39th Parliament, 1st Session



Monday 11 May 2009 Lundi 11 mai 2009


























































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The House met at 1030.




Mrs. Liz Sandals: I'm pleased to introduce a constituent of mine, Una Murray, who is in the east gallery. She's here to visit with her granddaughter, page Kenzie Murray.

Ms. Sylvia Jones: I'm pleased to welcome a volunteer from my office, Oriana Kobelak.

Mr. Peter Shurman: I'd like to welcome to the House a group from Inspiring You Politically. Even though they are not here yet, I'd like to get it on the record.

Inspiring You Politically is a community organization that was developed to foster and motivate community involvement by young adults in the areas of municipal and provincial politics and create greater representation by African Canadians in politics. I'd like to mention that all members are invited to a reception by this group: 11:30 to 1, in rooms 228 and 230.



Mr. John Yakabuski: I'd like to welcome to the gallery for the first time, my daughter Emily and her friend Matt Reaume from Pembroke.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Also on behalf of the member from Oak RidgesâÂ"Markham and page Kenzie Murray, besides her grandmother Una Murray, who was already introduced, we'd like to welcome her mother Carol Heck and a friend of hers, Margie Parkin. Welcome today.

As well, I take this opportunity to welcome, in the east members' gallery, the mayors from the region of Niagara. Welcome to Queen's Park.

A special welcome to Peter Partington, a former member from the 29th Parliament, representing Brock. Peter, welcome back to Queen's Park today.

I remind the members, as well, of a reception of the Ontario Craft Brewers in rooms 228 to 230 from 5 to 7 this evening. I'd like to welcome all members, staff and all staff within the Legislature.




Mr. Robert W. Runciman: My question is to the Premier, and it has to do with the failure of two of your ministers to take action when they heard disturbing allegations of abuse against a prominent Liberal member of Parliament. I want to quote you in the year 2000: "Cabinet ministers should live up to a high standard of responsibility and unquestionable ethical behaviour."

Premier, you've tried to slough this off by suggesting that your ministers simply had a tin ear and that their failure to act looks bad, but that's it. That's your public spin. Premier, why are you endorsing the moral and ethical failures of your ministers?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I welcome the opportunity to speak to itÃ¢Â"I believe for the first time in this HouseÃ¢Â"and to take the opportunity to commend both ministers for hosting this evening. Minister Fonseca will, sometime in the not-too-distant future, be introducing new legislationÃ¢Â"a bill in this HouseÃ¢Â"to help us better address the special needs of our live-in caregivers. But I do want to commend both Minister Fonseca and Minister Wynne for taking it upon themselves to host a meeting on a Saturday night. This was not part of any formal committee consultation process. They took it upon themselves to do this, which I commend them for. They wanted to meet with live-in caregivers to hear some of their stories and to share with them some information about how they might assert their rights. I thought it was an important thing to do, and I commend them for taking those steps.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Robert W. Runciman: The Premier is not only commending them; he was laughing about the ministers' failure to react to the plight of vulnerable women. That's the real story here.

Premier, your position on this, in contrast to your holier-than-thou attitude with respect to ministerial conduct when you were in opposition, has to raise eyebrows about real motivation. Your ministers weren't raised in a cabbage patchÃ¢Â"at least not the Minister of Education; she knew that what she heard was a bombshell.


Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I learned about this, and I can confirm that my office learned about this, when it appeared in the media. Again, let's understand what was happening here: Both Minister Wynne and Minister Fonseca had agreed that it would be a good thing to host a meeting in Minister Wynne's constituency office on a Saturday night. A number of live-in caregivers told their stories that night, which is the first opportunity they ever had to deal with persons of authority and to relate those stories.

Ministers Fonseca and Wynne received them, and welcomed those stories as they welcomed the individuals into Minister Wynne's office. They then told them that there was a particular number they might phone to pursue this particular issue. I think they heard some 30 stories that evening.


The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Final supplementary.

Mr. Robert W. Runciman: The Premier and his friends like to portray themselves as the defenders of the downtrodden. Here's a case that puts the lie to that portrayal. When it comes to acting on serious allegations of abuse against women unable to defend themselves or protecting a Liberal, they chose protecting a Liberal. The Premier says that's okay; it's just a tin ear problem. I think your endorsement of your Liberal ministers' moral and ethical failures reveals the phoniness of your concern for the disadvantaged.

Premier, once again, let us know how you can defend the moral and ethical failures of your ministers. Why have your standards dropped so far, now that you're on that side of the aisle? Why have they changed so much?


Hon. Dalton McGuinty: Again, so we understand, the purpose of the meeting was to give live-in caregivers the very first opportunity, I believe in many if not all the cases, to speak to persons in authority, to better acquaint them with their rights and to listen to their stories. Part of the information that was provided by Ministers Fonseca and Wynne covered the following. There was a letter that was handed out to everybody there that answered these questions: "What are my rights at work?" specifically with respect to limits on hours of work, overtime pay, minimum wage. It answered questions like, "Can my employer deduct room and board meals?" "What about this whole idea of public holidays, pregnancy leave, family medical leave, vacation with pay, termination notice?"Ã¢Â"all those kinds of things. All those were made available to all those who attended. Again, I think it was the appropriate thing to do in the circumstances.




The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Robert W. Runciman: Well, we'll look forward to that as well.

Anyone following these proceedings up to this date in this assembly should be disturbed by the government's stonewalling, and that's what it's been: stonewalling. We have to ask, what are they hiding? What are they afraid of? Did these two ministers, after hearing shocking stories of abuse from two vulnerable women, women without a voice, simply walk away without care or concern when they heard a prominent Liberal was involved?

Premier, it's interesting that you're suggesting your Minister of Labour will appear before the federal committee. We'll look forward to that. Will you allow both of your ministers to appear before a provincial justice committee? Let's deal with the responsibilities of provincial members in the provincial assembly. Will you do that?


Minister Fonseca has made himself available to the media and here in question period on a number of occasions to allow my honourable colleagues and members of the press to put questions to him and to explain his particular side of the story. I think we've had a full accountability and a full airing in that regard. I think what Ontarians want us to do, but especially what live-in caregivers want us to do, is to find ways to provide them with better ongoing protections. That's what we'll continue to work toward as a government.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Final supplementary.

Mr. Robert W. Runciman: As I said before, the Premier likes to portray himself as the defender of the downtrodden. We're talking about the plight of individuals, immigrant women, poor women, vulnerable women. What we're suggesting here is that your ministers were that incompetent, that insensitive to the plight of these women, that they ignored their plightÃ¢Â"that's what you're saying. If that's the case, according to the standards you said you stand for with respect to ministerial conduct, they should be gone; they should be fired; they should be turfed. But no, you're defending the indefensible, stonewalling the Legislature. It has to beg the question, who in your office was involved in keeping this matter under wraps? Was anyone in your office contacted about this matter following the nannies' allegations?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I said no before, and I'll say no again. The first time we learned about it was when it appeared in the paper. I think Ontarians need to know what we're talking about here. Notwithstanding the enhancements brought forward by my honourable colleague, we're talking about a couple of ministers who decided that on a Saturday night, quite separate and apart from any formal committee process, they might come together and invite Ontario live-in caregivers to come forward and tell their stories. They did that. They also apprised them of their rights.




Does the Premier condone the Minister of Labour's complete lack of judgment?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: I appreciate the question from my honourable colleague, but I don't share her perspective. The Minister of Labour did what he should have done. In fact, he went beyond that in terms of setting up this meeting in the first instance to meet with live-in caregivers.

We just believe in the importance of due process. We think that it's not incumbent upon ministers to decide which complaints, which stories and which allegations are worthy of further investigation and perhaps even prosecution. There is a separate, independent arm of the government made up of bureaucrats who are charged with those special responsibilities. Just as it would be inappropriate for us to direct the police, it would be inappropriate for us to direct investigators and prosecutors in this particular matter. That's why the appropriate thing to do is to provide women with knowledge of their rights.

Ms. Andrea Horwath: The minister didn't hand off the information to bureaucrats; that's the problem. The events of April 25 raise serious doubts about the competence of the Minister of Labour and about the political will of this government to enforce its own Employment Standards Act. Quite frankly, the minister's unwillingness to take action to protect these vulnerable caregivers mirrors the inaction of his ministry as a whole to protect Ontario's workers.

Ontario workers need a Minister of Labour who cares. Ontario workers need a Minister of Labour who will uphold his ministry's legislation. When will we finally get one?


Ms. Andrea Horwath: I would submit that the minister's responsibility is to protect the rights, not just apprise the workers of their rights. A minister responsible for protecting the rights of all Ontario workers who hears stories of abuse from caregivers and thinks it is perfectly acceptable to do nothing other than give them a not-in-service, toll-free number is not up to the job. The minister didn't follow up with the deputy, which would have been the responsible and the right thing to do.

How can this Premier continue to defend the minister's gross failure to uphold his own Employment Standards Act?




Ms. Andrea Horwath: Back to the Premier: Last Wednesday, Vera Trevisanello was at Queen's Park to tell her story of discrimination in the workplace. The story she told was of an Ontario where it is acceptable for employers to fire new and expectant mothers.



The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Ms. Andrea Horwath: This weekend I was contacted by another mom, Beverley Stiles, and here's what she wrote: "I was to return to work full-time at the end of January when my employer had told me earlier to find a new job, that he didn't have room for me any longer. But in the end of January, he took me back, but only 16 hours a week and every third weekend. I filed a claim with the labour board almost two months ago and I am still waiting for them to investigate further. In the meantime, I am stuck trying to pay the bills and to put food on the table. I am almost to the point that I am having to turn to the food banks to get food to feed my 15-month-old son."


Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Labour.







As Minister of Labour, I will continue to advocate and make sure that these women are protected and that their jobs are in place once they're done with their parental leave.


Mr. Ernie Hardeman: My question is to the Premier. The Toronto Star reports that the Minister of Agriculture supports selling fruit wine in farmers' markets. The Ontario Federation of Agriculture strongly supports this, and the industry itself supports it. The parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Agriculture spoke in this LegislatureÃ¢Â"on behalf of the minister, I presumeÃ¢Â"and fully supported selling fruit wine in farmers' markets. The Legislature unanimously supported second reading of Bill 132, which was introduced by our leader, Bob Runciman, and allows the sale of fruit wines in farmers' markets.

Premier, are you the only person holding this up?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Government Services.

Hon. Ted McMeekin: The Ontario government has traditionally sought to achieve a balance between offering consumers greater choice in purchasing and consuming alcoholic beverages while at the same time ensuring social responsibility and public safety. At this time, the government has no specific plans to allow the sale of fruit wines at farmers' markets. We believe, and continue to advocate, subject to whatever happens in the Legislature, of course, that fruit wine producers have the same rights and opportunities as others. It's really a fairness issue. If we were to go down that route, the producers of grape wine wouldÃ¢Â"


Mr. Ernie Hardeman: Premier, the minister referenced the fact "subject to whatever happens in this Legislature." I did mention in my question that the Legislature unanimously supported selling fruit wines in farmers' markets. The main problem that our fruit wine industry is having is their inability to get their product to the consumer. Bill 132 would solve that. It would help farmers' markets and the fruit wine industry.


Hon. Ted McMeekin: I just want to say that I don't know why the party opposite, when they were in government, didn't act on this. Maybe they had some similar concerns to ours. Fruit farmers are already permitted to operate wine retail stores on their production sites, which provides an opportunity to supplement their agricultural businesses with value-added manufacturing. There are also a number of other options for the retailing of fruit wines. For example, fruit wines may be sold through the LCBO Go-to-Market program, direct-delivery sales to liquor licensees and through on-site manufacturing retail stores, as is currently permitted in the legislation for all producers of wine right across Ontario.



Why is the Premier not enforcing his own Employment Standards Act?

Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Labour.


In this 2009 budget, we have just put $4.5 million more into employing more employment standards officers in the province of Ontario. Those officers are doing a commendable job. They're retrieving many of those funds owed to those workers through claims that are being put forward through our employment standards office. That employment standards office, after many, many years, has been modernized and updatedÃ¢Â"



Ms. Cheri DiNovo: Under his watch, Mr. McGuinty's labour minister has, in fact, deferred gross violations of employment standards to a 1-800 number. The call centre makes an initial call back, and then 18 months go by until investigators examine the case. This is the standard under Dalton McGuinty's labour ministry: Defer all allegations of employment standards violations to a 1-800 number. This is shameful and unacceptable.

Why won't the government take responsibility for properly investigating the Employment Standards Act of Ontario?

Hon. Peter Fonseca: I will not take lessons or lectures from that member when it comes to protecting vulnerable workers in this province. But what I will do is share with that member the progress that we've made when it comes to employmentÃ¢Â"


The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Next time I won't stop the clock, member from Durham, and you might want to be in your seat too.


Hon. Peter Fonseca: Let's do a quick compare and contrast. Between 1989 and 2003, there were a grand total of 97 Employment Standards Act prosecutions initiated; that is, in 14 years, between that party and that party. Since 2004, there have been almost 1,700 prosecutions completed. I think that speaks for our record of how we're protecting vulnerable workersÃ¢Â"

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.


