role="main" class="main-container container js-quickedit-main-content" id="main-content">

January 9, 1989

34th Parliament, 1st Session

< Previous sitting day

Next sitting day >

Hansard Transcripts

L126 - Mon 9 Jan 1989 / Lun 9 jan 1989

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

FLUORIDATION

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

HOSPITAL SERVICES

LONG-TERM PLANNING

LARK MANUFACTURING INC.

VISITOR

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

EMPEROR HIROHITO

HOSPITAL SERVICES

DRUG ABUSE

RESPONSES

EMPEROR HIROHITO

HOSPITAL SERVICES

EMPEROR HIROHITO

HOSPITAL SERVICES

DRUG ABUSE

ORAL QUESTIONS

HOSPITAL SERVICES

HOME CARE

HOSPITAL SERVICES

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

USE OF LOT LEVIES

LITERACY PROGRAMS

COURT SYSTEM

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

CHILD CARE

LANDLORDS’ RESTRICTIONS ON PETS

CONTAMINATED SOIL

PETITIONS

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

HOME CARE

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

STRATHROY MIDDLESEX GENERAL HOSPITAL ACT

THE SISTERS OF SOCIAL SERVICE ACT

MOTION TO SET ASIDE ORDINARY BUSINESS

HOME CARE

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

The House met at 1:30 p.m.

Prayers.

MEMBERS’ STATEMENTS

FLUORIDATION

Miss Martel: Three months ago, the regional municipality of Sudbury requested funding from the Ministry of the Environment to help fluoridate existing water systems in the region. Several outlying communities do not have fluoride-treated water and the public health unit had evidence showing that young children in those communities had a higher incidence of tooth decay than children in the rest of the region.

Regional council originally approached the Ministry of Health for assistance with the fluoridation project. While the Ministry of Health agreed fluoridation was a safe and economical measure to reduce dental disease, regional council was advised to apply to the Ministry of the Environment for funding. That ministry has a 33 per cent grant available for projects that are designed to resolve health or environmental problems.

Given that dental disease is certainly a health problem, and given that the Ministry of Health referred the region to the Ministry of the Environment, the region believed its fluoridation project qualified for the 33 per cent grant. The Ministry of the Environment did not agree. The minister replied that he would not fund fluoridation equipment as a health matter. He gave no indication of what type of health matter his ministry would fund.

Surely the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Bradley) can do better than that, and surely both ministries should get their acts together on this matter. The Minister of the Environment should reconsider his decision and accept fluoridation as a project designed to resolve a health problem.

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

Mr. Eves: It is my pleasure to rise today and inform the Legislative Assembly that this afternoon I will be introducing a petition with close to 4,000 signatures on it asking for the four-laning of Highway 69 from Waubaushene to Sudbury.

In attendance today are the mayor of Parry Sound, Mr. O’Halloran, and Mr. Wong, the mayor of Sudbury, as well as the past reeve of the township of Georgian Bay.

This is a very apolitical and nonpartisan approach to a very serious problem, and I understand that my colleagues the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black) and the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Laughren) will also be rising to give statements on the same subject.

Just between Christmas and January 1 of this year, in a small stretch of 20 miles of Highway 69 between the communities of Mactier and Parry Sound, some seven people have been killed in traffic accidents. That is by no means unusual for this stretch of highway, which I believe is among the most dangerous in Ontario.

What we are seeking is a practical commitment from the government that over a certain period of time and a set timetable, it will indeed four-lane the highway through Parry Sound and on to Sudbury.

I believe that the resolutions of Parry Sound council and other municipalities are very reasonable and practical, calling for four-laning of the highway as far as Parry Sound by 1994. I believe it is one with a nonpartisan approach and an approach to improve not only the safety of Highway 69, which is part of the Trans-Canada Highway system, but the economy of northern Ontario as well.

Mr. Black: I do want to support the views expressed by my colleague the member for Parry Sound. I would like to point out that it is the first time he has been on the right side of an issue for many months and I congratulate him for that.

In all seriousness, I should point out to members of this House that the four-laning of Highway 69, and indeed of Highway 11, is an important issue. I would suggest that it is important in both cases for three different reasons. First of all, there is the safety factor involved. Those highways were originally designed for traffic at a time when the flow of traffic from southern Ontario to the north was much less that it is today. The rates of accidents on those highways are important ones that we must be aware of.

I would argue that the four-laning of Highway 69 is important also for the development of Muskoka, Georgian Bay and Parry Sound regions. Those are the primary resort and recreational areas in this province. Many people from southern Ontario will be increasingly moving to them for their recreational time.

Finally, as I have mentioned before, the linking of northern Ontario with the southern part of this province is a vital priority in the eyes of many people. So I support the member for Parry Sound, and the member from Sudbury who will speak later, in their efforts to have this highway four-laned as soon as possible.

Mr. Laughren: It is time that this government took some initiative to upgrade our highways. It has been told repeatedly by groups and individuals of the pressing need for expansion, repair and upgrading of our highways.

Highway 69, a major artery from southern to northern Ontario is still only a two-lane highway. It is not adequate either from a safety point of view or for the economic development of northern Ontario. In 1988, 23 people were killed in the 240 kilometres of two-lane highway between Waubaushene and Sudbury. That is up almost 200 per cent over the previous three years. Another 214 people were injured.

In a speech to the standing committee on resources development last week, the Minister of Transportation (Mr. Fulton) included among his major expansion programs Highway 69 from Waubaushene to Port Severn. That is approximately 10 kilometres; about five miles is all that is. The minister himself says that transportation is often cited as a major contributing factor to the relatively high cost of doing business in northern Ontario. “These costs are viewed as a barrier to economic development,” says the minister.

He says that the Ministry of Northern Development will design a larger highway capital construction program for long-term development. What is his priority? He tells us in his speech, “improving transportation infrastructure and service in and around the greater Toronto area is a major priority of my ministry.” It is time Highway 69 was four lanes.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. McLean: My statement is directed to the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) and concerns a growing number of people in Ontario who do not want to end up being just one more statistic on her books.

I have a letter concerning Clifford Mears from the Orillia area, who was diagnosed as having severe angina. The earliest he could be scheduled for surgery was early January. That has since been delayed a number of times. Mr. Mears has since had a heart attack that has caused permanent damage and has led to the deterioration of Mr Mears’s quality of life.

I have a second letter -- these are both just last week -- from a Mrs. Beacock of Elmvale, who has been waiting since last November to have an aortic valve replaced in her heart. She was released from hospital late last year and told to wait for a call from the surgeon about when she could be expected to have her surgery. Mrs. Beacock is still waiting for that call.

The time is long overdue for the minister to get a better grip on her ministry because heart surgery delays like these I have mentioned here today place an enormous emotional stress on the patients waiting for the surgery, and for their families as well. It seems we cannot pick up a newspaper without reading about horror stories similar to those I have mentioned.

What are we supposed to tell people when they come to us and ask why their heart surgery has to be delayed time after time after time? Her ministry has declined to the point where major surgery is required to bring it back to health without further delay.

It appears that many of those heart surgery delays are a result of there not being enough hospital beds. If she had looked outside today, she would have seen a large group of homemakers who were protesting her government’s deafness for more funds to reduce the problem.

LONG-TERM PLANNING

Mr. Adams: The current boom in the economy of the province, including the unprecedented growth of Metropolitan Toronto, is creating stress in communities across Ontario. The government is responding to problems of housing, transportation, schooling and delivery of basic services to communities in and around Metro.

The scale of problems is directly proportional to the pace of development. Individuals, communities and governments are struggling with immense challenges which, properly handled, present great opportunities. Beyond Metro, the stresses are sometimes less obvious but are there nevertheless. Agricultural land and environmentally significant areas are being swallowed up or set aside for future development. Industries are trying to acquire prime development sites. The commuting distance to Metro is increasing, driving up home prices, increasing demand for rapid transit and generating more traffic on already congested highways.

I am concerned about the impact of Metro’s growth on the rest of the province. It is our duty, as provincial legislators, to ensure that the province as a whole benefits from these good times and is adequately prepared for challenges faced in the world economy. I urge that a high-profile inquiry be established to determine long-range planning strategies and goals for Ontario.

LARK MANUFACTURING INC.

Mr. Reville: I want to bring to the attention of the Legislature today the plight of 140 mainly Chinese-speaking, mainly female workers who, until the end of September, had jobs in my riding at Lark Manufacturing at 345 Carlaw Avenue. These workers were laid off with five minutes’ notice. The company did not pay them back wages. They are owed between one and three weeks’ wages. They received no vacation pay and they received no severance pay.

A complaint has been registered with the employment standards branch, but to date that branch of the Ministry of Labour has done little that satisfies the workers that the government is really interested in helping them get money which they earned with their own hands, as they put it. I call upon the government to get cracking and help these workers.

VISITOR

Mr. Speaker: I know the members would want me to draw their attention to a visitor in the lower east gallery, a former member, Margaret Campbell. Welcome.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: A very proud mother of a member of the provincial parliament, you should add, Mr. Speaker, if I may.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Peterson: There is not much charity across this hall, Mr. Speaker, however.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

EMPEROR HIROHITO

Hon. Mr. Peterson: On behalf of the government and the people of Ontario, I would like to extend my condolences to the people of Japan on the passing of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito.

The reign of Emperor Hirohito, which began on December 25, 1926, coincided with a period of tremendous change and growth for the Japanese nation. During the reign known as Showa, or the Era of Peace and Enlightenment, Japan emerged from the dark days of the Depression, and the tragic days of the Second World War, to develop as one of the world’s paramount industrial powers.

I know that the people of Japan felt the presence of the Emperor as a strong guiding force in their everyday lives, and they share a great sense of loss in his passing. I extend my sympathies to them in their hour of national mourning.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I wish to bring members up to date on recent developments regarding the scheduling and cancellation of heart surgery at St. Michael’s Hospital.

An immediate independent investigation has been launched, under the Public Hospitals Act, into the scheduling of heart surgery at St. Michael’s. Vicki Kaminski, assistant executive director of nursing at Sudbury Memorial Hospital, and Dr. William Sibbald, co-ordinator of the critical care-trauma centre at Victoria Hospital in London, have been appointed as investigators by the province. Sister Elizabeth Davis, executive director of St. Clare’s Mercy Hospital in St. John’s, Newfoundland, has been appointed on the recommendation of the hospital. I have asked the investigators to report as soon as possible.

As indicated on Friday, the independent investigation will examine, among other matters, admission and scheduling procedures for cardiovascular surgery, methods of monitoring patients while on waiting lists for surgery and other factors which may influence the scheduling and admission process.

My ministry has recognized the need to assist hospitals meet the growing demand for cardiac care. Last June, for example, the ministry approved more than $21 million for the province-wide expansion of a program to treat and prevent heart disease.

