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January 25, 1989

34th Parliament, 1st Session

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Hansard Transcripts

L135 - Wed 25 Jan 1989 / Mer 25 jan 1989

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

ROBERT BURNS DAY

WASTE MANAGEMENT

YANGTZE RIVER CANOE PROJECT

MICHAEL SMITH

MUNICIPAL FUNDING

DRIVER EXAMINATIONS

GEORGE KNUDSON

VISITORS

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

ACID RAIN

RESPONSES

ACID RAIN

ORAL QUESTIONS

NURSING SERVICES

PLANT CLOSURES

HEALTH SERVICES

NURSING SERVICES

POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS

USE OF LOT LEVIES

PROPOSED ARENA

WASTE MANAGEMENT

SALE OF CIGARETTES TO MINORS

PARENTAL LEAVE

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

YOUNG OFFENDERS

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

HOSPITAL SERVICES

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS / COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RÈGLEMENTS ET DES PROJETS DE LOI D’INTÉRÊT PRIVÉ

MOTION

ESTIMATES

ORDERS OF THE DAY

TIME ALLOCATION (CONTINUED)

The House met at 1:30 p.m.

Prayers.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

ROBERT BURNS DAY

Mr. McLean: It has been 230 years since the birth of Scotland’s greatest poet, Rabbie Burns. He was a poet of the middle class against the privileged minorities, a reformer and a genius. His views and teachings were common sense, joyful and irresistible. There have seldom been more weighty documents in the history of freedom than the songs of Rabbie Burns. His satire still stands strong. Like musical arrows, his words sing through the air. Even people who care nothing for literature and poetry care for Burns.

He was the poet of the poor, anxious, cheerful, working humanity. He made the language of the Lowland Scots people famous. He took the speech of the market and street and clothed it in melody. The memory of Burns for many of us carries snatches of his songs and we can say them by heart. What is strangest of all, we never learned them from a book but rather from mouth to mouth.

When they come to reckon just a few of the great men Scotland has provided to build the proud history of the land we live in now, the world can see we Scots have given Canada the fundamentals of its exploration, its regiments, its trade, its railways and its automobiles, as well as providing some of the finest preachers, actors, poets and artists.

When to all that is added Canada’s outstanding gallery of Scots-blooded statesmen, politicians and rebels too, it is clear how truly Sir William Osler spoke when he said: “The Scots are the backbone of Canada. They are all right in their three vital parts -- head, heart and haggis.”

We join the hundreds of thousands of Ontarians of Scottish descent in celebrating the birth of Rabbie Burns.

Mr. McGuigan: January 25 is a day that Scottish people particularly revere. That reverence is shared by people of many tongues and faiths through the words of a great poet, the words of a people who suffered the retribution of an unyielding and impossible soil, a people who lived in the shadow of the world power of the day. If Scotland has a national day it is January 25. On this day Scots flock to eat haggis, to hear their own tongue spoken, to drink a dram of barley whisky and to honour their country’s greatest son.

Scotland has no national anthem. The nearest is Burns’s Scots Wha Hae. He was a reformer, a champion of the underrepresented. He dared to challenge the authority of the nobility, the kirk and of custom. He declared his views of human rights in the poem A Man’s a Man for A’ That. Today, on the anniversary of his birth, he will be remembered “till a’ the seas gang dry...and the rocks melt wi’ the sun.”

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Mr. Hampton: I regret that I cannot speak on Rabbie Burns, though I might like to. What I do want to bring to the attention of the House is the fact that we in northern Ontario do not want southern Ontario’s garbage; that any proposal to place southern Ontario’s garbage in northern Ontario is a completely inappropriate way to address our problems of waste, recycling and conservation.

To put this in a slightly historical perspective, it was only about 10 years ago that the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. said it wanted to store nuclear waste in Atikokan, not realizing that right next door to the town of Atikokan is Quetico Park. How do you attract people to one of the world’s richest parks if you are also going to store nuclear waste next door?

This proposal has come and gone. It has been considered across Ontario. Now we have the most recent proposal to ship southern Ontario’s garbage north. It is not something that will help northern Ontario, either in the short run or in the long run. It is not something that will help southern Ontario in terms of an appropriate way to deal with waste, to deal with garbage and to deal with the conservation question.

Please, think again. Think about something more appropriate than simply shipping garbage north.

YANGTZE RIVER CANOE PROJECT

Mr. Runciman: This year marks the 40th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. Canada’s leaders have led the western world in recognition of this country. Already festivities have started in China and they will culminate on October 1 in Beijing.

I wish to draw the members’ attention to a project that, with the ratification of the Chinese State Council, is responsible for ensuring that any currently available film technology can be applied in China. I am referring to the Yangtze River canoe project which was reported on the front page of the November 22 issue of the Globe and Mail.

That project will see a group of international canoeists, spearheaded by former Brockvillian and personal friend Kevin Darroch, travel across China in order, at the request of Chinese officials, to arrive in Beijing on October 1 at the height of their celebrations. I am sure all members will want to join me in wishing the canoe team well in its travels across China.

MICHAEL SMITH

Mr. Miclash: It gives me great pleasure today to speak about a distinguished member of the Kenora community.

Michael Smith, a young man from my constituency, is an all-round athlete who last year represented Canada in the decathlon at the 24th Olympic summer games in Seoul, South Korea. Mike placed 14th overall, with a score of 8,083 points. This is a marvellous achievement, as Mike had been competing in the decathlon event for only three years before qualifying for the Olympics.

Other achievements garnered by Mike have been to be a member of the Canadian Commonwealth Games team in Edinburgh in 1986. In the same year, he placed second at the world championships in Athens, Greece.

As a friend of the Smith family and a teacher at Mike’s former school, I cannot convey how proud the citizens, along with Mike’s family, are of his achievements. Mike is now studying commerce at the University of Toronto and around these studies he continues to fit in a very ambitious workout schedule, training for the francophone games in Morocco and the world student games in Brazil.

I would like to express my delight that northwestern Ontario, and especially Kenora, has received such fame in the person of Mike Smith, a very gifted and committed athlete. Mike is with us here today, seated in the members’ gallery, and I would ask that we give him a warm welcome to Queen’s Park.

MUNICIPAL FUNDING

Mr. Allen: When the government freezes unconditional grants to municipalities at a time of continuing inflation, local finance becomes very difficult. When it follows the below-inflation increase of two per cent, it is not only doubly difficult but unrealistic. When it comes just when local governments are trying to make up for lost ground during leaner years, a zero increase in grants to municipalities becomes a nightmare for local politicians.

In real terms, Hamilton now has lost seven per cent in two years, close to $1 million, yet costs for staff and equipment are going up. Provincially generated costs in programs such as pay equity have to be met solely out of municipal coffers. Hamilton supports pay equity and all worthwhile provincial programs to increase fairness and the wellbeing of its citizens, but its ability to maintain services is severely compromised when it loses that amount of money in real terms over a two-year period.

The issue crops up again in education, for example, where provincial support has fallen to a level of 32 per cent of local costs; in local homemaker services, when the region had to make up for abominably low provincial grants; in costs related to training programs, where the municipality has to pick up day care, transportation costs, etc.

Surely it is time for fair play to the municipalities in terms of their provincial transfer grants and assurances that municipal grants will at least provide inflation-level increases.

DRIVER EXAMINATIONS

Mr. J. M. Johnson: I have a news release that states: “The Minister of Transportation today announced expanded services to selected driver examination centres in Ontario. This service includes Saturday testing.”

If this government is so determined to inflict an open-Sunday policy on this province, why does it not set an example and open some of its own government agencies and offices on Sundays, such as the Ministry of Transportation driver examination centres? I am sure the public would appreciate this service.

Mr. Speaker: The member for Simcoe East for 15 seconds.

GEORGE KNUDSON

Mr. McLean: I just want to pay tribute on behalf of our party to George Knudson, who passed away, and extend to his family sympathy for the great loss that they have suffered.

VISITORS

Mr. Speaker: Just before I go to the next order of business, I would ask all members of the assembly to join with me in recognizing some visitors in the east end of the Speaker’s gallery. They are members from the Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly: Henry Zoe, Don Morin and Brian Lewis. Please join me in welcoming them.

STATEMENT BY THE MINISTRY

ACID RAIN

Hon. Mr. Bradley: On December 17, 1985, this government kept its promise to the people of Ontario to bring our big acid rain polluters under control. That day we announced Countdown Acid Rain.

Countdown Acid Rain required these companies to cut their collective sulphur dioxide emissions by two thirds from the 1980 levels. The companies were required to cut back from 1,993 kilotonnes in 1980 to 665 kilotonnes in 1994. They had to report every six months on the research and planning they were doing to meet the new limits.

Yesterday, Ontario Hydro submitted its plan to reduce acid rain pollution to the legal limits set by Countdown Acid Rain. This event marks an important milestone in the fight to protect our rivers, lakes, fish and timber resources, as well as our health and our historic buildings, from the ravages of acid rain.

Now, all four of the major acid gas emitters in Ontario -- responsible for 80 per cent of the acid rain pollution generated in Ontario -- have told us how they propose to achieve drastic reductions.

Ontario Hydro emitted 396 kilotonnes of sulphur dioxide in 1980. This must be reduced to no more than 175 kilotonnes in 1994. In addition, emissions of nitrogen oxides are to be capped at 40 kilotonnes. The plan submitted by Hydro details the methods it is proposing to meet and maintain the reduced limits.

Ontario Hydro is proposing to spend $2.5 billion between now and the year 2000 to meet or better Countdown Acid Rain’s requirements for acid gas reduction. More than half this amount, $1 .3 billion, is to install scrubbers at coal-fired generating stations.

Hydro plans to begin operating its first two scrubbers at its Lambton coal-fired generating station in 1994. Six more scrubbers are planned by the year 2000 in order to stay below the limits as power demand increases.

In addition, Hydro proposes to employ conservation, energy efficiency improvement, increased use of low-sulphur coal, development of alternative renewable resources and private generation in order to meet its environmental obligations.

Previously, the three metals companies submitted their plans to meet Countdown Acid Rain’s requirements.

Inco, the single largest acid rain pollution source on the continent, has proposed a $494-million plan to meet the law. Its 1980 legal limit was 1,159 kilotonnes of sulphur dioxide. By 1994, Inco can emit no more than 265 kilotonnes. Inco plans to change its milling technology to reject more sulphur from the ore before smelting, as well as installing new oxygen flash smelting furnaces to help capture more sulphur dioxide before it goes up the stack.

Algoma Steel’s Wawa iron ore sintering plant plans to continue to limit production in order to keep emissions within legal requirements. Algoma’s legal limit drops from 285 kilotonnes in 1980 to 125 kilotonnes in 1994.

Falconbridge had a legal limit of 154 kilotonnes of sulphur dioxide in 1980. It must limit its emissions to 100 kilotonnes in 1994. Falconbridge has proposed a $38-million plan which will reduce emissions by increasing sulphur ore rejection and making process changes.

