25 SEPTEMBRE 1991 ASSEMBLÉE LÉGISLATIVE DE L'ONTARIO

The House met at 1330.

Prayers.

MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

HUGH MCDONALD

A lawyer by profession, Hugh had a long and distinguished record of public service in Nepean. From 1968 to 1976 he was a commissioner of Nepean Hydro and its chairman. In 1978 he was elected alderman and served in this function until 1985. From 1985 to 1989 he was a member and, for some time, chairman of the Nepean Police Commission.

Hugh served in the Royal Canadian Navy from 1946 to 1956. After graduating from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1960, he became the first lawyer to open a private practice in what was then the township of Nepean. He was a long-standing member of the Nepean Kiwanis, Delta Chi and the Upper Canada Law Society.

Hugh McDonald had a very keen interest in local, provincial, and federal politics. His advice was always valued and his help much appreciated. Nepean and Ottawa-Carleton have lost a great citizen. I am sure the House will want to join me in extending sincere condolences to his family.

LAND REGISTRATION

The Minister of Consumer and Commercial Relations had assured me that Almonte was to be reviewed, and she would see, personally, that unanswered letters would receive replies. Letters in May received no replies until late summer. I am saddened to say the replies were flawed and unacceptable because they were based on a flawed analysis.

The government fails to realize that Almonte's $1-million registry office, which just opened in June 1990, services not only northern Lanark but parts of west Carleton and Kanata. The area is one of the fastest-growing in eastern Ontario.

Essential information was considered when a three-year study was done prior to building this $1-million building, which opened, as I say, one year ago.

The people of Lanark-Renfrew will hold the minister and this government responsible for the outcome of this review.

POLICE SERVICES

Law enforcement is multi-faceted work. Part of it is spent educating the public: making them aware of certain dangers; advising them of better ways. Enforcement, of course, is the other aspect. Police officers respond to a variety of offences, from the Highway Traffic Act to more serious crimes against persons and property.

Policing has been described as hours of tedium and painstaking work, interspersed with moments of extreme tension and stress. Ontario is fortunate to have some of its finest citizens serving us in provincial and municipal police forces.

Many of us are guilty of not taking the time to appreciate the work our police forces do. Maybe it is a sign of how well they do their jobs that we do not even notice. We take for granted that our society is a safe haven for ourselves and our loved ones, particularly in our small communities, but police officers know that it is their work and dedication that keeps our system running smoothly in an ever-changing world, and sometimes they are the first to pay the ultimate price for our freedom.

It is with great sadness today that I offer my condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Constable Scott Rossiter, who was killed in the line of duty last week in Ingersoll. He had moved to Ingersoll because he wanted to serve a smaller community where he could be closer to the public.

Constable Rossiter is the second Ontario police officer to die this year; OPP Sergeant Tom Cooper was killed last July near Kenora. In total, 10 Canadian police officers have died in the line of duty in the past five years. All of us should take time to reflect and remember and honour the men and women who serve us in our police forces.

WATERFOWL HUNTING / CHASSE A LA SAUVAGINE

When ingested by wildlife such as geese, ducks and swans, lead shot is a toxic substance which results in plumbism, better known as lead poisoning.

The United States hunt will use alternatives such as steel or tungsten shot, which do not cause lead poisoning when ingested by birds.

It was estimated in the late 1980s that over 3,600 tonnes of lead pellets were fired annually over and into the wetlands of North America. In the United States alone this resulted in the death of between 1.6 to 2.4 million birds out of an annual migration of 100 million birds.

The eating of only a few pellets when foraging in a pond can kill waterfowl. Since proven alternatives exist, a province-wide lead shot ban for the hunting of waterfowl is overdue in order to stop this senseless slaughter.

Le gouvernement néo-démocrate se doit de bannir l'utilisation du plomb lors de la chasse à la sauvagine. C'est le moindre à faire pour protéger les oiseaux et l'environnement.

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NURSING HOMES

The per diem subsidy for municipal homes is 32% higher than the subsidy for privately owned nursing homes, despite the fact that the residents of both of these long-term care facilities have the same needs and are provided with the same level of care.

I recently had the opportunity to visit one of the nursing homes in my community, the Chateau Gardens nursing home in Elmira, and I was impressed by its dedication to providing a high standard of care for its residents. The hard reality, however, is that their dedication is greater than their resources and that they will be forced to make staff cuts if this government does not take action by October 15.

This crisis at Chateau Gardens is not an isolated incident. Sixteen homes have gone into receivership, and more will follow if the government does not change its funding policy.

I believe the private sector has an important role to play in assisting the government in providing long-term care and I believe that all residents of this province are entitled to receive the same high level of care.

I would urge the Minister of Health to meet with the representatives of Chateau Gardens to discuss their financial problems and to take action to eliminate the funding gap, which has widened over the past six years.

UNITED WAY CAMPAIGN

Earlier this week, labour and corporation dollars filled the United Way kitty in my riding to kick off this year's fund-raising drive. The two accounted for almost $224,000 raised in the first day of the campaign. That is almost 25% of the United Way's $1-million goal for Chatham-Kent in a single night.

My former employer, Rockwell International, may have been tough at the bargaining table; however, Rockwell pledged $10,000. Meanwhile, its employees, whom I represented, came through with $7,000.

But there were many other employers and employees who had made the mercury in the United Way thermometer boil. Union Gas, our biggest corporate citizen, helped the cause with $38,000, while its workers kicked in an additional $29,000.

Workers at Navistar were good for a whopping $40,000, while the corporation kicked in $15,000.

This is just one prime example of how corporations and workers co-operate to meet the better needs of their community. I think with the future of this government and the future of workers and corporations, we can achieve successful goals and a prosperous Ontario.

ONTARIO HYDRO RATES

If Bill 118 becomes law, our hydro bills will be increasing in order to pay for the cost of any directive issued to Ontario Hydro by the government. What is particularly frightening is that Bill 118 will no longer require that these directives be related to Hydro's exercise of its powers and duties under the Power Corporation Act.

This change in our Hydro law will open the floodgates for the NDP government to fund any of its social or regional economic development programs through Ontario Hydro. This government's intention to use Ontario Hydro in this way is made clear by the track record it has established in the cases of Elliot Lake and Kapuskasing.

Hydro's chairman has predicted double-digit increases in hydro rates each year for the next four or five years. These predictions were based on the premise that Ontario Hydro would continue to supply power at cost. We can only speculate as to how much higher our Hydro bills will be in order for us to cover the costs of the social programs Ontario Hydro will be forced to fund.

Our caucus opposes Bill 118. When this legislation goes to committee for public hearings, this government will quickly learn that the people of this province will not tolerate any action by this government that will threaten our supply of affordable electricity.

ALTERNATIVE FUELS

Since last Friday I have been driving a natural gas vehicle which is being lent to me by Consumers' Gas. Compared with gasoline and diesel fuel, natural gas significantly reduces harmful emissions. Natural gas is also a plentiful Canadian resource. Natural gas is available at 40 service stations in Ontario. As well, a refuelling appliance can be installed for convenient fill-up at homes which are heated by natural gas. Dual-fuel systems are available so that drivers can flick a switch to change to gasoline in areas where natural gas is not readily available.

There are economic benefits from converting a vehicle to natural gas, which can lower fuel bills by up to 50%. The Ontario government offers a sales tax rebate of up to $1,000 on newly purchased vehicles which have natural gas systems installed. There is also a federal government taxable grant of $500 to offset conversion costs. It is estimated that installation costs are paid within a few months in fuel savings.

I would encourage all Ontario drivers to give serious consideration to switching to alternative fuels. It is a little thing each of us can do for the environment while reducing our driving costs. I add that in my opinion all governments at all levels should have their fleet vehicles using alternative fuels.

CANADIAN FOOTBALL LEAGUE

At the present time the Ottawa Rough Riders are under the ownership of the league and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats have been running in the red ever since a new owner took ownership in 1989. The originality of three downs, a 110-yard field, wide-open and high-scoring football must receive some support. The NFL, better known as the No Fun League with its boring, low-scoring, overexposed hype, must be put in its place.

The taxpayers of Ontario built a palace for the Toronto Argonauts and support the facility through advertisements in the dome by many ministries, but the support of the other two Ontario teams is nil. The Ontario Lottery Corp should advertise in both Hamilton and Ottawa, plus I suggest that it be investigated if a non-profit organization such as the Canadian Football League can be allowed to obtain some sort of lottery licence to assist in the survival of these two teams.

It is now time that the members from Ottawa and Hamilton get together to make sure the two franchises are operating on a level playing field with the rest of the teams in the CFL.

STATEMENTS BY THE MINISTRY

ALCOHOL AND DRUG TREATMENT

Last year Ontario paid $51.3 million for 3,700 residents to receive addiction treatment in the US. It is unacceptable that taxpayers here should be providing annual subsidies amounting to almost $6 for every man, woman and child in Ontario to profit-driven residential treatment facilities outside of our borders. The cost of treatment at a residential centre in the US averages $12,000 a month. Equivalent hospital treatment in Ontario costs about $5,600 and community-based residential care costs about $2,600. Outpatient treatment in Ontario averages about $400 per month.

We can give Ontarians in their home province more of the high-quality treatment they need for much less than we have been paying to out-of-country facilities.

Today I am announcing new funding of $9.4 million a year to expand addiction services in Ontario. We are adding this to the $56 million that the ministry already has in its community mental health budget. We expect this effort will allow almost 24,000 people to receive a full course of addiction treatment in Ontario each year. Thousands more will be aided in expanded facilities such as detoxification centres.

The new aid for these people comes at a cost of about $1 per citizen of Ontario, not the $6 we sent outside our borders last year. This funding will stay in our province.

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The expansion I am announcing has four parts:

First is $4.1 million a year for residential and non-residential treatment programs. It is in these programs that addictions are broken and lives are reclaimed.

A mixture of programs is important. Outpatient treatment is often preferable for an adult, providing help with much less disruption to work and family life than would happen during an extended stay in a residential setting.

On the other hand, young people are often best served in a residential centre away from an environment that may be feeding an addiction.

For these reasons, funds will be allocated to a mixture of programs based on recommendations from district health councils which know best the particular needs of their communities. The Ministry of Health has issued a call for proposals. The councils will be asked to respond before the end of 1991.

The second component is $300,000 a year for the Addiction Research Foundation to run a registry of addiction services. This new registry will allow Ontario's network of 34 local assessment and referral agencies to refer people readily, on a family doctor's instruction, to available addiction programs throughout the province. Those agencies can begin using the registry on October 2.

The third part is a $3-million increase to the annual funding of assessment and referral centres. The centres already provide services to 18,000 people a year. With this funding they can increase staff and boost that number by 25%.

The fourth component is an increase of $2 million annually to detoxification centres.

These services are on the front lines of addiction help and this funding will increase their combined capacity by more than 50%. We are working with an executive committee of directors of these centres to determine which services need expansion and where new services are required. The amount budgeted for the expansion to addiction services for the remainder of this fiscal year is $6.4 million. Specific allocations are yet to be determined because they are dependent on recommendations coming from our district health councils.

Meanwhile, as I announced in August, provincial health insurance on October 1 will begin to cover the full cost of out-of-country addiction treatment when appropriate care in Ontario is unavailable and where prior approval has been obtained. Those who must go outside the province will be directed to treatment centres with which my ministry has negotiated a payment schedule. Those negotiations are proceeding as I speak. Those who choose to go elsewhere will be entitled to funding at the OHIP rate of $200 a day.

The increases I have just announced will cut substantially the numbers of people who need to go outside our borders for help with their addictions. We will have a clear indication of the exact numbers once the many expansions are in full operation in communities across the province.

I am not claiming a cure-all. More work needs to be done. For example, the member for Yorkview and parliamentary assistant to the minister responsible for the provincial anti-drug policy recently completed a tour of the province in which he examined the way Ontario deals with addictions. I understand his report will soon be released.

I also wish to underline that payments for drug addiction services represented only one quarter of the total out-of-country hospital services we were billed last year. We will be making other announcements in the future about other measures to use health funding more efficiently in Ontario to reduce out-of-country payments.

Today's announcement is a good step forward. It is an example of the kind of cost-effective management the nation's health ministers committed themselves to in Winnipeg last week. Our government is determined to use health dollars wisely and to provide the best services possible to Ontarians in their home province.

RESPONSES

ALCOHOL AND DRUG TREATMENT

More than a year ago the last government announced its proposals to reduce the use of out-of-country treatment facilities and replace those with services in Ontario. The minister's statement today takes a slightly different form in the specifics than our approach did, but we concur with the view of the minister that as many Ontarians as possible should have access to treatment in Ontario without the stress and disruption and additional cost to the system that out-of-country treatment provides.

We hope the savings that are accrued in the funding mechanism changes from out of the country to in-country will be redirected to providing services here. We like the emphasis on the community-based services and believe the addition of the registry the minister has announced will assist providers in ensuring appropriate access to the mix of treatment that is available.

Last November the advisory committee on drug treatment chaired by Garth Martin presented a comprehensive report called Treating Alcohol and Drug Problems in Ontario: A Vision for the 90s. This report is a comprehensive one, as I have said. More recommendations that are included in this report are not addressed by the minister today. We hope she will address those soon. I have to remind the minister that close to a year has gone by since this report became available. The minister has said that more work needs to be done. We concur with that view and we are looking forward to further announcements.

People in the Niagara Peninsula have had to go to the United States and some people have gone as far south as Texas and other places where people are advertising their services. I will put it kindly. I know the Minister of Health and members of the standing committee on public accounts have been extremely concerned that these people have been almost recruited to go to the United States at a great cost.

The fact is that the services we provide in this country in many circumstances are equal to the services provided there. We have in the Niagara Peninsula a group that has come together specifically in my city of St Catharines to look at all the services and see where there is duplication and who is doing what best. With the additional funding we are going to see for this program announced by the Minister of Health today, I think they will be in a better position to deliver those services.

Those of us who served on the standing committee on public accounts had the opportunity to hear witnesses from a variety of fields who indicated the genuine need here, the good services that are available here and the underutilized services. I am not suggesting an advertising campaign by the government, but I think the Ministry of Health would want to be involved in encouraging people to look very carefully at our own facilities here in Canada.

I know the people in the Niagara Peninsula as well would say that with the lineup now of some six months for a CAT scanner while there are dogs and cats that are able to get services up in York region, those people hope that the Minister of Health would rise in this House on some occasion very soon to announce permission for a second CAT scanner to be installed in the Niagara Peninsula so that the same service that is available to many other communities in this province will be available to us.