Members should also know that funding requests by St. Michael’s last year for additional cardiovascular services were approved by the ministry, including $2.2 million for capital grants and $6.4 million in operating funds to meet the growing number of cardiac patients as well as additional beds required for critical care patients.

In keeping with its commitment to increase cardiac capacity by 200 cases per year, the hospital has informed us that it will open two more trauma beds this month and two more in February. St. Michael’s will also be adding about six critical care beds. At present, trauma patients must sometimes be put in beds which could be occupied by cardiac patients.

In light of the cases brought to our attention last week, we want to work with St. Michael’s to ensure that the scheduling and admissions procedures are as effective as possible.

DRUG ABUSE

Hon. Mr. Ward: Our government believes the schools of this province can and must share in the challenge of fighting drug abuse by our young people.

Educators, including teachers, principals and elected and administrative officials of school boards, must work in partnership with parents, communities, police and many others in our province to attack substance abuse.

Today I am announcing an important initiative designed to help educators do their

part in this joint endeavour.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Karl Kinzinger, director and secretary-treasurer of the North York Board of Education, as chairman of a ministry advisory committee to help school boards develop drug education and drug abuse policies.

Karl Kinzinger is a capable and appropriate choice for this important position. He has joined us today and is sitting in the members’ gallery. He brings to the chairmanship an extensive background in Ontario’s educational system, including 15 years as a teacher and principal in both rural and urban schools and 20 years in various administrative posts with the North York board, one of the largest in this province.

The creation and adoption of drug education and drug abuse policies by school boards was a recommendation in the report on the use of illegal drugs in Ontario by my colleague the member for Muskoka-Georgian Bay (Mr. Black).

The advisory committee’s role will be to ensure that there is consistency in the drug education policies school boards adopt. The committee will create a framework to provide boards with direction on what should be included in a drug education policy.

The committee is to present me with its report by the end of this year, and the policy framework is to be available to school boards by the spring of 1990.

It is my expectation that every Ontario school board will have a comprehensive drug education policy in place by September 1991.

In addition to the chairman, 10 major educational organizations, the Addiction Research Foundation and the Ontario Provincial Police will be invited to have representation on the committee along with Ministry of Education representatives.

The work of the committee is one of several steps my ministry is taking in a co-ordinated attack on drug and alcohol abuse in Ontario. It is an essential link in the province-wide partnership through which we must all help our children say a strong no to drug abuse.

RESPONSES

EMPEROR HIROHITO

Mr. B. Rae: On behalf of the New Democratic Party, I want to share in the comments made by the Premier (Mr. Peterson) on the passing of Emperor Hirohito.

I am sure, along with many others who have watched the events of the last few days and had a chance to reflect on the history of this century, it really is quite a dramatic series of changes in the relationship between Canada and Japan, and between Japan and the rest of the world, over which the Emperor has presided.

Of course, we send our prayers to his family and wish a healthy and happy reign to his successor, Emperor Akihito.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Reville: In response to the statement today by the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan), I want to start by saying it almost defies belief that the government should respond to the tragedies that have occurred, not just recently but ever since this minister took over that job, by launching an investigation into scheduling of heart surgery at St. Michael’s Hospital.

This is a classic case of blame the victim. There is more than one victim here: there are the people of Ontario and there are the institutions and medical professionals who are doing their best to provide those people with the care they need.

It does no good for this minister to recite again announcements that were made as long ago as June and from which we have seen little effect. It is astounding to me and I am sure to any member of this Legislature that the minister has failed to say again today what it is she intends to do about the critical and growing shortage of nurses in the province. It makes no sense at all to say that the matter is finished because we are going to put some money into creating beds. We can renovate all the wards we like, but until we solve the nursing crisis, nobody is going to be in those beds because there will be no care available for people who are recovering from surgery.

The medical profession has been very clear, particularly of recent days, in indicating that it too believes that the problems being observed in the scheduling of cardiac surgery are almost entirely related to the shortage of nurses. It appears that the government’s stinginess in terms of funding hospitals means that, in the interim, hospitals are unable to go to agencies to hire critical care nurses.

One of the responses the minister could make immediately is to consult with the hospitals, surgeons and nurses and discover just how much money it would take to ensure that at the moment, in the interim, money could be made available to hire nurses from agencies.

That, of course, will not solve the long-term problem. There is no mystery whatsoever about the nature of the problem and the steps that must be taken by this government and by this Minister of Health to solve the problem. Continuing to repeat that the nursing shortage is a cyclical problem is an insult to all those professionals who have advised the minister otherwise over and over again.

This matter is not at all news to the minister. I know people will not be satisfied with this kind of response. By all means, one can always look into procedures that are taken or not taken at particular hospitals, but this will not do at all. I think it is far past the time when the Minister of Health and this government must take immediate action to solve the nursing crisis before that profession, the largest profession in this province I might add, is wounded fatally.

EMPEROR HIROHITO

Mr. Brandt: I want to take this opportunity to join the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae) in expressing the sympathies of our party with respect to the recent passing of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Hirohito. This is certainly a very sad and difficult time for the people of Japan, who held their emperor in such high esteem.

I think all Canadians certainly share with the people of Japan the terrible loss of the emperor’s passing and the passing of an era in Japan which was a very difficult one for the people of that country, going back to the time of the Second World War, then to a more enlightened era under the past emperor when Japan became one of the largest economic powers in the world and one of Canada’s most important trading partners.

In this time of national mourning for the people of Japan, I want to take this opportunity to extend our heartfelt sympathy to all of those people in Japan and to the Japanese throughout the world who will certainly have this sad moment as a result of the passing of Emperor Hirohito.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Eves: I would like to rise and respond to the statement made by the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) in the Legislature this afternoon. It is a somewhat interesting statement, from this particular minister especially. I am reading here from the minister’s statement of June 9, 1988:

“In Toronto, the three heart surgery units will increase their ... case load ... to 3,100 almost immediately.” I do not know what “almost immediately” means to the Minister of Health, but we are exactly seven months later to the day this announcement was made on June 9, 1988. This is January 9, 1989. Hello. Is anybody over there? Is anybody listening? “Plans for a fourth unit at Sunnybrook Medical Centre will be accelerated. We expect it to be in operation by the end of the year.” That was 1988; this is 1989.

I would like to join with the comments my colleague the member for Riverdale (Mr. Reville) made about the nursing shortage. Both opposition parties have been talking about the nursing shortage in this Legislature for many months. The minister’s response has been everything from, “There is no nursing shortage,” to, “Yes, there is one, but it is cyclical”; “Yes, there is one, but don’t worry about it, because our nurses are the highest-paid anywhere in Canada”; “Yes there is one, but we’re going to graduate a record number of new graduates this year from nursing.”

So there is no problem, Minister. Where are the problems? Why are these people dying? Why are their problems not being addressed?

The minister told us there was a central registry system for cardiovascular surgery patients operational in the city of Toronto as a pilot project before the end of the year. Why did that not help Mr. Coleman? Why is it not helping these other patients and why is the minister sending an investigation team to St. Michael’s? It sort of smacks of the investigation team she sent in to Cambridge Memorial Hospital.

I do not know why the people over there will not take responsibility for the decisions they make that they have control over. If they get their act together, then they can talk to somebody else about getting their act together and maybe save some lives in the process.

DRUG ABUSE

Mr. Harris: I want to respond briefly to the statement by the Minister of Education (Mr. Ward) and say that we are pleased to see Karl Kinzinger, director of the North York Board of Education, as chairman of the committee. However, that is where our pleasure stops.

When Benji died and the Haywards came to us all, they said, “It’s too late for Benji, but we hope it isn’t too late for others.” They encouraged us all to press on faster and with more resolve.

The minister’s statement says a comprehensive drug education policy will be in place by September 1991. It is already in place in North York in 1988. Many are asking why it was not in place in many more boards in 1988. I do not think anybody can accept that it will not be in place in 1989, let alone by 1990, and the minister is saying he is going to wait for September 1991. I think that is unacceptable. I think it will be far too late for many more people, many more youths, many more students in 1989 and in 1990.

My only question to the minister is: Why the wait? We have unanimous consent that we must go in this direction. Why is he taking two years to bring forward something we are all --

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

ORAL QUESTIONS

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. B. Rae: I want to ask some questions of the Minister of Health about the crisis in surgery for heart patients and ask her some questions about the announcement she made in the House last June.

The minister announced a central registry pilot project for heart surgery patients which has not yet started. She also announced a major expansion of facilities for heart surgery which is not yet in place. She announced that Sunnybrook Medical Centre would have a new unit performing surgery by the end of 1988, and that has not happened. She announced that there would be additional surgery at the Toronto Hospital.

I can tell her that Toronto General Hospital is actually performing fewer heart surgeries than it was last year. At Mount Sinai Hospital, again, the change is not yet in place. At St. Michael’s Hospital, there are only two additional beds of the several announced by the minister.

How does the minister explain this incredibly dismal record in the implementation and follow-through of an announcement which got all kinds of publicity last June when the minister made it? Does the minister not feel that these broken promises are things she is responsible for and that it is not good enough for her to pass the buck and blame the institutions, that she has to take some responsibility for the fact that the things she said would happen have not happened?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I would like to say to the Leader of the Opposition that the announcement that was made last June was the result of consultation with some of the leadership from Metropolitan Toronto and across the province in the provision of cardiac care. We discussed what was needed as far as expansion was concerned, not only for Toronto but also for other centres across the province, and what was a realistic implementation time frame.

I am as frustrated as he is that there have been delays in implementation. I was assured at the time that the time frame that was set out was reasonable and I am confident that we are making progress to implement. The funds are available, and it is a question now of having the partnership between the hospitals, the staffing and the ministry to make sure that the resources are in place.

Mr. B. Rae: The minister announced that these things would be done, that they would have an impact right away in reducing the waiting list and that they would have an impact right away on the surgery being performed in this city and in this province, and those announcements have not come true. They are another list of broken promises from this Liberal government.

I would like to ask the minister if she can explain why her government has not made one practical proposal dealing with the nursing crisis and the nursing shortage; why there has not been one specific intervention from her and from her government dealing with the fact that even once these capital improvements have been made, the beds have been set aside and the renovations have taken place, the hospitals simply do not have the staff to perform the surgery and to provide the care that is needed for patients before, during and after surgery.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In fact, the Leader of the Opposition is not correct in the last analysis. The registry which he talked about, while it had some delays in getting going, is up and running now. Toronto Western Hospital’s increased capacity is functioning and available now. There are additional beds, which I mentioned today in the statement, coming on stream at St. Mike’s. Sudbury has increased its capacity, and I understand the Hamilton capacity is increasing within just the next couple of weeks.