My ministry’s technical experts are analysing these reports to make certain they will obtain the required benefits for Ontario’s environment. I believe the four compliance reports should also be reviewed by a committee of the Legislature.

Countdown Acid Rain is right on schedule. It is a program which will safeguard valuable resources, historic monuments, vacationlands, jobs and the very beauty of Ontario. This is a great day for Ontario’s environment.

RESPONSES

ACID RAIN

Mrs. Grier: That is certainly another good news announcement. I only wish that we were in 1994. I think that is going to be the great day for Ontario’s environment, when we actually see some of these plans come to fruition. At least I am very glad that the program is on schedule, unlike other programs of the minister which are now two if not three years behind schedule. I am, of course, referring to the municipal-industrial strategy for abatement.

I also welcome the minister’s conversion to having these compliance reports reviewed by a committee of the Legislature. I regret that it took a question in this House and some considerable publicity to remind the minister of the commitment that he gave me in the select committee on energy two years ago that when these reports were submitted, they would in fact be submitted to a committee of the Legislature.

I hope the fact that the minister has today said that will be the case means that he has the agreement of his House leader that it will be the case very shortly, because I remind the minister that when I asked him in the House whether there would be committee review of the compliance reports, he neatly dodged the question and said, “Over to the House leader.” That, of course, was where I next directed my question.

I am being very gracious and I wish to congratulate the minister in having brought, finally, one of his programs in on

schedule for the first stage.

The only reservation I have is in what is not said in the paragraph on Hydro’s plans, where the minister tells us that Hydro proposes to employ conservation, energy efficiency and increased use of low-sulphur coal. I hope that means Hydro is not, once again, going to insist that its reliance on nuclear power means that it is meeting the acid rain emissions indicated by the minister, that it is truly going to employ conservation and that we might see scrubbers on some of Hydro’s plants, because that, like the minister’s Countdown Acid Rain program, is long overdue.

Mrs. Marland: It is always very interesting to hear the Minister of the Environment refer to his Countdown Acid Rain program in such glowing terms, especially as it refers to Ontario Hydro, because the Countdown Acid Rain program, when it was introduced in dealing with the problems associated directly with Ontario Hydro, gave Ontario Hydro the now infamous provisions of banking its emissions.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Long gone.

Hon. Mr. Elston: Long gone.

Mrs. Marland: Let us not forget who was responsible for the removal of those banking provisions.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Liberal members.

Mrs. Marland: The interesting aspect about the government members sitting in the House today talking about “long gone thanks to the committee,” is that the select committee on the environment in fact uncovered the existence of banking emissions as a privilege of Ontario Hydro.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: You don’t have to use the full five minutes, Margaret.

Mrs. Marland: Thank goodness the select committee on the environment did pass a resolution and, ultimately, a recommendation in its report that the banking provision that was going to allow Ontario Hydro to emit on any given day an accumulation of its emissions, and therefore the control of acid rain in the province with the banking provision in it was absolutely meaningless.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: It was adopted right away.

Mrs. Marland: Anyway, it is even more interesting, as we go in to the minister’s statement today, that he gives the emissions of Ontario Hydro as a comparison back in 1980.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: That’s the American-Canadian agreement.

Mrs. Marland: What this Minister of the Environment fails to say, however, is that prior to 1985 and in those years between these figures in 1980 and 1985, the Progressive Conservative government forced Ontario Hydro to reduce its emissions by 50 per cent. So, the credit this Minister of the Environment is taking for the reductions of 66 per cent in fact is rather -- of course, I will not use the word “misleading,” because I am not allowed to. But it is interesting to see that in fact he is taking credit for 66 per cent, 50 per cent of which was an accomplishment of the Progressive Conservative government between the years 1980 and 1985.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Talked about, never done.

Mrs. Marland: I would also like to say that in those years, the Progressive Conservative Minister of the Environment was responsible for negotiating with seven provinces across this country an agreement to reduce acid rain emissions in Canada collectively.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: That was when you were holding up the spills bill.

Mr. Brandt: It has nothing to do with the spills bill.

Mrs. Marland: I hope, in the program that Ontario has to install scrubbers, that it will start looking at the necessity for scrubbers to be installed in those coal-fired thermal units which exist today in densely populated areas. I will give as an example --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the member, but it is a little difficult to hear.

Mrs. Marland: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, but the truth of the matter is that we in the opposition know very well that when we get heckled to death while we are trying to respond to the minister’s statement, it is purely because we are stating the facts and the government cannot bear to hear them. But that is fine. We will continue to let the people of Ontario know the truth and the facts and we will continue to let the people of Ontario know that we represent their concerns.

There is a concern with coal-fired thermal units in this province that do not yet have scrubbers nor have scrubbers planned for them. For example, the Lakeview generating plant in my own riding is surrounded on three sides by a densely residential area and on the other side by the recipient of all the pollution, namely, Lake Ontario. So naturally we would like to see more than two scrubbers in the

schedule for the next five years.

I recognize the financial investment that has to be made by Ontario Hydro, but it is an investment which the public demands. It is an investment which the public would agree to fund through some cost-sharing, in terms of its hydroelectric rates, as long as it is to protect the environment. This is something Hydro has yet to be asked to look into. If we have increased capacity at these coal-fired thermal units --

Mr. Speaker: The member’s time has expired.

Mrs. Marland: -- are we going to guarantee that the scrubbers will be in place?

ORAL QUESTIONS

NURSING SERVICES

Mr. B. Rae: The Minister of Health will know, because she was there, that hundreds of nurses came off their midnight shift this morning and came to the Legislature. They really had a couple of very specific demands. I would like to ask the minister about one of them.

One of their demands, which has been on the table now for several weeks, is that their contract, which is a three-year contract with the Ontario Hospital Association, should be reopened so that nurses who are providing critical care can be paid more and so that we will not continue to see this loss of nurses so essential to the profession and to those hospitals. Can the minister tell us exactly what she has done to see that the contract is reopened and that the particular needs of critical care nurses are met?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I did meet with the nurses on the steps of Queen’s Park this morning. I told them that we appreciate the competent, quality care they give to the people of the province. I would say to the Leader of the Opposition that I have listened not only to the nurses this morning, but to nurses as I have travelled across this province, and what they are telling me is that in fact the solutions to the situation of nursing in this province must be responded to jointly, collectively and co-operatively, by employer, unions and government.

I want to say to the Leader of the Opposition that I met in the past week with the leadership of the Ontario Nurses’ Association. I told them that I respect the collective bargaining process and asked them if they would come together with the Ontario Hospital Association to discuss the issues facing nursing without any preconceived conditions, and they have agreed.

Mr. B. Rae: The minister’s respect for the collective bargaining process is interesting.

Hon. Ms. Caplan: Admirable.

Mr. B. Rae: And fairly selective, I would say. Nevertheless, I would indicate to the minister that this has meaning only if the government is prepared to sit down with the Ontario Hospital Association, which she says is the employer, which is technically correct. Nevertheless, she is the minister and the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon) is the moneybags for that employer; that is the reality of life in Ontario today.

The minister knows perfectly well that the hospital association has said it is not about to reopen the contract and not about to reopen the collective bargaining arrangement with the nurses, because it says it does not have the money to do so. The only player in the field that can break this logjam is the government of Ontario.

I want to ask the minister specifically what has she done, in her conversation with the hospital association, to ensure that nurses get more money now in recognition of the critical job they perform at the very heart of our health care system?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the Leader of the Opposition knows, a number of studies have been undertaken which have looked at the situation of nursing in Ontario. He knows full well that the contract which was negotiated and ratified by the nurses’ union, the Ontario Nurses’ Association and their employers, the Ontario Hospital Association, is considered by some to be one of the best contracts in Canada and Ontario nurses are the highest paid. But when he addresses this, let me quote from a report on nursing human resources that was done jointly by the Federal-Provincial Advisory Committee on Health Human Resources:

“While higher salaries are sometimes offered to reduce the dissatisfaction, the relief it provides is only temporary. The fundamental issue relating to the working conditions and the professional development of the profession of nurses remains to be addressed. Many of the factors contributing to the volatility of nursing employment appear to be within the control of management.”

We have spoken to management. The Ontario Hospital Association is willing to sit down with the representatives of its employees to seek solutions to difficult and challenging issues. We respect the collective bargaining process. I am quite surprised to hear the comments from the Leader of the Opposition.

Mr. B. Rae: I am not prepared to watch this government sit on its fanny while hundreds of nurses vote with their feet and leave the profession. That is what we are not prepared to do in our party. If it means more money, if it means a new collective agreement in terms of nurses in critical care, if it means a new housing allowance, if it means a new transportation allowance for nurses who are working downtown and cannot afford to live anywhere downtown now because of the disastrous housing policies this government has brought in, that is what it is going to take to make a change and we are prepared to fight for that change.

I have mentioned a housing allowance. I have mentioned a transportation allowance. I have mentioned an addition in terms of money for those nurses who are working in critical care. We are 140 nurses short today in Toronto alone in terms of critical care nurses.

Mr. Speaker: The question?

Mr. B. Rae: What is the minister prepared to do to pay for that and to make sure that it happens, rather just sit back and wait for something to happen? What is she going to do to make sure it does in fact happen?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would say to the Leader of the Opposition that a number of issues have been identified which do not involve money at all. Respect within the system, within the hospitals, an opportunity for nurses to have a greater say: Many of those can be resolved through amendment to the Public Hospitals Act. I have said we are going to do that. Greater educational opportunities, more flexible scheduling for nurses; ONA has agreed that there are many issues that can be discussed.

The Ontario Hospital Association has agreed and it is willing to sit down collectively. I am supportive of that process that brings together the employees and their representatives of the union and the employers and their representatives, the Ontario Hospital Association. The member should respect that and support it as well.

Mr. B. Rae: I have Orders and Notices here. I do not see any mention of the Public Hospitals Act on any order paper or on any priority list. The minister is wrong --

Mr. Speaker: Your question is to which minister?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have already announced the conciliation.

Mr. B. Rae: Where is it in terms of the legislation?

PLANT CLOSURES

Mr. B. Rae: What I would like to do is ask a question of the Premier. I wonder if the Premier can tell us why it is that the workers at Molson’s read about their layoffs in the newspaper this morning? Can he explain why it is that the laws in the province are so weak that companies can conduct a merger, can produce their corporate plans for reorganization that involve layoffs of thousands of workers, and workers in fact read about it in their daily newspapers?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The Minister of Labour can help the honourable member with the question.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I read those reports in the newspaper as well. I am interested that the Leader of the Opposition suggests that we should take the front page of the Toronto Star or any other newspaper as authority. My understanding is that his view of the matter is that there should be sufficient notice to workers from employers when there is going to be a layoff of any size. I would suggest to him that those provisions have been captured in Bill 85, which was passed in this House in the last parliament.

Mr. B. Rae: If the minister is satisfied with a series of laws that allow companies to make these decisions without any consultation with government, without any consultation with the trade union, without any consultation with the workers, without any justification before any committee or tribunal or anybody else; if he thinks those are the kinds of laws that are going to help the citizens of this province deal with massive industrial change, which is obviously happening and coming, then he is living in a different universe from anybody else I know who has to deal with these problems.