Ms. Laurel C. Broten: My question is for the Attorney General. Last Thursday, this House passed Bill 133, the Family Statute Law Amendment Act, the first significant reforms in Ontario's Family Law Act in over two decades.




Bill 133, which this House passed just last week, will make sure that those living in fear, those who might be the subject of violence, are able to get restraining orders faster. They will expand the situations in which they are available to those who've been living in a relationship for three years. They'll also be enforceable under the Criminal Code, which is where serious issues of violence should be enforced.

I am pleased that this HouseÃ¢Â"at least the Liberal membersÃ¢Â"unanimously supported Bill 133.

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?


Attorney General, how are these changes going to come into effect to make a real difference in women's lives?

Hon. Christopher Bentley: I want to express a thanks to the Premier for the domestic violence action plan and to my colleague from EtobicokeÃ¢Â"Lakeshore, who did so much of the work on that plan, which is a broad range of initiatives which have ensured that women and children's lives are safer and that where issues are raised, they get to court faster and more effectively.

This bill speaks to an issue that's been raised in this House for more than a decade. This bill speaks to an issue that's been on the minds of Ontarians. This bill speaks to an issue that's been raised by advocacy groups from Ottawa to Windsor to Thunder Bay, north and south. This bill speaks to an issue that all in this House have said needed to be addressed, but when the time came for it to be addressed, one party stood up for women and childrenÃ¢Â"that was this partyÃ¢Â"and the other parties, well, they're absent without leave. We stand up for those we protect.


Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: My question is for the Minister of Health. According to the Hamilton Spectator on May 9, "Doctors in Hamilton and across the province say" your decision to impose a hiring freeze without warning on April 17 on doctors joining primary health care practices is "wreaking havoc with recruitment at the most crucial time of the year as medical school graduates decide where to practise." This also puts at risk the ability of these practices to take on more of the almost one million patients who are waiting for care.

Will you, Minister, lift the hiring freeze today?


We're reviewing the primary health care model to ensure that we support health care providers in the most effective and responsible manner. We are reviewing this and are determined to have it resolved as quickly as possible. That's why we're moving forward with 50 more family health teams over the next two years, targeting rural and underserviced communities. For the member's edification, she's going to be hearing more about this because that's on top of the 150 family health teams that we've createdÃ¢Â"teams of doctors, nurses and other health professionals working together to provide better care.

Family health teams are already providing care to over two and a half million Ontarians since their introduction, including more than 200,000 Ontarians who previously did not haveÃ¢Â"


Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: It's obvious that this minister isn't listening to the doctors and those throughout the province of Ontario at the medical schools who are very concerned about this hiring freeze that was announced on April 17Ã¢Â"just an indication of poor planning on the part of this minister.

I would say to you, medical graduates have told me that they're making decisions now as to where they're going to practise at a time when we need every one of them. What you have done is forced them to start looking elsewhere. They can go to Manitoba; they can go to Alberta and British Columbia. They all need doctors too. So at a time when you talk about bringing down emergency room wait times, you're making decisions that are increasing wait times and you are delaying access to care for patients.


Hon. David Caplan: In fact, I disagree with the premise of the member's question. I think she's simply wrong. We're reversing years of inaction by previous governments to boost access to doctors and family health care in the province of Ontario. Today, there are almost 1,800 more doctors in Ontario than when we began in 2003.

It was this government that began the work of fast-tracking international medical graduates so they could get into practiceÃ¢Â"it was this government, under the opposition of the member opposite and her colleagues to expand medical school spaces in the province of Ontario. I don't think anyone in this House will accept any lecture from this member given the sorry record that she and her colleagues had when it came to providing access to needed medical services in the province of Ontario.

There is an administrative review which is going on. It will be dealt with as quickly as possible. Of course, we'll continue to get more family health teams, more nurse practitioner-led clinicsÃ¢Â"

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.





Hon. Peter Fonseca: The member's question around experience rating is quite right: This is a very, very important program. Experience rating is a program in place by the WSIB that is being reviewed today.

For those who don't understand what the program's all about, it's about incenting good behaviour. It's about creating a culture of workplace health and safety. This is a program that we want to ensure is working well because it will have a tremendous impact on what our number one goal is: lowering lost-time injury rates in the workplace and ensuring that we don't have fatalities in the workplace. The only way to do that is to have employers with a good experience rating program in place, working with employees, working with labour, together toÃ¢Â"





Here's what Clive Thurston, president of the Ontario General Contractors Association and industry task force member, has to say about how Ontario is doing: "I am not aware of any other country that excels at health and safety like Canada does and in particular Ontario."

We have a commendable record, but we have much more to do, because any injury, any fatality, is one too many. We've lowered lost-time injury rates in this province by over 20%. We will continue to make progress and ensure the health and safety of Ontario workers.


Mr. Jim Brownell: My question is to the Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities. A recently released report from Ontario's Workforce Shortage Coalition indicates that the province's private sector includes a higher share of industries with high-skilled workers than the US. At the same time, the Conference Board of Canada estimates that even with strong immigration levels, Ontario could be short more than 360,000 skilled employees by 2025 and more than 560,000 by 2030.



Hon. John Milloy: I thank the member for the question. Members of the Legislature may be aware that at last year's Council of the Federation meeting, all Premiers, including the Premier from Ontario, committed to ensuring labour mobility becomes the norm for workers in regulated occupations.






Exceptions to labour mobility in certain circumstances will be allowed in order to protect the health and safety of Ontarians, but I should stress that at last year's meeting all Premiers agreed that these exceptions would be rare and that provinces and territories would work to put forward as few exceptions as possible and also work together to better harmonize the standards so that full labour mobility would take place.


The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.




Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Economic Development.

Hon. Michael Bryant: I thank the member for his question. It's certainly not the first one in which the member has come to the defence of his community, the industry in his community, and in particular the workers there.


I want to congratulate as well and acknowledge the work done by the mayor of Oshawa and council who were present at the GTA economic summit, about which I'll have more to say in my supplementary. But we will do everything we can to work with the member to assist the workers in his community being hit with these hard times.

Mr. Jerry J. Ouellette: Minister, the question was regarding the harmonization of the PST and the GST. Once the HST comes into play, the PST workersÃ¢Â"of whom there are over 1,200 in Oshawa and the region of DurhamÃ¢Â"are going to be substantially impacted. These workers need to know what's going to happen with their jobs once the HST is implemented, and we'd like to know that. Can you give us an answer, Minister?



The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.




Hon. Dalton McGuinty: To the Minister of Labour.

Hon. Peter Fonseca: I thank the member for the question. It gives me the opportunity to say, as Minister of Labour, that I've listened to, I've heard, hundreds of stories from injured workers, from families and friends who have lost loved ones in the workplace, from vulnerable workers, and that's what I'm going to continue to do. I'm going to continue to reach out to the community and make sure that we can put the right protections in place for these workers.

Our record has been one of very positive numbers in terms of lowering lost-time injury rates in the workplace: an improvement of over 20%. We have added over 200 inspectors to ensure that health and safety standards are being upheld in the workplace. We're going to continue to work forÃ¢Â"


Mr. Paul Miller: I could go on about the failings of this minister in this portfolio. The WSIB experience rating program is a disaster and you know it. The practice of deeming is still there, and I've repeatedly called on this minister to fix it, to no avail. The recent revelations about pregnant women and new mothers losing their jobs are very disturbing, and yet it has continued despite the minister's good words.


Hon. Peter Fonseca: The most important thing that we are doing, as the government of Ontario, under Premier McGuinty's leadership is ensuring the health and safety of all Ontario workers and making sure that everyone who leaves their home for a hard day's work will come home safe and sound. That's why we have moved on a great deal of legislation here in this House to protect Ontario workers, and in particular, our vulnerable workers. We're going to continue to do that, and the best way that we do that is through consulting, through listening, through going out into the community and ensuring that we get it right for those workers.

This member may not be taking this issue very seriously, but I can tell you that I do as Minister of Labour, and thisÃ¢Â"

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.




Minister, what are the government of Ontario's aims in attending this important international conference, and how many stakeholders and industry leaders will be participating with the government?

Hon. John Wilkinson: I thank my friend for the question. I'm pleased to be leading the Ontario delegation to BIO Atlanta this year. Team Ontario is delighted that the Premier will join us. There will be over 20,000 in attendance, and some 450 delegates from Ontario. I am especially pleased to announce that the Premier will receive the Biotechnology Industry Organization's second annual International Leadership Award.

This international award honours one individual each year from around the world who has shown a strong commitment to advancing biotechnology through policy mechanisms that facilitate and strengthen a country or a region's innovation frameworks. It will be the highlight of team Ontario to be down there with the greatestÃ¢Â"



In these difficult economic times, some governments, shockingly, believe it's easy to cut science because it doesn't get a lot of votes, while some other governments have chosen to create their own future. As an example, the Obama administration has recently renewed the American commitment to scientific exploration. What policy measures in Ontario's success story will the government be highlighting to attract investment in this critical industry of the new economyÃ¢Â"

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.






No one likes this. Parents and students and teachers are against this. Municipalities have passed resolutions opposing this. The boards have proceeded reluctantly, only because you have threatened them with penalties if they don't comply with your order to cut transportation funding.




The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. John Yakabuski: My goodness, the minister has been busier than Ruby Dhalla's nannies.

The staggered bell system may work in Toronto, but you need to understand that Renfrew county is nothing like Toronto. You need to get out of the city more. You need to see what it's like getting students to and from school safely in rural Ontario. Last week your government once again showed its bias against rural Ontario by voting against my gas tax fairness resolution.


Minister, we're not asking for swimming pools. We're just asking for enough money to get our children to and from school safely and without putting them and their parents into unacceptable situations. It's time for you to step up to the plate and base funding on where the needs are, not where the votes are.

Hon. Kathleen O. Wynne: I've been to Renfrew county; I've seen the rural community that the member opposite speaks about. In fact, this year, rural boards have received $131.6 million in new investment. That's in the face of serious declining enrolment across the province. What we have done as a government is we have continued to increase investments because we recognize that even when there are not as many students in the system now as there were a few years ago, boards still have those costs. Boards still have to look after their schools. Boards still have to have principals in their schools. In fact, the school foundation grant that we brought into the funding formula guarantees that any school a board deems viable will have a principal and will have a secretary. That's a major change from the funding formula the party opposite introduced that did not guarantee those resources at all. We have supportÃ¢Â"

The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Thank you.





The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Supplementary?

Mr. Michael Prue: I cannot believe what the Premier has just said. You're talking about condominium owners as if they are all going to make huge scads of money. It's going to cost them money.

Linda Pinizzotto and Stanley Smith are here in the gallery today. They are, respectively, presidents of condominium boards, one in Toronto and one in Thornhill, and they've come here to say that the HST tax grab will hurt many thousands of Ontarians and may force people out of their homes. These are very serious matters. Condo maintenance costs will increase by a whopping 8% at a time when people can least afford it, and this government doesn't seem to care.


Hon. Dalton McGuinty: We need to level the playing field for Ontario businesses. One hundred and thirty other countries have in place the equivalent of a value-added or single sales tax. Those businesses enjoy an advantage over ours. It's time that we levelled the playing field.

Something my honourable colleague needs to keep in mind is that those people who are at present paying a provincial sales tax will qualify, going forward, for an input tax credit that will reduce their input costs. That will reduce the costs overall of the products that they're selling to the public. That will be an advantage to consumers. I know it's not easy working our way through this transition, but four other provinces have done this; 130 countries are already there. It's especially important for us at this time in our history that we move ahead with this package of comprehensive tax reforms to strengthen our economy and ensure that we can create more jobs.





The draft regulations call for increased requirements for appropriate use of restraints in our homes, and a requirement for infection prevention and controlÃ¢Â"



The House recessed from 1137 to 1300.




The term "Israeli Apartheid Week" is not only offensive to the fully democratic state of IsraelÃ¢Â"a state that respects the rule of law and human rightsÃ¢Â"it is also offensive to the millions of people who suffered under true apartheid in South Africa.


When I addressed this House on this matter in December last year, I said the term "apartheid" belongs in the same category as such terrifying words as "genocide." Today, I again want to stress that neither word should be used carelessly; otherwise, they will become meaningless and their true victims will be forgotten.

Recently, we commemorated the victims of the Holocaust. We all know that the central theme of any ceremony commemorating the victims of genocide is "never again." Today, I am asking the members of this House to condemn Israeli Apartheid Week and, by doing so, to ensure that victims of the apartheid regime in South Africa are never forgotten and the lessons of that terrible period in history are truly understood.




I rise in the House today to talk about another unique feature associated with the Warsaw community. I'm going to speak about a special group of women who are members of the Warsaw Wackos hockey team. Earlier this year, they were successful in being selected as one of the top 10 Canadian finalists in TSN's Bring Home the Cup contest with Mark Messier.