Mr. B. Rae: I did not hear an answer to my question about nursing at all. We can argue with the minister about what has been and what has not been done. If she is arguing that the commitments she made in June have been fulfilled, let her say it outside and try to convince the patients who have been waiting and who are waiting still and who know perfectly well that the promises this Liberal government made to them have not been kept.

The minister will know that the first recommendation of the special report on nursing manpower by Professor Noah Meltz, conducted on behalf of the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario, recommends that the Ontario Hospital Association and the Ontario Nurses’ Association adopt premium pay scales to attract registered nurses to difficult-to-staff units, and that includes cardiac care units.

The minister will also know that the ONA president has announced on the weekend that she is willing to reopen the collective agreement between the nurses and the hospital association to deal directly with the pay levels of nurses who are providing cardiac and critical and intensive care.

I want to ask the minister a very direct question: Is she prepared to sit down with the hospital association and find a way to fund the kinds of increases in pay that she knows perfectly well are going to be absolutely essential to attract, train and keep nurses at the bedside for heart patients?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the Leader of the Opposition knows, there were a number of recommendations addressed in the studies which have been brought forward on nursing manpower which talk about the obligations of the employers, the hospitals and the employees, as well as educators and government. As he knows, I made a commitment to open the Public Hospitals Act to make sure that nurses participate fully and are recognized as important members of the health care team.

I was pleased that the Ontario Nurses’ Association announced that it would like to return to the negotiating table. Their negotiations are with the Ontario Hospital Association, and in fact I would support those new contract discussions. I would like to see such issues as differential pay for critical care nurses discussed. I know the collective agreement between the Ontario Nurses’ Association and the Ontario Hospital Association could be amended in some way to allow for the flexibility required to make sure that the needs of critical care, in downtown Toronto particularly, are being addressed.

HOME CARE

Mr. B. Rae: I have a question to the Minister of Community and Social Services. I wonder if the minister can tell us whether he agrees with a statement that was made by the interministerial committee report on homemaker services. The committee was set up in January 1987, two years ago, and it reported in July 1988. The report states, “... increasing homemakers’ wages is the single most important factor in ensuring the ongoing viability of the visiting homemaking system.”

I wonder if the minister can tell us whether he agrees with that and what he intends to do to deal with a situation where a visiting homemaker from Port Colborne to whom I was talking outside on the steps today, where neither the minister nor the Premier (Mr. Peterson) was prepared to come, told me she is making $5 an hour providing care for senior citizens at home. What is the minister going to do to increase her wage to a living wage?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: In response to questions in the House last week with respect to the deficit situation, I said very clearly that one of the key issues was the wages being paid to the direct front-line homemakers and that any attempt to deal with the deficit situation by itself would not resolve the current problems. The homemakers’ wages are a very important component to the whole difficulty.

Mr. B. Rae: My question was: What is the minister going to do to deal with the most fundamental recommendation of that committee? That committee made a fundamental recommendation. What is the minister going to do to deal with the basic recommendation of that committee?

If he wants to keep people, if he wants to stop a turnover rate as high as 120 per cent and 130 per cent in some parts of this province, what is the minister going to do to make sure that people are paid a living wage, a wage that will allow them to stay there, that will treat them with dignity and will mean that people will not be leaving every three or four months, with people having to be trained and retrained? What is the minister going to do to implement that basic recommendation of his own --

Mr. Speaker: The question has been asked. Order.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The honourable member is aware of the fact that in the last two years my ministry alone, apart from the Ministry of Health, has put an additional $40 million into the homemaker programs of the province. At the same time, we realize the increase in the growth and the demand for that kind of service.

As a result of that, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services are jointly preparing a complete overview of community care programs versus institutional care programs. The honourable member will be well aware of the fact that at the present time the institutional care programs in both ministries take a very substantial share of our budget.

If we can figure out ways to shift money from that component of our two budgets into community care, then we are going to be able to resolve these issues, but we are going to be dealing directly with the issue of homemaker wages very shortly.

Mr. B. Rae: This government and its predecessor Tory government, which it is beginning to resemble more and more every day as I speak, have been studying this question of the relationship between institutional care and community care, between the ministries of Health and Community and Social Services, for more than a decade. There are reports piled up higher than my desk out here in the minister’s own bureaucracy on this relationship.

The people who were demonstrating outside and who are leaving the profession in droves do not need another overview. What they need is an increase and a commitment from this government to fund community care at a level that will allow community care to grow in a realistic, sensible way. Every government in place has to face up to that reality. What is the minister going to do now to increase the pay of the people who were demonstrating outside?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Mr. Speaker, it becomes increasingly difficult to respond to these kinds of questions, because you will be well aware of the fact that this same opposition leader, his colleagues and the members of the third party over the last several months have been very strenuous in their questions to the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) about putting increasing sums of money into the basic health program that exists now.

The member will be well aware of the fact that last year the total new taxes that were raised by this government were $1.3 billion. Of that, $1.2 billion -- in other words, every single cent of those new taxes, with the exception of $100 million -- went into the health programs to respond to the very kinds of questions that they have constantly been raising in this House.

What honourable members have to appreciate is that we cannot continue to pour those kinds of dollars into the institutional component of health and, at the same time, put additional dollars into communities. We have to find a way to balance those two kinds of service. That is what we are trying to do.

Mr. Brandt: My question is to the same minister and along the same lines as the question raised by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae).

The minister is aware of the fact that there was a demonstration, obviously, on the front steps of the Legislative Assembly today. There was some concern about neither the minister nor the Premier being in attendance to at least share with the group that was assembled, the homemakers of our province, their views as to what is going to happen with respect to the future of that program.

I think their concerns centre very specifically on the interministerial report which has been developed, starting some two years ago and made public about six months ago, relative to the changes that are going to be necessary in homemaker services. Can the minister share with the House what he intends to do with that report? Does he intend to implement the findings of that report and its recommendations? If so, when can we expect that the decision will be made by his ministry?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: There were three essential recommendations in the report that the honourable member will be aware of. One has already been discussed, the direct wages paid to the homemakers. The second one with respect to the homemakers was training programs. The kind of care of the elderly and the disabled in the province today is of an increasingly serious and difficult nature. The third one was the rates paid directly to the agencies for the administration costs which they encounter in delivering those services, including, as the Red Cross brought to our attention, the travelling costs of its workers.

All of those have been accepted by us as legitimate concerns and legitimate areas for consultation and solution. We are working on those right now.

As the honourable member said, the report was released publicly approximately six months ago. We have constantly been in touch with the various agencies across the province and with the municipalities, who are our funding partners. As the member knows, my ministry pays 80 per cent and the municipalities pay 20 per cent. We have been in touch with the Red Cross. We consulted with them last Friday as to what our intentions were in the immediate short term, as well as our long-term intentions. It is an ongoing process and we are dealing with it right now. All three of those issues must be dealt with.

Mr. Brandt: I would like to remind the minister that this is, in fact, a report prepared by his ministry in consultation with other ministries. It is not an outside consultant’s report but an internal government report with a series of recommendations by his own people. Second, it is in direct line with and supports the promise made by the Premier in the last election, and I recall those ads very well, when the Premier promised to expand the homemaker program right across this province into areas which are not at the present time receiving that particular type of service.

In order to help the people who have taken the time to come here today and to demonstrate at Queen’s Park, can the minister perhaps give them some indication of what he plans on doing with respect to issues like the inadequate wage levels that these people are receiving at the moment? Can he give us some indication of his time frame, when he intends to act on his report prepared by his ministry and others?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I do not think I suggested at any time that it was other than an interministerial report. On the basis of that, that is why we agree with the three main recommendations in the report. I am not in any way denying that.

At the same time, I have to remind the honourable member that the introduction of the integrated homemaker program by this government was picking up a program which his own government had attempted to introduce as far back as 1981 and it sat on the shelf from 1981 to 1985 with no action at all.

We are not suggesting that we have gone as far as we need to go or as far as we plan to go with the current program. We know what the needs are, but the difficulties that we are encountering are because, in fact, we are taking a proactive stance in this field. We are moving increasingly into the field. We are moving into the field with elderly persons’ centres. We are moving into the field with a whole range of home support services. We are moving into the field with Alzheimer’s services, and we have moved into the field with this new integrated homemaker program.

In total, this government is spending $373 million in a range of home support --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Brandt: That program has not used up the money that the minister provided for in his own budget, so he has underspent that program.

For weeks now we have been talking about picking up the operating deficits of the Red Cross and other of the not-for-profit agencies involved in delivering a homemaker service. As late as Thursday of last week, we talked about the need for that deficit to be picked up in order that those agencies could continue to operate.

Now we have an announcement over the weekend about the fact there was going to be a demonstration on Monday -- today -- here at Queen’s Park, and interestingly enough, right in the middle of those two time frames, the Thursday question and the Monday demonstration here, there was an interesting announcement made by the minister, after stonewalling this question week after week and day after day in this House, refusing to make a commitment.

Mr. Speaker: The question?

Mr. Brandt: All of a sudden, like manna from heaven, an announcement was made by the minister that the Red Cross would receive $1.1 million and that there would be $1.8 million in total to all of the homemaker agencies that required a covering of their deficit.

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mr. Brandt: I ask the minister: What happened?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I would ask the honourable member to examine the answers to my questions from last week. I believe there were three different ones on three different occasions and on each one of those occasions I indicated very clearly that we were in the process of reviewing that request and that if we could find the necessary resources, we were prepared to allocate them.

I also indicated specifically, in response to a question from this honourable member, in response to another newspaper report in fact that we were not going to pay it: “No, I did not say that at all.” We said very, very clearly we were trying to find the resources; and second, we were trying to ascertain for ourselves whether or not agencies other than the Red Cross were involved in this particular concern and to what extent we could verify the deficits themselves.

All of those things were taking place during last week. Since it had not yet been resolved as of Thursday at 2:30, I could not respond to it. It was resolved later on Thursday and the announcement was made on Friday. We cannot be quicker than that.

HOSPITAL SERVICES

Mr. Eves: I have a question for the Minister of Health. In response to a number of questions that I and other members have asked regarding waiting lists for heart surgery, she said, “Our system is designed so that those in life-threatening situations receive priority.” She also said that if a patient requires immediate surgery, that treatment is readily available. Does the minister still stand by her previous commitment?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: I think the member opposite will agree that in fact our system is designed so that those requiring emergency and urgent care receive that care first.

Mr. Eves: Let me tell the minister some facts about another constituent of mine, a Mr. Porter. Mr. Porter is 58 years old. He has had eight heart attacks in the past 18 years. He has been hospitalized for a week at a time in North Bay Civic Hospital eight times since April 1988. He needs triple-bypass surgery. He has an aneurysm in his left ventricle. He has been on oxygen daily since October. He is on nine or 10 different types of medication a day. He had bypass surgery in 1976 and has been on a waiting list in Ontario for cardiovascular surgery since August 1988.