I would like to ask the minister, specifically on the question of justification: The minister’s leader in 1985 stood in front of a factory in Kitchener, Ontario in the middle of a provincial election campaign and said that if he were elected Premier he would bring in legislation requiring companies to justify plant closures and to explain them and to allow the burden of change to be shared fairly in our society. I want to ask the minister: What happened to that promise which was made by the Premier (Mr. Peterson)?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: That promise was fulfilled. It was fulfilled in Bill 85.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: No, it wasn’t.

Mr. Reville: It was not.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: That is not a public justification.

Mr. Reville: Baloney.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: If the Leader of the Opposition and his friend the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S.

Cooke) would be quiet for a moment, they would know that under Bill 85 no notice or severance provisions click into place in terms of time until a company which proposes to lay off 50 or more employees sends notification to the government and to the Ministry of Labour setting out all of the reasons the layoff is going to take place, setting out what consultation is to take place with the union, if there is a union for the employees affected; to set in motion a process where the government of Ontario becomes involved with labour adjustment programs and the federal government becomes involved with their employment assistance programs.

In layoffs we have seen in this province, as a result of Bill 85 -- I refer, for example, to the layoffs at Firestone -- that process has worked. Certainly employees have lost their jobs in layoffs. That is the nature of the exercise, but as a result of Bill 85 what we have seen is a consultative effort with the employer, with trade unions, with workers generally, with the provincial government and the federal government, and the results in very difficult situations have been generally glowing.

Mr. B. Rae: The minister talks about glowing. What is glowing? Four hundred Molson’s workers in downtown Toronto read in the newspaper about their layoff; 400 workers with 10,000 years of service and the minister talks about some kind of glowing result. It is as if one were living in a different world from that occupied by the minister and his colleagues on the Liberal side.

I want to ask the minister: What happened to the specific commitment his leader made on plant closure justification, a sense that workers would not have to read about some issue in a newspaper as a result of a corporate merger which will not lower the price of beer in this province by a cent? Consumers will not benefit from this. Workers are getting shafted. Consumers are not getting any benefit from this. The minister says this is a glowing situation. Can the minister explain what happened to that specific promise which was made by his leader to require --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Would the member take his seat?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I am not sure the Leader of the Opposition was listening.

What I said was that as a result of provisions we passed amending the Employment Standards Act -- putting into place the most stringent provisions with respect to severance, the most stringent provisions with respect to notice, the most stringent provisions with respect to support and justification of the layoff which is a requirement of the act -- the layoffs and the situations where there have been plant closings in this province since the passage of that bill have represented the highest degree of consultation with governments and with trade unions and with employers to ensure that the best interests of the workers are protected.

We have the most stringent severance legislation in Canada. We have the strongest legislation with respect to notice. The consultation process I expect to happen in any layoff situation will involve both levels of government and will be protected under the provisions of Bill 85.

HEALTH SERVICES

Mr. Brandt: My question is for the Minister of Health who, I believe, is now taking her seat. I would like to advise the minister that yesterday Dr. John O’Brien-Bell, who is the president of the Canadian Medical Association, said in a prepared statement that our present health care system faces tremendous problems and that these problems “indicate the potential danger of a more serious breakdown of the entire health care system.”

I would really prefer not to get the usual kind of answer from the minister that goes on to quote the only cardiologist in the entire Metro area who seems to be satisfied with the status quo as it relates to the difficulties we are having in heart surgery in this province; the first step towards solving a crisis is to admit that we do in fact have a crisis.

Is the minister prepared today to indicate that there are some very serious, critical problems with health care in this province that have to be addressed immediately?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have enormous confidence in our health care system. We face many challenges, many problems and issues which are not unique to Ontario, but by any objective observer -- and they come in droves from around the world -- we are considered to have, and I believe we do have, one of the best health care systems in the world.

Mr. Brandt: Let me remind the minister that today in the Globe and Mail, a Toronto cardiologist is quoted as saying of this world-class health care system that the minister seems to be so proud of, “Every cardiac surgeon in this city has had at least two or three patients a year, and some of us more, die waiting on the list.”

I brought to the minister’s attention the case of a lady in my own constituency who died within a matter of hours after being released from Victoria Hospital in London.

Is that the minister’s definition of a health care system that is without problems, a health care system that is in fact world class, and after these facts have been presented before her, is the minister not prepared to admit that there is a very serious, critical problem with our health care system?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: We review on an ongoing basis the performance of our health care system. We look at the primary, secondary and tertiary care that is provided: primary care in physicians’ offices, in community health centres, health service organizations and by public health nurses; secondary care in a variety of our 222 public hospitals; and tertiary care, that highest and most specialized care, in very highly specialized centres, particularly in health science centres but in other hospitals as well across the province.

When we identify a need to move and increase capacity in a highly specialized area -- and there are rapidly changing technological advances which cause us to constantly re-evaluate what we are doing and how we can do it better -- we then make adjustments and announce them.

Last June I announced an increase of some $18 million in cardiovascular care expenditures to increase the capacity in a number of centres across the province. I announced the appointment of a cardiovascular co-ordinator. There have been some frustrations in bringing those increases on line, but I have been informed that those resources are available. The capacity increases should be on stream within a matter of weeks.

Mr. Brandt: When it comes to negotiating problems with nurses, the minister puts it in the hands of the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Nurses’ Association and she indicates they can solve the problem. The only ingredient that is missing in that whole package is the very fact that more money is going to be required in order to solve that problem.

When it comes to waiting lists for heart surgery, the minister indicates that the surgeons, the cardiologists of this province, can make the selections from a long waiting list that grows longer as we debate this issue today. They have indicated very directly to the minister and through numerous comments that they have made publicly that they cannot play God and that they cannot make those selections off lists that are now over six months long in terms of getting patients into those hospitals for absolutely critical surgery.

What is the minister going to do in order to relieve the stress and the anxiety that these people are feeling as a result of being on long waiting lists?

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Mr. Brandt: It is contributing, Mr. Speaker --

Mr. Speaker: I appreciate it is, but the question has been asked. Order.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: The resources in our health care system are increasing and increasing rapidly. I have attempted on numerous occasions in this House to explain it to the leader of the third party; now, let me show him: in 1984-85, $3.9 billion; in 1989-90, $6 billion, an increase of almost 50 per cent.

We know that better use of our resources is always sought after by everyone. I am always distressed when I hear about people on waiting lists. We are doing everything we can to work together co-operatively with the physicians. We take their advice. I am advised that the resources that we made available will allow the capacity increases to come on stream within the next few weeks.

NURSING SERVICES

Mr. Eves: I have a very simple question for the Minister of Health. All the minister has to do is answer yes or no. That seems pretty simple.

The minister has said that, in part, one of the solutions to the nursing shortage in Ontario would be for the Ontario Hospital Association to renegotiate its contract with the Ontario Nurses’ Association. Perhaps she is not aware of this, but her ministry funds the hospitals in the province. They, in turn, spend over 75 per cent of their budgets on labour costs. She is trying to say it is not her problem; in effect, it is theirs and she has washed her hands of the issue.

Hospital budgets have already been cut to the bone in this province and she knows that. Renegotiation is not possible if she does not provide the means to negotiate. Is she going to fund a renegotiated contract between the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Nurses’ Association? Yes or no?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have said repeatedly in this House that I have respect and confidence in the collective bargaining process. I have also said that I have met with the leadership of the Ontario Nurses’ Association. Discussions are ongoing. I have met and discussed with the Ontario Hospital Association and its leadership the many issues that can be responded to.

When the member talks about funding, I would say to him again this is the hospital funding initiative. He does not listen. I keep telling him hospital base budgets have increased by some 50 per cent from 1984-85 to 1988-89. I can tell him that we are working co-operatively and collectively to seek solutions.

His solutions are simplistic. We know that by working together co-operatively -- and there is a commitment to do that -- we can resolve these issues facing us in Ontario.

Mr. Eves: The minister seems to be incapable of giving us a straight answer. Her answer is not good enough for the nurses outside the Legislature here today, and her answer is not good enough for the hundreds of people on waiting lists for all types of surgery across the province. We have a crisis in the health care system and she is not doing anything about it.

It is very appropriate that her chart that she so proudly displays in the House this afternoon is in black. Perhaps she would like to bring another chart to the House that Dr. Barkin could stay up tonight drafting, indicating the number of people who have died on the waiting list for cardiovascular surgery and how that has risen over the past five or six years in Ontario. When is she going to do something positive?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have asked the critic from the third party on a number of occasions to work with us, to join with us, to encourage the kinds of discussions which will be fruitful in dealing with what is a very difficult issue. I have been told by the leadership of the nursing profession, the leadership of the unions, the hospital association, that many of these issues, as I said to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae), involve respect, work scheduling, educational opportunities and an opportunity for nurses to have greater say within their work environment and in the kinds of working conditions they have.

I am bringing together the leadership of nursing -- the Ontario Nurses’ Association -- and the Ontario Hospital Association, which co-operatively want to work with us to resolve these issues. I would invite the critics in this House to be supportive of that process.

Mr. Eves: The minister talks about recommendations with respect to the nursing shortage and how most of them do not have anything to do with financing. Maybe she would like to turn to the little guide that the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario put out. The first five recommendations have very directly to do with money, and the money comes from the minister. It has to go to the Ontario Hospital Association through her. She provides them with the money; they give it to the nurses. It is as simple as that.

The ONA’s report makes four major recommendations. The first three deal with money. We know there are other recommendations that have to be addressed that do not cost money, but there also are some very serious ones that do cost money and the minister has a responsibility to provide it. Is she going to provide it or not? Yes or no?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I have yet to meet anyone but the member opposite who feels that these kinds of solutions can be found unilaterally by any one partner in our health care system; he is the only one who believes that is the best approach. My approach is to bring people together -- the nurses’ union, the profession and the hospital association -- to seek these kinds of solutions.

This year we have allocated 8.1 per cent in the transfer payment to hospitals, and that is an increase in hospital-based budgets from the Treasury. We have seen hospital budgets increase dramatically over the past few years to the point of some $6 billion. I believe there are many opportunities for us to seek solutions to these issues and I believe we can do that by working together co-operatively.

POLYCHLORINATED BIPHENYLS

Mrs. Grier: My question is for the Minister of the Environment. Since 1979, residents of Charlottenburgh township near Cornwall and the township council have complained to the Ministry of the Environment about conditions on a property owned by Cornwall Factory Surplus.

My information comes from a letter from the ministry’s district office which shows that between 1981 and 1983 there were three complaints of burning. In November 1985, it was found that transformers containing polychlorinated biphenyls in excess of 50 parts per million were improperly stored. There was burning again in 1986, burning of transformers in February 1986 and burning in May 1986. A burning investigation revealed transformers had burned in January 1987 and oil discharged to a creek in May 1988.