Every Wednesday during the winter for more than 35 years, this diverse group of women from all backgrounds and all ages has gathered to play hockey in Warsaw, Ontario. This team gives new meaning to the phrase "team spirit." Wednesday's Warsaw Wackos have a unique style of play that supports players of all skill levels. Their passion for the game is so strong that when a shift is over, members don't take to the bench; they take to the goal net. I'm told this can lead to as many as seven goaltenders in net at one time. This is community spirit at its best.

Congratulations to the Warsaw Wackos women's hockey team.



Muscular dystrophy is a disorder that weakens the body's muscles. It is caused by an error in a specific gene associated with muscle function. The disorder weakens muscles over time, making it difficult to do the simplest tasks, such as crossing the street.

Today, there is no cure for muscular dystrophy, but doctors and scientists are working hard to find one, and that's where we can help.

Muscular Dystrophy Canada has launched the first annual Chair Aware Challenge. It is a fundraising campaign that will challenge able-bodied people to experience what life is like in a wheelchair. Their goal is to raise $150,000 to assist those living with muscular dystrophy, and they're going to have lots of help making this happen.

The honorary chairperson of the campaign is 1010 CFRB's own Bill Carroll. Other personalities lending their time to assist muscular dystrophy are former Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman, 99.9 Virgin Radio's Mad Dog, Global TV's Leslie Roberts and CEO of the TD Bank, Tim Hockey.


To donate time or money to this worthwhile cause, please go to www.muscle.ca for details. I thank you for your support.




As well, environmental education is now part of the mainstream curriculum. It's important that we teach our young people the necessity to be environmentally conscious from a very young age.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to make this statement. I want to thank all the people who participated in this event, because it's very important to save our environment.









People in northern Ontario are asking, if the McGuinty government could put $1.25 billion of financial restructuring into Chrysler Canada, why can't it also pay attention to the workers at AbitibiBowater in northern Ontario?








Rick was a student in my very first class at Cornwall's Viscount Alexander Public School back in 1969. He was active in school life then and remains a positive force today as one of the voices of the print media in his community.


To quote Rick, "We tell the stories of our community, the stories of our readers. In our paper, the school bake sale doesn't have to fight for space against the war in Afghanistan."

Community papers bring the news that is closest to their readers' hearts, and there will always be a place for them in Ontario.




Next year is the 25th anniversary of Rick's labour of love, the Seaway News, and I'm sure he is planning to make this momentous occasion something special. I wish him well in the future.


Mr. David Ramsay: I'm very pleased to stand in my place today to bring to the attention of all members that my riding of TimiskamingÃ¢Â"Cochrane is scheduled to host the International Plowing Match during the week of September 21 of this year. Today, I want to give members and Ontarians an update on the progress of our community and government working together.

First of all, the McGuinty government has continued to provide support, on top of the $1.7 million already committed in the 2008 provincial budget for highway improvements. These investments include $75,000 for the Ministry of Culture's attraction fund; $59,000 from the Ministry of Tourism, through Celebrate Ontario; and $35,000 from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.





Mr. Caplan moved first reading of the following bill:

Bill 179, An Act to amend various Acts related to regulated health professions and certain other ActsÃÂ / Projet de loi 179, Loi modifiant diverses lois en ce qui concerne les professions de la santÃÂ© rÃÂ©glementÃÂ©es et d'autres lois.


First reading agreed to.


Hon. David Caplan: In ministerial statements, Speaker.






Based on the recommendations made by the Health Professions Regulatory Advisory Council, or HPRAC, we're taking steps to better utilize all of Ontario's health professionals. We're taking steps forward by optimizing the scope of nurse practitioners by removing some of the limitations on what nurse practitioners are currently authorized to do, like ordering X-rays; physiotherapists to communicate a diagnosis to a patient; dietitians to take blood samples from a patient to check blood glucose levels; respiratory therapists to independently administer certain substancesÃ¢Â"for example, oxygen; and pharmacists to extend or adapt prescriptions.



This is a positive first step, and we plan to review other HPRAC recommendations in the future. Our goal is to ensure that Ontario's health regulatory system is responsive to the continuing changes to health care delivery. We believe in the need to make the best possible use of all the members of the health care team for the greater good of our health care system.







Certainly, our hearts go out to those who suffer: to the woman who said, "After I had four miscarriages, my body was a mystery to me. Something wasn't working, but no test, no doctor, no treatment could reveal a definitive problem"; and to the hopeful mother who talks of "those two weeks each month spent between sanity and insanity, where time turns so slowly, it seems like an eternity." Even the simple question "Do you have kids?" can be devastating to those who want a child but yet have been unable to conceive.

We believe that everyone should have a fair opportunity to have a family. That's why, last summer, we established an expert panel on infertility and adoption to take the first crucial steps to see how we could better support people who want to start families.

The panel is exploring ways to make both fertility treatment and adoption more accessible in Ontario. This 11-member teamÃ¢Â"comprising adoptive parents, people who have had personal experience with infertility, and representatives from the medical and adoption communitiesÃ¢Â"is chaired by David Johnston, a leading academic and president of the University of Waterloo.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the panel for their ongoing work and their commitment. I've met with them; they are knowledgeable, empathetic and determined to find just the right solutions.





There are many dedicated people in our communities who work hard to help Ontarians realize the dreams of parenthood. I'd like to thank them all. I'd like to thank the support groups that encourage and listen during a sometimes difficult journey, and the community organizations whose informed advice and guidance have helped so many Ontarians build their families, be it through fertility treatment or adoption.


As a mother and grandmother, I know that having a family is life's greatest gift. I simply cannot imagine my life without my family.


The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): Responses?


Mrs. Julia Munro: I'm pleased to join in marking Infertility Awareness Week in Ontario.

I want to begin my comments with the fact that the Ontario government has appointed an Expert Panel on Infertility and Adoption to study the matter. As the minister said in her remarks, the fact is that this panel is set to provide recommendations to government in the next month. But I can't help but compare that to the Quebec government and Premier Jean Charest, who, during their recent election, promised to maintain Quebec's leadership in Canada for providing support for couples facing fertility challenges. Just a few months later, the Charest government not only delivered, they exceeded that promise by announcing full funding for three in vitro fertilization cycles. I'm sure that this is welcome news for those in Quebec who find themselves in this very unfortunate position, both emotionally and otherwise. Certainly, I've received letters from many of my constituents who have made this kind of comparison between the recognition and the opportunity provided by the Quebec government and the silence that we have in Ontario on this issue. As the minister mentioned, the government did make a promise in 2007. We certainly await those recommendations becoming public.



Mrs. Elizabeth Witmer: I'm very pleased to rise on behalf of the Progressive Conservative caucus to respond to the new legislation dealing with the changes to HPRAC. This is a large bill and it's going to amend, I understand, some two dozen different acts. Of course, it's going to expand the scope of practice for many of our health professionals. That's somewhat ironic today, at a time when the government of course also has, as of April 17, imposed a hiring freeze on doctors joining new family health practices, and saying today that they encourage these interprofessional relationshipsÃ¢Â"and yet we have a shortage of 2,700 physicians in the province right now. We've got about 2,600 doctors retiring and we have a freeze on the hiring of family doctors to family health teams. It's a little bit bizarre and contradictory.

Having said that, these changes, I think, on the whole are probably worthy of some very serious consideration. I know it's a huge task. I want to congratulate Barbara Sullivan and her team. I think she does very good work. I want to compliment her on the recommendations that she has brought forward. I think they have been very thoughtfully considered. We'll now wait to see what the reaction is of the stakeholders and, obviously, the public.

Certainly, taking a look at the nurse practitioner changes, I know there's some reason for hope and support. I do know that the RNAO is somewhat discouraged by the lack of expansion of the scope of practice for nurses. Of course, if we take a look at pharmacists, obviously they are overjoyed to see the expansion of their scope of practice as well. I know the physiotherapists are quite happy; they've spoken to me. In the area of midwifery, where we have a crisis, any expansion is certainly worthy of merit.

So we will closely look at the changes that have been made. We appreciate, again, as I say, the role of Ms. Sullivan and the work that's been undertaken. It's a big jobÃ¢Â"I know from my experience, having served as Minister of HealthÃ¢Â"and we just want to make sure that at the end of the day our primary concern is that patient safety will always be foremost in the minds of everyone and that these changes do address that.





The Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario and the Nurse Practitioners' Association of Ontario have pointed to two blatant problems in the bill: the failure to have open prescribing of medication for nurse practitioners and the authority to admit and discharge patients from hospitals, as fewer and fewer family physicians ask for privileges to do hospital work. New Democrats would like to see these gaps closed.


How can this government be leaving such an important issue to a question of corporate profit and gain? Should not the needs of Ontarians in remote and rural communities take precedence over all else? What is the government's plan for ensuring that the legislative changes will have an outcome of better care for all Ontarians? All of these questions are left unanswered.

There are many more questions in this bill, and serious gaps, but, as has been the government's habit, it leaves far too much to regulations that we have yet to see. I look forward to working on this bill through second reading as well as at committee and seeing what the stakeholders have to say.


Mme France GÃÂ©linas: I'm also happy to have a few minutes to talk about Infertility Awareness Week. I'm happy to have a chance to rise today and speak about this important issue. There is no question that the families in Ontario who are coping with infertility need our support. All too often, these individuals and families are left coping on their own. We still have a long way to go before the issue of infertility can be talked about openly and in a supportive manner. We hope that infertility awareness week will move these important goals forward.

The issue of infertility is a very difficult issue, and it is something where, with Mother's Day having just passed, many of us can relate to the strong emotions that this issue evokes. I know that there is currently an expert panel reviewing the status of Ontario's fertility treatment services, and that is a good thing. The field of infertility has changed dramatically over the last 10 years, and Ontario needs to ensure the relevancy our services.




The Speaker (Hon. Steve Peters): I ask the members to join me in welcoming to the east members' gallery Barbara Sullivan, the former member from Halton Centre from the 34th and 35th Parliaments. Welcome back to Queen's Park today, Barbara.



Mr. John O'Toole: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and with your indulgence, I would like to introduce Tim Eye, who is the chair of the Durham labour council political action committee. His work on pensions is part of the petition I'm about to present, which reads as follows:


"Whereas the General Motors of Canada salaried pension plan fund (plan 0340950) is severely underfunded due to the government's lack of responsibility in allowing policies (regulation 5.1, 'too big to fail' legislation) which permitted GM to underfund the pension benefit guarantee fund; and

"Whereas GM is experiencing severe financial problems and there is a potential for bankruptcy; and


"Whereas GM salaried retirees contributed a percentage of their annual income to pension plan 0340950 and were permitted only limited contributions to RRSPs due to the federal government's CRA discriminatory RRSP restrictions for defined benefits pension plan members;



"That the Legislative Assembly of Ontario take immediate action to protect GM pensioners."

I'm pleased to sign and support this petition.













As I agree with this petition, I shall sign it and send it to the Clerk's table.



"Whereas residents in BruceÃ¢Â"GreyÃ¢Â"Owen Sound do not want a provincial harmonized sales tax that will raise the cost of goods and services they use every day; and






I have signed this.



"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:


"Whereas the study found that emissions of acrolein and acrylonitrile exceeded provincial limits; andÃÂ ...





I'll sign the petition and provide it to Alexis.


Mr. John O'Toole: I'm pleased to present a petition on behalf of the constituents of the riding of Durham. It reads as follows:

"Whereas the proposed harmonization of Ontario's retail sales tax with the federal GST"....

The added costs "would have a devastating impact in difficult economic times; and

"Organizations such as the Ontario Home Builders' Association have estimated that harmonization would add $15,000 in taxes to the price of a new Ontario home.







"We, the undersigned, petition the Legislative Assembly ... as follows:



I have signed this petition.



"Whereas the federal government's employment insurance surplus now stands at" over $50 billion; and

"Whereas over 70% of Ontario's unemployed are not eligible for" the federal employment insurance program "because of Ottawa's unfair eligibility rules" for the people of Ontario; and


"Whereas the average Ontario unemployed worker gets $4,000 less in EI benefits than unemployed workers in" Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, "thus Ã¢ÂÂ¦ not qualifying for many retraining programs;


I support this petition and affix my name to it.



"Whereas the skyrocketing price of gasoline is causing hardship to families across Ontario; and






I have signed this.








I would affix my signature my signature thereto.










"Whereas Hamilton and greater Toronto area fans deserve competitive professional hockey teams;



I agree with this and will sign the petition.



"To the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:






I support this petition.


Mr. Jim Brownell: I've a petition to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario:














"Whereas more than 24,000 Ontarians are currently waiting for an LTC bed;




"Whereas devoted LTC staff are burdened by cumbersome government regulations;










I support this petition and will affix my name to it.











(2) fully backing the province's pension benefits guarantee fund so that all current Ontario pensions are fully protected. This would require an increase in the monthly benefit guarantee to at least $2,500 as recommended in the Arthurs pension report; and


This is addressed to the Premier of Ontario.