Would the minister agree that this is a life-threatening and critical situation? Why has Mr. Porter been on the waiting list for five months?

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: As the member knows, what we have been attempting to do, as in the announcement of last June, is to respond to a needed increase in capacity for cardiovascular care. I have said on numerous occasions that we rely on physicians to use their very best medical judgement in determining the priority of patient need and ensuring that those requiring urgent care get that care first.

I always advise patients, if they have concerns, to contact their physicians so that those appropriate medical judgements can be made. When the member asks me a question in the House for my medical judgement, I would tell him I am not a physician.

We recognize that there has been a very large increase in the number of people recommended for this surgery and we have moved to expand capacity across this province in the centres providing cardiac care. That is coming on stream. The registry is up and running. I believe that this will, along with the increases in capacity, help physicians to refer their patients to the most appropriate location for care.

Mr. Eves: Trying to pass the buck to the physicians, quite frankly, is not the answer to the problem. I do not believe a lot of the other supposed answers the minister has given us over the last several months are the answers to the problem either.

Let me just tell the minister about a few people under her system where everybody who gets immediate care gets it: Mr. Pitcher, 36 years old, father of three, died last March awaiting heart surgery. He had been on a waiting list at St. Michael’s Hospital for two months. Mr. Thornton, another constituent of mine, had his surgery postponed five times before it was made available last April. He had a heart attack on the table and died three days later. In July 1988, Gordon Montgomery, 59, of Sarnia, was put on an urgent waiting list at University Hospital in London. Mr.

Montgomery finally received his operation in December 1988. He was one of the lucky ones. In early October 1988, Brendan McLean, 40 years old, was told that he needed heart surgery the next day --

Mr. Speaker: The question.

Mr. Eves: He was placed 16th on an emergency surgery waiting list. He died six days later. Richard Rutter, 64, of Kingston -- I can go through this whole list; I am not even halfway through it -- and we end up with Mr. Coleman a few short days ago.

Are Mr. Porter and the others like him out there going to go the same route as Mr. Coleman and some of these others?

Mr. Speaker: Minister?

Mr. Eves: Or is she going to do something to correct the problem, besides saying it is the physicians’ problem and they have to make the decision or these people are going to die?

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Eves: Is she going to do something as Minister of Health?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the member take his seat?

Mr. Eves: She told us she solved it in June --

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. Eves: -- when obviously she did not. What is she going to do?

Mr. Speaker: The member for Parry Sound --

An hon. member: Throw him out.

Hon. Mrs. Caplan: In fact, I think we have made progress. In the past, the surgical capacity has increased. We are responding.

The member might find it interesting to know that Sudbury, which has additional critical care nurses available, will be sending some of its nurses to Toronto in February to help, so that the downtown Toronto critical care nursing situation can be alleviated somewhat. As well, there are additional critical care nurses in training right now, so that will be an assist.

I can say to the member that in fact there are, and have been for the last couple of years, in excess of 5,000 coronary artery bypass surgeries performed in Ontario. We expect next year that this will significantly increase. I can tell the member that as we monitor that and increase the capacity, I believe that we will work together co-operatively with the physicians and the hospitals to ensure that we can implement this so that the patients can receive the care they need as soon as possible.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. D. S. Cooke: I have a question to the Minister of Financial Institutions in regards to the insurance companies of Ontario. He will be aware that last Friday another insurance company, Prudential, announced that it will not be offering new car insurance policies to the people of Ontario. The minister will also understand that this is the fourth or fifth company that has withdrawn from the market in Ontario in the last couple of months.

What is the minister prepared to do to stop this systematic withdrawal by the private insurance companies from offering insurance to car owners in this province? If he is not prepared to offer public auto insurance, what is he prepared to do to guarantee that car insurance purchasers at least have options in the private sector?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The honourable gentleman should be aware that there are a sizeable number of companies offering insurance coverage to the people of Ontario, and he might want to, as he gives examples of those withdrawing, give a list of the companies which are still offering service to the public. In fact, there is a very large number: 170 or so companies is the total at this current date. I stand to be corrected, but there is not much variation between that number and the actual number which make insurance coverage available to the people in the province.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: It is amazing to hear cabinet minister after cabinet minister say that everything is fine in Ontario. People are dying on the operating tables in this province and insurance companies are withdrawing from the market in Ontario and his only response to this whole thing is to say, “We’ll give them nine per cent increases on their rates last year” as this company is saying, “Either give us 35 to 40 per cent more or else we’ll stay out of the market.”

I am asking the minister what he is prepared to do to guarantee that those in Ontario, who are living under laws where it is compulsory to have car insurance, are going to have access to either reasonable rates in the private sector if he is not prepared to go the route of the public sector insurance, or if they are not prepared to do it, is the minister going to seriously consider public auto insurance in this province?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The honourable member is being outrageous. First of all, let me say this as an example of what happens to a company that says that it requires huge increases. There was an indication that Safeco was going to be needing, as a result of its testimony, a 53 per cent increase in its premium prices. That caused the people who were customers of Safeco to indicate that they wanted to change policies, which brought a rejoinder by the people at Safeco, who said, “We weren’t really saying we needed 53 per cent. Listen, do not change your coverage.”

What was asked of me by the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke) was, in fact, what am I going to do to make sure that there is a choice in the marketplace. I have said that in the marketplace in Ontario there are about 170-some companies offering coverage for automobile insurance.

What is also being done is that there is a public hearing so that the people in the province can be assured that the parts of the rate-making structure are put together fairly and that they will know exactly what the rate is made up of when premiums are assigned to them by their companies. I can tell the people of the province that the hearing process will continue and that it is a fair and open process, and that if private companies -- and this is an unusual situation for them -- want to get out of the business, then that is a private company’s decision. But I have never heard the New Democratic Party before, until now, saying, “Mr. Minister, please” --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. Thank you.

Interjections.

Mr. Pouliot: You are talking out of both sides of your mouth. If you do not have an answer, say so. You do not have an answer. You did not have one last week; you do not have one this week.

Mr. Speaker: Order, the member for Lake Nipigon. Order. The member for Nipissing (Mr. Harris) is waiting to ask a question.

Mr. Pouliot: You will make the announcement when the election is called; you know that. You do not have the guts to get up and say it now.

Mr. Speaker: We will just wait, if the member for Lake Nipigon wants to waste time.

USE OF LOT LEVIES

Mr. Harris: I have a question for the Treasurer. At a meeting this weekend, school board officials from across the province were a little surprised to learn from Treasury officials that the only way lot levies would be acceptable to the government would be if the government share of education capital expenditure was reduced from 75 per cent to 60 per cent.

Trustees also felt that they were being blackmailed into a position that if they ever wanted more money or if anybody wanted more money for schools in this province: “You are not going to get it from the government. We are not going to live up to the former way of doing it. Even though the economy is expanding, we are not going to go that way. The only way you are going to get it is to support our lot levy proposal.”

I would ask the Treasurer if he shares the views of his officials that were expressed this weekend or is he beginning to feel, as I do, that some of his greedy Treasury officials think their only job in life is to figure out ways to wring out more money from the unwilling taxpayer?

Hon. R. F. Nixon: The honourable member speaks with yearning tones of the former way of doing things. The former way of doing things was to support the capital needs for elementary and secondary education to the extent of about $78 million a year. That was flat-lined for many years. In the three years we have had the responsibility of the Treasury, this has increased to $300 million.

In order to assist in more long-range planning, rather than the year-to-year planning that was the regimen of the previous administration, I have indicated that the budget would have at least that amount in it for the next three years. We have indicated anything but parsimony. We have indicated that we want to spend as much money as is needed to meet the requirements of the community as they are presently understood.

Mr. Harris: In spite of the Treasurer’s election promises, he has cut the education operating share from the former way of doing it, at 48 per cent, to under 44 per cent now. Now he wants to cut the provincial capital share from 75 per cent to 60 per cent.

I want to get this straight; I want to be fair to him. As I understand it, what he is proposing is that a lot levy on new lots that will increase house prices, say, $5,000 to $10,000 -- pick a figure, whichever it ends up as -- would represent, say, one to two per cent of the housing total. But he will increase the housing affordability problem on all the homes because all homes will go up.

I want to understand what he is really proposing. He is proposing to increase the housing affordability problem on all homes by getting some revenue on to the municipality, which it will have to pay instead of the government, on only one or two per cent of the homes out there. I want to understand --

Mr. Speaker: Order. Thank you.

Mr. Harris: Is that what it is and does that make sense to him --

Mr. Speaker: Order. The question has been asked. Will the member take his seat.

Hon. R. F. Nixon: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that you, unlike the honourable member asking the question, have read the proposals in the policy paper, which as well as proposing lot levies as one of the alternatives, also refers to other alternatives.

We are proposing a special loan fund based on capital from the Canada pension plan for certain of the municipalities. We are also proposing an amendment to the appropriate legislation that would permit school boards to enter into agreements with developers whereby lot levies and other special funding would be unnecessary if the developers themselves were to undertake the cost of building schools up to the specifications.

We are trying to put forward an array of alternatives that will mean the taxpayers of the province, in spending the $300 million a year -- who knows, it may he more in the future and we expect it might very well be -- are going to get the kind of quality school building the community has demanded, and really deserved, so that the quality of education is going to be able to improve under the leadership given by my colleague the minister.

LITERACY PROGRAMS

Mr. Faubert: My question is to the Minister of Skills Development. The minister will be aware of the survey that was commissioned by Southam Inc., which indicated that 24 per cent of Ontario adults are functionally illiterate. I am sure the minister knows that this means 1.2 million people in this province lack the equivalent of a grade 9 education, denying them the ability to participate fully in many day-to-day activities that most in our society take for granted.

There has been an increased focus on illiteracy from both the provincial and federal orders of government, and we have all been informed about the increased funds the minister’s ministry has provided to the community literacy groups this year, for which I congratulate him and his ministry. Can the minister assure this House that this funding is sufficient to meet the challenge of adequately addressing and eliminating illiteracy in Ontario?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I welcome the question from the honourable member. In response to the last part of his question, whether I feel these are adequate funds to meet the challenge of illiteracy in this province, I would say no. But I hasten to say that this ministry and this government have been able to get various people in the community, such as the labour unions, businesses and other governments, to pay attention to this very serious situation we have here in Ontario. As a matter of fact, it is more than Ontario; it is widespread. Adult illiteracy is at a rate of about 24 per cent.

This year this government, through my ministry, has spent $40 million in regard to the literacy program. Other ministries have spent an additional $10 million towards fighting illiteracy. Further, we have been able to fund 20 francophone groups in the province and a further 24 native literacy programs. Again, I say this is not sufficient in itself to eradicate illiteracy.