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The minister previously announced that a committee would be established to review applications of those Ontario residents who require treatment outside the province of Ontario, where that treatment is not available within the province. This committee, as I understand it, would review those applications and then would okay or not okay, as the case may be, treatment in other places.

I would be interested in receiving a report from the ministry with respect to the status and the success of this committee, because I am concerned, as I believe everybody should be -- and I am sure the minister is as well -- about patients who require immediate or emergency treatment and concerned that this treatment is not delayed by some bureaucratic red tape.

The last point I would like to make with respect to the announcement today is that we really have the need for a comprehensive needs assessment in Ontario with respect to drug and alcohol treatment and rehabilitation programs to figure out what we do have, what is needed and what we can afford to do in the most appropriate fashion on a province-wide basis. Obviously we do not have nearly enough, or all these people would not have been going to other jurisdictions to get the treatment they so sorely need. And of course the Ontario taxpayer ultimately ends up paying for it.

I agree with her and I think many experts agree with her that the appropriate solution for some is not necessarily appropriate for others, but there is considerable expertise in the province in long-term residential care, particularly for youth who are chemically dependent.

I want to say this to the minister. We have, I think, about 40 or 50 beds available in the province. I do not have the figure at my fingertips; it is not very many. However, while we have such a dearth and a shortage, and many have had to go out of province to seek this type of help in breaking long-term dependence, we have shut down in the Nipissing-Parry Sound region a facility that proved effective at a cost far below that of virtually any other facility in the world for providing this very type of program: the Vita Way farm. It is not just for the benefit of those, really, from Nipissing or Parry Sound, but indeed from the province, because it is a residential setting with a view to removing young people from the environment where they live to help break those habits and lifestyles that are part of chemical dependency.

There has been a very, very talented group from the Nipissing-Parry Sound region which has been pleading with the government not to let this program die -- not to say that some of the other studies in other areas are not necessary, but that the minister should not let this facility, should not let this expertise, should not let this type of program die while we go on with years, it looks like, of study.

I would ask the minister if she would look at the proposal that is before her ministry and Community and Social Services as well, because it is involved with this as well, for an existing facility with existing expertise at a cost far, far less than any other facility or any other program I have seen around the world, and one that has been working very well. Let's not allow this to fall through the cracks while we sit and wait for new, grandiose schemes where we will have to build them all anew.

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VISITOR

RENT REGULATION

I understand that the rent review services branch of Ontario's Ministry of Housing will be investigating this matter, as it would any allegation concerning units, and naturally I will assist them in every way that I can.

I purchased the duplex with my brother, David Shepherd, in 1984. Immediately prior to the purchase, the building had been so extensively renovated and altered that in fact two new units had been created. At this time, it was possible under section 128 of the residential properties act to renovate a unit so substantially as to create a new unit and to set a new rent without application to rent review. This was in accordance with applicable legislation, dependent on the amount of money spent on a renovation and/or the nature of the work done.

The renovation at 964 Avenue Road was extensive and costly. The cost was more than 25% of the total cost of the building and the land. Renovations included modernizing and updating the heating, electrical and plumbing, reconfiguring the interior, adding a second bathroom to each apartment and rebuilding and reconfiguring the kitchens. It was common practice at the applicable time to assess such an expenditure per building as a new unit, in accordance with applicable rent review legislation, and new rent was set without application.

After the renovations and the purchase were completed, one unit, the lower, had an initial rent set of $1,000 per month. The other unit was occupied by the co-owner, David Shepherd, who of course did not pay rent. In subsequent years, the rent of the first unit, the lower, was increased in accordance with the rent review percentage guidelines. In 1989, I purchased my brother's share of the building. Because the building's second unit had been occupied by an owner-occupier and had no applicable rent history, the second unit's initial rent was set according to the requirements of the legislation.

When I was appointed to Ontario's cabinet, the Premier determined that my ownership of this duplex was not in conflict with his conflict-of-interest guidelines.

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ORAL QUESTIONS

BUDGET

Now, here we have both the prime minister of this province and the Treasurer running around since this paper has been released, saying: "We must cut back on our expenditures. We must cut, in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars." Can the Treasurer tell us, as he is unable to tell us exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars he is cutting, what has happened since just last month, when everything was, to use his words, "spot on," to make sure that in fact some catastrophe has occurred in the last 30 days? What is going on?

The other component, of course, is that while we feel our revenues coming from Ontario sources appear to be the way we projected they would be, or very close, we do not know -- the history of Ottawa is rather an erratic one in terms of the revenues it gives us in the form of, for example, the provincial income tax revenues. The member's government remembers how erratic those payments were. They would be out as much as $1 billion in a year. So we have to be very careful about managing our expenditures.

I wish to ask him about something that is very intriguing to me. He has indicated there are obviously massive problems with the funding for both the teachers' and the public servants' pension plans. He has mentioned that both yesterday and again today. Since he will not identify the margin by which his reckless $9.7-billion deficit is in jeopardy, can he tell us and define for us precisely how much the teachers' pension plan and the Ontario public service pension plan are out of line, so that we can start getting bits and pieces, one at a time, line by line?

The member asked me about the deficits of the teachers' and the public service plans. The member will remember, I think, that going back to 1989 there were changes made in the legislation governing those two plans.

Since then, an initial evaluation of the plans has increased the deficit on both those plans. The deficit on the teachers' plan went from what was originally thought to be around $4 billion to $7.8 billion. Now that does not have to be made up all in one year. I think the member appreciates that. In the public service plan, the deficit has increased from $1.9 billion -- that was in 1989 -- to about $2.5 billion. There is, by the way, no relationship between the partnership worked out between the government and the teachers --

It seems to me that while we wish the Treasurer could talk to us about an increase in the job market in the province, what he has done is make a lot of work for a lot of people like me who are trying to figure out what the magnitude of his problem is, but it is like pulling teeth, one at a time -- very, very difficult.

The Treasurer has now talked about the teachers' pensions, to which I suspect he will be requiring teachers to contribute, and he nods his head yes. Can the Treasurer now tell us what other lines are causing him serious heartburn as he looks at the sanctity of his $9.7-billion deficit?

I have already alluded to the matters that are causing us a problem besides the deficits in the teachers' plan, which really do go back some time and are not the result of anything that was done in the last year or even the last two years. That is simply not the case. I have referred already to the increase in the social assistance case load. That is directly a result of the recession and the severity of the recession in this province. I mentioned some of the health-related issues, such as OHIP and the Ontario drug benefit plan, and the home care costs as well.

Those are the major issues, although just the other day we learned that the cost of firefighting in the province is up substantially this year over what it was expected to be. As a matter of fact, it is higher than it has ever been. So there are a number of issues that are problems that are causing us heartburn, as the member would put it, because of the pressures they are applying on us in managing our expenditures.

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I think that the leader of the official opposition, though, would recognize that when we are under the kinds of pressures we are now with our expenditures, we look across the entire government for ways in which to manage our expenditures in a better way and a more judicial way, and we intend to do that, but I am not standing here in my place today and announcing where those expenditure management actions will be taken. That will be done and I will be making -- I have already said I will be making -- a further statement next week.

VISITOR

RENT REVIEW

We on this side of the House have expressed concern with the rent control system now for several years. The current rent review system is not creating more affordable units and it is a bureaucratic quagmire, I think the minister would have to agree. Would she also agree with our party's proposal to undertake a cost-benefit analysis of a shelter subsidy system for tenants in Ontario?

Interjections.

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Interjections.

Interjections.

I would point out to the member, first of all, that in provinces, states and other jurisdictions which do not have rent control systems or indeed rent review systems, the problem of increasing rental supply continues apace. It is very comparable to the kind of problem we have had here in Ontario.

Second, I wonder if, as the Housing critic, she has had time yet to familiarize herself with the joint study undertaken by the Ontario union of co-ops -- I have forgotten its name because I am new to my portfolio -- with the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. That indicates that the cost of the kinds of measures that she might like to substitute for rent control would be about $1.2 billion annually. Does that satisfy her need for a cost-benefit study?

Given the amount of money that the minister's government is spending on housing, why will she not look at alternatives, rather than simply adding new rules to the existing system?

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I would ask her also to consider putting in her views, if she still feels the best way to provide for people who are having trouble in the private market in housing is to provide rental subsidy. Let us know. All Ontarians are invited to take part in this consultation. We would be glad to have her views, along with everybody else's, and we are certainly going to look at them all.

ASSISTED HOUSING

One of the reasons for that pertains to my question to the Minister of Housing. Last week, Toronto city council voted to back out of the proposed Ataratiri housing development unless the province agrees to cover expenditures above the already promised $800 million. Three years ago, when the Liberal government announced this project, estimated costs were $444 million. At that time I said, "It is unrealistic," that the government had failed to plan for land acquisition, for infrastructure, for environmental considerations. I said, "The costs are unrealistic."

My worst fears have been realized. The Urban Development Institute predicts the minimum cost over 10 years will be in excess of $2 billion. There is a point where affordable housing is no longer affordable, and we are now beyond that point. Each of the 7,000 units is now estimated to cost $250,000 per unit. Does the minister intend to waste even more money by covering further expenditures for this project?

However, those lands are mainly now in public ownership, through the agreement with the city of Toronto. Certainly we will be working with Toronto to make sure the best possible use is made of them. We are working hard on that to make as reasonable and practical plans for the future as we can.

The minister received environmental evaluation reports last March. At $3 million an acre, $237 million has been spent on expropriating land, a ludicrous amount for severely contaminated land. Each day now that the minister delays costs $60,000 interest to the project debt. Today $2 million a month provides shelter subsidies to 8,000 needy families in existing private sector houses. How many more taxpayer dollars is the minister going to waste on this project before she makes up her mind one way or the other, where she can now help 1,000 more needy families today by working with the private sector in a shelter subsidy program?

We know there is a great need for affordable housing in Toronto. Nobody, I hope, can stand up in this house and call a unit affordable that costs $250,000 to build. Private developers like CN Rail have been waiting five years for permission to build more than 5,000 units of housing near Spadina Avenue. They have agreed to build 2,000 units of affordable housing at not one cent's cost to the taxpayer.

It is time for the minister to refuse to extend guarantees on this project, on the loans, to cut the losses from this white elephant and to take that money and help real people who need help today in getting decent housing for themselves. Will the minister agree to cut this white elephant loose and put that money to helping people today?

LABOUR DISPUTES

I am wondering if the minister could help us out on this side of the House. How can he reconcile his refusal to intervene in the collective bargaining process during last week's TTC strike with the precise pay ceiling that was given to his former colleague and Council of Regents chair, Richard Johnston, who is currently negotiating with the service staff of the province's 23 community colleges? How can the minister reconcile those two divergent activities?

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However, I think the minister will be aware that the Treasurer is refusing to tell the people of this province what the magnitude of this government's overspending problem is. He is refusing to be upfront with this Legislature. I would like the minister to contrast the statements of the Treasurer with the comments made by his assistant deputy minister, who stated, "It would be wrong for the government not to let the people know what our circumstances are." All we are asking for is some consistency.

What kind of rules is the minister playing by? Is it okay to increase the salary of the civil service and the doctors at the sacrifice of the men and women who work at the community colleges? What is the minister's position in terms of those issues?

As I have indicated, there is no inconsistency in the statements that have been made. As we head into the next year, there are some fiscal realities we are facing. There will be an impact within the question of salaries and wages, which we have discussed with our unions informally, which we have discussed with the public sector employer groups and which we will need to continue discussing with people in trying to arrive at a solution.

LABOUR LEGISLATION

Does the minister agree that his present labour law reform package supports the rights of trade unions at the expense of individual rights? What changes is he prepared to make to ensure that the individual rights of each worker are preserved and protected?

If unions are given more rights, as this legislation seems to indicate, they should also be given more responsibilities. Why has the minister not proposed the introduction of a representation vote in all cases so that each affected individual can democratically express his or her choice on unionization?

I would point out to the member that we do not have a set position or a recommendation as yet. We are developing a discussion paper which has not gone out for discussion purposes as yet. There are a number of options on that paper, and when it is ready it will go out and we will hear what the people think of it.

FOREST MANAGEMENT

The initiative that protects this area was developed in discussion with some of the environmental groups and the decision enables us to ensure that the criteria for the old-growth candidate sites are met and that we are able to connect the east Galloway Lake area with two other areas previously identified, the Bliss and Quinn lakes areas, so that we have a total protected area of 6,000 hectares. I think this protection of such a large area while we develop the old-growth ecosystem strategy is an indication of the recommitment of this government to the protection of old growth in the province.

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ONTARIO HYDRO RATES

No one likes to see increases of a double-digit nature in Hydro rates, but at the same time I do not think there is anything that can be done about it because those costs are there and Ontario Hydro needs the revenues to pay for them. It is as simple as that.

When you take that statement from Hydro and add that to the energy and hydro policy of this government contained in the endlessly fascinating Bill 118, I ask my friend the Treasurer, given what he said and what the NDP has said over the years about their objection to regressive taxes, what do they say to the unemployed loggers and the beleaguered farmers of the Ottawa Valley who look to this essential service and realize that they are going to face rates of increase probably in the 12% to 15% and perhaps 20% range for as many years as this government is likely going to enjoy this mandate?

ONTARIO HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

As of October last year, $3 million was set aside for 10 investigators to take some of the more difficult cases in the backlog. In the first six months, instead of solving those 200 cases that were assigned, 71 cases were closed and then in the next six months there were another 200, so 400 cases were approached and of that in the early while they were not very successful.

Yesterday the minister announced $6.4 million towards the whole backlog problem we have in human rights cases in Ontario and she was going to bring on 33 extra investigators for a time. She has also brought on a new vice-chairman and a new chief of the board of inquiry. I have a very simple question. How can this minister or this government justify spending close to $10 million of taxpayers' money on a system that is not working?

In the minister's own words, the system is not working. Why does she insist on recklessly throwing money at this problem and adding more bureaucratic layers on a system that is not working. Where is the money going? What is going on over there? Why do we not have a complete overhaul of the Ontario Human Rights Commission and solve the problem once and for all?

Interjection.

I also would like to ask the member, while we are doing this project and code review -- and we are going to do a code review -- is the member going to go back to his constituents, is anybody in this House going to face those constituents and say: "No, we are not going to address your rights and your human sufferings. We are just going to leave and abandon you"? I do not think I am going to do that.

Interjections.

ASSISTANCE TO FARMERS

I have a question of the minister. The farmers are pleased with his recent announcement of a $93-million interim payment for the gross revenue insurance plan, which will partially address the financial --

Interjections.