Ms. Andrea Horwath: It's my pleasure to be the first member of our caucus to be speaking to this motion, and I know that as the afternoon continues, we will have a number of other people from the NDP caucus rising in support of this motion, particularly our current pensions critic, Paul Miller, the member from Hamilton EastÃ¢Â"Stoney Creek.

I'm also very pleased that today in the Legislature we've had some people join us to support the motion by being here, and those are retirees and the members of a couple of different unions, particularly the CAW as well as the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. We're glad to see that they're here listening to the debate today, because it's an extremely important debate. I say that because we know what's happening right now in this province. We know that there are hundreds and hundredsÃ¢Â"probably thousands and thousands, in factÃ¢Â"of workers in this province who are very, very worried, who are very, very concerned that they are either on the brink of retirement right now or that they know retirement is coming sometime soon, and the pensions that they have been paying into all of their lives may not be there for them when they retire.

These are working people who have dedicated their lives, in many cases, to the work that goes on in the plants where they work. They work hard. They are loyal to their employer. They have put in year after year after year, and have put away some of their deferred wages. Instead of wage increases, they've taken those wage increases and deferred them into pension plans, into defined benefit pension plans. These are pension plans that are guaranteedÃ¢Â"supposed to be guaranteed for workers when they retire. A defined benefit pension plan means the benefit at the end is defined. There are no surprises. It means that you know exactly what it is that you're going to have as an income in your retirement.

That's why defined benefit pension plans are the most important piece of social legislation, if you want to call it that. They're the most important piece of our social safety net, if you want to call it that. Why? Because it guarantees that hard-working people of this province can retire with an understanding that they will have the income they need to be able to have a decent quality of life. What else does anybody want in their retirement years? What does anybody want once they've finished work, once they've toiled for decades at their place of employment? What else does anybody want but to know that once they retire, the income they're going to receive will provide for them a decent roof over their head, decent food on the table, a decent quality of life and a decent opportunity to be able to age, go through those golden years with dignity, with a good quality of life?

I don't think that's a lot to ask. I really do not believe that's a lot to ask. Unfortunately, we know that in the province of Ontario some 65% of workers do not have any pension plan whatsoever. So we know that 65% of the people of this province who end up retiring, and we see them in all our ridings, are people who didn't have the opportunity to have a pension plan when they were working. So now those workers are hitting retirementÃ¢Â"especially nowÃ¢Â"and they've seen what little they were able to put away in an RSP, if they were lucky enough to do so, completely lose value because of what's happened in the market. Some of those workers who don't have a workplace pension plan were able to save a little bit through RSPs, but those RSPs have been flatlined because of what's happened to the economy.

A lot of workers don't have RSPs. A lot of workers weren't able to scrimp and save, because they weren't paid the wages. They weren't paid a decent amount during their working years, so they didn't even have the opportunity to put away any money whatsoever. So when they retire, what are they left to rely on? A totally inadequate Canada pension plan and the old age security system, a system that we know very well keeps senior citizens today, in this current year of 2009, living in destitution and poverty. There is no doubt about it: You cannot make ends meet. You cannot have a decent quality of life in this province with some meagre $900 a month or so on old age security and Canada pension plan.

And you know what? There are workers in this province who are even further disadvantaged when you look at the Canada pension plan and the old age security system. Why? Because those workers, over their lifetimes, didn't have the chance to be able to pay into those systems like many other workers. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about women workers, many of whom in their lifetimes maybe didn't engage in paid work at all, raised families, or maybe they engaged in paid work for a portion of their working career, which means they weren't maximizing their contributions into these systems. So these workers, women workers particularly, are seriously disadvantaged when it comes to the current environment in terms of our pension system, both the federal and workplace pension plans.




Unfortunately, what we've seen in this situation, as it stands right now in Ontario, is a government who, althoughÃ¢Â"when I was first elected, I was the pension critic. I had the opportunity to travel around this province, I think it was, in the winter of 2004-05. I spent several months travelling to 10 or 12 cities in this province having round table discussions about Ontario's pension system. That was five years ago, and the government did nothing. I issued a report. The report spoke to a number of problems with the plan. At that time, the Ontario pension systemÃ¢Â"it had been 20 years since it had been reviewed. Now it has been 25. We know that the government has put a review in place and we have a report sitting on a shelf, the Arthurs report.

What we talked about back then, five years ago, were things like portability of pension plans; things like changing the pension benefits guarantee fund so that the minimum amount is increased from $1,000 to $2,500, so that it actually reflects what the workers who pay into their plans need, to top up if for some reason their pension plan gets wound up and it's underfunded, which we know is happening right now. We know it's happening everywhere. There are threats of it happening with GM and with Chrysler. We've seen it with steel. We've seen it in my own community, actually. We've seen it with GenFast in Brant. We've seen it in all kinds of situationsÃ¢Â"AbitibiBowater in northern OntarioÃ¢Â"where workers are at threat of not being able to receive their full pension. So there's this fund that's supposed to top up, and what we see is a wholly inadequate amount of top-up, which is $1,000. We need that to go up to $2,500. That's not new; that's something I was saying five years ago and something Harry Arthurs is now saying in his reportÃ¢Â"not that I agree with everything in that report, but there are some nuggets in there that I certainly support.

The issue is that this debate is not something that the government is prepared to engage in. In fact, all the government wants to do is punt the issue up to the federal government and say that it's a CPP issue, a Canada pension plan issue, and it has nothing to do with what's happening in this province. That's not where they want to go. I've got to tell you: The workers of this province want to go there and New Democrats in this province want to go there. We believe it's time to have a serious debate about the income security of people when they finish their working careers. We believe there need to be significant changes made. We believe they should have been made five years ago when the economic times were good. But at the very least, it needs to be looked at now, when so many workers either don't have a pension plan or see that their pension is not going to be there for them when they finish work.

It's unacceptable, and what's the response of the government? There has been two: "Punt it up to Ottawa because it's not our issue," or their second piece was to turn their backs on the pension benefits guarantee fund at the very time when workers need it the most. How shameful is that? This governmentÃ¢Â"instead of saying, "We are going to make sure that fund is solid; we are going to make sure it's there for workers when they need it," they turn their backs and say, "This fund is never going to have enough money in it to help those workers." Shame on the government for a wholly inadequate response to the crisis that's hitting workers in this province right now. It is a shameful show of their lack of consideration, their lack of concern and their total lack of capacity to understand the fear and the worry that are in the hearts of workers across this province.

So, yes, we believe changes need to be made, and we're going to be putting on the record a number of specific things that we want to see changed in the pension system. A number of those things relate to the pension benefits guarantee fund. I've already mentioned one being the increase to $2,500 monthly, but there are others.

I mentioned the crisis in the economy and how that has raised this issue and put it on the front burner, but this is not the only jurisdiction that's dealing with this. While the government of Ontario is saying, "This is not our problem; it's a federal issue," we see other provinces beginning to have a debate about this very issue. We see British Columbia and Alberta talking together about the possibility of a provincial type of pension plan. We see that right now. We see Nova Scotia engaging in that same kind of conversation. For some reason, the most populous province, Ontario, isn't interested in having this conversation, notwithstanding the fact that most of the workers are right here in this province. So we're going to put on the table some ideas, because we think this debate needs to happen. We believe this debate should have happened a while ago, but it certainly needs to be happening now. We believe the province of Ontario has a significant role to play in upgrading our pension systems.

I want to put three specific issues on the table that I think we need to consider. I'm not saying we're going to design the system right here in this Legislature today. What I'm saying is, there are pieces of a provincial pension system that we need to look at, and they are serious issues.








I would urge every member of this Legislature to take your position here seriously. This is a place where we create legislation, where we make positive change. If there's one place where positive change needs to be made in this province at this point in time, it's in the pension system and the capacity of people to retire with dignity and quality of life.








The expert commission on pension reform did just that. It consulted widely, over an extended period of time, and provided a broad range of recommendationsÃ¢Â"some 142 recommendations, I believe, within the report.

Now, when a report of that magnitude, with such long-reaching and far-reaching implications, is received, it's not a situation where governments can act quickly or unilaterally. This talks about the long-term implications and the long-term needs of pension reform.

It is now part of our obligation to consult, in the context of these recommendations, with Ontarians and with the partners involved in this whole situation. Those include workersÃ¢Â"those who are not in the organized labour force and those who are in organized labourÃ¢Â"the business community, and our other partners. One of those other, major partners must be the federal government.



The motion speaks specifically to "providing a universally, province-wide pension plan." We haven't had that discussion. We don't know what the costs of that are, and we don't know who will bear those costs and how they will bear those costs. Each time we have discussions of this nature, we have to be cognizant of the potential implications to the taxpayerÃ¢Â"not just those who contribute to the pension fund directly, but will there be implications for the taxpayer? To what extent will the taxpayer be expected to contribute, or not; to guarantee funds, or not; and to what extent are those who contribute to the plan responsible?

The second part of the recommendations speaks specifically to an increase, as recommended, to some $2,500 from the current $1,000 limit. We haven't had the debate about what the cost of that is. We haven't had the debate around what the contributory portions are, about who would make those contributions and whether there would be any expectation that taxpayers should be engaged in that process.

Full portability of pensions, as a third element in the resolution itself, is a complex matter. If you have portable pensions between companies and between different business elements, how much of the burden will be carried directly with the employer? How much of that burden will be the employees'? What is the cost of that transfer of responsibility on a new employer? How fully are pensions portable between companies, between industries, and between public and private sector entities? Clearly those are the types of initiatives that need more than a cursory review. It's the reason that the expert commission was called into play to provide a series of recommendations for us to have that opportunity to consult.


The province will, through its budgetary policies, continue to provide support for those who find themselves in a vulnerable situation. Certainly they include seniors, some on low pensions and some without any pensions. We'll do that through a great variety of measures, whether it be mechanisms to provide protection in their homes through property tax and property rental agreements, such that we are providing support where they need it. We'll continue with the enhancements we have already put in place in that regard as we move through this budget year and subsequent budget years.


The consultation around the expert commission will continue as well. We need to look carefully at those recommendations so that we understand the implications, not only to workers but to employers, and not only to workers and employers but to all OntariansÃ¢Â"all those who will have some obligation in that regard.

I can suggest to you that we welcome the dialogue. Having said that, I'm not in a position, nor do I believe that members of our caucus will be in the position, to support the opposition day motion. Clearly when you come down to the very specifics of the recommendations that are before us, they're beyond this Legislature to support. It's beyond this Legislature to arbitrarily support the recommendations as they are put before us today.



Mr. Jerry J. Ouellette: I very much appreciate the opportunity to speak today. First of all, I must say, in dealing with the issue, that it's a very contentious issue in Oshawa, and as many would expect, we get a lot of calls on both sides of the issue. By any stretch of the imagination, it's far from unanimous either way.

It all comes down to how the process began and where it comes from, back from regulation change 5.1 back in 1992, I believe, when the government of the day, the NDP, came forward with the "too big to fail" issue. At that time, it may have been the perceived method in order to assist the companies, but the end result is that a lot of people have a lot of strong concerns now. I'm hoping that this legislation goes far beyond just the direct impact and actually addresses a lot of other aspects of pension issues province-wide.

After the issue of the regulation change 5.1 came forward, our government was in power, and at that time the number one question that I got on the line was very specifically, "Do we have to work another weekend?" When you're dealing with that aspect, when the concern comes forward, it's like, "We're not concerned about the pension issue." I never heard one concern about the issues being readdressed and funds being put back in, because the perception wasÃ¢Â"

Interjection: The economy.

Mr. Jerry J. Ouellette: That's right, because the economy was moving along wonderfully, cars were selling and everything else was happening.

For a lot of individuals who don't understand the process, I should explain some aspects of it. We get a lot of calls, and I do a lot of explaining of what takes place with this pension top-up fund up to $1,000. What that effectively means is that whatever percentage of shortfall is found within the fund is the percentage that is made up, up to the $1,000. My understanding of that isÃ¢Â"I hear various ratesÃ¢Â"that the fund of the line workers at General Motors would only be approximately 40% funded now. That would mean that the top-up pension aspect would top up the 60% shortfall to the $1,000, which would mean $600 a month.

If we get a turnaround in the markets because there was a substantialÃ¢Â"about 18%Ã¢Â"drop in the fund markets that their funds were invested in, that would mean there would be less of an onus requirement for the province to step in.


A couple of precedents were set in the province. One was Algoma Steel. Our party supported their pension fund; otherwise, it would have broken the very base fund that we're talking about and lost all the funds. The other one that took place, which the current government assisted with, was Stelco. What do you do in situations like this? I'm going to give some options a little bit later, but I want to talk about some of these things.

What are you going to do with a 92-year-old individualÃ¢Â"my uncle, for exampleÃ¢Â"who's very dependent on his General Motors pension? He never missed a day of work in his entire life, and until he was 91 years old, he never went to the hospital. Here's an individual who has contributed his entire life and never missed a day of work, who has a very, very meagre pension. That individual, if you walk into their house, every wall is white gloss paint. There are no luxuries there. It's very basic. It has a garden the size of the official opposition party, and that's how they supplement their income, by taking care of those things.