Mr. Faubert: The minister will be aware of the $110-million literacy announcement made by the Prime Minister last September. This has created a federal-provincial partnership to alleviate the problem of illiteracy. Is this new federal partnership on literacy encouraging news for the minister’s provincial planning in this field?

Mr. Runciman: Who wrote that for you?

Hon. Mr. Curling: I again welcome that question. I can hear the member from the third party asking who wrote that question. I am glad the third party is paying attention. The federal government itself has put $110 million towards literacy to be spread over five years, and in a comparative way, the provincial government has put $100 million in over two years.

I am encouraged the federal government is now paying attention and I welcome that amount of money. I hope, though, that in the future more money will be put into this very, very serious problem we have in combating illiteracy. The year 1990 is the International Year of Literacy, and I seek the support of my party and all my colleagues on the opposite side. I seek the support of the federal government in not only looking at $110 million for five years, but also in arresting the problem of illiteracy in this country and this province.

COURT SYSTEM

Mr. Hampton: My question is for the Attorney General. Last week, at the annual opening of the courts, the Chief Justice of the province stated that 282 accused criminals walked free from Ontario courts because of unreasonable delays in the prosecution of their cases. He further stated that the Attorney General’s intransigence in dealing with the problem of the shortage of judges is bringing the administration of justice in Ontario into disrepute.

What is the Attorney General going to do about this serious situation, or does he still insist, as he did a few short weeks ago, that it is not a serious situation?

Hon. Mr. Scott: I think it is important to have the situation in perspective. Court is conducted every day in Ontario in hundreds of courtrooms at 240 locations and it is presided over by 450 judges, which is one of the highest ratios of judges to population in the western world.

Thousands of cases are dealt with in Ontario every week, and as the Chief Justice’s own figures revealed last week, court lists on the civil and criminal side are in order in almost all those courtrooms all across Ontario. We have six problem areas, six problem municipalities, in the provincial court (criminal division) and one in the district court. They are all in the bedroom municipalities adjacent to Metropolitan Toronto.

As I said last Friday to the loud applause of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae), who was present, the chief judge and I have grappled with this problem and have set up, as I announced to the House the other day, a number of projects to deal with it. I am confident that with good management, which is a co-operative exercise between an independent bench and the government, this situation can be addressed.

Mr. Hampton: It never ceases to amaze me that the Attorney General always tries to miss the question. The question was not about how many judges we have in total in Ontario. It was about the provincial court (criminal division), where 282 accused criminals walked free last year. Furthermore, even where he has put in his trial co-ordinator system in Ottawa, it has only reduced the backlog from 14 months to 12 months. Is that what he calls progress?

Finally, he says it only involves the bedroom suburbs of Toronto. Sixty per cent of the people in Ontario live in Metro Toronto or the surrounding suburbs. Sixty per cent of the people in Ontario are not getting the kind of justice they deserve. What is he going to do?

Mr. Speaker: That is two questions.

Hon. Mr. Scott: I am as troubled as I was on Friday by the expression “accused criminals.” The persons who are referred to were acquitted by the court and I am not prepared to determine, in the face of that acquittal, that they were criminals. We have had some difficulty grappling with the Chief Justice’s figures. It is not apparent where they came from and I am not able to give an assessment of them.

Mr. B. Rae: He does not know what he is talking about? Come on.

Hon. Mr. Scott: No, I did not say that at all. I did not say that for a minute and would not dare say it. What I do want to emphasize to the honourable member is that something like 10 million separate charges are laid in Ontario every year and dealt with. We have a justice system, as the judges recognized on Friday, of which we can be very proud. What we have to do to make it operate efficiently is to manage it co-operatively. This Attorney General does not decide whether courts sit in the summer or at night, or begin at nine o’clock or 10 o’clock. Those decisions are made, as they should be, by an independent judiciary.

As Chief Judge Hayes and I have concluded, this resolution, this approach to co-operative management, is important. It is being undertaken with considerable success in the six areas mentioned --

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. New question.

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Runciman: I have a question for the Minister of Financial Institutions. As he knows, the Ontario Automobile Insurance Board hearings are slated to wrap up this Friday. He has been giving us the impression that he is being kept well informed on the happenings at the board. I assume Mr. Kruger is keeping in close touch with him or his officials. I wonder if he can give us a rough idea of how many presentations have been made to the board and how many of those are from outside the Metropolitan Toronto area.

I do not know if the minister was able to hear that, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hon. Mr. Elston: I will give the exact number of presentations to the honourable member tomorrow. I will get an up-to-date tally for him and advise him personally.

Mr. Runciman: We attempted to obtain the information earlier, especially in respect to the people from outside the area, but the reality is that the board will be wrapping up its hearings this Friday without having set one foot outside of Metropolitan Toronto. If they truly cared about public input, if they truly cared about the different regions of this province, they would ease up on their Metro Toronto focus.

Instead, we get a lot of back-slapping in this Legislature from their own members saying what a wonderful job they are doing in eastern Ontario and what a wonderful job they are doing in northern Ontario. The reality is that they do not want to hear the views of the people of Ottawa, the people of Windsor or the people of Thunder Bay. All they apparently care about in this case, as in so many others, is Metropolitan Toronto. How can the minister justify not extending the hearings to give all concerned Ontarians a meaningful opportunity to comment?

Hon. Mr. Elston: The board hearings have been going on for some time now, as the honourable gentleman has indicated, and in fact the material that has been put in front of the board members has canvassed a series of issues, all dealing with items that are especially relevant to all of the people of Ontario; that is, the rates to be considered or the methodology by which rates are to be put in place for auto insurance premiums in Ontario.

The board’s mandate, as it was established, was to consider in a very open and public way what rates, or in this case, ranges of rates ought to be put in place so that there is fairness in that marketplace. I can tell the honourable gentleman that their mandate extends not just to Metro Toronto, but in fact it reflects right across Ontario. I think it is very plain to all of us here in the Legislative Assembly, as individual members and as insurance purchasers ourselves, that their mandate is important to everybody in every part of the province.

Their study reflects the insurance in every part of the province. Their requirements are to examine in detail those components that make up the rate-setting structure. They will consider everything that is required to be considered from right across the province.

I can tell the honourable gentleman that he, like --

Mr. Speaker: Order. New question, the member for Mississauga West.

CHILD CARE

Mr. Mahoney: My question is to the Minister of Community and Social Services. In the past several months, a number of grants for new day care centres have been awarded in my riding: a grant to the West Park Day Care Centre Inc., a nonprofit centre located in an industrial park, a grant to Sheridan College which runs a nonprofit workplace centre in the Mississauga Civic Centre, and a grant to the Mississauga Young Men’s Christian Association, which will open a child care centre in its complex currently under construction in the city centre area of Mississauga.

These grants are greatly appreciated, but I would like to ask the minister what he and his ministry are doing to ensure, specifically, that more workplace day care centres will be available to the families of Ontario.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: The total number of workplace day care centres in the province today is approximately 50, and about 12 of those are directly operated by various ministries of government scattered across the province.

To facilitate workplace day care centres, we are doing two things. First, we provide a $55,000 startup grant to any employer who wants to start a workplace day care centre as part of his place of employment or in association with other employers. Second, we have set up an advisory council at each of our area offices scattered around the province to provide assistance and advice to potential employers on the basis of the

interpretation of the legislation, the steps they have to go through to get a licence, the design of the program they ought to offer to meet their employees’ needs, and finally, the kind of funding we have learned from other experiences is required.

Given the number we have there now and given the services we are offering, there is no good reason why an employer who wants this service cannot get it.

Mr. Mahoney: I support the concept of workplace day care, but in today’s society, with both single mothers, and in fact single fathers out there and many people having dual career marriages involved, there seems to be a strong need for day care centres that are flexible enough not only to be in the workplace but also to respond to the demands of shift work and/or flextime.

How is the minister working with the day care community not only to ensure that day care is affordable and readily available in the workplace, but also to ensure that it is accessible to all parents who need the service at the specific times when they need it?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: Built into our new directions for day care in Ontario were two or three initiatives that I think respond to the particular question.

The first one is the establishment and funding of community development groups in various areas across the province. This is a group of volunteers, in most cases parents who need the service, who come together and assess the needs of their community with respect to issues like shift work, weekend work and things like that. They advise the local suppliers of day care as to what that need is. For example, in the Ottawa area there is a day care centre that operates 24 hours a day because in that particular community they decided they needed that kind of service.

The second thing we have done is to build a flexible services program into our total program. Initially, we supplied about $10 million for that. In this current budget year, we have added almost $3 million to that. That has resulted in about 290 projects serving well over 4,000 children. So I think we are recognizing those needs and beginning to meet those needs.

LANDLORDS’ RESTRICTIONS ON PETS

Mr. Philip: I have a question for the Attorney General. On October 14 and December 14, the Toronto Humane Society sent representations, including a brief, to the Attorney General. In that brief they pointed out that as a result of pet exclusion clauses inserted by landlords, some 17 per cent of the animals they euthanize are the direct result of people having to give up their animals because of these pet exclusion clauses. This is some 10,000 animals euthanized, including the animals of senior citizens, disabled people and so forth.

Since the minister has not seen fit to even acknowledge receipt of the brief, let alone respond to it, I wonder if he would tell the House what action he intends to take. Does he intend to amend the Landlord and Tenant Act to prohibit these exclusion clauses?

Hon. Mr. Scott: The problem is presented because people who have pets which they want to keep, then sign leases that have a provision in them that they cannot keep pets on the premises they are renting. Those people must decide sooner or later whether they wish to keep pets or not. If they do wish to keep pets, they should see to it that they do not sign leases in which the landlord extracts a promise on behalf of tenants, for their own benefit and the benefit of their neighbours, that they will not keep pets. That, of course, is in the end, the solution to the problem.

Mr. Philip: If I understand the minister’s position clearly, what he is saying to all those senior citizens and disabled people is that they must choose between having their pet euthanized or having a roof over their head.

Hon. Mr. Scott: No, no, no.

Mr. Philip: That is precisely what he is saying. Where are these people going to move to?

Would the minister not agree that under the Landlord and Tenant Act, at the present time --

Hon. Mr. Scott: What do you do in your buildings, Ed?

Mr. Philip: I do not know why the minister is so upset. I sent him a Christmas gift. It was to help him in his worship services over the Christmas holidays. It was a mirror.

Why would the minister not agree to take the exclusion clauses out of the present leases, since landlords have other recourses to deal with those people who do not act responsibly as pet owners?

Hon. Mr. Scott: It has been perfectly clear that if tenants sign leases that do not have “no pet” clauses in them, there is no court that will evict them from the premises or, indeed, order their pets to be removed unless a pet is committing a nuisance for other tenants. If on the other hand tenants, for whatever reason, go ahead and sign leases that say, “You cannot have pets in this building,” they cannot be surprised if the landlord, in his interest and that of the other tenants, insists on the performance of that lease according to its terms.