1500

AUTOMOBILE INSURANCE

On September 10, Mel Swart, a former member of this House, the dean of the House, I think, at one time, gave an interview to the St Catharines Standard about the government's flip-flop on automobile insurance. He pointed out that the central part of the automobile insurance plan on which the government had run in not only 1987 but 1990 had been part of the NDP's policy since its creation and part of the policy of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party long before that.

He said that he had received calls from a tremendous number of NDP supporters across Ontario, because he had devoted much of his career to the advancement of this policy. He said he thought the Premier was wrong, that the decision of the new government, in which he had such confidence, was -- and these are his words -- "a very bitter disappointment and a very serious mistake." He was also concerned, he said, particularly because the decision made on automobile insurance, "shows how the government may handle other important policies in the future."

If the minister will not answer us, what is the answer he gives to Mel Swart and his supporters?

Interjections.

The member for St George-St David, we are attempting to re-establish a tone in here in which we can all have a calm and reasoned approach to the public business. The Speaker and others would appreciate your co-operation in that manner, and perhaps you will withdraw the remark that was made.

The government did not reject its policy of public auto insurance. This government has not changed its view of the value of a publicly owned automobile insurance system. This government will be releasing in the coming months its plans for public auto insurance and it, in effect, will be the yardstick against which we measure the performance of the private sector, because it has said it can do it.

But if that is the answer he gives to Mr Swart, what answer does he give to the honourable member for Welland-Thorold, who said this, and I think he was accurate about this, the next day in the St Catharines Standard: "There isn't a New Democratic Party member in this entire province who did not campaign on the promise of public auto insurance, and to permit this type of 180-degree reversal seems to me to be a betrayal of the commitments that those people made to their voters. I am disappointed. I can't think of a policy that was more central to the NDP platform in this province." Then he goes on to say that the insurance industry has got to the Premier's office.

What does the minister say to his present colleague? We have heard that he has diffused what he says to Mr Swart. What does he say to his present colleague, the member for Welland-Thorold?

The test of whose pocket we are in and the test of what we do in the future will be the public acceptance or rejection of the reforms that --

Interjections.

The minister's promise of reform is long-standing. We have been hearing about this since last fall and we still have nothing. This government continues to flip-flop on its philosophy while the list of innocent accident victims who have been promised by his government to have their right to sue restored grows daily.

His party has released this past week a tabloid which sets forth his party's policies, yet he continues to tell this House that he is still in the process of consultation. Because of the minister's party releasing this tabloid to his members, I think he owes it to this House to tell us when exactly he intends to introduce a bill setting forth his government's reform on auto insurance.

Interjections.

1510

Now, that does not sound like consultation. That sounds like definite policy. Has the bill been written or has it not?

PETITIONS

LANDFILL SITE

"King roars, 'Respect our rural environments.' We, the undersigned, oppose the Minister of the Environment's arbitrary decision to make York region Metro's megadump. As concerned citizens, we specifically oppose any landfill site located on environmentally sensitive areas, such as the Oak Ridges moraine."

I have signed my name to that petition.

HEALTH INSURANCE

"The recent policy change by OHIP of reducing their payment for hospital and medical fees for out-of-country vacationers will have a very serious and profound effect on senior citizens. The Blue Cross has already announced their substantial increase in the cost of supplementary insurance. As an example, the cost of out-of-country insurance for three months last year was $111. This year, with the announced increase, it will be $347 for a single.

"Many senior citizens on a fixed income cannot afford this additional increase. Some will cancel their plans to get away from the cold Canadian winter, and this will certainly have a negative impact on their health. Others will gamble and leave the country without supplementary insurance, which could prove to be a disaster if they are involved in an accident or have a serious illness.

"We, the undersigned, therefore request the Ontario government to re-examine this change in policy by OHIP as it relates to retired senior citizens who can ill afford this tremendous increase in their cost of living."

TAXATION

"We, the undersigned, object to the system of taxation. We are all residents of the John Bayus Country Club and ask for a review of our situation.

"We do not object to paying taxes, but the neighbouring area receives service such as garbage collection, road repairs, snow removal from the town of Flamborough. We receive none of the above benefits and our taxes are out of all proportion to those paid by neighbouring houses.

"We are also caught in a system of mobile home sizes as a criterion of assessing, while smaller trailers pay no taxes but have added rooms, some larger than mobile homes.

"We would also appreciate your consideration of a new tax system for seniors who live in a senior residential area. Many of us have fixed incomes and have invested into a community dedicated to seniors and their needs. We ask that you consider our appeal, and look forward to your reply."

CHRONIC FATIGUE AND IMMUNE DYSFUNCTION SYNDROME

"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:

"Whereas the chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is a chronic, debilitating disease currently affecting over two million adults and children in North America; and

"Whereas diagnosis is difficult and the direct costs to our health care system are enormous; there is a drain on the social services; and tax revenues are severely affected because affected people cannot work;

"We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the Legislative Assembly of Ontario to support the establishment of a task force to study the most appropriate method of establishing an information centre and clinic to provide both information and care to persons with" -- this disease -- "Their families, physicians, educators and others.

REPORTS BY COMMITTEES

STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

Mr Runciman from the standing committee on government agencies presented the committee's 13th report.

INTRODUCTION OF BILLS

PROVINCIAL BUDGET AND FISCAL POLICIES REFERENDUM ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 SUR LES RÉFÉRENDUMS CONCERNANT LES POLITIQUES FISCALES ET LES BUDGETS PROVINCIAUX

Mr Harris moved first reading of Bill 138, An Act to authorize Municipalities to obtain the Opinions of Electors respecting Provincial Budgets and Fiscal Policies.

M. Harris propose la première lecture du projet de loi 138, Loi autorisant les municipalités à obtenir l'avis des électeurs concernant les politiques fiscales et les budgets provinciaux.

All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Motion agreed to.

La motion est adoptée.

Municipal electors could be asked whether they agree that the provincial government should be required either to balance its budget at least once in every three fiscal years or, if it fails to do so, to call a general election or seek approval in a province-wide referendum to spend this money that it does not have.

I believe the bill is an important one. If it were passed quickly it would allow municipalities in this election to be able to put this question on the ballot, and I would encourage the government to pick up on this and facilitate second and third reading as quickly as possible. If there is unanimous consent, I move that we move to second reading today, Mr Speaker.

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ORDERS OF THE DAY

INCOME TAX AMENDMENT ACT, 1991 / LOI DE 1991 MODIFIANT LA LOI DE L'IMPOT SUR LE REVENU

Resuming the adjourned debate on the motion for second reading of Bill 83, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act.

Reprise du débat ajourné sur la motion visant la deuxième lecture du projet de loi 83, Loi portant modification de la Loi de l'impôt sur le revenu.

A number of points have been made to me since then to make sure that I reinforce them. I think one of the points is that when this government enacts another tax bill, it is another occasion when the public is saying: "It's hurting so much. We can't give any more. What are we going to do?"

The fact is that there is a whole reaction beginning to form by society at large out of anger and frustration at the very large taxes they are having to pay now. The kind of thing that is happening is that we are going to see and will continue to see a reduction in the amount of money that people give to charities and to worthwhile events in their own communities.

I have had a number of people talk to me today and say, "I'm ending up now paying so much in taxes that from my disposable income, the money that's left over, where I once made a contribution that was of a significant nature to different health causes, cancer, kidney foundation and other health areas, to the United Way, I do not have the resources left over to make the kind of contribution I used to." So they are cutting back on the public services that once took a certain share of their income.

I think what has happened here is that this government, along with the previous Liberal government under David Peterson, is turning people off. It is turning them off so that instead of wanting to contribute to their community and to make some kind of extra effort, they are saying: "Look, I am being bled to death through my taxes. I have so little blood left in the veins, I'm not going to come along and give what's left over elsewhere."

That disposable dollar is being reduced and reduced, with inflation taking a certain percentage of it, with the cost of living and everything else that is coming in. It seems that those who make more and more get less and less because more and more is taken away by the government.

The kinds of dollars that this amounts to some people say is peanuts. It is not, because you are not only taking away from them the money in their earnings and their income, but also their incentive to want to go out and make more and do better. There is a point -- I am not sure when that happens but there is a point -- at which you say: "Why do I continue to work so hard for the government? Why am I not working harder for myself?"

What ends up happening is that we are getting a kind of underworld current here where people are trading things on the side. There is a form of commodity trading where instead of having to pay taxes they will provide services to other people for cash and it will be under the table. It is another form of breaking the law, but because the taxes are so high, they are almost being encouraged to break the law.

We have lost sight of the reason why people came to this new country in the first place. They came to this country for freedom. They came to establish a new, fresh life out of the control and bounds and limitations that under a feudal system or under a government that was not giving them a chance to prosper.

What they have come into now is a province that is moving into every area of human life and taking away that incentive and that freedom that people came here for in the first place. A fundamental breakdown in society is happening because we here in government are allowing it to happen. It seems as if people take it for granted.

I have to say that under the leadership of the member for Nipissing our caucus and our party will continue to be vigilant and will speak out on the whole issue of taxation. It is not something we take as just a necessary thing we have to do in the Legislature. We believe there should be the kind of fiscal leadership and responsibility in government and the kind of leadership that is going to say, "No, we can't spend more money on it because we are going to have raise more taxes to do it, and we can't continue to build a bigger debt." It is high time that this government and all governments understood the importance of having that kind of fiscal responsibility.

The public at large, if they have not lost confidence in this House, are continuing to lose it for all of us. We must begin to start today. Here on this bill would be as good an example as any, Bill 83, where the government would say, "All right, let's find a way of restricting our spending, reducing our spending, reducing the deficit, putting our house in order."

It is a problem when people pay so much out for taxes that they do not have enough left over to protect themselves from future disaster or the kind of recession we are in now. What is happening is that most people are living within one or two paycheques from bankruptcy. The more you make does not mean the more you save, or the more you make, the more you are able to put on to your home and your recreation and other things. It is surprising how many people who are in the category for taxes that this bill will affect, who are making in excess of $84,000 a year, are very controlled in their spending because the commitments they already have for the dollars they are making worry them. Their disposable income is reducing constantly. This is another example where they will have less disposable income to do other things.

One of the things that will suffer in our society is certainly the charities and those needful agencies that are looking for contributions from private citizens. What we are seeing with the social democratic agenda is that the government will take over everything. The government will run all things. So those people who once had some disposable income are now going to hold on to it. They are turning off the funnel. There will not be the kind of money for the United Way and for those services that there should be. One of the reasons is their lack of confidence in the future. They are saying, "Well, the government is already taking so much that there isn't enough left over for us to really make the kind of contribution we want to make."

As business continues to suffer, as people continue to suffer, what do we see? A government whose tax policy is almost forcing more suffering upon them.

It is not easy times. I had several people react to the ignorant comments from this House when I talked about a home -- it was ignorant. When we started talking about people whose homes are $500,000 and $600,000 and who are having trouble paying for it, people in this House said, "Oh, yes," and there was a chuckle across the floor. That is not something to laugh at. There are people in my community and in many communities who have an expensive home, are working hard in order to pay for it, to pay it down. It is their biggest investment most of the time, and here what we are doing is almost making fun of that kind of investment they have. The problem they have is that when they lose their jobs and they are out of business, who is there to help them? There is no program that comes along and helps subsidize them for the kind of commitments they had when they were making big money. Then they end up having to sell their homes. They have to change their lifestyles. They have to do a number of things.

What are they going to do right now? When they see the government continuing to sap the strength, to sap the money, to drain it off from them, they are going to hold on to more and more of it for the rainy day. If you go and do an assessment of those people who have been spending money in our society, it is a very small number who have the large dollars. Those who are making between $80,000 and $120,000 are people who are really hustling to make it happen. They are working 60- and 70-hour weeks. They are not people who are just coming along and winning a lottery. Their lottery comes through the effort of their hard work.

What this government wants to do is put them down so that everyone is at the same common, low denominator, and that is not for the future of our country. We should have the opportunity for everybody to make big dollars and then be able to spend those dollars or save those dollars, but not to make the dollars and have them taken away from them by the government. It is like Sweden was. Sweden has woken up and is going back to another system now. They are moving to free enterprise. We are moving right into socialism. Do not make fun of it. I see it as a serious problem.

Europe is coming along and changing in a way. They are moving to democratic systems. They are coming to a system of free enterprise. We are moving into socialism the same way eastern Europe is trying to move out of it. So we are swinging one way; they are swinging the other. This government will swing at the end of a rope in four years.

1530

Interjections.

As we look at the number of taxes that have been levied in this province in the last five or six years --

Interjection.

Interjection.

Interjection.

Interjection.

Interjection.

In the current fiscal year, tax revenues account for 78.1% of the total revenues and represent the equivalent of 11.9% of the province's gross domestic product. In 1984-85, the comparable ratios were 62.9% and 8.8% respectively.

We are just seeing a dramatic increase in the cost of life and living here in the province, but I have to face up to, and we are all facing up to, what this government is doing: forcing a fiscal recovery within this province further off as the New Democratic government relies more on deficit financing for the remainder of its mandate.

Interjection.

Interjection.

The dipper government's, I mean the New Democratic government's midterm fiscal plan shows that in addition to this year's $9.7-billion deficit, Ontario's smiling socialists will add another $25.1 billion to the province's accumulated deficit from 1992-93 to 1994-95. The New Democratic government will then effectively push the province's accumulated deficit, which stands at an estimated $44.5 billion in this current fiscal year, to a total of about $70 billion in 1994-95.

When measured in relation to the accumulated deficit in 1990-91 of $34.8 billion, the midterm fiscal plan indicates that the New Democrats will effectively run up as much new debt in four years as had been accumulated by all previous governments in Ontario. Their policies will ensure that by the end of their mandate the province's deficit, its gross domestic product ratio, will be worse than that of the federal government's, at least when measured on the 1991-92 budget projections of both governments.

Ontario's debt service charges will also rise as a percentage of provincial revenues as New Democratic policies begin to erode the bottom line. Over the midterm forecast, debt service costs will continue to increase. By 1994-95, the debt service cost will account for 12.3% of the total revenues coming into this province. In other words, 12% of every dollar that comes into this province will be feeding the debt.

At the federal level over the same period, public debt charges measured in relation to federal revenues will drop from 33% of revenues this year to a projected 26.5% in 1994-95. There is a recognition on the part of just about everyone except the New Democrats that the deficit has to be fought and that you do not live by continuing to live beyond your means; you control your costs and put a lid on it.

