer or a farm worker.

Mr. Laughren: Yes, I certainly am.

Mr. M. Davidson: There is quite a difference.

Mr. Laughren: There is a big difference between a farmer and a farm labourer. I happen to know.

Mr. Riddell: We consider our employees to be farmers the same as the owners.

Mr. Foulds: And you give them a share of the farm, do you?

Mr. Riddell: You are the one making the class distinction.

Mr. Foulds: You give them a share of the land, do you, when the farm owner passes on?

Mr. Riddell: They sure get a share of the profits.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Roy: You want to nationalize farm land now?

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Could I ask the honourable members to give their attention to the member for Nickel Belt?

Mr. Foulds: We’re for developing cooperatives, Albert.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Mr. Chairman, he is sowing the seeds of dissent.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Would the member for Nickel Belt please continue uninterrupted?

Mr. Laughren: I would love to, Mr. Chairman. I am trying not to be provocative.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: He is trying to find mythical classes.

Mr. Laughren: But I must say when we are dealing with a bill like this it is very difficult, because your intentions are so clear. Other groups in our society don’t have to fight for fundamental rights the way farm labourers have to.

Mr. Eaton: No farm labourer has to do a job that the farmer himself doesn’t do.

Mr. Villeneuve: That’s right.

Mr. Riddell: That’s right; I have to agree with you.

Mr. Laughren: If that is the case, why are you excluding them? What you are telling me is that farmers do unsafe work? Is that what you are telling me?

Mr. Eaton: Not at all.

Mr. Laughren: Because they do it the farm labourers should do it? That’s a pretty specious argument.

Mr. J. A. Taylor: They don’t want a band of bureaucrats breathing down their neck though.

Mr. Laughren: That’s a pretty sad argument. People should not work in unsafe conditions --

Mr. J. A. Taylor: Shouldn’t work according to you.

Mr. Laughren: -- and yet you have decided that a group of people will not have protection under this act; that is what you have decided.

Mr. Martel: You’ve never worked a day in your life, Taylor. You have been at the public trough all your life.

Mr. Laughren: Presumably this bill --

Mr. Villeneuve: Half of the country is unemployed and --

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order. I would ask the honourable members to please desist from interjecting, we have a lot of amendments to deal with today. And would the member for Nickel Belt please continue and address the chair?

[11:00]

Mr. Laughren: Mr. Chairman, I shall try. Presumably the government believes that this bill will do the job as they wish to amend it.

If that’s the case, one has to ask why they have selected these groups in our society to be excluded from coverage. Presumably, it works for other groups. I haven’t heard any good arguments as to why it should not include farm workers. I have heard no good arguments whatsoever. I have heard arguments raised that are somewhat fanciful but I haven’t heard any substantive arguments as to why farm labourers should not be included. The point my colleague from Sudbury East made is one we should keep in mind, namely that in the long run the best interests of everyone will be served if everyone is covered.

That’s the point we have trouble getting through. It’s like in the construction or the mining industries. In the long run, not only will the conditions be better in the mines or on construction jobs and so forth, but the miners, the employers themselves, will be better off in the long run. We will not have high workmen’s compensation assessments against employers when they clean up their act and make it a safe place to work. The farmers should understand that too. It’s in their best long-run interests. It makes them more safety conscious.

What we are trying to do is establish a co-operative effort in the province to make working conditions safer. That’s what we are trying to do. This is a co-operative effort between workers and their employers and that’s why you are so fundamentally wrong to exclude any group of workers. You don’t seem to understand, or you do understand, in fact, that one group of workers can be excluded. I find it most offensive and I am surprised the minister would succumb to the lobbies that have been on his doorstep since this bill was reported from committee.

Mr. Sterling: Mr. Chairman, I felt a need to speak on this particular amendment because I think it’s extremely important. In terms of what actually went on last February in the committee which I sat on, and in terms of what is now being done in terms of this amendment, when we go back in history to what did happen in the committee, we found the Liberals put an amendment before the committee to include all work places.

Prior to the vote being taken on that particular amendment, it was pointed out to the Liberals the intention of the Labour ministry, and the thrust of the approach the Labour minister was taking at that particular time was to include basically the industrial and the mining sectors within the statute or the embodied part of the bill. It was the intention to include other groups by regulation thereafter.

That was the thrust of our approach. I felt on that particular vote we were really determining the approach to the piece of legislation we were dealing with.