That is the present situation. Tenants in the province have to decide whether they wish to live in buildings that do not permit pets or whether they are content to live in buildings that do permit pets.

CONTAMINATED SOIL

Mrs. Marland: My question is for the Minister of the Environment. The minister is aware of a very serious problem that we have in my riding involving lead-contaminated soil in the area of the former Exide Electronics plant and the existing Tonolli Canada plant. He also is aware that during the estimates of his ministry meeting on Thursday, November 24, I did ask him what the plans were for his ministry to meet the commitment it had made to the people in that community that the soil cleanup of the lead-contaminated soil would in fact start in the spring of 1989 and be completed by the fall of 1989.

At that time, there was the response that it had to be a tripartite commitment between the municipality, the company and the ministry to pay the cost.

Mr. Speaker: Question?

Mrs. Marland: My question is: Since the city of Mississauga has passed a resolution saying it will not pay for this and has referred the matter to the regional municipality of Peel, and since the regional chairman, Frank Bean, is still waiting to hear from the ministry five months later --

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sure the minister will find a question somewhere there.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: I was willing to let her go on with further information, because it is very useful.

The member will recall our discussions during the consideration of the spending estimates of the Ministry of the Environment in this matter, and I want to tell her that there have been conversations that have taken place between the Ministry of the Environment and the city of Mississauga at the present time at officials’ level where there was a discussion of the manner in which the city of Mississauga might participate, or the regional municipality of Peel.

Members may recall the example here in Toronto, where the city very quickly and voluntarily said that it would be pleased to participate in that particular kind of cleanup. As a result, we worked quickly with the Ministry of the Environment, working with the city of Toronto and the people in the neighbourhood, to ensure that an expeditious cleanup of the properties did take place.

Those discussions have been undertaken by people within the Ministry of the Environment discussing it with the mayor’s office, and I am hopeful that we will see the kind of progress the member is seeking.

Mr. Speaker: Thank you. I am sure the member will find some answer there to ask a supplementary about.

Mrs. Marland: I think what the minister has to address is the fact that his staff are not meeting with the municipal officials, nor with the mayor’s office. It has been referred out of the mayor’s office to the region of Peel.

What we need to know, what the people in the community want to know, is: Regardless of the financial commitments by whomever, when is this soil cleanup going to start and when is the ministry going to deal with the region of Peel? It has nothing to do with the city of Mississauga any longer.

Hon. Mr. Bradley: The member would know that, just as in the case of the city of Toronto, I guess the city of Toronto could have said it had nothing to do with it and simply say that Metro should deal with it. Instead, it decided that it would be a partner in this.

In the situation in Mississauga, they may have felt that the regional municipality of Peel was the more appropriate organization to deal with this, and I think there may be a way in which the regional municipality of Peel in fact can participate and that is the nub of the discussions that have been taking place by representatives of the Ministry of the Environment and the mayor’s office.

If my recollection is correct, this took place before Christmas, and obviously what has happened is that an approach has been now made, I believe by the city of Mississauga, to the regional municipality of Peel.

As would the member and the residents in the area, I hope to have this matter dealt with at the earliest opportunity.

PETITIONS

HIGHWAY CONSTRUCTION

Mr. Eves: As I indicated during members’ statements, I have a petition here signed by some 3,746 residents of Ontario. It reads:

“To the Honourable the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

“We, the undersigned, beg leave to petition the parliament of Ontario as follows:

“To have Highway 69 widened to four full lanes from Highway 400 extension to Sudbury.”

As I indicated, this petition has been signed by almost 4,000 residents of Ontario. I must congratulate Mayor Roy O’Halloran of the town of Parry Sound for introducing the initiative to get these petitions signed, and the people who are in attendance here today from Sudbury and Georgian Bay township, as well.

HOME CARE

Mr. Brandt: I have a petition for the Lieutenant Governor in Council and the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, signed by 38 persons from the Hamilton area, which reads in part as follows:

“We are well informed as to the services provided by homemakers to the frail, elderly, infirm, palliative and disabled persons in this community and across the province. We appeal to you to recognize the value and continued need for the services of homemakers who maintain clients in their home environment. Homemakers are not the Cinderellas of society. They are, in many cases, the primary care givers. We urge you to elevate their status and make funds available so that the homemakers can continue to perform this invaluable service to society. We feel homemakers must be given the benefits received by other health care givers, such as pension plan, sick pay, etc. and a decent hourly wage.”

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

Mr. Adams: I have a petition from a number of residents of the general Peterborough area.

“We, the undersigned, wish to protest strongly the proposed increase in auto insurance. This increase may not seem large to you, but to us, whether seniors or working parents, this hike is atrocious and totally unnecessary. Please give this your strong consideration.”

REPORT BY COMMITTEE

STANDING COMMITTEE ON

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. Neumann from the standing committee on social development reported the following resolution:

That supply in the following amount and to defray the expenses of the Ministry of Skills Development be granted to Her Majesty for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1989:

Skills development program, $406,299,500.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

STRATHROY MIDDLESEX GENERAL HOSPITAL ACT

Mr. Reycraft moved first reading of Bill Pr80,

An Act respecting Strathroy Middlesex General Hospital.

Motion agreed to.

THE SISTERS OF SOCIAL SERVICE ACT

Ms. Collins moved first reading of Bill Pr61,

An Act respecting The Sisters of Social Service.

Motion agreed to.

MOTION TO SET ASIDE ORDINARY BUSINESS

Mr. Speaker: Just before orders of the day, last Thursday afternoon, I received two applications for debate under standing order 37 to discuss a matter of urgent public importance. The first notice was filed by the member for London North (Mrs. Cunningham) and the second was filed by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. B. Rae).

As members know, according to this standing order, only one motion can be entertained during a sitting. Therefore, as the first motion was received in my office at 2:32 p.m. and the second at 3 p.m., I feel it only fair that I recognize the member for London North to move that motion.

Mr. D. S. Cooke: What’s fair about that?

Mrs. Cunningham: The member is smiling; he must think it is fair.

Mrs.

Cunningham moved that pursuant to standing order 37(a), the ordinary business of the House be set aside to discuss a matter of urgent public importance, that being the funding crisis for home care services in Ontario and, in particular, the imminent termination of the homemaker program offered by the Ontario Red Cross because of the present government’s mismanagement, total lack of leadership and absence of planning for the future with regard to this matter, which will lead to the loss of home care services in many communities, particularly in rural Ontario, resulting in a great deal of uncertainty for seniors and disabled people who are threatened with the prospect of losing their independence.

Mr. Speaker: Members have heard the motion, pursuant to standing order 37(a), by the member for London North. As I indicated earlier, this motion was received in time and therefore I have to consider an order.

I will listen to the member for up to five minutes, giving reasons why this House should debate this matter. I will also listen to two representatives from the other parties for up to five minutes.

Mrs. Cunningham: There are many reasons why this House should enter into an emergency debate on a very important service that has been offered for literally decades in Ontario, and that is the Red Cross homemaker service.

In the last provincial election campaign, the Liberals promised the people of Ontario that, if elected, they would move to shift the health care focus of the province from an institutional to a community-based approach. Expectations were raised and waiting lists increased.

Two years later, we witness increased frustration of health care providers unable to adequately meet the demand of the public and the growing discouragement of those in need of homemaker services that would allow them to remain in their homes rather than face unwanted institutionalization.

Specifically, the people of Ontario were promised by the Liberals in September 1987 that 28 centres providing homemaker service would be up and running in the next year. At that time, 18 centres were in place; and two years later, there are still only 18 centres providing homemaker services in this province. A recent glance at the estimates briefing report for the Ministry of Community and Social Services showed that for the next fiscal year, the government has capped homemaker centres at 18. These centres were to form the foundation for community-based health care services in Ontario. Many are now on the verge of collapsing.

We are in a state of crisis, and I think it is worth a debate in this House so that the citizens across this province will understand why we are concerned in opposition and what the Liberal government is going to do about it.

Current funds announced by the government to meet stated deficits will merely act as a temporary and precarious bandage. It is not meeting the demands.

The estimates briefing report also showed that despite the Liberal government’s promises, it underspent this fiscal year’s estimated budget for integrated homemaker programs by $5 million. We wonder about the true commitment on behalf of this government to a very important program, one that should have a vision and a plan for the province.

This debate is called to discuss the Liberal government’s failure to adequately address the needs of Ontario seniors and disabled and maintain its commitment to a community-oriented health care system.

This lack of planning and leadership is also accompanied by flagrant mismanagement on the part of the government, further eroding the future viability of community-based health care services in this province. Homemaker programs have not been adequately administered, but the fault lies with the government itself, not the program providers.

A government interministerial report on integrated homemaker services found that the government failed to adequately administer and manage these programs. This report was released some eight months ago, and as yet the government has failed to move on any of the recommendations which are crucial to the future viability of homemaker services.

Many of the recommendations are for the establishment of a rate-setting process. This is a management process, one that this government is responsible for. Currently, the rate reviews for programs are a sloppy process with no formal structure in place. The Liberal government has not required budgets to be submitted for review -- if one could imagine such a step -- and has failed to approve increases to budgets which are above the level of inflation. With no review, how can the government adequately assess the needs of the programs and future demands?

We would very much invite the government this afternoon to tell us about its processes, whether they are working and whether it too is concerned about them.

The interministerial report further states that when a budget is submitted little attention is paid to the needs of the client -- the people who were here, to support programs for the people who are paying the taxes in this particular province. The special demands of service delivery are not adequately addressed or the real costs to the organization in providing the homemaker services.

The Liberal government has failed to look at the true cost of delivering these services. That is the responsibility of the government, not the service provider. It is our responsibility to check out programs, to make sure they are working and to fund them accordingly. That is the role of government. While accusing the Canadian Red Cross Society of poor administration, the honourable minister fails to understand what components make up the administrative cost. The Red Cross, because of the insufficient number of service providers employed, is now sending staff out to three different locations a day.

Mr. Allen: The homemaker services of Ontario were in crisis two years ago and at that time the government bailed them out, covered their deficits and established an interministerial committee to bring in a report examining the circumstances of the homemaking services in Ontario and in the meantime undertook to establish integrated homemaker services.

There was a crisis two years ago; now we have another bailout. Nothing has been done to follow up the report that was finished a year ago and circulated to all the homemaking services in Ontario. Good feedback came to the minister. The minister in fact has known for two years what the proportions of this problem are.

The fact that nothing has been done to address the fundamental issues raised by the interministerial report constitutes the crisis today. The fact that the minister responded to the deficits once more is an indication that a crisis not only exists and continues to exist but has really not been touched. The interministerial report said flat out that the central issue for the provision of homemaker services today was the provision of adequate wages somewhat above the average of $5.60 per hour that homemakers make.