Interjection.

Interjection.

This is just a one-sided, blinded view that some people have. The tragedy is that this is the experiment that failed. The experiment that has failed in Ontario is the New Democratic government. On September 6 last year people thought, "We're a little disappointed in David Peterson," and they had reason to be, because they looked at Patti Starr, they looked at the way they raised the taxes so many times, they looked at the giving away of Senate seats in Ottawa, they looked at a number of issues, they looked at their credibility and at the reason for calling the election, so the election on September 6 had something to do with 38% of the province, not 50% but 38% of the province saying, "Let's give a message to the Liberal Party and allow the New Democrats a chance." They had no idea that those guys would take this thing over and that they would be doing the kind of damage they are doing right now.

1540

The Treasurer blamed his deficit woes on federal policies and in particular on the transfer payments he says he did not receive from the federal government, and he indicates they cost a total of $3.6 billion in 1991-92. However, the Treasurer does not mention two points: Other provinces have had to live with the same changes in federal policies and have not tripled their deficits. This Treasurer, unlike other finance ministers in the country, has done nothing whatsoever to restrain his spending.

At this point I would like to comment on the restraint of spending. I went through these books which are the Ontario budget for 1991 --

The problem we have is that in this budget document restraint is not mentioned. Yesterday when the Minister of Health was here heckling me she was saying, "Oh, yes, there's restraint." There is not. There is not any effort by this government in this budget to show restraint. It has become the new R-word they learned about at the Delawana Inn, but it is not something they have included in their thinking over the next three or four years, and that is a problem. Everyone else in this province is having to live under restraint because there is only so much money coming in, and what is left over they are having to give to the government under Bill 83. That kind of action by the government is costing people just too, too much.

I would like to comment on the problem with taxes. I happen to have one of the newspapers in my riding, and it is really one of the better newspapers, I have to say. Members are not going to believe what it is called --

Woe to them to try to withhold it from the province. You try to hold back a tax to the Minister of Revenue, who is not here at this time but has been sitting in here most of the time --

I am not in love with the GST. It would be nice if this province were working with the federal government on having one common sales tax that would somehow work between the two, instead of having --

Interjection.

She goes on to say, "It is unlikely to get the GST repealed or to persuade the Ontario government to rethink its high-deficit policy, but it will attract the attention of local government and that is a good place to start."

People are going to start taking it out on local government to see what they can do to reduce the costs of providing municipal services. A tax revolt has begun. I and our caucus are in a tax revolt. We will do everything we can to fight the Treasurer and this government as they continue to hike taxes, to raise taxes. We will fight them. As long as they are going to be as irresponsible in what they are doing with our money and increasing it as much as they are, then someone has to stand up and make sure they get the lesson.

I have a feeling, Mr Speaker, that not you, but those other honourable members in this House have not really a true regard for the impact these taxes are having on our society as a whole.

If the people of Ontario had a chance to take a government to task for its dishonesty and its irresponsibility, if there were some way in which we could have the public have a vote on a referendum basis on some of the issues that it is into, I will tell members that the public would not support it. The 38% that voted for the government last September 6 would not be voting for this tax bill today. They would not. The 38% that voted for the New Democrats on September 6 would be coming along and saying, "We disagree."

Oh, they will get some of the true orange and free who will support their policies, and that is fine. That is the freedom in a democracy and I do not take that away from any human being. I think that is part and parcel of a free country. But the fact is that the 38% that voted for the New Democrats across the province would not be voting for the kind of fiscal irresponsibility that is implicit to this budget, and that is a fact.

I have a number of points that I would like to follow on further and a number of issues that I would like to raise as they pertain to what this government is doing and what it is not doing. I know there is going to be another day on which I will have an opportunity to talk to it. There are at least four other tax bills that are coming forward and I hope to be able to speak on each one of those so that the views from the riding of Markham can be heard and the people who are represented, at least by the PC caucus, will have a chance to put on the record some of their concerns.

I truly believe that Bill 83 is an example of the irresponsible collection of more taxes by the government of the Premier. I believe that in taking this money away from the people who are earning it right now in the province, it is taking away, certainly, some of the disposable income they would spend on other services. It is also taking away some of the confidence they had in the province.

I see this province as one that is in trouble right now, very serious financial, economic trouble, not just because of a recession that has hit Canada and North America and English-speaking countries; we are in a problem because of the failure of leadership of the Premier and his social democratic government. I see this government as one that is digging a bigger and bigger hole for the people of Ontario. I see business backing off and moving away. I see investment funds from Ontario putting their money elsewhere where it is not going to be in jeopardy, as it will be in Ontario with this government in charge. I see people saying: "Why spend money in Ontario? We'll go across the border and spend it because we can get more value for our dollar there."

I see a government that is digging a bigger hole for us by virtue of its high deficit, a deficit that will be, at the end of its term, double the size it was before. I see a government that is now in a position, if it had integrity and honesty and self-respect, to review its fiscal policy and come back and say: "We've made a mistake and we're in a position now to review the kinds of decisions we were going to make. Let's start showing restraint. Let's start showing some way of living within our means. Let's start setting an example."

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There is still time to do it. If members of this House have been listening, there is indeed a chance that members of the New Democratic government will vote against -- yes, vote against -- Bill 83 and allow this bill to go back to the Ministry of Treasury and Economics and let them rethink their financial plans for Ontario. If the government members do not do it, our votes are not enough to make it happen. I know the member for Dufferin-Peel and I will be here and there will be many others who will come into this House to vote against this bill.

I do not know how the Liberals will vote. The Liberals voted for so many tax increases when they were in power that they will probably come along and say, "We were used to it then, so we're used to it now." I have no idea where the Liberals will be today. They have had quite a conversion from the days in which they were in government. Now they are coming along and knocking all these tax increases. But they will make up their own minds. They have their own way of deciding these things, and whatever they do is their decision.

I can tell members this much. Our caucus is opposed to Bill 83. We are opposed to tax increases. The people of Ontario have had enough. Why does the government not wake up and understand that?

The other party made a comment which is a major part of the GST fight I was part of. The people who are working in factories and in small businesses make probably about $30,000 or $40,000 if they are lucky. When you look at that and try to distribute that kind of money over buying things -- for instance, when we face the GST now, they are adding an extra 7% that is taxing their income. When you talk about $84,000, if I only make $30,000 and spend $25,000 of it back into the economy -- most of us who worked in factories and elsewhere were lucky if we had savings accounts. Where the tax is focusing, and where his focus is being misled -- I will straighten that one out; is being improperly put -- is that people over $84,000 are paying a little extra. That is a single person making $84,000. If you are married and you get dual income, you go through the system, and if you make, probably, $130,000 or $140,000, you are going to pay a little more.

The people we have to focus on during this debate are the working people who are generating every weekly paycheque into the economy. That is who we have to help. They are the ones who stimulate the jobs. I think it is important that when we look at the bill, we look at the context of the bill and make sure that we go in the right direction to help working people who stimulate this economy, the people who work in the $30,000 and the $40,000 and less jobs a year.

But to hear some of what he has to say and to listen, to really think about what it would suggest, is to take me back to one of these tax revolt meetings of not too many weeks ago when a similar old Tory gets up, and having apparently passionately advocated for the building of the opera house here in Toronto, notwithstanding current financial difficulties, is the first man none the less to go out and have at the social safety net that is so central to so many people who are either out of work or on the verge of losing their jobs.

He is quite legitimate in the criticism of any government around. I have the advantage of a few more years in this place than he does, and I have said before that were few people for whom I had a higher regard than W. Darcy McKeough, the former member for Kent West and the long-time Conservative Treasurer of Ontario. But in my first year here, 16 years ago, in what were by today's standards halcyon days, the Tory government of Bill Davis, under the able financial leadership of Darcy McKeough, brought in a budgetary deficit of $2 billion on an expenditure plan of some $12 billion to $14 billion.

I know he was not a member of this assembly then, but the member would do well, in the interest of an honest debate, to reflect upon those salad times when 16 years ago Darcy McKeough was forced to present, for whatever reason -- I am sure it had nothing to do with the election of 1975 -- a budgetary deficit of $2 billion on an expenditure plan of not $50 billion, but, then, $12 billion.

The member for Dufferin-Peel: Where does one begin in describing where the Liberals went astray? I think they really had a chance during the halcyon days of the mid-1980s to bring this province into the future. They brought a number of social programs we could all support, but their way of spending money at great abandon has led this government into a way in which it has had to continue those programs.

By the way, when the government came along with its close to $10-billion deficit, it did not even give credit to the Liberals for giving it, because so many of those programs that led to the kind of deficit it has got were initiated by David Peterson. It did not have the nerve or the knowledge or the kind of backbone that would say, "Hey, let's change some of those policies."

But I appreciate the comments of the member for Renfrew North. I happen to respect very greatly his expertise and his understanding in the House. Philosophically, we are very much on a different part of the pendulum, but that does not take away the fact that there is a real depth of appreciation for what he has to offer sometimes.

I would just like to say to the member for Chatham-Kent that when he talks about stimulating work, there is no doubt that those who are making $30,000 to $40,000 or less -- some are making far less -- are indeed much of the machinery of what it takes to have the province run effectively. Never do we ever want to see anyone not appreciate the kind of contribution they make. The other part of the equation, though, is the capital that it takes to invest in jobs and businesses and machinery to make it go. You need the people to make it go, but you need the capital to make it come together. Those two things, when they come together, make for prosperity.

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I must say, truly I listened with pleasure to the member for Renfrew North yesterday. He is a fluently articulate member of the Legislature and very knowledgeable about the history of the House, at least for the last 16 years. But I would just like to remind him that certainly it was in the last five years that there was a 5% increase on the Ontario surtax on the federal portion and that 5% increase was one that was initiated by his government.

I also find it interesting, I might add, that he does not embrace Keynesian economics, but in part I see that while they were in power they had an opportunity to do some saving and maybe did not do that as well as they could, and certainly they did make some tax increases.

I had an opportunity yesterday as well to listen to the member for Carleton, who unfortunately is not here today, and I found it interesting to hear him talk about the need or the supposed need for companies to move to the United States and in fact for people to want to move to the United States because of the tax system we have here in this province. I would like to remind him, in his absence, that there are many other taxes that are levied in the United States that are not similarly levied here in Ontario. There are city taxes, there are taxes in municipalities, there are road taxes. They put up toll bridges on highways in order to collect taxes. We do not have toll bridges in Ontario, nor do our cities levy their own sales tax in Ontario.

I listened as well to the member for Markham, who is no longer here, who wanted to say that this was a horrible tax increase. Certainly people have opinions that they express in the House, and I think it is important that they express their opinions, but their opinions are not always correct. I would like to point out that error in the member for Markham. In fact, he talks about this grave tax increase, Bill 83, and the actual increase is one quarter of 1%. That is a nominal, almost insignificant tax increase, and what that in fact does is increase, as other members have said, tax on those single individuals who make more than $84,000 a year, and as has been mentioned earlier, those who are married and have more dependants can make more before this will affect them.

Might I add that $84,000, in my opinion, is a significant income. The average income in the province is far less than that, and in fact only 3% of the taxpayers will be affected.

What is going to happen with this? We have given a break to the people at the bottom end of the spectrum, and a portion of these revenues collected in this new tax will help those people. It will increase the moneys to dependants, from $200 to $350, of those people who are needy at the bottom end of the spectrum.

It was mentioned that as many as 700,000 low-income taxpayers would benefit from this. I would suggest, because of the difficult times we are having with the economy right now, that may even be more now.

We listened to the member for Markham say we have to learn to say no. "We've got to learn to say no," he says. Who do you say no to? I would ask him. Do you say no to hospitals? Do you say no to --

Interjection.

I heard him say that in other provinces they have rolled back the numbers of government employees. The people of Ontario want more service, and truly the people of Ontario are concerned about taxes, so we have a Fair Tax Commission that presently is looking into this system of taxation.

I just want to say, because there might be a chance that the errors of the commentary of the member for Markham might be believed by members of the public watching to be the truth, that in fact Bill 83 only increases taxes by one quarter of 1%, and I want to say one more time that is only on single people who make more than $84,000.

I rise to support this bill. I think it is a very important bill. It takes some money from the people at the top of our income scale and redistributes it, something that I think we as members of the New Democratic Party have advocated. It is a very small way, but it is certainly a step in the right direction, and so I wholeheartedly support this bill.

To hear Richard Johnston this morning on radio was, to me, just breathtaking. I hope my friend Richard Johnston, for whom I have the highest regard, is up to the miserable task he now has to perform.

Paddy Musson must be out there at some NDP action committee right now in London in overdrive and apoplexy. No wonder the Minister of Labour does not want to answer that question. I tell members, the Minister of Education will need danger pay to go home to face Paddy Musson in full flight over what this government has of necessity now to do to the college system.

Of course, they have made an agreement with the doctors, an incredible agreement, a good agreement, perhaps, to get peace in our time, but it is six years and apparently it is on the shelf and it cannot be touched. But they are already facing farmers and they are about to face Paddy Musson and the college teachers and a variety of other people for whom the news is not going to be good.

I will say just in conclusion, and here I am being a bit spiteful, I found it fascinating today to hear the Treasurer say that one of the things that is driving the expenditure line of the government is the teacher pension situation. A part of me, the spiteful, vindictive part of me, almost wishes, in a figurative sense, that the NDP drowns in the teacher pension politics in which it has engaged over the last 18 months.

It is no different than it was back then. It is no different than when this Bill 83 was first introduced. We are simply saying, "Hold the line."

Obviously, now the Treasurer is simply saying, "There are several millions that may have to be looked at." He is not being very specific. I am sure in due course he will introduce a statement that will tell us exactly what he is going to cut, but I think there is a lot of fear out there about exactly what the Treasurer is going to cut. He probably has not even told the member yet, but he will. I think there is a lot of fear.

On the subject of pay equity alone, which of course was introduced by the Liberals, we are now being told that the civil service is going to triple in size and that the cost of pay equity and the cost of bringing other crown corporations and others into the civil service is going to be astounding.

If the government does not start cutting, it is going to bankrupt this province. My question to the member is, does he think that this province and the taxpayers of this province are a bottomless pit?

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Who do you say no to and how do you put fiscal management back in? The percentage increase may be just a reflection of balancing the system out, because I know for a fact the majority of the taxation has always hit the working- and lower-class people of society. We have kept them lower. We used to have a low- middle- and high-income status. We now have low and high and those are the only categories we have. So it is important that through the tax, and I think the member has illustrated it right -- what do we do? Do we start holding referendum balloting on paying for roads or paying for the schools or paying for the sewage treatment, paying for the luxuries we have?