It was also explained in terms of how the bill was structured at that time that we were dealing in defining different situations in terms of work places. We were not dealing with particular professions. That amendment proposed by the Liberals was supported by the other opposition party, the NDP, and that all work places were to be included within the purview of the bill.

Next, we had an amendment placed by the Liberals to exclude all agriculturalists. As I said, again the argument was placed to the Liberal members of the committee that the bill was in fact structured on terms of work place. It wasn’t structured on terms of professions. No one really knew what agriculturalists meant. There was no definition within the bill of what it included, or what it did not include. It really had no meaning at all and it was impossible to support. That’s why that particular amendment was not supported by the members on this side of the Legislature who were sitting on the committee.

Mr. Eaton: It was hastily put together and poorly thought out.

Mr. Sterling: Now we have an argument being placed by the Liberal caucus in support of this amendment, that we want to take a different approach, that we want to include everybody and exclude one particular body or profession. They want to take credit on both ends of the scale, which is pretty difficult to do.

Mr. Bradley: You are telling stories over there.

Mr. Sterling: I submit that the argument which they supported in the committee was an approach to how we were going to deal with the whole situation.

Mr. Bradley: That’s the gospel according to the member for Middlesex.

Mr. Sterling: They voted to include all work places. Quite frankly, I would have thought, having come to this particular stage of the bill, that they would have supported what the New Democratic Party has proposed; that is, to take the agricultural people out by regulation. They can’t have it both ways.

Mr. Eaton: They try.

Mr. Sterling: They are arguing that this special group is different from everybody else in this province.

Mr. Kerrio: They’d better be different or we wouldn’t eat.

Mr. Sterling: In the committee, I supported the then Minister of Labour in her approach at that time, in that what we should have done was to name specific industries and manufacturing plants, and to work forward from there. I just cannot follow the argument -- and I agree with our NDP colleagues --

Mr. Bradley: You agree with the NDP?

Mr. Sterling: -- as to how the Liberals can support this amendment at this time. It may sound absolutely ludicrous for a member on this side of the House to say that. But the Liberals’ arguments are specious at this point in time, in view of what they did in the committee.

Mr. McKessock: Mr. Chairman, as an employer of farm people also, I would like to point out that farmers are a little different from other employers in that the wide majority of them only hire one or two people. In my own case, which is typical, I don’t want anything to happen to those workers for the main reason that there is no one to replace them. This makes us different from a factory or a mine where, if a worker were injured, someone would step right in and take his place.

On the farm, where you might only have one or two employees, you are really up against it; so you go to special lengths to see that these workers are well protected and in no way in danger of being hurt and off the job. For this reason, I feel that farmers are different from employers in other industries.

Mr. Eaton: Mr. Chairman, I would like to speak briefly to this, because I know a few things were said when I wasn’t in the House which were accusations about what I did on committee and so on.

I think the thing to be realized here is that farm people really don’t want to be excluded. The positions of the farm organizations have been put forth to be involved. They met with the Minister of Labour a number of times previously; they had worked out arrangements that would bring about regulations which would bring in the farm community. That was all agreed upon, it was part of the legislation that was put forth by the previous minister, and it was done in a good spirit of co-operation with the agricultural community.

It was only the mucking up of the amendments by the Liberal Party that left the bill in the position it was left in. You will recall the amendments that were brought in, Mr. Chairman, and in the great flap they got into they even had to adjourn the committee for a couple of minutes to try to figure out what they were going to do in the situation.

Mr. Roy: For a couple of minutes? Who are you criticizing now?

Mr. Eaton: I’ll tell you right now that --

Mr. Cunningham: Tell us right now.

Mr. Eaton: -- I support this amendment. I’ve always supported it. I supported the position that the federation took in the meetings that they had with the minister.

Mr. Bradley: You are not too happy with it.

Mr. Eaton: It is a constructive approach to it and it will proceed under this method. Farm workers and farm people themselves will be included under the legislation eventually and included properly. I think we should all support it. You people are going to support it because the positive position has been put forth again that we had originally.

Mr. Riddell: I’m glad you’re with us now.

Mr. Eaton: We were with the bill all along, the way it was proposed.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Eaton: It was you people that screwed it up and you know it.

Mr. Roy: Oh, that is unparliamentary.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Order.

Mr. Eaton: You just tried to wriggle your way out of it as you do with every other issue that you flip-flop on.