In order to maintain workers in the field to keep the service operational so that the clients of the service -- whom we all recognize as being very needy with respect to the service -- would in fact be served, what the minister has done and what the government did on Friday afternoon to bail out the Red Cross and several of the other homemaking services does nothing to address that question.

The problem for the clients has been the revolving door of service that has smitten homemaker service after homemaker service across the province, as retirement rates from the service have grown 20 per cent in some places right through to about 120 per cent in another, meaning that continuity of delivery has been impossible, the satisfaction that clients receive from being attended by someone they know is gone and homemaker services have to feed training dollars after training dollars to retrain new homemakers in their service.

In order to try to make ends meet, those agencies have tried to spread their homemakers more thinly, but that has meant more travel and therefore more travel costs, which the minister does not cover and which are only covered by some of the homemaker agencies. Indeed, there are homemaker agencies out there that do not cover the travel costs, and the individual homemaker has to cover those costs. There have been escalating costs of that kind in terms of compensation and in terms of long-distance telephone communication, which is necessary in order to keep people in the field in operation, that are quite outside the control of the agencies.

By simply covering the deficit, the minister and the government are in fact not addressing any of those issues. They are simply addressing, if you like, the status quo antebellum, the state of affairs before the real war broke out this afternoon when we met 500 homemakers on the front steps of this Legislature, a most unusual event.

When 500 homemakers, who normally do not kick up their heels in protest, finally resort to the desperate expedient of coming to the front steps of this place to tell us how serious their situation is, they are the best people to tell us whether there is a crisis. Any words in embellishment of any of their arguments on the part of myself or the member who just spoke do not paint, in any respect, the colourful case they can give us.

They tell us about the time they have spent on the job. They tell us about the training they have undertaken. They tell us about the care they give to the persons they serve. They tell us about the extreme dependence of those persons and how much they need that care. They also tell us how much they save the government, and it is extraordinary what the difference is.

Therefore, it seems to me that even on the basis of financing alone there is a crisis, because money is being spent which should not be being spent and which the government could be relieved of by providing economical and straightforward home care service as necessary.

Hon. Mr. Conway: I want, on behalf of the government, to speak to the motion standing in the name of the honourable member for London North, who it appears has had a very busy weekend, what with her drafting of emergency motions and her widely reported sermon in the Stratford Central United Church yesterday.

I just want to say to the honourable member and to her colleagues on the opposition benches that it seems to us in the government that the steps taken last week by the Minister of Community and Social Services (Mr. Sweeney) on behalf of this government indicate the willingness of the Peterson government to continue to address the very real needs and concerns which have been identified by the Red Cross and by others in the community.

I suppose, as the government moved last week to address the specific issue that was of concern to the Red Cross, we could presumably argue that this debate ought not to take place. But I recognize the interest of the honourable members opposite to press the government on the additional issues which have to be considered and addressed, and I welcome, quite frankly, the opportunity to spend an afternoon in this Legislature to welcome those from the homemaker community who I know are in the area today, watching perhaps, after the very interesting speeches made by the member for Sarnia (Mr.

Brandt) and the member for York South earlier today, and tell them that we as a government do not see there is any lack of leadership. Quite to the contrary.

Our colleague the Minister of Community and Social Services has over the last three years and some months moved, I think with expedition and with effect, to address many if not all of the concerns in the community. I would be the first to say, and I know my friend the member for Kitchener-Wilmot (Mr. Sweeney) will agree with me, that of course more remains to be done. When we have addressed all the needs in the community in this and other matters, then we will know we have been transported to another place.

I say to my friend the member for London North when she says that there is a lack of leadership, that there is a crisis, that is not a view I share. I appreciate her concern. I point to the very considerable improvements this government has made over the last number of years. I want to speak personally for a moment, because the motion standing in the name of the member for London North draws our particular attention to the situation in rural Ontario.

I say to my friends the member for London North and the member for Hamilton West (Mr. Allen) that I represent one of the most rural constituencies in this province and I can say without fear of contradiction that over the last number of years, because of the kind of leadership the government has shown and the minister has exhibited, the conditions in rural Ontario have improved significantly.

Throughout the course of my Christmas visits in the Ottawa Valley, the Red Cross came to see me to indicate that it wanted the deficit question addressed. I told them then what the minister has indicated throughout the piece, that while we were very anxious to work with those who provide the homemaker services, including the Red Cross, to look at the deficit question, we were willing to admit that there were a variety of other issues that had to be addressed at the same time.

To be sure, the opposition points out that the answer is simply to increase the funding. As the Minister of Community and Social Services will point out shortly, we have made significant improvements in the enrichment of homemaker services over the last number of years. When the government committed millions of dollars just some months ago to the integrated homemaker program, that was new funding for a new program. I believe -- and the minister can correct me -- that this year we will be spending something in the neighbourhood of $40 million for that relatively new program.

Of course, the demand that we have identified has been very significant indeed, and we intend to work with the very valuable providers of the homemaker services. I would be the first to say that, in my communities, the Red Cross plays an enormously important role in the provision of these homemaker services. They are not the exclusive delivery agent, but we recognize the enormous contribution they have made, and we intend, as a government, to continue to work with those providers.

I want to say on behalf of rural Ontario and on behalf of this government that under the leadership of the Premier (Mr. Peterson) and the member for Kitchener-Wilmot, we believe our record is good and our commitment is strong, and we consider the prospect for future advancement to be very positive indeed. We do not share the view that there is a crisis or, certainly, that there is any lack of leadership.

Mr. Speaker: We have now dealt with the motion of the member for London North under standing order 37(a), (

b) and (c). We come to 37(d), and it appears from the comments made that members wish the debate to proceed. However, according to the standing order, I must put the question. Shall the debate proceed?

Agreed to.

Mr. Speaker : I remind all members who wish to participate that they may take up to 10 minutes. The debate will continue until we have run out of speakers or the clock strikes six. The member for London North, for up to 10 minutes.

HOME CARE

Mrs. Cunningham: I found the government House leader’s statements most interesting. I suggest his statement that many if not all of the concerns about the needs of the community have been or are very closely being met by this government is most interesting.

Certainly, one of the real needs of the community of the province of Ontario has a lot to do with taking care of people who are not able to care for themselves. We have been told over the last few months that the cost of health care in this province is out of control and spiralling. The government has also told the hospitals and people in charge of the delivery of medical services that they had better be very careful with their budgets. At the same time, we have seen waiting lists for different surgeries and for hospital beds on the rise -- long lists.

We have been told that community-based health care services are what this government will support. At the same time, we see in the nursing homes and homes for the aged long lists of people waiting to be admitted. We also see long lists of people waiting for some kind of respite care in this province. These are very expensive services and they are services that the people of our province are deeply in need of.

I think one of the most efficient ways of delivering service to our citizens is through a homemaker program. Therefore, we do agree with the government that it is a very important priority; it is one that is certainly fiscally the most responsible. I would think, for the citizens who would want to remain in their homes as long as they can, whether they be disabled, ill, elderly or just tired of being able to take care of themselves because of failing health and age, they would want to be home; and we should be supporting that.

Homemaker services for the elderly in rural Ontario will be especially seriously jeopardized if the province refuses to cover the Red Cross Society’s $1.1-million homemaking deficit. That was the criticism last week. I would suggest that this was the one that the government chose to listen to. In fact, they did. They met that deficit.

In doing so, they were just partially addressing the real needs of the Red Cross and of other homemaking providers across this province. The real problem, I think, for this government is to put forth a policy that it believes in, that makes good sense and that it can support, a policy that the people of the province understand.

It was this government that promised during the election of September 1987 that it would be supporting increased homemaking services. It established an interministerial committee to look at the need and to look at the kinds of expectations that would have to be met on behalf of the public, the service providers and certainly the clients.

They looked at many recommendations. We are very pleased to take the time to thank the people who had input to the committee in the establishment and the writing, finally, of the Report of the Interministerial Committee on Visiting Homemaker Services.

I would suggest that it has been almost a year that the government has looked at the recommendations of that report. Meeting the deficit was just the beginning. Taking a look at the kinds of recommendations and problems in service delivery, the challenge to this government is the other part of the picture and the one that the Progressive Conservative Party is equally concerned about -- not just throwing money, not simply increasing funding, as the government House leader suggested, and not just providing new funding for a new program.

If this program were to continue being delivered the way it is now in Ontario, it simply could not survive. We know that one of the greatest challenges in delivering this program is having people to provide the service. We have many, many dedicated providers of a home care service working across our province. They start out with wonderful expectations, they start out with wonderful energies and wonderful hopes of being able to help other people. The real problem is that we cannot keep them.

We ask them to work long hours. We pay them rotten wages. We ask them sometimes to travel long distances. We pay them mileage. We do not pay them for the total time it takes to drive to locations very far away. We accuse them of having great administrative costs. Sometimes, in some of the service areas that we have been in contact with -- sometimes they have contacted us -- they advise us that perhaps two people are responsible for overseeing the work of some 67 homemakers.

I would suggest that administratively, in the true sense of the word, this particular service is extremely efficient. What we are looking at is a total lack of understanding around the high cost of transportation, around the high cost of training and keeping people in the job and around the very low cost to our government with very low wages.

We should be looking seriously at this report where there are a number of recommendations around training, some seven, and where there are a number of recommendations around wages, about 10. On one that I spoke on earlier this afternoon, the rate-setting process recommendations, we are looking at some seven. Finally, we are looking at recommendations that have to do with rate structures.

This particular service has been studied to death. What this government is extremely famous for is soliciting reports, soliciting input, asking for people’s advice, saying that it will be an open government, that it will ask the public and the citizens to participate in the democratic process, and then turning a deaf ear and doing nothing.

I personally have the greatest admiration for the minister. I think his real problems lie in persuading some of his colleagues that if the government is going to make promises and is going to meet the needs of the people in Ontario, especially around homemaking, thereby allowing people to remain in their homes, it is going to have to start listening.

One would never criticize for one moment this particular report. As a matter of fact, it is the government’s own report. We have the Ontario Association of Visiting Homemaker Services helping us along, the Canadian Red Cross Society helping us along, the Visiting Homemakers Association (Toronto) giving good advice, the Ontario Municipal Social Services Association giving good advice, the Ontario association of home care associates giving every good piece of information it can give us, and individuals and groups such as the Community Concern Associates Ltd.

We could go and on. The government could not get better advice. Sooner or later, it has to bite the bullet and say: “We are not going to increase the number of hospital beds. We are not making more room for the elderly and people in need in homes for the aged and municipal homes. We are not going to increase hospital costs by having people in respite care in hospitals if it is not the most efficient way of providing a service.”

The only other viable way is to support a program that has been in existence for some 65 years. I think the government should be ashamed of itself for not showing leadership and saying: “This is our plan. This is what we are going to support.” Surely we do not always have to wait for threats of emergency debates, threats of marches on Queen’s Park, threats all the time of someone or other calling a press conference to get some action from this government.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time. I hope the government members are listening. I am sure the minister will take the advice he receives this afternoon seriously.