I see he happened to step outÃ¢Â"but just joining us now is Mr. Tim Eye, whom I happened to meet on Friday, and we discussed that very issue with him. I know he can't participate in the debate, but I'm hoping he didn't pass on my confidential information that I passed on Friday. It's either a yes or a noÃ¢Â"okay, very good. Thank you very much, because I've been trying to deal with this issue in a different aspect.

Effectively, the leader of the official opposition has said, "We're going to put some ideas on the table," and I'm going to do the same thing right now. I've been trying to draft legislation for an extended period of time. It's been shot down, and I fully expect it'll be shot down the next time as well because it effectively deals with options that are available.

When you're looking at contributions, who is eligible to contribute in the province of Ontario? Self-employed individuals? Workers who do not otherwise have a pension plan? What about people who may work for an Ontario employer but don't work in Ontario? For example, when the Kuwait issue took place, there was a huge contingent of people from Ontario that went to Kuwait to put out all the fires on the oil rigs, and those incomes thereÃ¢Â"they're Ontario-based companies but they're working out of province. Are they eligible to contribute? What about the amount of the contribution: Is there a minimum? Is there a maximum? What about the tax implications, if any, for a contribution? Specifically, is there a deduction from the taxable income for the amount of the employee's contribution? What about portability? What happens when an individualÃ¢Â"and we talk about today's society and the amount of time that they spend in one particular job. What happens if they move from job to job to job, and what happens to the employer's and the employees' contributions in particular situations like that? If an employee wants to contribute, is the person's employer also bound to contribute? These are all questions that need to be answered when you're looking at a potential opportunity.

Effectively, what this is leading to is an Ontario pension plan bill. What this is designed to do is bring in all individuals in the province of Ontario, so that it would be managed and funded in the same fashion as the Canada pension planÃ¢Â"not necessarily to replace the Canada pension plan but to supplement it. So when my kids start theirÃ¢Â"not their paper routes, but the first time they get a paycheque where there are deductions on it, they can contribute into the fund, so that when they achieve a retirement age, they know what their level of support will be.


When we talk about the impacts here, when we talk about General Motors, everybody thinks of Oshawa. Well, quite frankly, the number one employer in LindsayÃ¢Â"and I see the member from LindsayÃ¢Â"is General Motors; the number two employer in PeterboroughÃ¢Â"and I see that the member from Peterborough was just hereÃ¢Â"is General Motors; and the number one employer in Port Hope is General Motors. So a lot more than just Oshawa is impacted.


There's a lot of concern that taxpayers' dollars are going to go into supporting General Motors or high-paid General Motors workers who don't deserve that. But quite frankly, if the government of the day had not given the exemptions that took place, we would not be in this situation, because either General Motors would have gone under at that time, saying, "We can't afford it," and the pensions would have been secured, or we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now. We need to make sure that these individuals are taken care of.

There are a lot of considerations. For example, when I'm talking to individuals throughout the ridingÃ¢Â"what are we going to do with a senior who's in their 80s and in a retirement home? Their pension comes in and pays for the retirement home stay to take care of that individual. Who is going to pick up that cost when that pension is gone and lost? It'll be the taxpayer in another form, because the support is not there. These individuals need to be taken care of. There are a lot of other areas that need to be addressed as well, because it's not just a matter of the funds; it's the other support categories that take place.




I think there are a lot of considerations that need to be addressed here, and I want to make sure that everything is put on the table so that everybody realizes the real effect. We need to think outside the box. When I speak to the individuals, whether it's the local labour council individuals or whether it's local union presidents, on this, they realize there's no quick fix for the immediate situation. What we need to do is think outside the box and in the long term.

What I've done here is give some of those options or opportunities to think about. I certainly hope the third party will consider some of the things that I've brought forward because we need to think as a whole on the entire best interests of the entire province.




Over the months since I was first elected to this Legislature, I have raised my and my party's concerns about the fragile pension system in this province. Just a year ago, on May 28, I asked the Minister of Finance, "Will you act immediately to significantly increase the monthly pension benefit protected by the pension guarantee fund?" I pointed out that "Many Ontarians are worried about their pensions and whether they will be able to enjoy a financially secure retirement. They're worried because Ontario's pension protection legislation is badly out of date and full of holes. In fact, the coverage provided by the Ontario pension guarantee fund hasn't been updated since 1980 and now covers only a small part of the typical monthly pension benefit."


On October 9, 2008, I raised the concerns of workers who wanted "pension and wage protection that would make sure that workers get every penny they are owed from their employer when they close or leave the country, including not only severance, but holiday pay." An example would be the company I worked at and am a pensioner from, formerly Stelco, now US Steel. I have a real problem with some of the CEO buyouts and some of the things that have gone on. For example, Mr. Rodney MossÃ¢Â"was it Moss?Ã¢Â"anyways, he walked away. He was from the States, he came up to Hamilton, he revamped the company, painted a bit of machinery, bought some people out, made it look saleable, got some pension money from the government to help out with the pension fund a little bit, and then he turned around and sold it to US Steel. We had estimated from our union that Stelco was worth in the neighbourhood of $1.2 billion for assets. He turned around and sold it to US Steel for $1.3 million, and Mr. Mott, Rodney Mott, personally walked away with $68 million in his pocket after only 18 months of employment. But they're telling my pensioners and my workers to give up $4 an hour, to give up benefits. My pensioners are going to have to bleed the pension fundÃ¢Â"but you've got this stuff going on in North America; outrageous. This has to be addressed.

This past March 12 I talked about US Steel-Stelco and noted that to begin collecting pensions, workers must have 30 years of credited service acquired through their years in the plant. At Lake Erie Works, about 50 workers fall short by months. The number doubles when you add workers who have 30 years of service but are short on their pension credits because of layoffs or strike time. I asked for bridging to help those people who were a couple of months awayÃ¢Â"it didn't happen; not even discussed; it fell on deaf earsÃ¢Â"two months away from getting their pension. At Hamilton Steel, where three quarters of the workforce have more than 25 years of service, there are about 300 workers in this position. On that same day, March 12, I raised the issue of hundreds of workers slated to be laid off at Stelco who are just months short of qualifying for their pensions.




This government is forcing them to live in uncertainty. Pensions have been underfunded, and this government has done and continues to do nothing to protect these workers, but says, "We're going to start dialogue. We're going to start talking about it." Talk about johnny-come-lately.





"[W]e really believe that the pension benefits guarantee fund has to be there for our workers. It has to be there to protect the most vulnerable right now in this economic crisis. That's the reason it was built up; that's the reason that it needs to be in place now more than ever."




On a uniformly accessible, province-wide pension plan we need to think, people, about the 65% of Ontarians who have no pension plan at work, who must rely on their RRSPsÃ¢Â"if they haven't already spent it because they've lost their jobsÃ¢Â"and they have to rely on old age and Canada pension. I don't know about you, but $1,100 a month doesn't cut it if you live in a home and you're on a fixed income. It just doesn't cut it. Sixty-five per cent of the people who don't have a pension plan deserve better treatment in our province.


There are pension plans like this in other sectors of the world. There's one in Saskatchewan, right next door to usÃ¢Â"or two down. There's one in Finland. There are some in France. There's one in Germany. We have the ability to create a fund that won't chase businesses out of Ontario. It will be a few cents an hour. We have a humanity fund in the Steelworkers by which we raised millions and millions of dollars for a couple of cents an hour from our workers that went in there.

If an employer came to me and said, "Mr. Miller, I'm going to give you a dollar raise, but 25 cents an hour of that is going to go into your pension plan," am I going to complain? I can't even get a coffee for that. That 25 cents an hour, starting at age 25, and I retire at age 65, is going to give me anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 a month on top of my old age and Canada pension. Maybe I can stay in my home; maybe I can have some dignity; maybe I can live a life that I deserve. That could start now. It's too late for me because I'm too old to start into an Ontario pension plan, but we need to help our seniors and the pensioners now to make sure their pensions are secure and start setting up a plan to work for our kids and grandkids. We've got to start thinking outside the box. We haven't done this for many years, and it's time.



The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): Member from HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce.

Mrs. Carol Mitchell: I'm very pleased to enter the debate on the opposition motion. One of the things that is, quite frankly, not being talked about today is what is happening with the economy other than all the hardships that the people of Ontario are feeling today, what we have done as a government: the $32-billion investment in infrastructure and the financial commitments that have been made to so many of our sectors, be it forestry, be it the auto industry, be it agricultureÃ¢Â"a very long list of the work that has been done in order to ensure that we stabilize our economy.

One of the things that I also want to speak about for just a couple of minutes is the whole issue of taxation reform that is being presented in the budget, moving towards the single tax. One of the things that we have to continue to do is to bring about reforms and to adapt to the times and the realities that we face today. I think about the hardships that we are facing. We've seen unprecedented financial impact. We haven't seen it like this in over 80 years. I know when you're out and about, as all of us in this House are, people are very concerned. What does the future hold for them? What will their golden years be like? That's not people who are close, like myself, who had a birthday yesterday, so I'm a lot closer, but it's people who are very young.

Mr. Michael Prue: Twenty-six?


When we think about that, for someone just starting out, they want some guidance and they want some assurances of what they can expect. Also, as legislators, what we're looking at is what we can do in order to ensure the people of Ontario have their golden yearsÃ¢Â"that they are safe, they are secure, and they do have financial security.






The Premier has sent a letter, to begin, at the national levelÃ¢Â"65% of the people, if you break it down. How do we move towards the pension benefit guarantee?


We have also looked at tools to stabilize our economyÃ¢Â"obviously, that's one part of it. Then, the short-term reliefÃ¢Â"what has been provided. There has been an extension of the solvency amortization period from five to 10 years. There has been deferral of catch-up payments to provide one year of cash flow relief.



I come from a rural area, and we like to get to the money fairly quickly. I wanted to have some figures about what this motion represents for people in their pockets. We've heard a great deal from the opposition that it's not the time to come forward with our tax reforms, but this is what this means, in sum, to pay for what you are recommending: A self-employed businesswoman making $40,000 would now have to pay $4,000 a year. A company with 10 people making $40,000 each would be charged an extra $20,000 in taxes. So if your paycheque is $40,000 a year, it's an additional $2,000 that you're going to have to pay out of your paycheque to cover this. I just wanted to give it some financial perspective as well.

I do want to say that I am grateful to be able to enter the debateÃ¢Â"quite frankly, this is a discussion that will be ongoing. We really must ensure that we have the tools in place to provide a bright future for the people of Ontario while ensuring that Ontario remains strong.


Mr. John O'Toole: I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this, and want to make it very clear at the beginning that I believe there's a general sentiment of wishing to do the right thing on this NDP motion. There are three fundamental recommendations, as has been stated, one of which I believe is probably widely supported on all sides of the House, which is to provide "a universally accessible, province-wide pension plan." That would be an ideal state for us to be in.

We could say we have federal plans that tend to achieve some minimum amount of coverage. That should be the goal; in fact, it was one of the recommendations in the Arthurs report itself. Having worked for a number of years in a personnel function at General Motors, I'm reasonably familiar with the issues, but also conflicted, to the extent that I did work there.

Number two is the issue that's really before us here, the pension benefit guarantee fund, and it's generally very poorly understood. I don't mean that to be critical; it's perhaps just a way of expressing things. In fact, very few companies even belong to that fund. To belong to the fund, you must be a single employer pension plan, SEPP. They're the only ones that actually belong to it. Multiple employers aren't covered.

If you look at the numbers, roughly 70% of people don't have a pension of any sort, really, and 25% to 30% actually have some form of pension. Most of the public sector pensions aren't covered by the pension benefit guarantee fund, and the employer of record there isn't like General Motors, Ford, Chrysler or Stelco. The employer of record is basically the taxpayer. So the taxpayer is paying.

If you look at those public sector pensions, they're in worse trouble than most of the pensions we're talking about. The teachers' pension fund, the largest one in Canada, is short about $35 billion. They actually had a very important ruling just last year that, going forward, teachers hired in September no longer get an indexed pension. They have a huge liability issue.

OMERS, the Ontario municipal employees, has a huge problem. All the pensions that you can name here today have a liability, all of themÃ¢Â"not some, all. That's why they've had a federal commission as well as the Arthurs report on pensions. It's a huge, huge issue. I say this with some suggestion that the government should look at this pension issue, which they have, and there are some recommendations.

Number two is the problem. Who would qualify under the pension benefits guarantee fund? First of all, it has to be a certain type of pension, a single employer: Stelco, General MotorsÃ¢Â"you could name a few of them; there are probably about 12 of them in the Ontario. The rest of the pensions don't belong to this fund; let's be clear about that. They're not covered by it. The general misconception in the public is that they are.

What are they covered for? Well, it's only up to $1,000, so if the pension fund was funded at 75%, of the first $1,000, 75% would come from the employer even though it wasn't fully funded. The other part would come from the pension benefits guarantee fund, which in this case, if it was 75% funded, would be around $250. The rest of the pension would come from the employer, not from the fund. It's important to clarify some of these things; it's technical.