I support this amendment. We’ll see farm labour included and we’ll see farmers included eventually because that’s what they want.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Does the minister wish to respond?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I have just a couple of comments. The member for Erie asked me a couple of things about golf courses. I’d like to assure him that a golf course for the purpose of occupational health and safety is not a farm.

The member for Hamilton East made a special inquiry about tobacco curing. I think it’s very difficult at this time to give an exact answer. The usual understanding is that farming operations stop at the farm gate, and when processing starts, the nature of the operation changes. My best judgement would be that a curing operation would be a farming operation, but others might differ from that. I think that’s a matter that has to be settled by determination.

I do just once again want to make it clear that this act does not say farming operations shall be excluded. It simply indicated that they will be regulated in according to areas of hazard. That’s what everyone is really trying to say, once the rhetoric has gone, with due respect.

I do quite frankly take some exception to the views of the member for Nickel Belt regarding a class structure in this society and its relationship to this bill. I do not share that view and I’m certain that I speak for this government when I make that statement, and I want to make that very strongly and very sincerely. I ask that the Legislature support the amendments as I’ve introduced them.

Mr. Martel: I want to ask the minister if he could indicate to us how many people were killed in the farm industry last year? Do you have that material?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I am advised that during the year 1977 there were seven fatalities, but I’m unable to give the member the exact reason for the fatalities. While I’m on my feet I might just also indicate to all members that we already have in mind certain areas within the farming operations which will receive priority in our consideration, for example, the safety of equipment, protective clothing, toxic substances, respiratory disease, gassing accidents, such as in the silos, occupational animal diseases and probably noise as it relates to machinery.

Those are areas that we’ll have to take a look at in the right priority. There is an intention to deal with areas of hazard, as all members have said.

Mr. Riddell: Just further to the question asked by the member for Sudbury East, you said there were seven or eight farm people killed. Could you tell me whether these were owners or employees?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I don’t know. All I do know is they were people covered by the Workmen’s Compensation Act.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: Mr. Elgie has moved that

section 3(2) shall read: “Except as may be prescribed and subject to the conditions and limitations prescribed, this act or part thereof does not apply to the farming operations.”

Mr. Bounsall has moved an amendment to the amendment that that

section be deleted. Mr. Sweeney has moved that

section 3(2) be amended by deleting the word “may” in the first line and substituting the word “shall” therefor.

We will first take Mr. Sweeney’s amendment to the amendment which is substituting the word “shall” for “may.”

Motion agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Chairman: All those in favour of Mr. Bounsall’s amendment to the amendment will please say “aye.”

All those opposed will please say “nay.”

In my opinion the nays have it.

Amendment stacked.

[11: 15]

Mr. Deputy Chairman: On

section 3, subsection 3, Mr. Minister, I propose there is (a), (

b) and (

c) and because of the indication from the members, I think we should take (a), (b), and (

c) separately.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, with respect to

section 3(3) dealing with the teaching profession in various categories, I would like first of all to be very clear, because I have heard some statements and I have received some letters about this matter. This government, and I suspect the whole Legislature has no desire, on our own momentum, to exclude anyone in the teaching profession from this legislation.

I would, however, like to make it very clear to members why this

section was put in. It was put in very recently, to be quite frank with you. I would like, first of all, to read a letter addressed to me by the Ontario Teachers’ Federation quoting from the third paragraph and dated November 28:

“Would you be good enough to give consideration to exempting teachers from the terms of this bill on the understanding that the federation is prepared to pursue with the appropriate bodies, within an appropriate period of time, the necessity of a regulation for teachers?” Verbally, they indicated some time up to two years.

I might also say Mr. Bounsall was good enough to give me a copy of a letter addressed to him from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation which indeed says the same thing. It is a letter dated December 13:

“It would be most necessary and desirable, then, that a co-operative effort by the parties concerned should be made in the near future, and the results written into the appropriate legislation. Towards this end, the provincial executive of OSSTF recently accepted the position that teachers be exempted from the terms of Bill 70 for a definite term of two years pending development of suitable, relevant amendments and regulations. At the end of that term, however, and in the absence of alternative legislation, all teachers fall under this act.”

I would also like to introduce some comments from a letter addressed to me and dated December 12, from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and again reading from the fourth paragraph:

“Assuming no further amendments making special provisions for universities are contemplated in this act before it comes into force, OCUFA requests that university professors be exempted for a period of one year. Such an exemption would enable us to study the legislation and its impacts, consult with your ministry on provisions necessary to cover the unique circumstances of our members, and ensure that the legislation will work in the best interests of university professors.”