Surely, after the tragedy at St-Basile-le-Grand, the minister must recognize that in a place where PCBs are stored, burning is a very dangerous practice. Can the minister explain the inaction of his ministry and the failure to do anything about this site since 1979?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The information that the member provides is inaccurate. I happen to have some information on that. The interesting thing is that what everybody wants is the PCBs either moved out of his riding, moved out of his municipality or moved out of the location he is in. I always thought it would be interesting to have a situation where I could write a letter to the person and say, “So-and-so, member of the Legislature, said they should be moved to your constituency,” or to somewhere else. I think that is the situation when we are dealing with PCBs. It is not an easy situation in the province.

In reference to the particular situation that the member brings to my attention today, I indeed am aware of the situation that exists there. The investigations and enforcement branch has in fact conducted an investigation, which is presently ongoing, and is attempting to gather as much information as possible to determine whether charges can be laid in this situation.

In addition to that, considerable activity has been undertaken to secure the site where there are PCBs and to compare it to the larger sites in Ontario. According to the last figure I saw, there are some 988 sites in Ontario for storage of PCBs.

Mr. Reville: You better get cracking.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: What is your suggestion? What does the member for Riverdale suggest we do?

Mr. Reville: You are the minister.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mrs. Grier: If information is inaccurate, I submit that it is not my fault. It comes from a letter dated January 6, 1989, to Mrs. Ross, the reeve of Charlottenburgh, who is in the gallery today, and it is signed by the district officer of the Ministry of the Environment.

There are people living in a mobile home on this site. On December 5, 1988, the ministry issued instructions to the owner and told him to do a number of things, and that is what I want the owner to do: destroy the PCBs properly. The heaviest concentrations have now been stored in barrels and marked, but nothing has happened about the low-level wastes. The oil-spilled soil has not been cleaned up, as the ministry ordered the company to do. There has been no total site inventory prepared, as was suggested.

In December, the ministry gave the owner 30 days to do these things. No charges have been laid to this point and nothing has changed. Can the minister explain that?

Hon. Mr. Bradley: You cannot be in a situation where you can simply charge anybody when you want to charge anybody; you have to have all of the evidence brought together. You have to have the ability to go through each of the stages, because there is such a thing as due process.

Sometimes, I guess, it is easy to say that we should circumvent the law ourselves, that we should in fact go around the law, that we should do things which are over and above the powers of the police. But when the police exceed their power or when legal authorities exceed their power, members of the opposition justifiably call that to the attention of the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) or others in this province.

I assure the member that my information is that the owner is arranging for removal of the liquid waste to a licensed site. He has also been instructed to contact companies to arrange for the decontamination of the PCB waste held at the cargo units. Even though there has been some objection and even though there has been a securing of the site, as many other sites in Ontario would at the present time be secured -- the history of this is not a good history, as the member appropriately points out -- we have a director’s order being prepared at the present time and facts which will force compliance with the stipulations we have set out. This is despite the fact --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. New question, the member for Nipissing.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

USE OF LOT LEVIES

Mr. Harris: I have a question for the Minister of Housing. She will be aware of the speech given last night by the new Toronto Home Builders’ Association president --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order. I wish the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) would wait until the next question is asked of him. The member for Riverdale (Mr. Reville) and the member for Mississauga South (Mrs. Marland), please show some respect for the chair.

Mr. Harris: The Minister of Housing will be aware of the speech last night by the new Toronto Home Builders’ Association president, which I might say was nothing if not a damning indictment of this government’s dismal record in the area of housing policy. His criticism was focused on the question of lot levies and their impact on housing affordability.

When I raised this question with the minister in December, it was clear at that time that no study of the impact of the proposal was done to determine how many people might be shut out of their dream of home ownership by bringing this plan in. Some months have passed since we first raised it. Now that the minister has had some time, can she tell us if she or her government or her ministry has done any impact studies on the lot levy proposal to determine what impact it will have on housing affordability?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: I am extremely interested in the honourable member’s views, because just about two weeks ago he told the House that perhaps in two or three or maybe four years he would be ready to tell us what his views were about this question. Maybe he has now consulted with his colleague the former Housing critic, who seems to be very much in favour of the use of lot levies for funding the education infrastructure. Perhaps the member opposite has now decided together with his colleague what the view of his party really is.

Mr. Speaker: Supplementary.

Mr. Harris: She missed the point of my comment last week. I said that I have the answers and I will be legally able to answer them in the House in two or three or four years. Let me --

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Anyone else with a new question? Oh, supplementary.

Mr. Harris: Last night, the home builders released an in-depth evaluation of all the costs involved in the construction of a typical new home. They found that fees, taxes and levies imposed by the various governments added up to something over $26,000 or 11 per cent of the cost. That would be before the government’s proposal on new lot levies, which would reach even deeper into the pockets of Ontario home buyers.

I would suggest to the minister that if she has not assessed the impact of the proposal, she is not doing her job. If she does not know how damaging it is going to be or to what extent it is going to reach, she is not doing her job across this province on behalf of the Ministry of Housing.

I ask her again: Since she obviously has not done anything, will she commit to having an impact study done on this proposal, and to tabling that information and making it public before her government proceeds any further with this proposal?

Hon. Ms. Hošek: As the member opposite knows, the government released a discussion paper to generate discussion on this entire question. We are engaged right now in an exercise to determine the appropriate way of getting the services that need to be put into place in order for the housing we build in this province to be accompanied by the appropriate level of services.

It seems to me that is something the member opposite would have to agree with, that we really do need to have various ways of funding the growth that is going on. We are prepared to study and discuss with everyone who is interested in giving his views on this topic the appropriate way of funding services. I think all the communities that get built in this province are entitled to an appropriate level of service.

I invite the member opposite, if he has views on what the appropriate way of funding services is, to put them forward as well. Since he has mentioned the speech of Mr. Giannone last night, I am pleased to notice that Mr. Giannone did mention -- with great favour, I might add -- some of the things we are doing to help his industry do its work better; in particular, the work that has been done together with the Ministry of Municipal Affairs to speed up the approvals process for planning, and also the work we are doing on building regulation and building code amendments.

PROPOSED ARENA

Ms. Collins: My question is for the Attorney General. There is a widespread perception in the media that the city of Hamilton has appealed an Ontario Municipal Board and district court decision to cabinet in regard to the city’s decision to build a twin-pad arena on Hamilton’s West Mountain. Would the Attorney General please advise this House of the status of that appeal?

Hon. Mr. Scott: The city of Hamilton went to the Ontario Municipal Board for approval of the project to which the honourable member has referred and the project approval was refused. The city of Hamilton appealed to the courts and its appeal was dismissed. As I understand, there is no appeal from the decision of the municipal board to the cabinet in a case of that type.

What the city of Hamilton did through its lawyers was file with the government what it called a petition, which in fact is a proposal that among other things the Ontario Municipal Board Act be amended for the future. I can tell the honourable member I have that so-called petition and I will be discussing it with my colleagues and particularly with the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Mr. Eakins) in due course. There is no appeal to cabinet.

Ms. Collins: Then, could the Attorney General please outline the options that are now available to the city of Hamilton.

Hon. Mr. Scott: The first option, as I understand it, is to comply with the requirements the Ontario Municipal Board has set, which have been approved by the court. The second is to repass the bylaw, I suppose, and have another hearing before the municipal board and the courts. The third option is the policy option in which they propose an amendment to the Ontario Municipal Board Act, which we will be examining in due course. I cannot think of any more options.

Mr. B. Rae: Are we paying for this advice or is it free?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I say this to the Leader of the Opposition: This advice is free, and if he needs any I can meet him at one of our handy clinics.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Mr. Pouliot: In the absence of the Minister of Northern Development (Mr. Fontaine), I have a question --

Mr. Wildman: Here he comes.

Mr. Pouliot: We should give him time to solemnly and gracefully proceed to his seat.

My question has to do with the fascinating world of garbage disposal, as we know it in southern Ontario. I would like to draw the attention of the minister to a proposal made by Envacc Resources regarding the comprehensive waste management system for central Ontario, including the regions of Durham, Peel, Halton, York, and of course, Metropolitan Toronto.

The people of the north are somewhat apprehensive regarding the diminishing capacity in southern Ontario to absorb garbage and they are perhaps concerned about the future intentions of the present government to swing a deal with the private sector, with Laidlaw and CP, and eventually get to move the garbage of southern Ontario to some place in the north.

Can the minister give the assurance, before anything even gets contemplated, before any proposal even reaches the planning board, that municipalities and the people of the north, everybody in those municipalities and the region, will first and foremost be involved in not only the decision-making process but the consultation process as soon as it is on the drawing board?

L’hon. M. Fontaine: Je dois rappeler à mon ami, le député de Lac Nipigon (M. Pouliot), que je ne suis pas le ministre de l’Environnement. Alors, je réfère la question au ministre de l’Environnement.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The Minister of Northern Development has discussed this matter with me on occasion, and I will say this: Among all of these things the member talks about in terms of these suggestions or proposals that are coming from people the municipalities are talking to, I am not aware of any proposals except the proposal from the member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) and the statement that was made today by the member for Rainy River (Mr. Hampton).

I have not heard of any of these at all, but I do want to assure the member, because I think this is what he is concerned about, that any waste management activity in Ontario would have to be reviewed environmentally.

Mr. Wildman: We do not want your garbage.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: Anywhere in Ontario, no one wants garbage. I understand that.

Mr. Wildman: No. We will deal with our own garbage. That’s all we will deal with.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: They do not want their own and they do not want anyone else’s, I understand that.

I can say that any waste management facility proposal, whether it is for garbage or any other kind of waste management facility, would have to be reviewed very carefully environmentally before it could be accepted. Ordinarily, the Environmental Assessment Board would make a ruling on any of these situations, but I have not heard of any of them.

Mr. Pouliot: Of course, they would have to adhere to the regulations and specifications of the Ministry of the Environment. We are quite aware of that.

What we are asking is, will the minister give the people the final say on whether they want southern Ontario garbage or not? It is a very straightforward question. I would not dream of making a suggestion to send northern Ontario garbage to the south. We send our natural resources but we do not want the garbage to be --

Mr. Speaker: Order. That was a very straight-forward question.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: As the member and other members may be aware, there are other kinds of wastes around Ontario that are indeed transported to southern Ontario. Some of them are transported to the westerly portion of Ontario; for instance, where the Tricil facility is located in the Sarnia area of the province. There is an approved facility to deal with certain materials there. Those come, as far as I know, from all over Ontario.

Mr. Brandt: Another one of your good ideas.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The member for Sarnia (Mr. Brandt) is very aware of the fact that there are environmental hearings that are held to deal with this. Finally, the Environmental Assessment Board makes a decision based on the input from everyone concerned. In this case, I would think it is coming from north, south, east and west, all other parts of the province.

I want to assure the member, and I know what he is concerned about, that people would have the full opportunity for input into the environmental assessment process and the board would render a decision.