Yes, we have to make some financial changes, but I am sure the Treasurer in his capability as he stands tall in his seat where he sits -- I think it is very important that he is illustrating that fiscal management can come without knee-jerk reaction to situations. We have only been in for a year. Time will prove itself, and I am sure the general public, when the next election is called, will make all judgement calls in that nature. I think it important that we put a balance back in the system of helping people out in trying to put an equal system back in place.

I would like to go around with some of my colleagues across the floor when they are canvassing and perhaps talk with the average home owner, the average individual who does not make $84,000 a year, and ask him in the presence of my colleagues across the floor, "What do you think?" and see whether or not these individuals would take the same stance at that door. Something tells me that they would not and that here they say one thing and perhaps in front of their constituents they say another.

I would like to do that. Perhaps one of them can invite me to canvass with him during his next campaign, or even perhaps next summer or at Christmas time. Let's do it at Christmas time and see how much money the average person has to spend and where he wants these tax increases. I will bet the members that they will tell him that they want the increases in the higher-level-income homes.

I cannot see the debate here. I really cannot. Frankly I suggest we stop debate. I do not know. Perhaps I am wrong, but frankly they should please listen to what we are saying for a change.

I answer to the member for Dufferin-Peel that no, we do not have a bottomless pit. It is certainly finite; it is certainly limited. What we have to do is balance, and it is a very difficult balancing act, as I am sure he is most aware. Where we collect taxes and make expenditures, we have to make sure we collect enough to make enough. If we make the cuts -- I do not have to tell the member the story, I am quite sure, as he knows it so well.

I think not having a bottomless pit certainly means we have to be prudent when we deal with the overall fiscal management of the province. When we look at the revenues we want to bring into the province, the very small tax increases we want to make, I do not think they are unreasonable. I think the majority of the people in the province see them as small tax increases, and for the most part not unreasonable. People in the province want their services. They do not want things to be taken away. In fact, if they want anything, they want to see improvements.

I think what is important for this government is to make sure that what we do is maybe something that was not done as well in the past as it could have been, and that is to have a very efficient, effective government in dealing with the fiscal matters of the province. This government has the ability to do that. I think in time the member, my other colleagues and the people of Ontario will see that is so.

I did not think I was going to have much time to debate this bill because frankly I thought I would be spending some time debating the bill on the government automobile insurance plan. I kept hearing all summer that a plan would be introduced and that legislation was forthcoming.

I recall my friend and colleague the member for Welland-Thorold being very enthusiastic about this in opposition. I recall his filibuster of some 17 hours of expended time. That is not easy. Some people, particularly when in government, tend to be critical of that and say it is a nuisance and so on, but nevertheless he expended a good deal of time on an issue he obviously felt very strongly about. Of course, he is probably, as I am, waiting for that bill. He will have lots of time, as I do, to speak on this particular bill, because we will not be dealing with the car insurance legislation, since the Premier has decided to renege on the most important promise, I thought, or at least a central promise. I do not want to exaggerate. I think it is a central promise. Whenever I thought of the NDP, one of the things I thought was that it stood for government insurance.

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Those of us in the opposition who disagree with some of the policies which are advanced think of it in two ways. In one way, we are happy they have not proceeded with some of the things they said they would proceed with when in opposition and during the campaign, because we do not think they are good for the province. On the other hand, we have a bit of concern that it increases cynicism in the public when it watches a government get into power, head up to Honey Harbour, and late on Friday afternoon when most of the members have taken off make a final decision that somehow it is going to completely abandon automobile insurance, which is central.

That is not directly to do with this bill, Mr Speaker. You have been kind enough to indulge me for a period of time in diverting a bit from the precise subject, and that is taxation.

I look at this particular tax and it does not really affect me. On a direct basis, I do not worry too much about it. There are cabinet ministers who may or may not be affected by that. I forget how it actually works out. They make about $90,000 a year, but some of that is not taxable, so it might not even affect them. It may affect some of the advisers, some of my very good friends who have served in the past. The people who sit on the government benches will soon recognize that people who did not get elected make more money than people who did get elected.

My good friend David Reville, who was an excellent member of this Legislature, and Ross McClellan, another good fellow who sat on the NDP benches and defended the causes in which he believed greatly, and Gerry Caplan -- he does not work for the government, but I am sure he makes lots of money -- these kinds of people are all going to be affected by this. I suppose they are not going to be stampeded to the United States.

One of the concerns I have about this is it is difficult for me because I come from a working-class background. My father, when he was alive, was a union member. I live in a working-class neighbourhood in St Catharines. I do not live in the ritzy part of town or anything like that. Most of my friends come from the level of pay that would be commensurate with those who would not be affected by this tax and so on.

I used to think that was great, what we should do is always tax these rich people. I was a bit intrigued by the 1979 Marxist-Leninist slogan they used to put all over the city, "Make the Rich Pay," because it had a good ring to it. I was not rich; somebody else was. "Would it not be nice? There is a lot of fairness to that."

The previous speaker for the government, the member for Prince Edward-Lennox, talked about its being a matter of justice, I suppose -- I do not want to put words into his mouth -- and equality and so on. One of the concerns I have, however, is that many of the people in that category are people we really want to keep in our province. I may resent the fact they make more money than I do. I may think they make too much money and I may think it is unfair, but I watch people heading out of this province to other jurisdictions, particularly to the United States, because they think they cannot do as well as they would like in this province.

In some cases that is not a legitimate excuse. I hope people will think in patriotic terms, but I found more and more people I would not have believed now abandoning this country and heading to the United States or another jurisdiction, but it is mostly to the United States.

For all the revenue we are going to get from it, I wonder if we do the right thing. I wonder if this is not the kind of tax which is going to drive people farther. I am probably a person who supports a tax like this, because it seems to be on those, but I ask myself the question, as we all have to, with all of the taxes we have rather than this particular tax, do I drive them out?

I am a sports fan, as are many members of the Legislature, and I watch people now say, "I don't want to play in Canada because the taxes are too high." That is one of the reasons they do not. I suppose to a certain extent, if you look at it strictly in terms of dollars and cents, it makes some sense to say, "I would rather either be paid in American dollars or head somewhere else where the taxation system is different." We see talent, on that basis, wanting to go somewhere else. That is not as important to us. There is some pride to having those professional athletes here.

I am concerned about other people, whether it is top-notch people in the labour relations field or people who are in business or professionals, who might decide the taxation system has become so oppressive in our province because of taxes that have built up. With a Conservative government followed by a Liberal government followed by an NDP government, the taxes have increased over the years to meet what we all perceive to be a desire to meet the service needs of the people in this province. I think that is something we have to look at when we look at each of these taxes.

I also believe we are in a different era. There is nobody in this House who is not a grass-roots political representative who does not detect a considerable shift in the mood of the people of this province. Even a couple of years ago there was not the tax revolt we see today. Probably the recession had a big part to do with that.

The Speaker represents an area, as I do, which is subject to the ups and downs of the economy. When there is a recession on, hits Cambridge, hits St Catharines and hits places like Brantford, Oshawa and so on with a great deal of difficulty for the people who are living there. Windsor is another place I think of, and Sudbury and the extraction areas of northern Ontario where there are resource industries.

People then become resistant to tax increases. It is a difficult balancing act. I do not want to pretend, as some will, that somehow there is a magic way of doing this, that somehow we cut everything. That is difficult to do because each one of us as an MPP writes to ministers or speaks in the House or asks questions. I ask about a CAT scanner for the Niagara region all the time. The cost to the ministry is not great on that, but that is another demand the people want. The people in the area have to raise the funds themselves. That is how it works. The ministry does not pay the capital cost. There is an operating cost that is covered partially by the ministry. It is an example of how we are still going to have demands made of us, and at the same time try to keep those taxes down.

I look at the deficit, which is one of the reasons we put higher taxes on people. The Treasurer said, "I'm going to have a difficult time keeping it at even $9.7 billion unless I have some tax increases in my budget," so he increased taxes. If you take it to a full year, it is about $1 billion those taxes will increase.

There are other taxes I want to speak on at greater length, because I am more concerned about them than I am this particular tax, which I must say will never send me into revulsion or into the streets with a sign in my hand. But I look at the total accumulation of taxes and say that people out there are revolting and they are turning away from traditional parties as a result of that.

They look at the Conservative Party and they will hear members of the Conservative Party in this House make a case for restraint, make a case for control of government expenditures. They will look at Ottawa and say, "We have a Conservative government there." I understand how unfair it is trying to explain to anybody that there is a difference between a federal party and a provincial party. I had to go through that when we were in opposition and there was a Liberal government in Ottawa -- people said, "Well, your friends in Ottawa" -- and the Conservatives have to go through that at the present time.

But you look at the circumstances and people say: "The Tories in Ottawa have a huge deficit and they even have the word Conservative in their name and they seem to have a lot money for certain things. Yes, they have tried to pull in the reins on other things, but they seem to have a lot of money for things. They seem to be pretty big spenders."

Then look at the Liberal government. We went through some good times and we were able to expand some programs and undertake some capital projects. They say, "That party, when it was in power, sure it balanced the budget one year but it had five good years out there and it seemed to have money to be spending on the population."

Then they look at the NDP and say: "Those people have never been interested in restraint. That's not been part of their policy. It's been a policy of providing service and expanding and investing, and that's been traditional." At least in Ontario, they would gain that impression.

They start turning to other parties, and that is where we see the results of the election in New Brunswick. I do not attribute those victories or those eight seats to something called taxes and things of that nature. I know the reason for those seats being lost, and that is not hard to figure out when you look at the demographics of the province.

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But one of the factors that makes the Reform Party attractive to some people in this country, and parties such as CoR attractive, is a feeling of oppressive taxation. That is why we have proceeded with a good deal of care when we talk about implementing new taxes in this province. I am concerned about, as I am sure everybody is concerned about, the deficit in this province. We have about a $10-billion deficit this year.

What I submit is even more disconcerting, however, is the fact that next year it is projected at about $9 billion and the two years after that at about $8 billion. That accumulated debt is beginning to worry even people I would not have believed would have any worry about debts, and that means that you start hearing the buzzwords of "spending smarter." Even the government picks up on these now as the opposition parties did when they were in power and were looking at ways to avoid tax increases.

I look at the promise of 60% of the cost of education. A number of the people who sit on the other side of the House come, as I do, from the teaching profession, and the federations certainly always plugged heavily for 60% of the cost of education to be paid by the province. Now we find out that last year in fact the percentage went down once again. It went down under the Liberals, it went down under the Conservatives, and they found out they were chasing something that was pretty hard to catch up to.

I wonder how, without even more tax increases, this government is going to be able to meet that promise. They are either going to have to break the promise and say, "Look, we thought it was a good idea when we were in opposition, but guess what? We can't do it," or they are going to have to tax, or I guess the third is to run even a bigger deficit.

I do not think we can get away with running those deficits any longer, though I think in fairness when the New Democrats speak about a deficit, we have to look at what the member for Renfrew North said. You have to look at what the total budget is and what the deficit is. Ten billion dollars sounds like a lot and it is a lot, but I can recall in the midst of the last recession and in desperate straits a Treasurer, who was a Progressive Conservative Treasurer, had a deficit over $3 billion on a much lower budget. Darcy McKeough even had to run them and he was seen as a fiscal conservative.

But I think all of us are going to have to look carefully at those expenditures. I, almost ad nauseam in this House and to the boredom of a lot of people, recommended strongly -- and some people who have been around for a while know what I was talking about -- looking carefully at each of the expenditures. The Chairman of Management Board is an underrated position. It is now called treasury board, I guess; it has a new name. But the Chairman of Management Board has always been an underrated position. Management Board plays an extremely important role in controlling expenditures.

Unfortunately what you have to do -- there are a lot of programs around that have been around for a number of years, and I know as a minister if you try to cut those, there are people with a vested interest in seeing them continue in your ministry. They are good people. They are working hard at them. They believe in them and they do not want to see them abandoned.

But you may say we are in 1991. That program might have been relevant and might have been important in 1985 or 1980 or 1975, but today perhaps we believe within that ministry there is something more important we should be doing. Instead of putting in new taxes or running the deficit up, we might say to a minister, "If you abandon this program, we will allow you to take that money and spend it more productively on another program, or if the program is not needed at all, we will take that money into the central pot so we can pay down the deficit." I think that kind of fiscal control is going to bring our expenditures in this province under some considerable control in the future.

I look at other countries and what is happening -- and you cannot tell, because you will see different governments elected for different purposes -- but I look at Sweden as an example. This government and members of the New Democratic Party, in Ontario at least and perhaps other places -- only in my friends in the NDP in Ontario have I noted this -- have been particularly intrigued with what has happened in Sweden. It was always held out as the paradise, and indeed a lot of things were accomplished in Sweden.

A lot of what was accomplished was probably in a humane sense quite worth while, but the people of Sweden this time around -- I think, until this election campaign came up, a bit to the surprise of the governing party -- rejected a party which has provided government to them, has been a popular government over the years to the people of Sweden. They have said, "Our tax burden is too great and many of the ideas we thought were good and were almost paradise are not what we really need in the 1990s." So we see them being rejected.

Some people will compare, and I am not going to engage in it; they say: "Look what's happening in eastern Europe, in the Soviet Union, and everything. They are getting rid of socialism and they are embracing the free market." I do not think that is a fair comparison, quite frankly, because it was communism, a different kind of socialism, that existed in those countries.

However, the principle of moving towards a market economy is there and it seems that a lot of people in the world are moving more in that direction. What is fairer is probably to compare Sweden rather than to compare what is happening in eastern Europe. For rhetoric purposes it is great stuff and I will say it from time to time in a heated conversation with my NDP friends, but Sweden, I think, is the better example.

I look at some problems that arise that I will deal with at some length in other bills coming before the House, but the cross-border shopping issue is one which the member for Sault Ste Marie and I have had some chats about. I never reveal in the House the privacy of chats that members have, except to say, as he would publicly, that it is a matter that causes great arguments even within one's family as to whether there should be cross-border shopping.

It is also difficult with low-income people. Now these are people with not much money to spend and some people lecturing to them -- and we all like to hope they would buy in Canada -- say, "You know, you should buy in Canada." They will say, "Well, if I made as much money as a cabinet minister or as an MPP or something like that, as the Speaker, I guess I could afford to shop in Canada as well."