I would like simply to assure the Legislature that the reasons for excluding those three groups in the teaching profession is based solely in response to these letters. In the case of those teachers coming within the community college domain, it is simply a reflection of our feeling that there should be a standardization and a consensus of a view applying to all people in the teaching profession. There is no other reason than that.

Mr. Cassidy: You are defending Bette Stephenson’s case, that’s what is happening. She tried to take the teachers out.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, I rather resent that.

Mr. Foulds: I don’t blame you.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: These are letters addressed to me by those organizations.

Mr. Conway: And Bette can defend herself.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I don’t think the Honourable Bette Stephenson needs any help in defending herself. Perhaps the member would care to take that matter up with her in the halls, with the member for Fort William (Mr. Hennessy) supervising the battle.

Mr. Conway: She doesn’t even need elbow pads.

Mr. Breaugh: Why are you expressing such reluctance?

Hon. Mr. Elgie: I would also endeavour to undertake to meet with all those groups and try to establish this consensus and I have so indicated to them. If that is not possible, and it is clear that we will have to reassess the situation, I am prepared to commit myself that within the two-year period we will reassess the situation and try to deal with it in an appropriate manner.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, I believe a motion has been forwarded to your desk.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Sweeney moves that in

section 3(3)(

a) the word “may” in the first line be deleted and “shall” substituted therefor.

Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Chairman, in addition to that, the reason we are supporting leaving in 3(3)(

a) and 3(3)(

c) is as the minister has just described. We also have been approached by representatives of both the teaching profession and the university professors and, in our judgement, when these two groups of people have specifically asked that they be excluded at the present so that they may consult with the minister and their own Ministry of Education or Ministry of Colleges and Universities to draft more precise legislation or regulations, then we believe that request should be honoured.

Our critic will speak more specifically to 3(3)(b). I would just make two observations. In both these cases, the teachers of this province and the university professors of this province have been somewhat concerned by others suggesting to them that they want to be left out because they do not identify themselves with workers in this province. As one who has worked very closely with both these groups, I can most certainly say they do identify themselves with the workers of this province.

Anyone who has seriously, or for any length of time, engaged in either one of those professions would know that at the end of the day, they have done a day’s work. They most certainly are workers and they have not asked to be excluded in this particular way at this particular time because they see themselves above the other “workers” of this province. That’s one point which needs to be said and said clearly on their behalf.

One of the main reasons why both these groups have asked to be excluded from the legislation as it is presently written is because they recognize a very strong responsibility to their students. They recognize that it would not be appropriate for them to be brought under the legislation as it is presently drafted because it would allow them, in a sense, to walk off the job and leave their students unattended. They recognize that would be a very irresponsible way to act and they have no intention of acting in that way.

That is why they have very specifically said, and that is why we have put the word “shall” in here, that there will be legislation and/or regulations drafted which will cover their specific concerns but will also recognize that they do occupy an unusual niche in that they have the responsibility of a student body. They’re not working with inanimate machines or inanimate material They are working with other human beings for whom they have a strong sense of responsibility, and given the fact that they recognize that, we recognize that, and they have specifically requested that this be done, this party will support that position.

Mr. Foulds: I have a modest amendment to put.

Mr. Chairman: Would the member send it?

Mr. Foulds: Just as soon as I have it written out, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman: Mr. Foulds moves that the words “for a period of no longer than two years” be inserted in

section 3(3) after the word “apply” and before the word “to” so that the clause would read, “Except as shall be prescribed and subject to the conditions and limitations prescribed, this act or part thereof does not apply for a period of no longer than two years, to ... ” and following.

Mr. Foulds: I hope that meets some of the conditions the minister has indicated. If he has a better wording to meet the condition, I’d be glad to hear it.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, in response to that, I would have some objection to putting that in the act since in the correspondence it is indicated that some of the parties may wish it to be brought in under legislation. That’s the only difficulty I would have with it.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, if that is the major objection, could I suggest to the minister that if there were a new bill describing this sort of amendment, say, to the Education Act or any of the acts that govern teachers or university teachers, a simple deletion in this act at the same time would be entirely possible and could meet that objection?

Mr. Breaugh: No problem there, Bob.

Ms. Gigantes: Right as rain.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, once again the only problem I have is that these are groups that have asked to have some control over their own destiny, so to speak, in this area of occupational health and safety and they are the people involved in it. I would hesitate to commit myself in legislation to a time limit, although I have given the House my assurance that I shall endeavour to have the matter straightened up within two years.