SALE OF CIGARETTES TO MINORS

Mr. Sterling: I have a question for the Premier. About half an hour ago, the Student Movement Aimed at Restricting Tobacco, SMART, was successful in prosecuting Shoppers Drug Mart for selling tobacco to minors. Shoppers Drug Mart pled guilty to the offence and was given the maximum fine of $25. Does the Premier think this is an adequate level of fine for a corporation that sells over $2 billion annually?

Hon. Mr. Peterson: The Attorney General is an authority on these matters.

Hon. Mr. Scott: The act to which the honourable member refers comes within the jurisdiction of my ministry and I am perfectly prepared to agree that the maximum fine is perhaps not appropriate in the light of modern circumstances.

As the honourable member will know, the problem of reforming that act, which is desirable, is made difficult by virtue of the fact that it is now permissible in the province to sell cigarettes through machines, access to which cannot be controlled. If you are old enough to get the quarters in the slot, you can buy the cigarettes.

The question that confronts our ministry is whether we want to reform the act to increase prosecutions and consider a ban on all vending machines in the province of Ontario. That is the issue and I would be very grateful to have the advice of the honourable member, who of course in his own way is an expert on this subject.

Interjections.

Mr. Furlong: Don’t take those short jokes, Norm.

Mr. Sterling: I am getting some advice from the member for Durham Centre (Mr. Furlong), whom I tower above.

If Shoppers Drug Mart was again convicted of selling tobacco to minors, it would be fined the great amount of $50 for the next offence. The Attorney General dithers about vending machines and whether or not we should allow cigarettes to be sold in vending machines, or whatever his choice may be with regard to that issue. Why would he hesitate to act now and at least take care of part of the problem that is there? Why should Shoppers Drug Mart take any action as a result of a $25 or $50 fine when it is selling $2 billion a year? Why does the Attorney General not act now and do something?

Hon. Mr. Scott: The honourable member is really anxious to pick a fight with me on this issue and I am not fighting; there is very little difference between us. What he has to understand, and I hope he does, is that as we consider whether fines should be raised for those who manually sell cigarettes, we have to begin to deal with the real problem, which is that most individual packs of cigarettes in this province are sold through vending machines.

What I cannot get from the honourable member is the help I would like to have, namely, the view of his party as to whether all vending machines in the province of Ontario should be banned. To paraphrase the question of the honourable member for Parry Sound (Mr. Eves), yes or no?

PARENTAL LEAVE

Mr. Offer: I have a question of the Minister of Labour. I have received some concerns in my constituency surrounding the issue of differential treatment for adoptive and natural parents.

I am aware that parents of adopted children are permitted unemployment insurance benefits for a period of time -- 17 weeks -- equivalent to maternity benefits. The difficulty is not with this benefit; the difficulty is with the lack of protection under the Employment Standards Act for the parents taking a leave of absence from employment for reason of the adoption of a child, while there is protection for the natural parents taking such a leave of absence.

Can the minister clarify this current status in terms of the protection afforded under the Employment Standards Act for adoptive parents?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: It is a very good question from the member. Indeed, another member of this House, the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Kanter), has introduced a bill in this House, Bill 176, which received first reading in the middle of last year, in which it is suggested that the Employment Standards Act be amended to provide 17 weeks of adoptive leave.

It is now an anomalous situation in the Employment Standards Act that provision is not made for adoptive leave, and is made all the more anomalous by the fact of a recent ruling in the Federal Court of Canada. It is something we are considering very actively, as they say, as we review the Employment Standards Act, because it does deserve correction.

Mr. Offer: To be specific, is the minister prepared at this time to conduct a review of the Employment Standards Act in order to address and redress this deferential treatment?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: Indeed, not only are we prepared to do it; we are in the process of doing it. The question that remains to be considered by the ministry and the government is whether or not to proceed with a discrete number of amendments or to consider that process in a wider examination of a number of aspects of the Employment Standards Act. We are considering both alternatives.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE

Mr. Allen: To the Minister of Community and Social Services: While the government delays in the implementation of the Thomson report, the problem of poverty continues to grow in this province. Today’s headline in the Globe and Mail, “Metro Establishes 35-Year Record as Welfare Rolls Top 40,000 Cases,” has a note of alarm, and yet we have been told, of course, by one of the minister’s own officials -- Mr. Stapleton in Kitchener, in November -- that while one in 18 persons in Ontario is on social assistance, in the earlier 1980s, in depression conditions, one in 20 persons was on social assistance. The situation has got worse and one child in 11 is now part of the family on social assistance.

Surely, in all honesty, now is the time the minister should be telling us what he plans to do with regard to the implementation of stage 1 of the Thomson report in order to attack this fundamental problem in our society.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: My recollection, in looking over the same news item the honourable member just referred to, was a statement by Metropolitan Toronto that 25 per cent of its total case load -- in fact accounting for the total increase -- was due to the refugee claimants coming into the community.

The honourable member will be well aware of the fact that I have been in consultation with the federal minister to deal with this specific issue, and he will also be aware of the fact that the federal minister has now made an announcement that those refugee claimants will be able to work. My further recollection is that farther down in that

article there was a clear statement by the director in Metro that this should go a long way to resolving the particular issue he raised.

Mr. Allen: It hardly relates to the problem and the statistic I put to the minister, which did not bear upon the refugee question at all. If he looks at the welfare rate levels in communities as widely spread as Moosonee and Waterloo, he will find that they are also higher than they have been last year and the previous year.

Indeed Mr. Stapleton, when he was making his remarks in Kitchener last November, did not talk about refugees. He blamed failures of this government, in point of fact: the low, provincially set, minimum wage, which was below the real value of the minimum wage in 1975; the lack of day care space available for day care for single mothers; the lack of skills training and job retraining to assist workers meet new requirements in the workplace; and high costs of housing.

It was not refugees who were the issue for a big part of this problem. It was the failure of this government to address major problems that would help these people move on out of welfare, which continue to cycle them back on to it.

Mr. Speaker: The question?

Mr. Allen: When is the minister going to get on with the first stage of Thomson?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member will be well aware of the fact that with respect to assisting single mothers with their day care needs, we have doubled the number of subsidized spaces in Ontario in the last three years alone. The honourable member will also be well aware of the fact that with respect to assisting single mothers to get a foothold back in the workplace again, we have made available to several thousand single parents our social services employment program in hundreds of communities all across the province.

The member will also be very much aware, with respect to a similar question placed in the House, that indicated that movement on the first stage would be announced very clearly in the throne speech and in the budget speech, which he can expect within the next couple of months.

YOUNG OFFENDERS

Mr. Sterling: I have another question for the Attorney General, and I hope he can answer this without asking me rhetorically what my answer is.

Yesterday, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned a lower court decision requiring six Brampton teenagers who are alleged to have kidnapped and gang-raped a 14-year-old in November 1986 to be tried in adult court. Given the seriousness of this case, is the Attorney General intending to appeal the case to the Supreme Court of Canada?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I should tell the honourable member we are looking into whether it is likely that we would get leave in this case.

Moving from there to the merits of the case, I must tell the honourable member that this is a result we very much feared: that is to say that the possibility of moving a case from juvenile or young offenders court into adult court, which was a way of opening the process so that there was more sentence flexibility, is going to be foreclosed to us, and that is the message that the Court of Appeal sent yesterday.

I again emphasize to the honourable member, as he knows, that since 1985 I have been asking the Attorney General of Canada and his predecessors to look at that

section again to see if, as almost everybody agrees, more flexibility cannot be built into the young offenders legislation.

Mr. Sterling: The Attorney General knows that the age limitation of 18 in terms of adult court for criminal offences like this was brought forward by Robert Kaplan in the Liberal government in 1982 unilaterally, without consultation with Ontario. Ontario’s stance at that point in time was that the age should have been maintained at 16 years for those offences.

Is the Attorney General now willing to recommend or state as a matter of policy that he would lower the age with regard to criminal offences, maybe of an indictable type, to the age of 16 for trial in adult courts as a general rule?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I do not believe it would be possible to do so. The Young Offenders Act is federal legislation that is applicable in all parts of the country and there is no provision in the act that permits one province to opt out of parts of it, which in effect is the proposal.

What we have done, as the honourable member knows -- and again, I am not fighting with him; he and I agree about these things -- is, since 1985, within weeks of being in office, I went to the attorneys general conference and said that there are changes required to this legislation which can make it work better and more effectively.

One of the changes is the sentencing provision. A second change is the capacity to transfer appropriate cases to adult court in a clear way. The third change that may be required is some assurance that the provinces have the capacity to respond, not in a criminal way but in a custodial way, to under-12s. All those suggestions have been rejected by the present government in Ottawa, run by you-know-who.

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

Mr. Black: My question is to the Minister of Labour. Yesterday, he introduced in this House a package of amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act. It is my understanding that the focus of those amendments is to provide additional training for people who will be serving on joint health and safety committees and that, as a result of that training, they will become certified to carry out their functions. It is also my understanding that, once certified, they will have added responsibilities and that one of those responsibilities will be in effect to be able to stop work under certain specified conditions.

There is great concern in the business community that that responsibility, if it were abused, could result in costs of thousands and perhaps millions of dollars. What is the process which a certified member of a joint health and safety committee must follow when ordering a work stoppage, and does it adequately protect the employer against abuse of that power?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I want to thank the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay for the question. He is right that the amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act that I submitted to this House do put a very high premium on education and training as one of the mechanisms that we in the province are going to use, and use more effectively, to reduce the statistics in relation to accidents and illness in the workplace. We have an obligation, a serious responsibility in this province to get on with that agenda.

But the issue of the right or the authority or the capacity of a certified member of a joint health and safety committee has received a great deal of publicity. It is important to remember that under the bill the authority is to issue a notice to an employer to stop work under very restricted circumstances.

The circumstances are these: first, that there be a violation, obviously, of the Occupational Health and Safety Act; second, that the violation be of a serious and life-threatening kind; third, that individuals in the workplace would run a substantial risk of serious injury and harm were a stop work order not to be issued.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: In other words, what we are attempting to do is put the certified worker in the shoes of an inspector to do what an inspector would do under similar circumstances.

Mr. Black: My real concern is that the power that workers will now have should not be abused. Can the minister give this House assurance that those abuses will not take place? Are there provisions in the new regulations which will ensure that?

Hon. Mr. Sorbara: I think it is a reasonable concern, particularly as we are vesting under very limited circumstances a certain new authority and right to issue a notice, as I described in my original answer. There are very specific provisions and sanctions within the act to deal with that.

Above and beyond that, it is important to note in this regard that the taking of that sort of action and the criteria under which it will be utilized will be the subject of regulations and consideration by the agency, which was also created by the act.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. B. Rae: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: In this continuing saga of my correcting the record of last Thursday, I indicated to the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) the number of beds that were closed and I indicated as well yesterday in correcting the record for the first time, sir, that in fact I did not have the information from the Hospital Council of Metropolitan Toronto. I am glad to say that as a result of my having said that, I now do have this information and I would like to share it with the House.