Where I bring that into this argument is again the feeling that oppressive taxation is driving people out. It is an excuse almost. People feel vindicated. They say, "We've got the GST, we've got the PST and we've got all these other taxes, gasoline taxes and cigarette taxes," and whatever other taxes this government increases and other governments increase -- alcoholic beverages, that is it -- and they say, "This is my rebellion, my way of speaking out against taxes."

Now it comes back to haunt them, because a lot of the people who are working are going to be affected by this, and I have often had this argument with some of my colleagues and friends. I have not always been as successful as I might be, and I know my friend the member for Sault Ste Marie has experienced some of the same situations.

I am also concerned about plants leaving this province. Again you will say, "What does this have to do with all these tax bills we have?" It is again the accumulated effect of oppressive taxation on a province. I am not a business person. I often say, "They don't have any business experience over there." Neither do I have any business experience, but I guess I have some experience of having been in a cabinet and exposed to a lot of people around the table who knew something about business, people like the member for Wilson Heights and the member for Quinte who had been in businesses of their own, and some others. I cannot recall exactly all of them. Premier Peterson knew business, and so on. The debates were quite vociferous in cabinet between those who did not have business experience and those who had business experience. I hope a balance emerged from that.

But my concern is that with all the taxes we are seeing, people are going to head out of here. I do not know whether I have to like those people or not. Some of the heads of certain companies in this province who have been there over the years have been not very kind to their workers and not very good patriots. That is fortunately a very small number, but about some of those people some people say, "Good riddance to them." I am sorry, but there are jobs that are provided and it does stimulate the provincial economy.

Whether we like those people or not, whether we agree philosophically with those people or not, it is important that they keep their investment here and that they continue to invest, and that new people are interested, because if they are not interested, I am afraid all of the social programs that are advocated, by members of the government particularly and some of us in opposition, certainly will not be possible without the revenues that would come in from those people, without increasing taxes.

Now they have established a treasury board, I hope to heck they use the treasury board appropriately and that the chair of treasury board is going to be the most miserable person in government, because that simply is part of the characteristic of that person if he or she is going to be effective.

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I looked at a number of other issues that could arise, but I indicated to members of the House -- I know the Progressive Conservative Party has some future speakers, and others may have as well -- however, my concern is greater about the gasoline tax, and although I do not smoke and I do not particularly like smoking, about the tobacco tax only as it relates to cross-border shopping, and about the alcoholic beverages tax, which is also reflected in the price of meals. So I would be more inclined to spend some considerable time there, and it is probably more in order to spend some considerable time on that aspect of it at that time.

I caution the government at this time to look very carefully at expenditures. It is going to be attacked. It is going to be attacked by the opposition in some cases because we will decide what we think is a reasonable cut by the government and what is not reasonable. The government can be assured it will receive some attacks here and it will receive some from the people who supported it. The member for Durham West makes a lot of noise over there and his friends in the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation are going to be on his back when they see that the government is not going to keep the promises it said it was going to keep. So he will have to bear the brunt of that and it is part of being government. Some of them who have been close to social groups, social workers and others who believed that when the NDP got elected, at long last the programs would be funded the way they felt they should be funded, may be disappointed.

I am going to be interested in reading the union newspapers. I have always found it interesting reading the newspapers put out by various unions because there are some interesting points of view, some very compelling points of view put forward. I am going to be interested to see other people who make comments on public policy, whether they will be apologists for the NDP or whether they will continue to advocate for the group with which they have been involved.

There are some people who attacked the Liberals and said, "Well, of course, the Liberals are in the pockets of insurance companies." I have been known to interject occasionally in this House and I have interjected in a joking way, "Aha, you're now, as a government, in the pockets of the insurance companies." I am going to be interested to see whether today those same people who attacked me for not being an overwhelming and strong supporter of government-run auto insurance will be critical of the government. Will they have in the forefront their NDP membership card, or will they have in the forefront their lifelong struggle for things they believe in?

I know many of these people and I know they will have to put aside their allegiance to the NDP. They can still vote NDP and still be supportive, but I know that because they are people of integrity, they will be critical of their own New Democratic Party and will write letters to the editor instead of attacking opposition members for their positions. They will be writing letters to the editors saying, "We don't agree with what our NDP government has done." If they are simply apologists for the NDP and not defending the positions they have so strongly believed in over the years, then they do not serve the people they have been involved with over those years, whether they have been striving to support the poor or any particular group in our society.

I will be watching carefully. I know some of those people will overcome the desire to support the NDP no matter what and will make known their views in a very strong sense. That will make it difficult for the members of the government to deal with tax bills such as this particular tax bill, Bill 83, that we have at the present time.

Mr Speaker, I want to thank you for indulging me in this. The previous Speaker who sat in the chair, the member for Cambridge, was also tolerant of deviating from the precise provisions of this bill. I encourage the government to withdraw its other taxes and to examine the ramifications, through some kind of careful study, of even this tax for the wellbeing of the province.

He has observed socialism around the world. It is true that the tremendous upheaval in the Soviet Union is not really a fair comparison, but it is a comparison, that extreme socialism has not worked in that mammoth type of government. It has not worked in Europe, it has not worked in Sweden and it remains to be seen whether it is going to work in North America. We have observed an election going on in British Columbia and we have observed the member from the NDP in British Columbia distancing himself from Ontario. It remains to be seen what the people from British Columbia feel with respect to socialism in that province.

Certainly socialism does appear to discourage competitiveness. It discourages the desire to work. With all these facts, my question to the member for St Catharines is this; I know he has had more time to reflect on philosophies, having been a minister. I would like him to share some of his thoughts as to where he thinks this government is going with the philosophy that everyone else around the world is turning his back on.

It is interesting that the member for Dufferin-Peel talked about Sweden and how socialism had not worked there. I disagree with him in terms of the sense that it has worked there for many years and the people there have thought it has worked for many years. That is why they continued to elect the government. The reason it has worked is that they made value decisions. The people and the government made value decisions in terms of what were priorities and what was important to them.

Bringing that back to what the member for St Catharines was saying in terms of the dilemma we now face, it seems here in this country that people have made value decisions in terms of what issues are important to them, in terms of health care and education and the type of system we want to have here versus the system to the south. At the same time as they have made those value decisions, up to a certain extent they have been willing to pay a premium for those different values. While there may not be a better standard of living from a statistical standpoint, certainly there is a better quality of life in this province and in this country due to some of those value decisions.

The key dilemma right now is that many of those people are saying they still want to have those same values, but they do not want to pay the premium price that we have had to pay as Canadians and as Ontarians for that. That is going to be a real challenge for this government. I think it is going to be a real challenge for all governments in this province and country to try to deal with that. I am sure that debate is going to go on a little more. It has certainly been a learning experience for me over the past year in terms of balancing off that dilemma we face.

Certainly in my constituency, among my constituents, I am seeing that situation on a daily basis where young people, not just the corporate executives, are deciding they are going to choose career options that are outside of this country, and taxation is one of the reasons that is a turning-point in their decision.

Certainly if they look at the situation in the United States when tax reform occurred, one of the things we are finding in jurisdictions against which we are competing for jobs, for investment and so on is that while maintaining progressivity in their income tax rates -- indeed they have done that, collected the same amount of money, and reduced rates at the same time. So when a young person or an executive is looking at the comparative factors in deciding whether to stay or to leave, he is looking at substantially lower taxes for very similar services, other than health care. Even with the addition of what is clearly expensive health health care coverage in the United States, people are still making the decision that they will be further ahead at the end of the month and will have more freedom to decide whether they are going to invest in home life or in their community through corporate activity or other activity.

When the members look at new income taxes in conjunction with other taxes that are proposed, which the Treasurer has indicated in his last budget are going to be going on until the end of the government's term in office, believe me, that decision is coming earlier and quicker and with more definition each day.

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The idea that people think -- and they truly do -- there is an advantage to living in the United States may not in fact prove to be so. As I indicated earlier, there are city sales taxes, there are road taxes. I have not been in the United States recently, but I know when I was there about 15 or 20 years ago I was on one of the turnpikes and there were a number of toll bridges and I had to keep reaching into my pocket trying to find change to feed them. This is something we do not have in Ontario. There are ways and means by which they collect taxes that are not income taxes, and I think that certainly is something we have to look at.

The quality of life they have, the medicare system they do not have, and certainly the fact that they have probably one of the biggest deficits in the world, some day they are going to have to collect on that. I have no doubt about this. Does that mean that all those people who have migrated to the United States will suddenly say, "Hey, we're going back to Ontario because now there's an advantage there"? I am not sure. The situation is very serious and certainly I want to thank the member for St Catharines for the point that people think there is an advantage to moving to the United States.

The member for Dufferin-Peel asked me about what I felt the philosophy of the present government would do to Ontario, where it would send us. I think one of the problems is that the government when it was elected and when it was in opposition raised a good deal of expectations, expectations that cannot be met. I would suggest to them that people are soon not going to expect as much from government as they did before, except they are going to expect somewhat lower taxes. That is a change. That is a perceptible change from what I would have seen in the 1960s and the 1970s, even into the 1980s, as we get into the 1990s to see that change.

I think there is a recognition now among many that they are no longer members of advocacy groups; they are now people who have to make value judgements as they are elected. We like to chide them, whether they are from the trade union movement or other areas. My friend the member for Chatham-Kent is here and I like to chide him about those things, and I still recognize that as a member he is going to have to defend positions which are not 100% of what he would like. We are going to have to see that happening in this government, and it is doing it already.

I think there has to be a recognition that we live in a very competitive world. I wish we did not. I wish we were living in, I guess, a system where there was not the kind of competition -- the world after the Second World War, where Canada was king, pretty well, and we did not have to worry about the competition.

But in everything that the government does, I believe it is going to have to understand that the competition exists. Perhaps it cannot have everything as it would have liked.

The last thing I would say to the government is to be very careful of entrenching things in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I heard the Premier starting to make some comments about what he would like to see in a Constitution. May I assure the members, if they want to see the control slipping away from elected people to the courts or to a Senate or somewhere else, just entrench those things in a Constitution and they will find out there is a big difference.

It has been referred to by members in the government as a very simple bill, that there is nothing really to it, that it is minor increases to the very rich. I would like just to refer, for the record, to what the explanatory notes of this bill say.

"The bill implements the proposal contained in the budget of the 29th day of April, 1991 to increase the surcharge imposed under the Income Tax Act on personal income tax in excess of $10,000."

There is one section which is summarized in the explanatory notes:

"The re-enactment of section 2b of the act increases the rate of surcharge from 10 per cent of Ontario personal income tax in excess of $10,000 to 12 per cent for 1991 and 14 per cent for subsequent years."

I think that latter statement is certainly interesting. It is committing our future to future increases in the years to come of 14%. The bill, as the government has been wont to do, is making this retroactive to the first of January 1991.

As a new member, I can say that I meet not just people in my own riding but people around the province. I have had the pleasure, or the displeasure, of travelling around the province, specifically on the rent review hearings, and meeting people who have discussed not just housing issues but general issues of the economy.

It has been one of dismay. Standard questions one hears are: "Why are people cross-border shopping? What can we do about it?"

They are going because of the high taxation rate in this province. Certainly there are other issues. There are the issues of the recession and how the recession is affecting the people in this country and, yes, they are going because of the GST. I will be addressing the GST in a moment.

Another question that is asked is: "What is this government doing? Do we have to put up with them?" Yes, I suspect we do. The NDP won the election. It had a majority and it intends to implement -- it has given us notice of that -- social programs for the next number of years.

But there is a general fear, a fear by business. I sat on a committee yesterday where members of this government were concerned with what they called the myth that has been created by the opposition parties and the press that business is afraid of what the government is doing. I can tell members, it is there. All they have to do is read the papers every day, talk to people in their own ridings, talk to business people, talk to people on the streets, and business is afraid of what the government is doing, business is afraid of bills such as Bill 83 and how it is going to affect their businesses and their survival.

People are afraid for their jobs. They are afraid of how taxation is affecting business and how that is destroying businesses. Businesses are going bankrupt. Yes, it is not completely because of the government's policies, but it cannot deny that it is because of some of its taxation policies, and this is certainly one of them.

The fear is of companies moving to the United States. Yes, there is no question that there is a whole series of reasons why businesses have left this province and are going not only to other provinces but to the United States.

But the facts are there, the fear of increased taxation in this province. All of us in this House, particularly members of the NDP and members of my party, in the last election went around complaining about the past Liberal government and the great number of tax increases that it spent, but this government is no different.

People were very upset in the last election. The NDP did not win the last election because people were supportive of its policies. They were voted in because of the fact that people did not like the continuous tax increases that were being put forward by the Liberal government and yet the government continues to implement -- I submit it is even worse than what the previous government was like. Its taxes are becoming unbearable.

It is going to be interesting to watch the municipal elections that will be unfolding this fall. In every municipality around this province the theme seems to be the same: taxes, taxes, taxes. School boards are spending more, perhaps because of more increased pressure by the provincial government, and the downloading of policies is continuing. Bill 30 is an example.

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The municipalities are continuing to be concerned with the demands that are being put on them by this government. At the same time the hints were there. In the last election the government was thrown out and one of the main reasons -- there were a number of reasons and the members submitted them, as did I, when we went around our ridings -- was taxes. It is going to happen again, and yet the government continues to spend, to implement policies that are expensive and to put forward policies that we simply cannot afford.

I do not know how we are going to help that feeling of dismay and that lack of confidence, because how do you stop people from leaving this country or this province? How do you stop people from the lack of desire to invest in this province? What do you do? How do you do it?

The government's theory seems to be to continue with taxation. It has built up a deficit that is going to be insurmountable. The government members continue to remind us of the GST. I do not think anyone likes the GST. I do not think anyone in the country likes the GST and obviously that is a continuous debate that surfaces daily. People do not like the GST, but I would like to remind the members of the philosophy of the previous Liberal government in Ottawa, which was a spending philosophy and it caused great debt in this country. The debt increased until it was spending 33% or 35% on interest alone. That is what is going to happen in this province.

In the future, people who are coming to this country and our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay the debt. Somewhere along the line the debt has to be paid, and that is the fear and dismay this government is creating. There is still time to reverse that policy. There is dismay when we hear the Treasurer talk about the deficit and how he obviously is going to have to cut back on several millions. He has been asked in the last two days what he is going to cut. There is a great deal of concern.

Commitments have been made around this province. In my own riding, for example, there is a commitment to build a hospital by this province, by the Liberal government and by this government. It was renewed by the former Minister of Health and I hope she honours her commitments, because there is a great fear that this province is going broke and that we are not going to have the needed services that were promised by previous governments, and the planning and the great needs for our health services.