Why am I interested in this? I'm a retiree of General Motors, with over 30 years. I worked in personnel, and I've basically studied this; I took the securities course to be licensed as a securities investor. But I've also talked to some of the experts in the pension field on my own just to become educated, because, provincially, we could argue that we were part of a government that cancelled the pension as we would know it. I've spoken with Cameron HunterÃ¢Â"who is the head of Eckler and associates, a firm that represents many pensionsÃ¢Â"as well as others. I'll just leave it at that.

I would say that the issue here that I want to get on the record is that we should be doing the right thing, but we're not the government. The real issue here is Premier McGuinty. To be straightforward, he's the government, and if you want to really be specific, I think that FSCO, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario, is on the hook. In fact, I'd go so far as to say whoever was involved in negotiating pensions, pension entitlements and these options knew full well that the workforce was changing. We're outsourcing everything, so the base of contributors is getting smaller. There are fewer people paying and more people collecting. It simply doesn't work. It's finished, I'm telling you. So the government has a serious problem here.

At all levels, pensions don't work. They only work when the company keeps growingÃ¢Â"it's like a pyramidÃ¢Â"and they don't outsource. Why are they outsourcing? Because most of the pensions want to earn money. They want to earn a 7% return on equity or capital. I don't think the government can solve it. But Premier McGuinty's the Premier; it's his problem, and he should fix it. This is an agreement made in good faith between employees and employers. The regulator here, FSCO, the Financial Services Commission of Ontario, is his boss, and they have a job to do. It appears to me that they're trying to shuffle around it.

Now, there's a suspect portion in the last budget, Bill 162, the budget bill. There is a provision in that bill to set aside an amount of money to fix this problem, I believe. It doesn't say specifically, but there's a whole section on pensions. Have a look at the budget. They know there's a problem. They got the Arthurs report, there's a federal report, and this thing has been going onÃ¢Â"I was the PA to the Minister of Finance, and I would know it has been going on for a long time. I think there's been a lot of inappropriate intrusion by government, I would say, starting in 1992Ã¢Â"we all know thatÃ¢Â"2005, 2007, more recently in 2008, and now 2009. They're in this up to their ears, and the people of Ontario are being held hostage.

I think there was a very good suggestion made by a person that's with us, Tim Eye. It's one of the suggestions that are on the table. I'm going to read it, with your indulgence. It's a very good point of how this could be resolved. I hope the parliamentary assistant, Mr. Arthurs, is here today, Mr. Leal, who's from PeterboroughÃ¢Â"I know he has met with some of the stakeholdersÃ¢Â"and other members here who represent working people. We all represent working people. They want a fair shake, so stand up for them.


Under Tim's memo here, it says, "Under Canadian bankruptcy law"Ã¢Â"CCAAÃ¢Â""governments are the first creditor in line to divide corporate assets for taxes owed prior to secured and unsecured creditors." In other words, taxes are the first creditor for any money that's left in an organization. You'd think at the same time that the government recognized this and put the best interests of Ontario ahead of the bank.

Here's what he says: "We believe the government of Ontario has the legal and moral obligation to do what is best for all Ontarians. In the same context, a new law or regulation giving the government of Ontario the power to declare"Ã¢Â"this is the keyÃ¢Â""any unfunded liability on a windup basis of ... workplace-sponsored pension plan tax owed...." If it was taxes owed to the government of Ontario and payable to the same upon disposition of assets sharing the bankruptcy, then the government really wouldn't be ponying up the money; they'd be taking the first residual assets, which would be shared to the extent that they did cover the liability.


I want to put on the record that I wrote to Mr. Bob Christie, who was the CEO and superintendent of financial services, on December 1. I wrote to him advising him of some issues around the pension plan. At the end of that, he wrote to meÃ¢Â"I'm looking at my file on this. Mr. Christie said to me, "Re. General Motors Canadian retirement program"Ã¢Â"Mr. Christie reported to Dave Gordon, deputy superintendent of pensions, and then eventually to Julina Lam Lyn. I spoke to Julina Lam Lyn directly, and she manages most of this plan; she is the one manager of the plan. I can tell you, I've spoken to others. I have spoken to many of my constituents whom I work for, and my pension is dependent on my constituents keeping me hereÃ¢Â"because formally we don't have a pension, if you want to put it that way.

In fact, you see, we really do. This is the story that's untold. Our pension was wrapped up around 1996. For members who were part of that plan, they got a payout.

Mr. Peter Kormos: You've got a defined contribution plan.

Mr. John O'Toole: A defined contribution plan is what we have. That contribution plan is like the marketplace itself: It's down about 40%, roughly.

I want to leave time. I want to be on the record as supporting the workers who, in good faith, signed, and they're entitled to their entitlements, as has been said before by Prime Minister ChrÃÂ©tien. In good faith, these people will find themselves in court, in dispute with the McGuinty government, to do the right thing.



If you look back into the history, it wasn't that many years ago that this debate was up in Canada, and the government of Canada established the Canada pension plan. They did so so that no one had to fear growing old anymore; no one had to fear poverty in their old age. Sadly, 65% of the people of this province do not have a pension planÃ¢Â"not a direct benefit pension plan, in any event.


I think we ought not to fall into that same trap. Pensions should be for all of us; pensions need to be for all of us. The Canada pension plan, in and of itself, is not sufficient to make sure that a person stays out of poverty, enjoys one's retirement, has economic security and lives in dignity for the rest of their days.

There is an argumentÃ¢Â"and I see it almost every single day in the newspapersÃ¢Â"that the pension plans are just too rich, that all of those pension plans that were paid into by the paperworkers in northern Ontario, all those pension plans that were paid into by steelworkers across southwestern Ontario and throughout the rest of Ontario, and especially all those pension plans that were paid into by the many CAW workers, are simply too rich. They're too rich.

I read right-wing editorial after right-wing editorial saying, "They're too rich. We can't afford them. We have to find a way out of them. Look at Toyota versus General Motors." What spurious arguments these are. Toyota is of recent vintage in Ontario. They've only come here in the last few years. I would hazard a guess that they don't have any retirees at all. I would be shocked if they have any retirees at all. They've only just opened up operations. They hired people in their 20s. It's not conceivable that there are any retirees at all, and if there are, they must be at an absolute limit. But people turn around and say, "That pension plan they paid into for so many years is just too rich."

Well, I want to talk about what's really too rich. I don't know how many people get Maclean's. Last week's Maclean's, May 11, talks to me about pension plans, and the ones that I wish all of us had: real pension plans. It highlights six individuals, on pages 30 and 31.

The first one is Michael Sabia, BCE. How did he earn his money? "When Sabia took over BCE in 2002, its stock was struggling in the mid-$20 range. He was hired to fix things, but when his planned privatization fell apart, the stock plunged right back down to where it was when he took over." His pension plan: $21 million.

Robert Prichard, Torstar, the one that I saw in the Toronto Star this week, taking the GO train: How did he earn his money? "During his tenure, Torstar's stock fell by two thirds, and the company recently announced that its dividend will be slashed in half. Just after a large quarterly loss and writedown were announced, it was revealed that Prichard would be leaving with $9.6 million."

Tom Parkinson, the next one, Hydro One: How did he earn his money? "Parkinson left after scathing criticism of his billing practices from Ontario's Auditor General, but he still managed to pocket $4.8 million on his way out, including severance of $3.3 million and $1.5 million in salary and other payments."

Not to be outdone, of course, we have those people in the United States who have ripped off the entire system. They go on to talk about this one: Robert Nardelli, Home Depot. How did he earn his money? "Nardelli was lured to Home Depot with a promise that he'd get 90% of his pay no matter how poorly the company did. He resigned in 2007 after years of slowing profits, and still got one of the largest packages ever awarded"Ã¢Â"$210 million US.

Rick Wagoner from General Motors: How did he earn his money? On March 7, "when Wagoner was forced out of GM's CEO office after eight years on the job by the Obama administration, he left it teetering on life support. That didn't stop him from driving off into the sunset with a pension package worth roughly US$23 million."

And then, of course, not to be outdone by all of those guys, you have Stanley O'Neal from Merrill Lynch. How did he earn his money? "Under O'Neal's leadership, Merrill delved deep into subprime mortgages. When the market crashed and Merrill reported a quarterly US$2.2-billion loss, he left with about $161.5 million in stock options and retirement benefits."

If you want to know about gold-plated pensions, look at what the CEOs give themselves and look at what the companies set out for them; don't look at the poor workers who spent 30, 35 or 40 years on the line, working their guts out. Look at these guys. I'm telling you, I don't want to hear anything from the other side. I don't want to hear anything at all about the pensions being gold-plated. Thirty-five or 40 years of work and they end up here, coming to you, looking to you, trying to get a pension plan looked after. They're looking for an interim pension guarantee fund, and they are being attacked.


The other side says, "We need debate." Debate about what? I don't need a debate, because I can look across this country and see that British Columbia and Alberta already started the debate and are already trying to make determinations. I can look to Nova Scotia and see them ahead of us, making determinations, and all I hear from the other side is a little bit of talk. We don't want that kind of talk. What we want is a mandatory pension plan that every worker pays into and that every worker, at the end of their 35 or 40 years, can expect to get back in return. That's what they want here in the audience. That's what you should be producing. The time for talk is past; the time for action is now. Protect the pensions that are out there and build the new ones for the future.


Mr. Lorenzo Berardinetti: Following up on the remarks from the previous speakers, I just want to bring attention to the fact that in our last budget, we did put forward a number of proposals to modernize Ontario's pension system. One of them is to enhance the power of the superintendent of financial services to review certain pension arrangements in restructuring proceedingsÃ¢Â"and also introducing a package of additional pension reforms for the fall of this year, 2009. So we're not ignoring the issue; we're going to deal with the issue.

The question is not, are we going to deal with it? I think the question is how we're going to deal with it. And the question today in front of us is how we are going to deal with the pension benefits guarantee fund, which the leader of the third party brought up today, regarding the situation where people have not received the money that they thought they were entitled to.

I am totally supportive of people receiving a pension. Most people in Ontario, including my own parents, don't get a company pension; they rely solely on the Canada pension plan. The member from BeachesÃ¢Â"East York is correct: It's not adequate enough to live on that, but somehowÃ¢Â"I don't know howÃ¢Â"they make it work. They don't buy certain things that other people would buy. They both worked, and worked long hours in hard jobs, like many other Ontarians did, and did not end up with a pension other than what Canada pension gives them. I guess now, at the age they're at, they get an old age pension as well.

But I think the crux of the problem is that back in 1980Ã¢Â"it's not that hard to understandÃ¢Â"the pension benefits guarantee fund was set up. I don't even know, and I'm not going to put the blame on any particular Premier or government, but whoever was in power in 1980 set up the pension benefits guarantee fund. It was designed to protect defined benefit pension plans and the members in those plans should those companies that they worked for wind up with insufficient assets through a bankruptcy or liquidation. It was funded by a small levy on employers, so it wasn't the employees who were paying, it wasn't the taxpayer who was paying; it was the employer who was paying into this fund. And that's the key: The employer was putting money into this pension benefits guarantee fund.

So all was fine and dandy. In general, it would pay out up to $1,000 per month in pension benefits if something bad were to happen to a company. Lo and behold, the 1990s arrive and a recession arrives. An NDP government is in place here in Ontario. They decide at that time that they're going to change the rules regarding the pension benefits guarantee fund. Basically, six companiesÃ¢Â"GM Canada, Ford Canada, Chrysler Canada, IBM Canada, Sears Canada and StelcoÃ¢Â"located here in Canada wanted flexibility to trim their pension plan contribution. In other words, they said, "Mr. Premier, we don't have the money right now, because of the recession, to pay into this fund. So we'll pay later when times get better." The problem was that when things did get better, they didn't fully pay; not all of them paid the full amount. Some of these companies had also improved the pension plans of their employees and did not accordingly put in the same amount of money that would make up for that increase.

The day came that Stelco was no longer able to pay or function with its employees and pay out its pensions. Stelco's pension plan has a $1.2-billion hole in it, and the pension benefits guarantee fund, this fund that I'm talking about, has roughly $230 million in it. So we have $230 million in this fund and Stelco owes $1.2 billion in pensions. What do we do? That's the key question. To run to a rash decision today and to adopt this motion I think would be a little bit irresponsible, because there are other companies and other employees that work for other companies besides Stelco. The member from Durham worked for GM, and other members have spoken about other companies as well that are owed pension monies. Those companies, if they put money into this fund, deserve to get something out of the fund. But we're dealing with a fund that has roughly $230 million in it. We need to decide how much more to put into it and how to distribute that money.

So I think two things need to be done: The first thing is to collect the proper data so that we can assess the true value and cost of the pensions; secondly, clarify through legislation the original intent of the fund, which is that it was to be financed through premiums and not by the taxpayer. Again, some people think that this is a taxpayer-funded pension plan. It's not. It was funded by these companies that joined in. Many of them were large companies and some of them were small, but they put money into it so that it was a sort of an insurance that their employees would receive a pension. It's run into problems. It's been mismanaged since its inception back in 1981, it hasn't worked properly since then, and we're left with a problem. We are working on it. It's in our budget. We are looking at a way to bring forward proper legislation, and that's the way it should be done.