According to the information, which I should have had before me on Thursday and did not but will share with members now: closed beds as of November 30 were 888; additional projected closures, December 1 to March 31, are --

Hon. Mr. Conway: Order.

Mr. B. Rae: I am just correcting the record, Mr. Speaker -- an additional 1,112 beds, making a total of 2,000 beds.

With regard to projected openings -- and these are the numbers that I did not have and now have -- there will be opened in January a projected 1,084 beds, leaving a total of 916 closed; in February an additional 47, leaving 869 closed; in March 228 projected open, leaving 641 closed; and in April 40 projected open, leaving 601 closed.

I hope that finally closes this matter.

Mr. Speaker: It should.

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON REGULATIONS AND PRIVATE BILLS / COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RÈGLEMENTS ET DES PROJETS DE LOI D’INTÉRÊT PRIVÉ

Mr. Furlong from the standing committee on regulations and private bills presented the following report and moved its adoption:

Your committee begs to report the following bill without amendment:

Bill Pr80,

An Act respecting Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital.

Your committee begs to report the following bills as amended:

Bill Pr4,

An Act respecting The Ottawa Civil Service Recreational Association;

Bill Pr36,

An Act respecting Association des traducteurs et interprètes de l’Ontario -- The Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario Act;

Projet de loi Pr36, Loi concernant l’Association des traducteurs et interprètes de l’Ontario -- The Association of Translators and Interpreters of Ontario;

Bill Pr40,

An Act respecting the City of Trenton.

Your committee further recommends that the actual cost of printing be remitted on Bill Pr53,

An Act respecting The Peterborough Historical Society.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

MOTION

ESTIMATES

Hon. Mr. Conway moved that, notwithstanding any previous order of the House, the standing committee on resources development be authorized to consider the estimates of the Ministry of Northern Development on January 25 and 26 and on February 6, 1989.

Motion agreed to.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

TIME ALLOCATION (CONTINUED)

Resuming the adjourned debate on government notice of motion 20.

Ms. Bryden: Today we are discussing a very serious matter affecting our democratic rights in the Legislature, namely, the question of closure legislation. I recognize that legislatures have to protect the rights of both minority and majority views. The rules of this House try to do this. Legislation to set aside the rules should be considered only when there appears to be an unreasonable abuse of those rules which is seriously impeding the operation of the House. I submit that there is not in this case.

Closure or time allocation legislation has been used rarely in this House. My leader, the member for York South (Mr. B. Rae), reviewed these cases in his speech on January 19, 1989. He pointed out that the rules do permit a closure motion but say that it should not be put by the Speaker if it appears to the chair that such a motion is an abuse of the standing orders of the House or an infringement of the rights of the minority.

A time allocation motion should be subject to the same proviso. However, the Speaker has ruled in order the motion placed by the government House leader, the member for Renfrew North (Mr. Conway), last week for time allocation on Bill 113 and Bill 114, related to Sunday shopping and Sunday working.

The New Democratic Party members claimed that this motion was not in order for two reasons. First, it combined two bills of a disparate nature in one time allocation motion, an unusual move which the New Democrat members asserted could lead to putting all legislative proposals in the throne speech into the straitjacket of a time allocation motion covering the whole session. The second reason that the NDP thought that House leader’s motion was not in order was because it came in before the debate on the report by the standing committee on administration of justice on these bills had even started. That is unusual.

The justice committee had travelled the province and heard a lot of views from grassroots Ontarians on how these bills would affect them. The travelling committee had heard from businesses large and small. They had heard from municipal councils that would have the headaches of deciding on the rules for Sunday shopping and Sunday working if the bill were passed. They had heard from churches and from trade unions. They had heard from women’s groups that would be greatly affected by Sunday working and the need for day care on Sundays. Such child care is not presently available in many cases.

The only reasons we had extensive public hearings of this sort was because the New Democrats insisted that province-wide public hearings be held over the summer of 1988. We had to extract this concession by reading some of the thousands of petitions which have poured in to the Legislature and the Lieutenant Governor opposing Sunday shopping and Sunday working.

Most of the people who appeared at these hearings spoke out against the principle of these bills, namely, the local option principle. They also pointed out that this was contrary to the promise of the Premier (Mr. Peterson) in the 1987 election to bring in a common pause day for the province. They pointed out that at that time he did not mention local option as the answer to the Sunday shopping question

Why then does the government think we need a draconian closure motion at this time? Why do we need a very severe limitation of debate in this Legislature? If the members read the government House leader’s closure motion carefully, they will find that his so-called time allocation or closure motion will allow as little as three sessional days for all stages of the two bills following the report back from the justice committee on these two bills. This is what the government House leader thinks closure means. If this is what he thinks it means, it is a very draconian measure.

For a government which calls itself liberal -- small-l or big-L -- and democratic, this is a shocking abuse of power. This is an abuse of the rules of the House. This is an infringement on the rights of the minority in the House. In fact, it is contempt of the House. It is also contempt for all those people who appeared at the province-wide hearings in the last year.

Their views will not be brought to the attention of this House. The government will have no time even to attempt to respond to their submissions to the travelling committee in those three days. What a mockery they are making of public consultation. Is it a caring government without ears to listen? That is the conclusion that all those who appeared at the hearings will come to.

We know the real reason they are imposing closure. This cowardly government is tossing a hot potato to the local governments. It is using its top-heavy majority to duck out of its responsibility to improve the present store hours law and bring in a uniform, province-wide pause day. The polls indicate that that is what the majority in the province wants.

I recognize that the present Retail Business Holidays Act is not perfect. I recognize that it needs amendment and clarification. We do not oppose amendments to that act which eliminate anomalies and ambiguities.

The select committee of the Legislature on retail store hours travelled the province in 1987 to discuss the act itself and how it should be improved. It came up with a report which recommended sensible amendments which would remove most of the anomalies and ambiguities. These could still be enacted. We would then have a workable pause day law for the entire province. We would save the province from the horrendous consequences of enacting Bill 113 and Bill 114. These consequences will be serious for all the residents of this province.

The government has closed its eyes to the consequences in its efforts to use its majority and to duck its responsibility for bringing in sensible and reasonable Sunday shopping and Sunday working laws. It refuses to recognize that its avowed intent of improving the Sunday shopping and Sunday working laws will not be met by these bills. It refuses to recognize that these bills will inevitably have a domino effect and lead to a wide-open Sunday in most of the larger municipal areas, which will lead to a closed Sunday in smaller areas which cherish their common pause day.

But this will be discriminatory in that some areas will have wide-open shopping and others will not. It will also be discriminatory in that some workers will have protection and some will not.

It shows that this government does not really care for consultation. It does not care for people. It does not care for fairness.

This legislation will affect women particularly, because they will be the ones who will be asked to work on Sunday more than others. At the present time, many of them are already working in part-time jobs, but this will further require all jobs to be made into part-time jobs in order to spread the shopping over seven days instead of six.

There will be no additional gain to the retail establishments. It will simply be spreading the sales over a longer period. This will greatly add to costs. There will be additional costs for transportation to and from retail shopping areas. There will be additional costs for day care for women and other workers who are working on Sunday. There will be additional costs for hydro, for street cleaning, for all the municipal services that must be provided. There will be additional costs for buses and transit, and there will be additional costs for administration and management of stores.

The government is not really going to save money by this legislation; it is going to add to the cost of retailing.

It will affect municipal councils, most of which oppose this legislation. They will have to spend hours debating which establishments should be allowed to stay open on Sunday and which ones should not. They will have to be adjudicators between conflicting interests, some of which want retail establishments open and some of which want them closed.

It will affect small business, which will have its costs greatly increased. It will affect trade unions, which will have to fight for the rights of their workers who are asked to work on Sunday and who attempt to refuse under Bill 114. Bill 114 is so full of flaws as to how you determine whether refusal is reasonable, which is what the bill deals with, that there will be endless disputes, arbitrations and court cases to see who really is protected by that legislation.

Thousands of people will be asked to work on Sundays who will not even seek the protection of that legislation because they will be afraid to oppose the demands of their employers. They may not belong to trade unions and have no protection if their employer says they must work. They do not know what tribunal to go to in order to protect their rights.

It will be an unenforceable bill. I am sure the Attorney General (Mr. Scott) knows that it is unenforceable. He introduced such a bill a couple of years ago when there was a spate of Sunday openings. When the situation was somewhat cooled down by the Supreme Court decision that the act was constitutional, he did not pursue his bill; he let it die on the order paper. So even the Attorney General knew he was just grandstanding and attempting to show that he was interested in protecting the workers.

I sent out one of my riding reports entirely on this subject of Sunday shopping and Sunday working. I put in it all the arguments, pro and con, and discussed the issue. Then I said: “If you feel that this is the kind of legislation we should not have in this province, would you sign a petition which is on the back of this riding report?”

I got 2,514 signatures back from that one mailing. That is a very large response. My ordinary riding report response when they have to mail back a questionnaire is anywhere from 300 to 1,000. It shows there is a widespread feeling out there that they are definitely in favour of a common pause Sunday which would treat everybody equally and fairly and are not in favour of a wide-open Sunday.

Of course, those who may be in favour did not send in the petition, but as the response to it was more than twice, almost three times, my normal response, it indicates that there is a majority out there opposed to it.

I appeal to the government to change its path and recognize that this is a mistake; it should admit it is a mistake which the people of this province do not want to see it make. The government must show that it does care for people and that it is not just seeking to help retailers make more bucks by offering local option to the municipalities. It must show it is concerned about the social problems created by widespread Sunday openings and widespread lack of store hour control. It must show it is really concerned about people who will be required to work on Sunday against their will and will find Bill 114 extremely poor protection.

To increase competition in this way is wasteful and does not add to the development of the economy. In fact, it takes away from it by adding extra costs. It deifies what has become the “money culture.”

I hope the Solicitor General (Mrs. Smith) will disavow her support for these bills and withdraw them, because that is the only way the government can prove it does listen and does care. It is the only way the government can admit it has made a mistake. Make the withdrawal of the bills the action next week, and then we could get on with some sensible amendments to the Retail Business Holidays Act as soon as possible. Time would be freed up in the Legislature for other business.

I do not understand why the government insists on this attempt to jam through by closure and time allocation bills that have never been properly discussed; we must continue to fight because the government has not discussed the statements of the majority of people who have appeared before it.

I really do appeal to the government to show it is a different government, if it thinks it is, a Liberal and caring government, by withdrawing this very horrendous legislation which will have terrible social effects in this province.

Mr. Morin-Strom: I understand we have a rule -- I cannot remember the number -- that has to do with the number of members who are supposed to be in the Legislature while we are conducting business. I wonder if we do have a quorum here at the moment.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. M. C. Ray) ordered the bells rung.

The Acting Speaker: The Clerk advises that there is now a quorum present.

Mr. Runciman: I am pleased that a number of Liberal members have been found lounging in the corridors and have been dragged in kicking and screaming to participate in this most important debate.

Mr. Ballinger: How can the only Tory in the House say that.

Mr. Runciman: Was it necessary to point that out?