One of the major philosophical differences I have noticed with this government is that we should all be the same: "Tax the rich. Tax the middle class. Don't tax the poor." I think there have to be graduated schemes of taxation, but the middle class is slowly disappearing in this province. I would like simply to ask the members of the government why they feel we should all be the same. Are we all the same? Should the ministers be paid the same as other members in this House?

I disagree a lot with the philosophies that are being put forward by the ministers of this particular government, but I know they all work very hard. They all spend many hours and they should be paid more than the rest of the members of this House, and yet they are typical examples of people who are working and being taxed. There are others, other doctors and other people. I cannot expect that the members not deny they should be paid more because of their talents. Values are placed on more talents than others and should be paid accordingly, and yet the government's theory is to make us all the same, tax, tax, tax.

It is going to discourage people. Why should one be competitive? Why should one start up a business? Why not join the government? They are paid well and their jobs are guaranteed. Businesses continuously are going into bankruptcy, but why should the government? Why should they work hard and spend more hours? They do not have the union hours. The people in government do not have the problems that people in private enterprise do. Why do people do it?

I hope this government would try to put forward means to encourage private enterprise. We need private enterprise because it gets back to the issues that were raised by the member for St Catharines. Socialism is not working. It is not working in other parts of the world and it certainly is not going to work in Ontario. I hope that when the members are voting for these bills, they keep those theories in mind, and they encourage people to work in this province and not tax them so they will be forced to leave the province.

I spoke to a number of doctors who have raised the question of the issue of capping their salaries. They are simply saying: "Once I have reached that salary, why bother working? My salary is capped. I can't make any more. I might as well move to the United States." Considerations are being taken by those individuals. I appreciate that this specific subject does not have a great deal to do with Bill 83, but it has to do with the general philosophy of Bill 83 and the general issue of taxation.

There is the whole subject of particular industries and the concerns they have on taxation. For example, I will pick the subject of tourism. Certainly much time will be spent on the subject of the gasoline tax with the subject of tourism and I will not dwell on it, but the whole philosophy of taxation in the tourism industry and how it is affecting their industry is a concern.

Why would people in the United States come to Ontario? Why would they, because of the high taxes that are surfacing in this province? The prices are higher, costs are higher and taxes are higher. Why would they come here to spend their holidays? Why would they come here to spend?

There are concerns around the province specifically from the tourism industry. I would like to refer to some of the comments that have been made dealing with the whole theory of taxation and the tourism industry, and specifically I would like to provide a submission that was made to our leader's tax campaign that went around the province at the time of the budget debate. This came from the Peterborough Kawartha Tourism and Convention Bureau. At that time submissions were made to us expressing the concerns of the taxation policies and the high deficit policies of this government.

It is stated by this industry that the industry decline that started some two years ago was delayed in reaching Peterborough and the Kawarthas by some six months:

"That six-month reprieve helped, but now the slowdown has reached us. Tourism is of the utmost importance to this region. Studies conducted over the years confirm this. In 1989 the economic impact of tourism to the region was estimated to be $140 million. Direct and indirect employment was in excess of 7,000 jobs, which accounts for 12% of the area labour force as well as over $27 million in combined municipal, provincial and federal tax revenue."

That is something I do not think the government has spent a great deal of time on: the effect of its taxation policies on jobs, how it affects industries such as tourism and how it affects other industries and other jobs where people are simply going to lose their jobs because industries and businesses cannot continue because of the high taxation policies of this province, and Bill 83 is no exception.

"A brief background to the Peterborough Kawartha Tourism and Convention Bureau: The bureau was established in 1982 as the primary marketing and visitor servicing agency for Peterborough and the Kawarthas. We are a non-profit association representing approximately 200 members of the area's tourism industry."

This is an organization that certainly speaks for the entire area and expresses its concern about the decline of tourism in the Peterborough area. They talk about the additional taxes that were announced in the budget of April, and they say specifically that it was "bad news to operators at the start of the 1991 summer season. Added taxes which increase costs and are ultimately passed on to the consumer dim the light at the end of the tunnel."

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Then they refer to the various taxes which we will be dealing with later, the tax bills for gasoline, tobacco and alcohol. We will be spending some time, at least in this party, on how that has affected the tourism industry across the province.

"In 1982, US tourism represented 47% of all visitors to the Kawarthas. The percentage has continued to drop and in 1989 was down to 17%.

"One area resort operator tells me that his US business in 1979 represented 90% of his total business. In 1990 that figure was reduced to 3% and forecasts for the 1991 season see US business reduced to 1.5% of his total."

Again, there is no question that it is not solely the effects of this government that are causing that industry to decline. But certainly when you talk to these people in the business about the economic policies of this government, the tourism industry is placing a heavy responsibility on this government as to where the tourism industry is headed.

"In recent months, the bureau has seen increased inquiries from bordering US states. We are encouraged by the interest but concerned about reactions to costs upon the arrival of our American friends. The product is there, but by comparison to US prices we are expensive."

I have seen at first hand, particularly in the border areas, restaurants that normally are full in the summer months, and they were empty compared to other years. Why are they empty? Because of the philosophy, the taxation policies of this government.

"The 47% share of visitation previously made up of US visitors has now been replaced by visitors within a 140-kilometre radius of Peterborough. The largest of that 47% is 25% from Metro Toronto."

Then, again, they spend considerable time on the other taxation bills. I will try to restrict my remarks to the general taxation policy of Bill 83.

"At the annual pre-budget submission made by Tourism Ontario to the Treasurer of Ontario, the provincial federation which represents the industry suggested alternatives rather than presenting requests for the upcoming budget.

"These suggestions and alternatives could have reaped significant revenue for the province, and rebalanced taxation inequities.

"We are pleased to see that the freeze on the PST applied to roofed accommodation at 5% and the rebate of same tax to visitors from outside the province remained intact."

So there are positive compliments to this government, but they are discouraged by some of the recommendations that were not included in the budget, specifically the rescinding of the current provincial sales tax exemption on prepared foods; harmonizing the collection of PST applied to prepared foods and beverages to 8%; the levelling of the playing field between publicly funded and non-profit tourist attractions and private tourist attractions; and the reinvestment of provincial tax revenues collected from provincial fuel taxes, drivers' licences, etc, into the improvement, repair and expansion of provincial and municipal roads.

"We here in Peterborough were recently disappointed when yet another delay was announced in the completion of Highway 115. Highway 115 is the gateway to the Kawarthas."

So there is a feeling of dismay in this particular industry, and I think we could refer to a number of industries -- the retail industry -- as to the philosophical economic policies of this government.

One of the fears that is surfacing more and more -- and it existed a year ago, and members of the government saw it while they were campaigning around the province -- was the downloading, the passing of what are provincial responsibilities by a provincial government to municipalities. They are continuing to do that, which dismays many of the municipal politicians, and they will be attacked by that; they will be attacked by those philosophies in the forthcoming municipal elections.

There was an interesting observation talking about property taxes in the province of Ontario in one of our recent Toronto newspapers, commenting on the size of property taxes. In other words, property taxes are increasing more and more -- and, I would submit, because of their philosophies in the economic area.

I am quoting from this newspaper clipping:

"The total amount of property taxes collected in Ontario in both 1989 and 1990 was almost half the total collected in Canada.

"According to records in the public institutions division of Statistics Canada, Ontario collected $9,927.2 million in 1989 while in 1990 the figure was $10,682.2 million. The total property tax collected in Canada in 1989 was $19,895.6 million and $20,993.5 million in 1990."

That is rather astounding. The municipal politicians will unanimously be telling them that it is because of their economic policies, the policies of passing on provincial responsibilities in the education field and the municipal field to the property taxes, whether it be child care or whether it be other areas.

There is no question, I would submit, and it has been pointed out to them over and over; I am sure they have paid studies in their files that talk about predictions from economists that this province is going to be the last province to pull out of the recession.

The Premier and the Treasurer have made comments that, "Okay, we're going to spend our way out of the recession, and therefore we have a $9.7-billion deficit." Now they are saying, "Well...." We have not been told how much that has increased to and I think we are anxiously awaiting, as are the people of this province, to see what they have been doing with our money. But I am sure it is going to be revealed as to exactly how terrible the situation is, and we worry about it. We worry about it on this side of the House and we worry about it out on the street, as to exactly what the government has been doing with our money and how it has been spending money we do not even have.

Reporter after reporter after reporter has talked on this in the press. The government has received studies, I am sure, that have talked about this whole subject. I would like to refer to one that simply came from my riding. I will just refer to a couple of sections that express the concern of the people of this province.

Here is a writer in one of the newspapers who warns that "Ontario is repeating the same economic mistakes made by Ottawa during the last recession." He predicts that "the province will, as a result, be crippled in future with an institutionalized debt and spiralling taxes." Does that not sound like Ottawa back in the 1970s? Do members remember how the deficit had increased, increased? In one foul swoop, the government has created a monster in this province that will take decades for us to pay off.

"Ontario could well be the last province to pull out of the recession, which apparently is close to an end." That has been predicted around this country, that it is close to ending. There is a certain amount of optimism that the recession will end. But that optimism does not exist in this province. There is a fear of, am I going to lose my job? The housing market is certainly down, and the reason is not because of the interest rates; the interest rates are somewhat down and they were a few years ago. But certainly people are afraid of losing their jobs. Why are they afraid of losing their jobs? Because businesses are failing; people are being put out of work. Why are they being put out of work? Because of bills such as Bill 83, which is discouraging business from operating in this province.

This writer goes on to state that the Ontario budget proposes to "raise provincial spending by $6.2 billion, or 13.4%, in a single year." That is astounding in this recession, in a recession that we are already in, and yet this government decided to increase its spending by 13.4%, sustain a $9.7-billion deficit in the first year. That is astounding considering the recession we are in. Would government members put their families in debt in the same way their government has put this province in debt? I do not think they would.

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"This deficit is higher by $6.5 billion, or 204%, than of the previous year." What an increase, 204% from the previous year.

"Add another $25.1 billion to the province's accumulated deficit, from 1992-93 until 1994-95.

"Add more debt over 48 months than Ontario accumulated in the previous 125 years.

"By 1994-95, make Ontario's deficit-GNP ratio twice as bad as that of the federal government."

That is where we are heading. Those people stand over there and they say what a disaster the federal government policies are. They should think about it. If their economic policies continue, it will be twice as bad as it is now in the federal government.

"The Ontario government must question why it, alone among all the other Canadian governments, has chosen this well-known path to trouble."

That is how it ends, and so it is a feeling of dismay. I took that at random out of letters to the editor and comments that are made by reporters and columnists in our ridings.

There are other comments that have been made by people in the press that I am going to refer to, because I do not think those people are reading the press and the feeling of dismay that has been expressed around this province.

The main feeling, of course, is that "a net debt in Ontario, which under the NDP will grow from $34.8 billion to an awesome $69 billion by 1994-95" -- and that, of course, is calculated simply on the deficits of $9.7 billion this year, 1991-92; $8.9 billion in 1992-93; $8.4 billion in 1993-94, and $7.8 billion in 1994-95. How in the world are we going to pay it off?

One of the government's bright ideas is to put forward bills such as the one that is before it. That is how they are going to do it. How in the world do they expect that bills, about which one of the members over here says, "It's just a small amount; it's only going to tax people a little bit," are possibly going to reduce that deficit? Is it going to disappear by magic? Is it going to go through a recycling? If you think about it, where is the money going to come from? I mean, you do not spend money that you do not have.

The calculations that are put out by this reporter, and this came out of an article in the Toronto Sun at the time of the budget and that was an estimate, those figures that were given -- they are not just quoted here; they are quoted in other newspapers around this province -- are, "$25,000 owed by every household, or $7,000 owed by every newborn baby." Every baby that comes into this world, just because of their policies, is going to owe $7,000.

"Personal income taxes in Ontario now account for more than 37 cents of every tax dollar" -- does that not sound a little bit like Ottawa, a little bit like, where is the money going to come from? -- "compared to 26 cents back in 1984-85." That is what the people of this province are worried about. Where is this government going?

They also get into the other bills, Mr Speaker, and I can assure you that I will be expressing those concerns with respect to the other bills, because obviously this government is not listening to the concerns that are being talked about around this province.

There are a couple of other statistics, some of which have been given and I am going to repeat them -- some of them are new -- that I would like to refer to the House as a result of the tax economic policies that are being put forward by this government, as exemplified by this bill.

The NDP budget, of course, includes $1 billion in tax hikes. That includes them all, but $1 billion in tax hikes. Government members should try to remember back when they were running for office. They should try to remember back to what they were saying. Did they ever think that they would be taxing the people of this province an increase of $1 billion? They should try to explain that to their constituents. One of the members up here was talking about going around ridings such as mine and talking about the wonderful things he is doing here in Toronto. He is going to have a hard time explaining how in the world his government has $1 billion in tax hikes as a result of its philosophies.

This government is continuing on from the previous government. Ontario taxpayers have had more than 40 tax increases since 1985. The NDP government made the same sorts of remarks when it was running for office. They talked about the tremendous number of increases that the Liberals put forward. They were going to be the new breed of politician. They were not going to do that sort of thing, they acknowledged. They would go door to door and people would be complaining about taxes: property taxes, all kinds of taxes, tire taxes where the $5 tire tax was not even going on the environment; it was just disappearing into the general revenue. People were concerned, and they are getting terribly cynical.

Again, how is the government going to explain the continued number of tax increases? They should add them up. They should add up the number of bills that we are putting forward, that we are going to be debating. This is the first. I want them to go back to their ridings and explain why they have broken their promises. Of the seven Ontario budgets tabled from 1985 to 1991, five have imposed tax increases and/or new taxes; the two exceptions, of course, fell in election years.

No wonder the people of this province are cynical. No wonder they are cynical about what the government is doing. No wonder business will not trust them. We have been sitting through housing policies, and people who are investing in the housing industries, with the retroactivity, playing by the rules that were set by the previous government -- that is just an example. The government has lost the confidence of the people who invest in this province, not only from within the province but from outside the province.

The NDP government will collect $18.6 billion more in taxes than the Conservative government did in 1984-85 -- $18.6 billion more; astounding figures. The deficit has tripled from where it was to $9.7 billion. At least, that is what we were last told back in the spring. Who knows what it is now? I groan. It troubles me when I see the Treasurer say that he is going to be making several millions of dollars in changes. It really does, and I think it is troubling the people of this province. Where are they going to cut? Now, all of a sudden, they are talking about cutting. Where are they going to cut? It troubles us.