Mr. B. Rae: I want to participate in this debate because this is an issue that has concerned me and members of my party for some time, perhaps particularly because there are so many members in the House who were not here during the Tory government and perhaps will not be as aware as the minister certainly is of the fact that there are many issues. Some were here for about three weeks while we had a Tory government, but that was an unreal period.

Mr. Reycraft: That was enough.

Mr. B. Rae: That was enough, but that was a slightly bizarre time.

I am talking about the long debates we have had in this House, going back at least a decade, on this question of homemaker services, and also, if I may say so directly to the minister, on this question of the relationship between his ministry and the Ministry of Health, in dealing with not only the question of homemaker services but also the question of service and care for the elderly generally.

I am aware of several studies that have been done internally on the relationship between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. I think one of the really frustrating things, which one cannot get at in any detail in question period because of the nature of the beast, is the length of time it has taken this government to come to terms with some of the real institutional problems in the delivery of service and with some of the absurdities, the administrative complexity of this service that is being provided and the cost that imposes on all the agencies.

If I can just mention one example, it is not widely known, but it should be, that the Red Cross has to negotiate well over 200 separate contracts and separate rates with separate municipalities and areas in providing for home care on an annual basis. It makes absolutely no sense for there to be so many incredibly diverse rates, ways of doing things, ways of administering these contracts.

It would be far better and far simpler and would make so much more sense if there was one central contract, if you will, between the government of Ontario and the agencies providing for homemaker services and if the per diem rates and the per hour rates that were paid were negotiated on an across-the-board basis.

The leader of the third party said it was the question he asked on Thursday that caused the minister to come up with the money on Friday. I suppose I could claim it was the press conference I held on Friday morning that caused the minister to do his thing on Friday afternoon. Whenever I hear of those claims, I am always reminded of the person who thinks he caused the beginning of the hockey game because he joined in the singing of the national anthem.

I have no idea what caused the minister to change his mind or what battles took place within the government over the last week about whether to provide funding for these deficits. What I do know is that as I sat and watched questions from my colleague the member for Hamilton West and others during the last week, I could not figure out what the Liberal Party was gaining from failing to deliver on something for the Red Cross. I was asking my colleagues: “Where is the political advantage in being seen to be stingy with the Red Cross of Ontario? Is there something that’s gone on here that I don’t understand?”

I still cannot figure it out, but what I think needs to be said and emphasized is that there is a profound structural problem with the delivery of home care and with the delivery of care at home generally. I think the explanation has to be that home care has been the weak poor cousin of the social service-health care system. That is the essential problem. The essential structural problem we are dealing with is that health care and the social service component of health care, and that is really what this is, has always been seen as essentially an institutional system. Anything that takes place apart from that has been very much an add-on and very much a weaker sister in the system.

That problem was true when I got here in 1982. One of the first things we did in my party was to start a task force looking at care for the elderly across the province. It was an education for me as a member of that task force -- my colleague the member for Windsor-Riverside (Mr. D. S. Cooke) was also a member of the task force -- as we travelled across the province and listened to the problems endemic to Tory Ontario, as it then was, in the delivery of care at home.

We found there was no central piece of legislation that covered overall care at home. There was legislation on home care, legislation on visiting homemakers, but nothing on all those people who needed care and were not getting care. Now this government has improvised and created what it calls the integrated homemaker program, which was a build-on to what the Tories were already doing when Frank Drea and Larry Grossman were the Minister of Community and Social Services and the Minister of Health respectively.

I think it must be said that we really have not seen the administrative, the power change in the system of delivering care at home that needs to accompany the kinds of policy changes that are being talked about in the interministerial report. The interministerial report talks about wages, working conditions and training, and it also talks about the administration of the service. In each one of those areas this government simply has not moved.

The minister will say, as I know he will, “Look, when I took over in 1985 there was no money in the integrated homemaker program. Now, there is” -- well, there was supposed to be $43 million but there is only $40 million because we had the Treasurer’s (Mr. R. F. Nixon) cutback of September. “That money is there and it is new money.” He will also say, and if he will not I will say it for him, “The home care program in 1985 was spending a little over $150 million and now it is spending upwards of $285 million.”

So it is obviously an area that has expanded, but it has expanded because the demand for the service has expanded. It has not expanded because the quality of delivery of the service has improved dramatically.

One of the ironies of the minister’s announcement on Friday is that the announcement will not increase the wages of a single homemaker in this province, because what is it designed to do? The announcement on Friday is designed simply to cover the operating shortfall that is built into the budget of the Red Cross of Ontario for this past year.

In talking it over with the Red Cross people on Friday morning before our press conference, it became very clear that as much as they might like to see a higher wage structure, they are simply not in a position to do it. All they are doing is passing on the money they get from the government, as well, of course, as providing supervisory and administrative help for those people. That, again, is a bone of contention between the Red Cross and the minister because of the things he and others have said about the efficiency of the administrative overhead and the supervisory costs involved in delivering the service.

My approach would be this: If the government is going to have a Minister without Portfolio responsible for senior citizens’ affairs, it should give the minister for seniors something to do. It should give the minister for seniors a line responsibility.

It should let the minister for seniors take responsibility for nursing homes, for homes for the aged, for the delivery of home care and give that ministry the budget to deliver services for seniors at home and in the community in a comprehensive way, instead, if I may say so, of having these turf wars between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Community and Social Services carry on indefinitely and homemaker services provided at such a minimal, poor and inadequate level when it comes to people in the community.

My colleague the member for Windsor-Riverside was saying he had a call from somebody in his constituency who was saying that he had homemaker services for a year and that during that year he had 12 different homemakers. A homemaker is somebody who comes into your home, somebody who has a relationship with you. It is impossible to run a fair service and a good service if you have turnover levels that high, and it is impossible to stop turnover that high until we start building in a wage structure, a reward structure, a recognition structure for those people that is worthy of the name.

It is the problem we have in hospitals, the problem we have in nursing homes, the problem we have in care at home. Unless we pay enough and unless we take the service as seriously as we take care in institutions, in hospitals, it will continue to live from year to year, from hand to mouth and will continue to deny seniors and others the care they need at home. After all, if they do not get it at home, they are going to have to go to an institution.

Mrs. Marland: In rising today to speak in this emergency debate about the funding crisis for home care services in Ontario, and in particular the imminent termination of the homemaker program offered by the Red Cross because of this government’s mismanagement, total lack of leadership and absence of planning for the future with regard to this matter, which will lead to the loss of home care services in many communities --

The Deputy Speaker: Order, please.

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: My apologies to the member for Mississauga South, but I believe I stood but was not recognized. It is the Speaker’s decision to choose.

The Deputy Speaker: I am sorry. I did not see you. I am being told it was the Liberals’ turn to speak, was it not?

Hon. Mr. Sweeney: I believe the understanding is that we would make the normal rotation. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As our House leader has indicated, we also welcome the opportunity to participate in this debate. I believe the emergency nature of the debate that was suggested last week has been temporarily resolved, but I have no quarrel whatsoever with my colleagues in the two opposition parties who say it does not respond to the larger question.

As a matter of fact, I remind honourable members in the two opposition parties that is precisely what I said last week myself when I was responding to their several questions, that simply dealing with the deficit of the Red Cross was only the tip of the iceberg and the much larger problem with respect to home support services for the elderly and the disabled in this province was in fact below the surface, and that we had to take cognizance of all that if we were really going to come to grips with it.

That is why I am a little bit surprised to hear the criticism today, “Oh, all you have done ....” We clearly indicated last week that was the situation we were in as well as the government, and that I was in as the minister, in trying to come to grips with the much larger picture, in trying to come to grips with the recommendations of the inter-ministerial report, where we would deal not just with the deficits that have been brought to our attention, but also with the whole question of wages, with the whole question of rates, with the whole question of training, and if I may very briefly respond to the comments of the Leader of the Opposition, with the much bigger question of the role of home support and homemaker services and a whole range of community services, compared with the amount of resources we are currently allocating to the institutional side.

I want to say that I share a lot of the concerns and a lot of the support recommendations that have already been expressed. They are precisely the areas that I, as the minister, am working on at the present time, and that the Minister of Health (Mrs. Caplan) is working on at the present time.

I also want to point out that while we say that in dealing specifically with homemakers we cannot isolate just the deficit. If we are going to talk about the whole question of community supports for our elderly people and for our disabled people, then there is more to that than just homemakers. We have moved on a number of fronts to recognize that there are a number of services and a number of supports that must be made available.

We have spoken today specifically about the homemaker program and the figures have already been pointed out. Two years ago it was nothing; last year it was $20 million; this year it is $40 million. Those are the dollars that are actually going to be spent. That is a significant increase. I will be the first one to say that it does not meet all the needs but it would, I think, also be incorrect to say that we have not recognized certain specific needs, the need to do things in different ways, and begun to respond to those.

Let me also point out to them that we have improved a number of other home support services. The honourable members may be aware of the total range, just two years ago, of home support services other than homemakers themselves, support services that provide for relief for families, that provide for Meals on Wheels or Wheels to Meals, that supply home maintenance programs of a whole range of sorts to elderly and disabled people; that program alone has gone from $12 million to $40 million just in two years.

Once again, we recognize that if we are going to assist elderly and disabled people to stay in their own homes, or to stay with their families, they need more than just homemakers’ programs.

Let me point out that the home care program operated by the Ministry of Health has gone from $195 million to $285 million, an almost $100-million increase, recognizing the value of trying to prevent people from going into hospitals or chronic-care facilities in the first place, and if they are in there, getting them out as quickly as possible and back into the community. A component of that program is $53 million for homemaker services alone.

Therefore, there is a very significant recognition of the changing needs of the elderly and the changing needs of the disabled, and of the fact that there are more disabled in our communities now because they are coming out of institutions and they are not going into institutions. The advances of medical science are saving more people who would have expired otherwise and we have to provide services for them. We know, as someone has already mentioned, that the elderly population is growing at a rate of about three per cent a year and that we have to deal with that. We have to find different ways of responding to their needs.

We know from the report, A New Agenda: Health and Social Services Strategies for Ontario’s Seniors, that my former colleague Ron Van Horne published almost two years ago now, that there were some clear recognitions of the changing nature of the elderly population. Just because people are older does not mean they are sick, and therefore we have to have an entire new geriatric way of looking at them and the Ministry of Health is doing that.

We clearly indicated that we want to expand the home support programs. We have done it with the integrated homemaker program, with the home care program, with the homemaker and nurses’ services program, with the home support program. They all add up to a total budget right now of $378 million. That is the growth just in two years from $222 million.

That is significant new amounts of money being put into tha