In any event, I want to put a number of things on the record with respect to the motion we are debating here today, the effort at allocating time in this House.

During the course of this debate, some quotes of historical importance with respect to the government House leader -- comments he has made in the past in respect to similar initiatives -- have been placed on the record. In case they have not been, I want to put a couple of quotes on the record from the leader of the Liberal Party that deal with the question of time allocation.

This is from December 8, 1982, Hansard, page 5948, quoting the member for London Centre (Mr. Peterson):

“As my colleague pointed out, there were other options. That is why we cannot support this motion for closure, guillotine, phase closure, time allocation or whatever one wants to call it.”

Again, I gather in the same debate:

“I have the right to pursue the most vigorous opposition that I can pursue, and the longer I am here the more I believe very strongly that the opposition is the only thing that stands between government and the sheer, naked use of power. It is the only check we have in the system, and I believe it is our responsibility to exercise it in as responsible a way as we can.”

Mr. Mackenzie: Who said that?

Mr. Runciman: That is a fellow by the name of Peterson, who is the current leader of the Liberal Party of Ontario.

Another quote from him in that same debate:

“Speaking for myself and for our party, I say that part of our responsibility in pursuing what I hope to be a vigorous opposition is that we want to amend the bill and make it better. We regret very much that we have been precluded by certain kinds of behaviour from having that kind of discussion.”

Here is a quote which my friends in the official opposition may not appreciate, but it is certainly relevant to the discussion we are having here today, again from the member for London Centre: “We regret the use of” guillotine or “closure and the fact we are being punished for the NDP behaviour. We believe that a rational, sensible approach to this whole matter is being precluded from being discussed because of government overreaction to a series of irresponsible behaviours.”

Mr. Philip: You talk as though we were the real opposition back then, just as we are now.

Mr. Runciman: They may have been back then. I will not take issue with that point of view, but I might have to take issue with the position they take in respect to the current situation.

I think the member for London Centre made a valid point at the time when he said there were other options. Obviously, those other options were not explored.

I am not going to make any effort to get into personalities with respect to the legislation before us, but I know concerns have been expressed in the past about the approach to negotiations and dealings with opposition parties on the part of the government House leader. I think we have seen some changes take place in the last year. We thought there were positive signs there. If we reflect upon his service in that role, and obviously we go back to the lengthy debate on the free trade position that took us over the Christmas period, there was certainly a very significant deterioration in relations between the government and the two opposition parties.

I think there was a feeling abroad at that time that perhaps the government, as represented by the House leader, was not significantly concerned about the maintenance of comfortable relations, shall we say, with the two opposition parties. Initiatives were being undertaken without due consideration of the impact they might have on the other two parties represented in this House. As a result, we have had some pretty nasty things occurring, things that I do not think any members of this House would like to see repeated.

With respect to this particular initiative, if we look at the federal experience -- and I am not a parliamentary historian by any stretch of the imagination -- I believe there has been, certainly in the last number of years, even in the instances of time allocation a close collaboration and discussion with the opposition parties in the federal House. When time allocation has been resorted to at the federal level, in recent years in any event, it has not been an initiative that was brought forward without careful discussion with the other parties represented in the federal House.

Again, I know the government party has on numerous occasions expressed its frustration with the process in respect of Sunday shopping legislation. At the same time, they have to appreciate the very real concerns of many, many people in this province who are being represented by a relatively small number of people in the official opposition and within our party as well. We are looking at 34 or 36 members of the opposition who have to speak out on behalf of concerns widely held across this province.

We are certainly not getting it from members of the government party, who have the audacity to stand up in the House and table petitions of opposition on behalf of their own constituents but at the same time are not prepared to stand up during debate in this House or during the committee process and speak out on behalf of those people they purport to represent.

Our leader sent a letter to members of the government party, as you may be well aware, Mr. Speaker, encouraging them to stand up when this comes to a vote, which obviously it eventually is going to come to, and represent the people in their own ridings. The Premier has indicated to the House that this is going to be a free vote, that they are going to be allowed to stand up and do just that.

I would hope that he is going to take advantage of that opportunity and do so. It would certainly be encouraging, I think, not only to us as opposition members but also to people across this province, if we have a number of members participate in the debate as well and very clearly indicate the opposition views that are held within their own constituencies.

The reality is that many of those people are simply not being provided adequate representation in respect to this issue, so the opposition parties have had to assume that additional burden. We are not speaking only on behalf of the New Democratic Party or the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario; we are speaking on behalf of those thousands and thousands of Ontarians who are not being adequately represented on this issue by the overwhelming number of Liberal members in this Legislature.

There are 94 of them and we have not heard one of them, to my knowledge, stand up and express even reservations about this legislation. Certainly no one is standing up strongly opposing it, although we know that there are members of the governing party who do have considerable reservations.

In any event, I am trying to elaborate on the justification for the length of this debate. It has gone on for a rather significant period of time, there is no question about that, but I think the fact is that we as an opposition have had to take on that added responsibility, and I think that has to be appreciated by the members of the governing party as well.

My colleague the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham) had the good fortune to attend the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, Canadian Regional Council seminar in British Columbia last year. She delivered a paper on, of all things, allocation of time. I would like to put into the record a number of the comments she made during that address. I think they are certainly most relevant, given the nature of this current debate. The member said:

“It is widely regarded” -- and we are talking about time allocation or guillotine – “as an extreme limit of procedure and can be argued to be a measure which affirms the rights of the majority at the expense of the minority in the House. In Ontario, the standing orders contain no specific provision for an allocation-of-time motion.”

We have been through this, I guess, since 1982, and although I was not in the House when the Speaker rendered his decision on the challenge to this motion, I am sure he made reference to precedents in this Legislature. The motion is in order, in previous Speakers’ views, based not on the rules of the House but on precedent and parliamentary tradition.

Of course, the member for London North made reference to Bill 179, the Inflation Restraint Act, 1982, and I gather that the comments of the current Premier were directed towards that particular piece of legislation.

I do recall the debate and I recall the rationale behind the NDP’s opposition to that particular initiative. The bill was introduced in the House on September 21, given second reading and referred to the standing committee on the administration of justice and then came back into the House five days later with the time allocation provisions, and we know what transpired subsequent to that.

There have been a number of other initiatives as well since that time.

As we know, back in 1982 the member for Renfrew North, the current government House leader, was then the Liberal Party’s deputy leader. I am not sure what has happened over the years. He is now the House leader and no longer the deputy leader of the party. Perhaps he can bring us up to speed on what transpired at a later time, but the deputy leader of the day expressed concern about “so serious and so significant a new departure in terms of the way we have conducted ourselves in this Legislative Assembly for lo these many years.”

It was true that the Legislature had before it a motion that was unfamiliar to its proceedings and serious in nature. As I pointed out, the Speaker of the day, the former member for Peterborough, pointed out to the House that there were precedents for the motion at Westminster and in Ottawa.

I would like to put into the record a number of other comments from the speech given by the member for London North. She makes reference to, “The previous initiative by this same government in 1986, then existing in a minority situation. The Liberal government introduced time allocation for the consideration of Bill 94,

An Act regulating the Amounts that Persons may Charge for rendering Services that are Insured Services under the Health Insurance Act.”

Of course, we all recall that was Bill 94, the extra-billing debate.

“This motion, like the 1983 motion, contained specific dates. However, in this instance, although there was some debate on the motion, the opposition had agreed in advance to the dates in the motion.”

Time allocation is a serious and extreme procedure that Ontario governments have had to resort to on only four occasions in the last 121 years. The Legislature, over those years, has instead relied on voluntary agreements between the parties to secure progress on most controversial matters.

I think that really expresses the concerns that we have in this party. There is no middle ground in respect to the initiatives that the government has undertaken in respect to time allocation. There has been no real consultation with the opposition parties in an effort to try to achieve some satisfactory resolution of how to deal with this bill and how we might finally resolve this whole question of concern.

I think it is appropriate to make some brief comments in respect to what happened over the Christmas period. I was fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough, to sit through the hearings of the standing committee on administration of justice since the House resumed. The deliberations undoubtedly went on at great length, but during the course of those proceedings there were a number of amendments agreed to by the government.

There were a significant number of other very important amendments, put forward by both our party and the official opposition, that would have been positive in respect to how this bill would have dealt with businesses and, more important, working people across this province, but the government was not prepared to budge on those meaningful and substantive amendments that the opposition parties put before it.

Instead we were constantly subjected, as members of the opposition, to harassment from government members sitting on that committee, interjections which for the most part did nothing but take up the time of the committee and aggravate members of the opposition, generating bickering that certainly was unnecessary and consumed time needlessly when we could have been dealing with the very real concerns of people across this province.

We were, on a daily basis, frustrated by the interjections and tactics of the members of the governing party sitting on the standing committee on administration of justice.

I do not know if they were operating under directions of the government House leader, or the Solicitor General, who is responsible for this legislation, Bill 113, but in any event it was a very frustrating experience. I think those of us who sat on that committee wanted to play a meaningful role in the deliberations on Bill 113, wanted to have an impact on the final form that this bill took when it came out of committee and was tabled in the House, but as I say we were frustrated at every turn by the activities of government members sitting on that committee.

On a couple of occasions, we attempted to have the Solicitor General appear before the committee to deal with specific concerns that were being raised. She did appear, as I recall, on one occasion, very briefly, near the end of the day; but other than that she was unwilling to allocate a specific amount of time every week during the process to meet with the committee and deal with concerns that had been raised at earlier hearings.

I think that was a legitimate request at the time. We were suggesting meeting on Mondays and Tuesdays of every week and that the minister allocate enough time in her

schedule to spend the last hour of the committee hearings with us on each Tuesday to review the deliberations and the discussions that had taken place on Monday and Tuesday prior to the last hour of the committee hearings so that we could review those with her, get her input into the very serious concerns, amendments that were being proposed and so on. The minister declined to play that kind of an active role with respect to this important piece of legislation.

Again, members of the opposition parties felt extremely frustrated in their efforts to get meaningful answers and responses from the government. We were left with the parliamentary assistant for the minister to try and respond. I certainly do not want to say anything of a negative nature in respect of the member for St. Andrew-St. Patrick (Mr. Kanter). He did his best. He tried valiantly, there is no question about that, but I think he was operating with one hand tied behind his back. He was not able, in his role as parliamentary assistant, to be as frank and open as we would have hoped the minister could have been before the committee.

Hon. Mrs. Smith: Nonsense.

Mr. Runciman: The Solicitor General sees fit to interject at this stage, but when the committee encouraged her, implored her, to make herself available for one hour out of the week during the committee hearings, she was unwilling to do it. She was prepared to drop by the committee for 15 minutes one afternoon and say: “How are you, folks? I cannot be here.”

Now she is here for this debate and she wants to interject and be critical of me and members of the opposition party who are carrying the burden in terms of the concerns that are out there in the public. We 30-some members of the opposition are carrying the burden for those 94 Liberal members who do not have the intestinal fortitude to stand up on behalf of the people they are supposedly representing.