It is frustrating. The member from BeachesÃ¢Â"East York talks about how many people got so much money elsewhere in their pension plans. But we hope that by bringing forward the proper legislation at the right time and consultingÃ¢Â"which we have done; we have the Harry Arthurs report. It was only commissioned in 2006. It's come back with a number of recommendations. We have to look at those carefully and then move forward from there and bring the proper legislation forward, which will serve all the people in Ontario who are entitled to a pension.




I looked at a list of pension plans from across OntarioÃ¢Â"and there are numerous ones; something like 15,000 different pension plans. Because of the number of exemptions, and the number of exceptions with regard to the pension benefits guarantee fund, I can't tell exactly how many are struck byÃ¢Â"and protected, or supposedly protected, by the pension guarantee fund. But I assume that there are many pension funds and many people in Ontario who may suffer if a solution is not found.

I also want to address this problem that we have with the sitting government when they say, "We're going to talk to the federal government about this." Premier McGuinty has said, "We're going to talk about this at the end of May at a Premier's conference and a federal conference and we're going to talk about the solution to the pension problem that we have." The pension benefits guarantee fund is not a problem of Saskatchewan, it's not a problem of Quebec, it's not a problem of any other place in Canada but the province of Ontario. We have to solve that problem here in this Legislature, or that government has to solve that problem, as they are seized with dealing with that problem at this time.

We've heard a little bit about the history of the pension benefits guarantee fund. It dates back to the 1980s. I think that all political parties are painted with some degree of negligence with regard to dealing with the deficiencies that have occurred over that 25, 29 years, since it was created in the early 1980s. I can remember not only the problem that occurred at GM when the Rae government went in and said to GM, "You don't have to have your fund up to a solvency rate which is reasonable"Ã¢Â"and they let them off the hook and they had to pay in a little bit into this pension guarantee fund, but nowhere near any kind of money that would cover the kind of risk that they were let off with, with regard to dropping their solvency ratio with regard to their fund.

The CAW was not lily-white with regard to what they were doing. Accord to the Arthurs report, they acquiesced with regard to allowing that solvency rate to go down in order for immediate compensation issues. I can understand that in terms of the union leadership at that time. Nobody thought GMÃ¢Â"Bob Rae didn't think GM was ever going to go down the tubes. I'm not saying any one was at fault for the eventual collapse that has occurred, but I think everybody is sullied with a bit of the fault here.

This government, five months after they took office, wrote a cheque on March 31, 2004, for $330 million to the pension guarantee fund to take care of the problem with Algoma Steel. It was a loan. They gave them a loan for 30 years, with no interest paid on that loan. They gave them that moneyÃ¢Â"$330 millionÃ¢Â"then. As I understand it, looking at the last balance sheet for the pension benefits guarantee fund, they only have about $160 or $170 million left at this point in time. That amount of money, I'm told, would only cover some 7,000 Nortel employees that might be looking for help on their pensions for one year. That's how far out of whack this is. That doesn't take into account the Stelco workers we were talking about before, and it doesn't take into account the GM workers or the Chrysler workers or anybody else. So we've got to find a solution to this particular problem that we have.

Governments of all stripes, companies, employees and employees' representatives have all been part of the problem. It's been very convenient for all of us to shove this back and say, "Let's just deal with some of the other more urgent problems we have," but all of a sudden, with a thud, it's hit and it's hit hard. It's hit many, many people who are retiring now or are being paid pensions, but those pensions may be reduced dramatically and they are looking for help. We must address that problem directly here in Ontario.

Mr. John O'Toole: Dalton McGuinty should be addressing it.


Fortunately, we had the Arthurs commission come forward and talk about some of these issues in a very logical, reasonable and intelligent way. Arthurs's findings are quite good, but one of the findings he makes is contained in the motion here, which I support very strongly, and that is, we must not only deal with the people who have defined benefit pension plans now, but we must deal with all of those people in OntarioÃ¢Â"the other 65%Ã¢Â"that don't have any pension plan at this time. I would say to the government, why not use this crisis as an opportunity to act now, not only for the people who need the help of the pension benefits guarantee fund, but let's deal with the other people and offer them some hope in their retirement as well.

We have an excellent report from the Arthurs commission, and it tells us how some of that could be structured. But it will take, as he points out, a champion for pensions to be present in our province. He suggests a commission to set up that champion, and have that champion come forward to lead the charge to change things here in Ontario. He mentions offhand that perhaps you could deal with the CPP and have it changed and all the rest of it. Quite frankly, I don't think that there's a ghost of a chance that the federal government is going to dip its toes into the mire that we are in here in OntarioÃ¢Â"a mire that governments created and neglected over the last 29 years, since 1980, when this legislation was first created.

We must act, and we must act in a confident and thoughtful manner. I don't think it's fair to the 65% of the people who do not have pensions to say, "Pony up for all of these people who have a defined benefit pension plan. You should bail these people out while you sit with nothing to go home to." We have to address both problems at the same time. If this government was showing the kind of leadership that it should show on this very, very important question, important issue, for so many people in Ontario, they would pick it up and say, "I'm going to use this opportunity, this crisis that we have for our workers, to go forward with a comprehensive plan to not only take care of the people who have been left stranded, but I am going to take care of the people who do not have adequate retirement incomes going into the future in the province."



This is a crisis. This is a tremendous crisis. The people who come to my office who are from Nortel tell me about how securely they thought they had their retirement planned out, and now they find themselves in a terrible, terrible situation, a terrible dichotomy. They are worrying about their wives, they are worrying about their family and the ability to carry on, and all we seem to be getting from this government, from Premier McGuinty, is, "Well, let's have a conference about it with the federal government. Let's try to shift as much responsibility on to the federal government as we possibly can," as this government seems so prone to do. As soon as they face a real challenge, they say, "Let's go and call the feds in and see if we can dump the responsibility on their shoulders," instead of standing up and saying, "Look, we've all been part of this problem. We've got to roll up our sleeves and find the solution."


We in government, if we have failed our people in the province and if we have said to them, "We set up pension legislation. We regulate pensions," whether it is a pension benefit guarantee fund or it's FSCO or any other kind of regulation that we're involved in, then there's an obligation on us to step up now and find a solution for these people and feel their pain and understand that we can help. And we can help if we have the determination to do it. We must determine very difficult issues, like who should pay. It's very costly to deal with this, but we have to deal with it regardless.

I want to thank Ms. Horwath for bringing forward this motion. One of the problems I have with the motion, however, deals with the solution that they provide in one of the particular parts of their motion. I don't think you can just say, "We are going to pay this or pay that," without really saying who's going to divvy up for that particular amount, who's going to supply the funding for it. So there is a little bit of a problem with that, but overall I want to indicate my support and the support of our caucus for most of what is said in this motion.




But luckily, we have the Arthurs report now. It is a very good blueprint. Let's not repeat the same mistake made by the Conservative government of the 1980s and the NDP government of the 1990s. I'm not blaming them, because as the member from Mississippi Mills said, government in general was asleep. We must all do something together to deal with this, and let's not make the mistake of not seeking expert advice like they did in the 1980s when they put together the pension benefits guarantee fund that was underfunded, then again in the 1990s when the NDP said, "Oh, GM is too big to fail." The NDP bought the old story of what's good for General Motors is good for everybody. That was not something that could hold up to any test, yet they went ahead without listening to experts and made these decisions in a dark room. That's what the NDP wants to do again. Without listening to experts, without getting proper advice, we'll make the same mistakes the NDP made.



We need to listen to Harry Arthurs. We need toÃ¢Â"


Mr. Mike Colle: Here he is; he doesn't want to listen. He's still yelling because he doesn't want to learn from history. This is not something where they can say again, "Oh, it's too big to fail. GM is too big to fail." That's the idea they have.

There are people with all kinds of insights that we have to listen to. One expert we have is Keith Ambachtsheer, the director of the Rotman International Centre for Pension Management. He has been warning people about the need to have comprehensive action to deal with these pension issues. He's right up the street, and he has said to us over and over again that pension funds are actually extremely viable entitiesÃ¢Â"much more so than the RRSP approach and asking people to depend on the stock market for their future incomeÃ¢Â"because pension funds don't rely on the gambling that takes place and the exorbitant fees charged to people who are forced to rely on the stock market for their future income. That's what Keith Ambachtsheer says, and we should be listening to him.



That's why I think the Premier is saying that we have a role to play in Ontario, and we're going to do that based on the Harry Arthurs report. Secondly, what we're going to do is sit down with other provinces that have the same situationÃ¢Â"the vast majority of Ontarians are not protected by a guaranteed pension. They have zero pension. Those individuals, who have worked very hard all their livesÃ¢Â"30, 40 years of workÃ¢Â"and have so little, also deserve attention. They're not to be forgotten. They weren't working for General Motors; they were working for very small wages their whole life. Just as the General Motors worker who is retired now needs protection, that little person who worked their whole life also needs protection, and we must pay attention to both.

As I said, we need to listen to the experts and not go blindly into the dark like the NDP did back in the 1990s with their "too big to fail" approach, because this is a global thing. This is something that requires a comprehensive approach, and that's why the Premier has said, very astutely, that all provinces and the federal government should look at the state of the CPP, with a comprehensive view to helping people, and not do what we did in the past; that is, a quick-fix approach.

I'm afraid that the thing that's lacking in this motion is a comprehensive federal-provincial plan. Also, they don't cost out. They say, "Providing a universally accessible, province-wide pension plan." What's the cost of that: $20 billion, $30 billion? They don't put that in the motion.

"Fully backing the province's pension benefit guarantee fund"Ã¢Â"How many billions will that cost? The NDP, again in the dark, want us to make the same mistakes they made before by not listening to experts. We can't afford to do that again. We can't repeat the stupid mistakes of the NDP.


Mme France GÃÂ©linas: I wanted to share with this House that in my constituency office I very often get seniors coming in for help. They come in for help because they've got their new MPAC assessment that will mean an increase in the taxes they have to pay. Their budgets are so tight that with the little bit of CPP and the little bit of old age security, they cannot maintain their homes.

Those stories are tragic, but the saddest ones of all are the single older women who have no CPP because they chose to stay home to raise their family. They depend on very little money coming in through their old age security and the top-up to make ends meet. For those people, as soon as their hydro bill goes up a little bit, as soon as any expenses come in, such as the new HST, they cannot fit it into a budget, which is so tight and doesn't allow it. It always means the same thing: They're going to have to cut back on their basic needs. You're talking about food, you're talking about clothing and you're talking about a little bit of transportation, most of the time to go to physicians' appointmentsÃ¢Â"very limited.



Mr. Bob Delaney: It's a pleasure to speak on this particular motion. I'd like to focus on what I think is the salient part of this, which is that the NDP loves to spend other people's money. This is an interesting proposal, but it's wrong-headed. What it essentially does is give corporations a blank cheque drawn on the Ontario taxpayer.

Let's deal with the three aspects of this particular proposal. Providing a universally accessible pension plan: This Ontario Legislature doesn't have the jurisdiction or the power or, I put it, the need to change or to reform the Canada pension plan, which already exists to do exactly what the NDP motion advocates, in providing a universally accessible pension plan. Does the NDP suggest that a Canadian, just taking their proposal, who may have been raised on the east coast or somewhere out in the western provinces and someone who retires in OntarioÃ¢Â"do they suggest that they should not collect a pension, as they propose? If that's not their intentÃ¢Â"I suspect it isn't, and I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt; I suspect that's not their intentÃ¢Â"then perhaps they should just go through the motions, as it were, and ask their federal cousins to deal with the first part of this motion, which is to provide a universally accessible pension plan.

The NDP motion would ask Ontarians to sign a blank cheque on the pension benefits guarantee fund. What is the pension benefits guarantee fund? The pension benefits guarantee fund, for those of you who are watching at home and saying, "Never heard of it," is a fund into which pension plans pay so that in the event one of them fails, the pension benefits guarantee fund would be able to make up the difference, very much as the travel fund, if you were stranded somewhere, would reimburse you for travel. It's a loose analogy, but that's generally what it's intended to do. What the NDP motion proposes is that this pension benefits guarantee fund be completely guaranteed by you, by all of the taxpayers who don't have a pension to guarantee the pensions of the taxpayers who do have a pension. That probably hasn't been sitting very well with people where I come from and I'm pretty sure it hasn't been sitting very well all across Ontario.

So how much money is this? This is a lot of money. Let's be very clear. This is not just a few million dollars or even a few billion dollars but is very likely in the order of tens of billions of dollars, and again, from Ontarians, of whom two thirds don't have a pension, to give to the perhaps one third of Ontarians who do have a pension. The thing that bothers me about this is that it would forever absolve any and every company that wants to take its retired workers' pensions and fly the coop. They can take the pension money and run. You can chase them. You can talk about what you can do in terms of either civil action or criminal action, but at the end of the day, if this motion is adopted, it's the Ontario taxpayer who's left holding the bag.