This is the largest provincial deficit ever in this country. What a record, having the largest provincial deficit ever, an astounding record.

There is still time to change it. They can change the direction in which they are going. It is a direction in which they say they consult, but I question whether they do. Certainly there has been very little change as a result of hearing the people in their own ridings who are coming to them expressing concerns at the spending habits and the economic philosophies that this province is going and that their own government is going in.

I do not envy the government members. I do not envy how they are talking to their constituents. In fact, I was in Hamilton the other day talking to a group and they were having trouble speaking to the members. Hamilton represents four or five members. They are all NDP members, and they were hiding. At least, that is what I was told. And I do not blame them for hiding, because they are going to have a hard time explaining these facts. They are going to have a very difficult time. Facts are facts, and what are they going to do about it?

I will challenge them what to do about it. One of the things that they can do is that they can stop this bill, Bill 83, because it is a philosophical direction that is going nowhere. The cost to Ontario taxpayers is $13,684,931.50 a day for interest payments -- just interest payments. I will bet the government members never realized that. That is $507,205 an hour on interest. That is what they are doing to this province.

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Interjection.

To comment with respect to Ontario's eroding competitiveness, the government's budget outlook predicts employment levels will drop by 184,000 in 1991. The budget boosts provincial spending by 13.4%. Government operating expenditures increased over $5 billion from last year. The budget brings business tax rates up to 30% higher than similar companies in Quebec and New York state.

Two other facts: Ontario has been losing $360 million a year in retail spending due to the cross-border shopping. Of course, the budget makes the situation even worse.

Mr Speaker, it is difficult for me to stay specifically on this bill, but the philosophical theme of the bill goes into other areas. I appreciate your allowing me that factor. These facts affect all the bills. I may be repeating them back to the government, because I do not think it knows them.

Interjection.

The Treasurer has given some hints that he is going to consider it, and we will be looking forward to seeing what sort of cuts he is making, but it is troublesome that he made commitments in the spring and now he is saying it has gotten a lot worse. It has not gotten a lot worse; it is just as bad now as it was then. The government put this province in an unbelievable debt and I do not know how we are going to get out of it. One of the things the government can do is stop this bill.

Promises: A great deal of time has been spent by members of the opposition with respect to promises. The government obviously made the plan quite clear during the last election that there would be very few taxes. They would not give us any more higher taxes. That promise was made by all government members during the last election. That was their promise.

Interjection.

After the Premier told us in his $52.8-billion budget this spring that he was willing to spend Ontario's way out of recession, that budget cost our prized triple-A credit rating. No one has ever said anything about that. That is what the government is doing. That is what its economic policies are doing to this province. The fear that goes around, not only the world but within this province, is the lack of confidence as to what the government's economic policies are doing to this province.

Reference is made to Ontario's slow recovery, which has certainly seen recently housing starts taper off. Of course, there are no residential housing starts. There is no one building apartments. I am talking about general housing starts, which tapered off last month even though they were higher than last year. There is no question they were higher than last year, but they are tapering off. Why are they tapering off? Because of lack of confidence in this government. Toronto's resale market, which enjoyed some sort of boom this spring, did fall down considerably after the budget was put forward. Average prices were down in May. With respect to listings in the real estate boom, they fell substantially after that into the summer.

Auto sales were buoyed by dealers' cut-rate financing and special package deals. They are falling still. Those plans put forward by the dealers did not work. Why are they not working? Because people are afraid to make those types of investments. They cannot afford it. They cannot afford it because of the government's taxation policies.

The Premier has made comments that he is going to cut spending. He has not told us what. The fear that some of us have is that he is going to cut capital expenditures that would affect our infrastructure, because the municipalities are going to be hearing that. I do not envy the members opposite going around their ridings listening to municipal speeches, because that is the fear that has already started. The people who are declaring themselves for office, to run for municipal office, fear what the government is going to cut, what it is going to do to the infrastructure of this province.

One of the emphases the government seems to have is with respect to keeping social programs intact. At first blush that seems admirable, because certainly there are a lot of people who do need assistance, but the government is not looking at the other areas. It has made it quite clear that it does not appear to be going to be cutting its social programs.

Capital spending is going to be needed in this province to improve our productivity and I fear the government is going to disregard that type of philosophy.

I have just a few concluding remarks to make on this general type of bill. I will be rising to address the House specifically on some of the other bills because you start looking at the whole effect of cross-border shopping and how that has arisen, and the effect of just the gasoline tax, specifically in my community, the number of people who commute and how that is affecting them. We will be spending a great deal of time on that and how that affects their way of life and how it affects their living and their quality of life.

I would like to refer to a recent article in the Financial Post.

She continues: "Fully two thirds of [Ontario's] increase in spending will go towards health, education and community and social services." Two thirds of that increase will go to those areas. The Minister of Health talked today and yesterday about the problems she is having trying to keep the expenditures in the health industry under control. The members have been applauding her for that. But that is the direction the government is going in.

Again quoting Ms Getter: "Community and social services spending, for example, rose by about 28% in 1991-92. Health, education and social services are the areas most subject to uncontrollable cost increases." She refers to the Treasurer, who is announcing spending cuts of several hundred million dollars. This has been made on two days running, although he has yet to tell us what that is going to be. He says the reason he is going to do that is to prevent Ontario's deficit from climbing even higher than the $9.7 billion that was announced in the spring.

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It scares us when the Treasurer has given hints that we have a deficit that is even higher than it was in the spring, and he is very vague, several hundred million dollars. We do not know how many several hundred million dollars, but we know at least several hundred million dollars are going to be cut because the deficit has jumped.

Again quoting the article:

"The truth is that large deficits like Ontario's don't stimulate the economy....'Deficits increase the demand for funds in a way that pushes up interest rates'....And high interest rates tend to dampen the economy more than the deficit stimulates it....'You have to start with the view that large deficits are counterproductive to what they are designed to accomplish'....'The high deficit ends up hurting the very people you are trying to help.'"

It has been commented that this bill is a bill to tax the rich. The question is, who is rich? When we start hearing what the higher officials in Hydro are making and some of the amazing salaries that are being made, this bill of course affects cabinet ministers or may affect cabinet ministers. I am not too sure of the tax implications, but it is certainly going to affect them. The cabinet ministers tell us over and over that they are just average people, that they would be making more money outside, and some of them probably can. Some of them cannot, but some of them can.

But the effect of these financial policies is going to be affecting the very people the government is trying to help, people who are looking for jobs, people who are trying to improve themselves. They are leaving the province. They are not buying. They are going bankrupt.

This article in the Financial Post states, "Higher provincial taxes will be necessary just to keep Ontario's deficit from running out of control." That obviously is what the government is doing. They are going to tax, tax, tax to stop the deficit from going out of control.

The article goes on, "For that reason Ontario's policies 'will seriously reduce the province's competitiveness and could lead to a loss of investment, output and jobs over the longer term.'" This is from economists from the Royal Bank of Canada. The banks are concerned. The banks spend a lot of money hiring economists and people who have studied the economy in this country, in this province and around the world.

That is what they are saying, and this government should listen to them, because we are going nowhere but to disaster time. It is going to be a disaster. They complain about the GST, and again I hark back to it, when they create these deficits -- the Treasurer stated it -- some day these deficits have to be paid off. How is the government going to pay them off?

Quoting again from this Financial Post article:

"The NDP government in Ontario and its Liberal predecessor, for example, indulged in high spending in the late 1980s and early 1990s and knowingly courted inflation at a time when the Bank of Canada was trying to contain inflation with high interest rates. Clearly, Ontario's spending policies contributed to higher interest rates which increased business costs and government debt servicing costs."

It is very simple. The effect of the deficit, the effect of the government's taxes is going to affect everything else. I remember a few years ago we were concerned with the high interest rates. Here we have some very highly qualified economists who are stating that the government's policies will lead to higher interest rates and will certainly lead to higher business costs.

Businesses around this province are terribly concerned as to where they are going. They are terribly concerned. Many businesses are going bankrupt. Every once in a while we read statistics about people who are going bankrupt with respect to the costs they have in contributing towards the government debt servicing costs.

These statements that are made -- and this is a typical article, just at random. This is an article that came out of the September 16 Financial Post. I do not imagine many members read these things. As to these facts I have given that some members said they were bored with, and I am astounded they would state that because the facts are there. I will repeat: $507,205 an hour for interest payments alone. It boggles our minds, but that is what the government is doing to this province.

This article talks about the economics around the country. Clearly these articles are all very worried about where this great province is going, how it was once the great province economically and otherwise. I must say there is no longer, I get the sense, the hatred of big, bad, rich Ontario, because we are no longer big, bad, rich Ontario.

I hope that some of the members will go back, when we start voting on these bills, and take a long, hard look at the direction in which they are going. They should listen to what their Treasurer says when he starts cutting back, making the cuts. That is going to be the real key to their success. When they start making these cuts, are they going to be getting a whole other set of people upset with them because of the cuts, because of the promises they made? They are going to have to change their minds. Is it going to be in health? Is it going to be in education? Are they suddenly going to come along and say, "Well, maybe the Conservatives were right"?

I could again refer to other industries that are being affected, industries that are going out of business around this province, industries that are moving to the United States, businesses to the United States. I repeat, there is no question that part of the reason they are going to the United States is because of other economic influences from outside the country, from outside the province. But economists are saying almost unanimously that the policies of this government are playing a major role in why these industries and businesses are leaving the province and why people are becoming bankrupt and why their quality of life is decreasing.

I can tell members at first hand that specifically in the housing area, when we had people come from outside this country, from outside this province, they said they would not invest a nickel in this province because of their lack of confidence in this government, because of the economic policies it is putting forward and because of the high deficit. Where else in this world is there a deficit jump like what this government has just done? They are spending money like it is going out of style.

The problem in Ottawa was caused by a government that existed in the 1960s. Interest rates have gone out of control, costs have gone out of control, and that is what the government is doing in this province. There is no need for it at all. I want this government to reassess its position. I assume that they are going to have caucus meetings, that they are invited to caucus meetings and will be able to express their views freely. Hopefully they will be persuading their Treasurer and their Premier to change the economic direction in which they are going.

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The member read some things from the papers that would suggest that these people who have written in the papers are correct. I do not know that this is true. The amount of increase being a disincentive to stay in Ontario, if examined more closely, is not correct. Presently the marginal rate of Ontario income tax for those having high income is a little over 15 cents on the dollar. The existing surtax increased this marginal note for the highest, richest taxpayers to just over 16.5 cents on the dollar, and if this bill becomes law, the top marginal rate for those Ontarians having the richest income will rise to just under 17 cents on the dollar. That is for 1991. In 1992, it will be 17.1 cents. So this disincentive to remain in Ontario is 0.6 of one cent on each dollar. Is that a disincentive for being in Ontario for those people who have to pay the little extra? I think that is not a good enough reason, quite frankly.

They wanted us to harmonize the PST with GST. There is half a billion dollars versus the $1 billion they talk about.

The members should not be misled by Professor Watkins's apparent support of the budget, because if they read Hansard they will see it is wrong. I think they will find that the statistics that the members quoted are very accurate and facts are facts. I do not think they will find that there is an economist who would today say this budget is going to be helpful to the province of Ontario.

The government members may find, as I am certain the cabinet has, the budget is beginning to unravel. Frankly, I feel sorry for the Treasurer, who is clearly an honourable individual who is doing his best, but the budget is beginning to unravel. We will find over the next few months that many of the predictions that the member has made will come true. He is trying to raise with the government members the need to change their minds. They have made a mistake. They may not like to admit they have made a mistake, but they will ultimately have to admit they made a mistake. They are far better to do that sooner rather than later and get on with running the province the way it should be.

The second fact that is indisputable is that capital entrepreneurs, investors, are indeed fleeing this province. They are afraid of the future. They are concerned about their children. I hear people come to me and say, "We are really concerned about the future for our children and we think the best thing we can do for them is get them a green card in some other country anywhere in the world, whether it is the United States or anywhere."

When I spoke to a group of university students last week at the business school of the University of Waterloo, basically the thrust was, "There are opportunities all around the world for us." The professor was afraid of that. Their concern was they do not think they are going to be here in Ontario. That is their concern. That is what we are fighting for, that is what the member for Dufferin-Peel is fighting for.

By way of conclusion, I understand that government members do not understand this. We know that, or they would not stand up and vote for this silly stuff. We understand that they do not understand the facts, but surely it is our obligation to keep trying to bring this forward in different and in better ways, to get through their heads what is happening in this province.

A lot of us clearly understand what is going on, but when I hear the comments that are put out about, "The company is not sure; they are leaving and going away," they only have one individual in mind. We forget about those workers who may be affected, we forget about those family members who are affected. We hear the comments about, "We've got to cut spending, we've got to do this and we've got to do that." Well, we inherited a lot.

Members opposite put the comment that, "Well, the Liberals were in before the Conservatives." It is amazing how we did so badly in one year. How many years have we had a Conservative regime in the federal government?

I think it is very important what we are trying to do through the worst economic times we are faced with. People have been victimized by the governments for the last 10 years or more and they are asking for help of this government to get them back on their feet. There is only one good investment right now. It is to help out the working citizens of this province.

If we help out the farmers in my community, they generate dollars and generate business and generate the economy and generate the investments. If I put money back into investment in properties and back into the industries that are around us, we are putting investment into the people, because those people are going to spend.

If the members opposite want to talk about creating investment in Ontario, if you and I, Mr Speaker, are spending our paycheques, let me tell you, there are going to be people out there, little entrepreneurs who are going to see a potential market. What they will do is build a factory and sell that product for you. They will service your needs.

I would like to take the little time that has been left to me to refer to correspondence that was sent to the Treasurer, with a copy to the Premier, by a well-known business in this province, Weall and Cullen. Mark Cullen, the president of this firm, wrote to the Treasurer back at the time the budget was put forward, and he said:

"I am writing to express my deep disappointment in last week's Ontario budget. While I have no argument with the principle of helping the underprivileged and protecting the environment, my complaint is that a $10-billion deficit in one year is absolutely unforgivable. Your children, my children, and our grandchildren are going to pay for that. In time, the deficit that your government is running up today will have to be paid for by someone, somehow. What kind of legacy do you think this is to the next generation? How do you suppose we are going to pay for all that debt? Please, Mr Laughren, answer one question: Where will the money come from?"

That is the question, obviously, with respect to Bill 83, and I hope the government decides to withdraw it.

The House adjourned at 1800.

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