I am trying to give the House an explanation of why this debate has gone on at length, the frustration members of the opposition have felt and the lack of co-operation that has been forthcoming from the government, from the minister herself and from the government House Leader throughout this whole process.

Mr. Haggerty: You call them amendments?

Mr. Runciman: I want to tell the member for Niagara South that I listened very carefully throughout that whole process. I sat through those lengthy deliberations. That is no fun, as the member knows. He has been around here a long time. When you are talking about one particular piece of legislation at length, it does become a little tedious. There is no question about it.

But I think we felt, as opposition members, that we had a special responsibility with respect to this particular piece of legislation because of the widespread opposition to the legislation in the province and because of the deeply-held views of members in this party and in the official Opposition with respect to the impact this legislation is going to have on Ontario, especially the impact it is going to have on family life in this province.

It is going to have an impact on low-income earners and single-parent families, the people at the lower level in terms of income-earning capabilities in this province, who are now going to find themselves pushed into very difficult circumstances and required, because of the domino impact this is going to have across the province, to have to work on Sundays.

That is the reality of the situation. We can be jocular about this; we can kid around. We can have interjections from members of the governing side ridiculing us for our views, criticizing us for the length of this debate, but the reality is that our concerns are very deeply held and we are representing the concerns and views of a great many people in this province.

Someone has to do it. The members of the Liberal Party, many of whom may share our views, have decided for reasons of party discipline, perhaps for reasons of ambition -- we all know the game; no one wants to be in the Premier’s bad books. There are rumours of a cabinet shuffle coming up next month. The member for Niagara Falls (Mr. Kerrio), I am sure, is somewhat nervous about that. The Solicitor General, I am sure, may not be sleeping easily these days because of the way this bill has been handled.

We know at the same time that there is a horde of ambitious backbenchers and we have perhaps the most vocal group sitting over here in the rump. I think they see it as a special opportunity, since they are facing the Premier and the Treasurer (Mr. R. F. Nixon), to be recognized; that the Premier and the Treasurer will recognize the member for Durham-York (Mr. Ballinger) or the member for High Park-Swansea (Mr. Fleet) with their very noisy interjections on frequent occasions, which undoubtedly contribute little or nothing to the deliberations that are under way in this House.

When you are talking about such a large caucus, 94 members, you have to appreciate the position of members, the view that members like the member for High Park-Swansea take. It is a large group of people. They are sort of unknown figures in this 94-member caucus and they have to take every opportunity they can to stand up and wave their red ties, in the high hopes that the Premier and other powerful forces within the government will recognize them.

One thing they obviously do not want to do is to stand up on a high-profile issue like Sunday shopping, and say: “Mr. Premier, I’m going to stand up on behalf of my constituents. I’m going to stand up on behalf of the people who put me in this House to represent them.” That is not happening.

Mr. Fleet: That’s exactly what I did.

Mr. Runciman: That may well be happening with the member for High Park-Swansea, but we know that there is a significant number of members in this House, representing essentially rural ridings, ridings where the feelings are very strongly against this initiative. Where are those members today? Why are they not participating in this debate?

I know when we start talking about Bill 113 the members on the governing side who participate, who make a contribution to this debate, are going to say wonderful things about Sunday shopping; that it is the greatest thing for this province since sliced bread. We know that is what is going to happen. We know that is what they are going to say. It is terribly and sadly predictable.

The people of this province want to see different things happening in this Legislature. They want to see different things happening at the federal level. They want to see a diminution of party discipline in both the Legislature and the federal House. They want to see members standing up and speaking their consciences, speaking on behalf of the people they represent and not always singing from the same hymn book as the leader of their party.

That is what people would like to see happening more and more often. It is very regrettable in my view that it happens infrequently. We have seen -- I always have difficulty locating his riding -- the good doctor, the member for Etobicoke-Humber (Mr. Henderson), on a couple of occasions in the last session anyway, take a position that was clearly different from that of his government. As I have said in this House before, it takes a great deal of courage to do it on an individual basis, to make that kind of decision as an individual member and stand up in opposition to your party and to the leader of your party.

When we are dealing with this particular initiative, I think it takes perhaps a little less courage, because there is such a significant number of players over there, and over here, who are genuinely uncomfortable with this bill. I think if they get together at their coffee club or their caucus gathering or their table in the Legislative dining room, they may find it within themselves, as a small group, to stand up and say: “We are uncomfortable with this. We do not want to see this proceed in its current form.”

That would be a very pleasant surprise, not only for the members of the opposition in this House, but I believe for the people of this province, to see that kind of intestinal fortitude, that kind of stand on behalf of the people they represent. I am not optimistic at all we are going to see that occur.

I want to talk briefly about what happened during the Christmas period and the Boxing Day holiday situation. Perhaps there has not been enough emphasis on this, but certainly in the Metro papers there was a great deal of kerfuffle at the time that a number of stores were going to open on Boxing Day. Prior to the adjournment, the leader of our party suggested immediate agreement to amend the Retail Business Holidays Act to significantly increase the fines for violation of the act. As some of the members may recall, he suggested an increase from the $10,000 maximum fine, I think it is, to a $50,000 maximum fine.

That was something that would have addressed the situation over the holiday season. In any event, what happened over the holiday season was that we did indeed have a number of violators of the act, but they were modest in number. The reality is most people in this province are law-abiding. Most businesses in this province want to be law-abiding and they respected the current act, the Retail Business Holidays Act.

Despite the fact they could have been operating and making profits significantly higher than the daily fine in the current act, they did not open. The overwhelming majority of them did not open. The bottom line on that is that by and large the current legislation works. Our leader suggested, and I am sure members of the official opposition have made comparable suggestions, modest changes with respect to the penalties in the current act which would have addressed the modest number of people out in the business community who want to challenge the current law.

We know of Mr. Magder, the furrier in Toronto who continually opens his business on Sunday in the face of the law. I think increasing the fine to perhaps the $50,000 suggested by our leader would very effectively deal with people like Mr. Magder. We would not, as the government is proposing with its current slate of amendments, be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That is effectively what the government is doing.

What they are also doing is compelling a lot of people in this province to work on Sundays, many of whom are in difficult circumstances. They are also ultimately going to compel most of the municipalities of this province to open up on Sundays. That is effectively what they are doing.

Mr. Fleet: That’s not true; that’s not affected by the bill.

Mr. Runciman: I think they have to appreciate the concerns that we have been attempting to put on the record over the number of weeks we have dealt with this in committee and again been frustrated at every turn.

We have had members like the member constantly interjecting here. We have had the member for Durham-York. We have had even the parliamentary assistant, I regret to say, trying to throw roadblocks in our path at every turn. It has been a very difficult situation for those of us who want to see the parliamentary process work as effectively as it should.

Mr Fleet: You interject all the time in the House, Bob.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Runciman: We are dealing with a massive majority here, an unprecedented situation in Ontario where the governing party has 94 members -- count them, 94 members --

Mr. Fleet: Good every one.

Mr. Runciman: -- and a very modest number of opposition players who have to carry the load.

We have to carry the load. We have government members like the member for High Park-Swansea, who has very little to do with his time other than come into this House and try to disrupt the very valuable contributions opposition members are attempting to make.

Mr. Fleet: If we hear a valuable one, we’ll ignore it.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. One member at a time. The member for Leeds-Grenville (Mr. Runciman) is the only one who has the floor.

Mr. Runciman: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your intervention.

It is a difficult time for those of us in the opposition. When we look at the efforts being made by the governing party to obstruct our very real efforts to attempt to convince this government to see the error of its ways -- we are making, I think, some valiant efforts under very trying circumstances -- we have indeed, and I think it was pointed out, an arrogant government to deal with, and constant harassment.

We have seen this in the House day in and day out during question period, where the ministers not only refuse to answer questions in any meaningful way, but when opposition members are responding to statements, when opposition members are attempting to place questions, we have that overwhelming majority of Liberal backbenchers attempting to obstruct our efforts by catcalls, loud interjections, an extensive volume of noise.

Mr. Fleet: You interject more than anybody else.

Interjections.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. Runciman: It is an extremely difficult situation we find ourselves in and I think the people of Ontario are soon going to start to recognize the fact that we are dealing with an arrogant government, the fact that we are dealing with a group of people who are not prepared, even with the significant majority they have, to give the opposition an opportunity to express its views and opinions. They are simply not prepared to give us that opportunity; they are not prepared to listen.

During the whole course of the deliberations on Sunday shopping legislation, that has been the hallmark of this government. They have not been prepared to listen to the people of this province.

Mr. Matrundola: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Does the member have a point of order?

Mr. Matrundola: Yes, please.

The Deputy Speaker: Under which standing order?

Mr. Matrundola: I really do not know under which standing order, but I would like to tell you what I have to say, Mr. Speaker. I object to what the member opposite is saying.

The Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order.

Mr. Matrundola: I believe this chamber should be used to the benefit of the people of Ontario at large. We are here spending time at the taxpayers’ --

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. That is not a point of order; that is a point of opinion. The member for Leeds-Grenville may proceed.

Mr. Runciman: That is a regrettable intervention, but it is indicative of the kinds of things that we, as opposition members, have had to live with throughout the course of the deliberations in this legislation. We have had that kind of tactic used against us, every obstructionist method they could come up with -- interjections, points of order. It has been extremely difficult.

Hon. Mr. Conway: Don’t provoke this man. Just cool it. Be calm. This is not a man to be toyed with. I warn you; you’ve had previous experience. It is not helpful.

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please. The member for Leeds-Grenville has the floor.

Mr. Runciman: I want to acknowledge the House leader’s comments that he does not want to get me agitated. We have talked about this before and I agree that on occasion I do get agitated, perhaps overly agitated, but I want to say --

Hon. Mr. Conway: Those kinds of incidents I don’t want to have to deal with.

Mr. Runciman: I appreciate that. But I want to say that when I do get agitated, I like to believe, anyway, that I get agitated about very serious issues. I have some deeply held concerns about issues that affect this province. When I express my views, they come from the heart and I feel quite strongly. I cannot help it that on occasion I express them in very strong terms. I am not about to apologize for that,

I do not want to go on at any further length. I have made my point with respect to time allocation. I think it is an inappropriate initiative on the part of this government, but it is the sort of thing we have been faced with as an opposition.

The government members do not want to hear the arguments. They do not want to listen to the people of the province who have concerns about this. They have simply adopted a stance that only they are right and they are going to forge ahead with this despite the wishes of the people of Ontario, despite the concerns of many groups in society that will suffer directly as a result of this very unfortunate initiative.

Mr. Mackenzie: My comments will not be lengthy on notice of motion 20, the closure motion we have before us; time allocation, as the government House Leader likes to defend it. What I would really like to say to the members in the House and for the record is really a question: Why do we have this closure motion before this House now? Why the kind of rather draconian measures that have been taken at this point in time in Ontario and in this particular debate?

To add a measure of warning to the members of this House and to the government – I am not sure they are open to any suggestions, especially if you class it as a bit of a warning – I would si