Mr. Cassidy: Surely there is a time limit or there isn’t.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: Mr. Chairman, those are my views on it.

Mr. Chairman: I will place the amendment first.

Mr. Foulds moves that in

section 3 the words “for a period of no longer than two years” after the word “apply” and before the word “to” be added.

Mr. Foulds: Mr. Chairman, I just want to speak briefly on my amendment because I consider it frankly a fall-back position. I want to say this as cautiously but as clearly as I can: I think the teachers are making a mistake, I think that the university professors are making a mistake and I think it is a mistake to exclude teachers at community colleges. Basically, I think the minister actually agrees with me, but because of the --

Mr. Breaugh: Wishy-washy nature of his personality?

Mr. Foulds: -- position put to him by the organizations he has acceded to their wishes.

If I might say so, I think the teachers’ organizations have moved far too cautiously on this matter. After all, the bill has been in the public domain for a considerable period of time. Those organizations do have legislative observers. Obviously that should have been brought to the attention of the membership of those organizations when the legislation was under debate as a result of Bill 139. I don’t think from my own experience as a teacher in a secondary high school there are going to be any impediments put upon teachers in the performance of their duties if they are brought under this act.

I might point out the classroom is not, as is usually thought, a safe, sterile laboratory. There are occupational hazards. The obvious areas are gymnasia and shop classrooms, where the dangers to teachers and to students -- in terms of equipment, electrical, machine shop, sheet metal work -- are as real as they are on the job, it would seem to me.

I know that by and large the teachers of the province engaged in shop teaching have had a commendable record in safety. I have often thought there should be a study done of the danger to the academic classroom teacher from chalk dust. I certainly know it has a detrimental effect on one’s clothing.

Mr. Riddell: Now, that is a specious example.

Mr. Foulds: No, it isn’t, because I myself happen to suffer from sinusitis to a very large extent. I know at the end of a school day, if I have had a lot of blackboard work, I find it extremely difficult to breathe. I assume it has no permanent effects on my health but I’m not certain of that and I would doubt if very few teachers have that.

Interjections.

Mr. Chairman: Order, order.

Mr. Foulds: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling the House to order.

I think it is with only one point the previous speaker made I would like to agree. That is, I don’t think there would be any teacher in this province who would walk off a job leaving the students behind in a condition that he considered unsafe. I don’t think this bill imposes that on them at all. If I may say so, the way he put that argument was a fallacious way.

[11:30]

In circumstances, for example, when there is a fire or when there is real danger in a classroom, say, a chemical laboratory because of some spillage of chemicals, I think the first thing the teacher would do -- and in fact it would be mandatory for him to do under the duties imposed upon him in the Education Act -- is remove the students from that danger. That doesn’t mean he has to stay with the ship as it goes down as soon as they’re out. Presumably, he or she would go with them.

Very succinctly, I think I might say I believe the teachers are wrong in wanting exemption from this act. There is no reason in the world why, if they were included for the special circumstances they are concerned about, they could not work co-operatively with the ministry under the regulations to define more clearly their duties and responsibilities and any special circumstances that may arise. I think they are wrong because we all know in this House how difficult it is to get legislation in and through.

The experience we are now facing with Bill 70 today is a good example. I suspect it may be a considerably longer period than two years with the best will in the world before we will have special legislation governing those in the teaching profession, just as it will be much longer than that, I am convinced, before we will have special legislation governing farm workers.

I suppose what I want to say is that our view is that by including the exclusions the government party and the Liberal Party are approaching the problem the wrong way around. Our view is prove to us that it is safe and, if it is a safe work place, then the act need not apply. There will be no complaints and action under the act. It’s as simple as that.

If the teachers are convinced that their work place is safe and they don’t need coverage, by covering them they’re no further behind. I think they have made a grave tactical error and I say that with very deep sincerity.

Mr. Sweeney: I have just one question. I understand that as part of the so-called agreement or the point of understanding between the teachers and the ministry that the two-year time span was a maximum. I also understand that it was clearly understood between the teachers and the Ministry of Education that a group would be set up within the next two or three months to begin planning the necessary legislative changes or changes to the regulations.

Can the minister confirm that and can he support that position? That is my understanding.

Hon. Mr. Elgie: In response to the member for Kitchener-Wilmot, the letter from the Ontario Teachers’ Federation would confirm what he has just said. It says it is prepared to pursue with the appropriate bodies within an appropriate period of time the necess