That's not the intent with the pension benefits guarantee fund. This fund hasn't been managed very well in more than a generation. As my colleague from the other side put it, this goes through governments of all political stripes. So the first thing to do is to collect some proper data to set assessments that reflect the true costÃ¢Â"and this hasn't been doneÃ¢Â"the true cost of the pension guarantee.

Secondly, what we need here is not a motion like this but perhaps legislation that clarifies that original intent of the fund, which is that it was supposed to be financed through premiums and not by a future draw on taxpayersÃ¢Â"through premiums; that part is important.

I think it's incumbent on us to have a closer look, particularly if pensions are intended to benefit seniors, at what exactly has been done for seniors in the last few years. The enhanced permanent sales tax credit, which benefits low- to middle-income people, is going to provide up to $260 per person, $260 per person that's not available now. It would be refundable, and it's paid quarterly, not just once a year when you claim it on your tax but quarterly, so that it's actually a stream of income beginning in July 2010.

Property tax relief, in which the government of which I have the privilege to be a part has been a leader across Canada: We're going to be providing a new, refundable Ontario property tax credit. Again, the major beneficiaries are not the super-rich with the big mansions who don't need it, but it's low- to middle-income Ontarians, the very types of people who bought their homes in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and lived in them, raised their families and built their communities, and are now retiring in those homes. What's the best place to keep people when they've retired? In their own homes as long as possible, and that's what this measure does.




All those in favour will please say "aye."

All those opposed will please say "nay."

In my opinion, the nays have it.


The division bells rang from 1551 to 1601.



Bisson, Gilles

GÃÂ©linas, France

Hampton, Howard

Horwath, Andrea

Kormos, Peter

Marchese, Rosario

Miller, Paul

Murdoch, Bill

O'Toole, John

Ouellette, Jerry J.

Prue, Michael

Tabuns, Peter



Aggelonitis, Sophia

Arnott, Ted

Arthurs, Wayne

Balkissoon, Bas

Bentley, Christopher

Berardinetti, Lorenzo

Broten, Laurel C.

Brown, Michael A.

Brownell, Jim

Chan, Michael

Colle, Mike

Crozier, Bruce

Delaney, Bob

Dhillon, Vic

Dombrowsky, Leona

Flynn, Kevin Daniel

Gravelle, Michael

Hoy, Pat

Jeffrey, Linda

Johnson, Rick

Jones, Sylvia

Kular, Kuldip

Kwinter, Monte

Lalonde, Jean-Marc

Leal, Jeff

Levac, Dave

Matthews, Deborah

Mauro, Bill

McNeely, Phil

Miller, Norm

Milloy, John

Mitchell, Carol

Moridi, Reza

Naqvi, Yasir

Orazietti, David

Pendergast, Leeanna

Phillips, Gerry

Ramsay, David

Rinaldi, Lou

Ruprecht, Tony

Sandals, Liz

Smith, Monique

Sousa, Charles

Takhar, Harinder S.

Van Bommel, Maria

Yakabuski, John

Zimmer, David



Motion negatived.





Mr. Peter Tabuns: Well, it's an interesting opportunity to speak about this bill. I want to give you some background on my thinking on this matter before I talk about the substance of the bill itself.

In 2002 I was in Johannesburg for the Earth Summit, an interesting process, an interesting meeting. In the course of that summit there was a speech made by Jean ChrÃÂ©tien, who was the Prime Minister of Canada at the time. Jean ChrÃÂ©tien made a very solemn, stirring commitment to the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Canada. I have to say that generally the environmental movement praised Jean ChrÃÂ©tien for taking that commitment on, for being willing to stand with the rest of the world to ratify Kyoto and bring Canada into that community of nations that were willing to address climate change.


As you well know, Madam Speaker, and as many may know who are watching this today, Canada's emissions grew faster than greenhouse gas emissions grew under the administration of George Bush, even though George Bush's America didn't ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

I tell you that as a cautionary tale, for when commitments are made to substantial breakthroughs into environmental areas, into environmental commitments, one can look back at the history of such commitmentsÃ¢Â"the commitments by Jean ChrÃÂ©tien, the commitments by Dalton McGuinty in 2003 to shut down coal plants in Ontario by 2007, the commitments by Dalton McGuinty's campaign staffers in 2003 that new nuclear power plants were not part of the policy mix to deal with the coal phase-out. When I look at those commitments and I look at the commentary made by environmentalists about those earlier commitments, it makes me cautious; it makes me very cautious.

I approach this bill with that history in mind, those realities in mind, with a concern that on the one hand we need many of the elements that this bill would support, and a concern that in the end they won't be delivered, or won't be delivered in a way that actually gives Ontario what it needs to have.


There are four substantial problems that we have to come to grips with. The first I'll note is that of oncoming climate change. People in this House have heard talk about this at length and over time. I'll say very simply that in April, in the journal Nature, reported in the British press but not particularly reported here, a peer-reviewed study noted that at the rate greenhouse gas emissions were climbing, we would hit the point at which dangerous climate change is expected to start occurring not in 2050, but 20 years from now, two decades from now.



The second urgent issue we have to address in OntarioÃ¢Â"and you are well aware of itÃ¢Â"is growing unemployment. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost good-paying jobs in this province in the last five years. Those people need work, their families need income, our society needs their taxes and this world needs their productive capacity. We need them to be contributing, yet they have lost and more continue to lose. And we in this province are losing the industrial base, the manufacturing base, we need to employ them in future.

This is a change that is not like previous recessions we've seen, where people are laid off and then, as demand returns, people are taken back into their place of employment. Hundreds of thousands of people are permanently losing jobs that pay decent incomes. That has substantial ramifications for our society and for the lives of those individuals and their families. If we're going to deal with that, we have to deal with a few other problems.


If you look at the report that was done just a short while ago by Don Drummond of the Toronto Dominion BankÃ¢Â"a TD economics special report in September 2008Ã¢Â"he talked about the pillars of prosperity in Ontario. He talked about the Auto Pact, the rate at which the Canadian dollar trades and a variety of elements, including a well-trained and capable workforce, that are critical to us to hold on to a manufacturing base in this province.

A number of those elements are outside our controlÃ¢Â"we don't control Canada's exchange rateÃ¢Â"but one element he talked about was the availability of low-cost, affordable power. That has been a huge competitive advantage for Ontario historically, and a consciously competitive advantage. When Ontario Hydro was set up at the beginning of the 20th century, Sir Adam Beck and those politiciansÃ¢Â"members of the Legislature and members of city councilsÃ¢Â"understood the advantage of taking the power generated by Niagara and providing it at cost so that companies would want to invest in Ontario. It was a huge advantage to us. We have lost that.

In his report, Time for a Vision of Ontario's Economy, Mr. Drummond talks about the subsidization of power rates in Ontario. He talks about the fact that power rates are subsidized, and talks about the impact of nuclear. He says, "A significant share of this implicit subsidy relates to the province's experience with nuclear power. As such, there are some concerns that the government's decision to invest heavily in existing and new nuclear assets will run contrary to the objective of lowering the degree of subsidization in the system."

My translation of that commentary is that the more we invest in nukes, the less affordable our electricity system becomes and the greater the negative impact on our economy. If we in fact take a course of action that does not move away from nuclear power and does not move heavily into efficiency and conservationÃ¢Â"our cheapest optionsÃ¢Â"move into renewables, which have the potential over the next few decades to become without a doubt substantially less expensive, then we are going to be facing some very, very rough waters.

In the United States, recent studies of new nuclear power peg the price of power from those stations at close to three times what people are paying for power generation now in Ontario, peg the price for power from new nuclear at higher than the price that is proposed to be paid for wind power in the provincial government's program. Yet, the commitment to nuclear is fundamental and runs through all of the government's planning; in fact, I would argue it shapes the act before us, shapes it so that it contains the amount of renewable power that's generated, contains the amount of efficiency and conservation that is actually produced in this province, and thus sets the table for huge problems for us in years to come. Commitment to nuclear power will price Ontario out of the market; it will undermine our future as a job-creating centre.


If you look at Michigan, our neighbour, they have been battered heavily in the last decade or two by the decay of the auto industry. Their leadership, their state governor, is focusing heavily on renewable energy and development of clean cars, of electric cars, as the future for industry in that state. In April, Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan made this announcement: "Michigan's aggressive effort to grow the advanced-battery industry and the jobs it will create has resulted in four companies announcing plans to invest more than $1.7 billion to launch advanced-battery manufacturing facilities in Michigan. The projects that will create" almost 7,000 "new jobs in Michigan were awarded state refundable tax credits that will help the companies in their quest for some of the $2 billion in federal grants for advanced-battery research and development."



In Colorado, they have a unit in the governor's office whose only function is to look at the supply chain for renewable energy companies, identify areas where businesses in Colorado can provide components, and go to those companies and try and insert themselves into that supply chain, or they will look at defunct industrial properties in that state and say, "We have facilities that could manufacture what you need to get your product out the door. Come work with us." They are consistently and aggressively going after that business.



In the United States, jurisdictions that have faced many of the same problems we are facing here are aggressively going out and getting the manufacturing jobs and putting them in place. They're understanding, as I said, at the federal level in the United States that the world is changing very substantially. On April 22, the New York Times reported that the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory CommissionÃ¢Â"and for those who are watching this, I won't repeat that name often because I know that it's a sleep-inducing thought. The headline in the New York Times was, "Energy Regulatory Chief Says New Coal, Nuclear Plants May Be Unnecessary." This is not a minor researcher in a large federal department. This is the person who oversees the direction of energy investment, energy regulation, throughout the United States. He sees that the way that energy, electricity in particular, is generated and distributed in the United States is going to shift dramatically. That is a debate that is not over in the United States, but at least at the very highest levels they're understanding that there is that opportunity. It's there today, it's alive, it has to be taken, and it can have a huge positive impact on the economy.

In Manitoba, we have a government that has become a leader in geothermal, that provides funding for householders to put in heat exchangers so they can take cold out of the earth or heat out of the earth. That isn't electricity generation. That's taking advantage of heat and cooling storage in the ground, something we should be doingÃ¢Â"an area where that jurisdiction is leading the way.

In Quebec, they have investment in wind turbines that are changing the face of the GaspÃÂ© Peninsula. When we talk about investment in wind turbines in Quebec, you have to understand that they're very focused on the GaspÃÂ©sie, on an area that has been chronically underdeveloped, that has been losing employment and losing population. When Quebec talks about 60% Quebec content for wind turbines, they're talking heavily about content from GaspÃÂ©. Companies are having to move into the GaspÃÂ© Peninsula to make wind turbines, to make blades, to make the whole range of equipment to actually put those wind turbines in place. So an area that for generations has seen nothing but depopulation is seeing young people come back into the GaspÃÂ© because jobs are there that pay decently.

Quebec is using their green energy sector as an economic development toolÃ¢Â"frankly, like Minnesota, which has a similar strategy in the north end of their stateÃ¢Â"and seeing the positive results that you can see if you're willing to invest substantially and understand where the future is going.

We need to have the same approach here in Ontario. We need to have a far more thoroughgoing and far more committed approach. I don't know yet if this act will give us that. I think the decision to actually go forward is beyond the act itself. You have to know that Premier McGuinty has made statements about the Green Energy Act and about the need to invest in the 21st century. When this act was introduced, he talked about the need for clean power: "We need those jobs. We need clean electricity, and we need to assume our full responsibility in the face of climate change." I have to say that's a great statement. It's hard to disagree with that statement. The question for all of us here is, will this act, will his power planning, get us to that point? Will we actually get the results that the Premier himself has said are critical for this province to have?

On the face of it, what's before us is less than meets the eye.



"Across the landscape of these investments, we feel quite confident that 50,000 jobs will be created."

Now, I went to the press conference that the minister gave the day he brought the act forward, and it was interesting to me to see that the Toronto Sun reported what I had heard. The Toronto Sun reported that one of the first projects coming out of the Green Energy Act is expected to be a new transmission line between Barrie and Sudbury. That's what I recollect the minister saying; that was a major piece. Now, if you go to your computer, go to Google and enter "Power transmission line Barrie to Sudbury," you will find that a power line has been discussed for that stretch for a number of years. Ontario Power Generation owns a dam on the lower Matagami River. They want to upgrade that damÃ¢Â"nothing wrong with that; I think it's a great ideaÃ¢Â"and they need more power line capacity to carry the power south. So in fact the major job creator that was announced when this act came forward was a power line upgrade that had been on the books for a while. I don't think it's a bad thing to have that power line upgrade, I don't think it's a bad thing to increase the capacity of that dam, but I don't think it has anything to do with this Green Energy Act.


About the time this act came out, the Ontario Power Authority put out a release setting out their picture of the supply mix for Ontario. For those who are watching, the supply mix is what's going to be generated by what sources. About 53% of the total electricity in Ontario, the Ontario Power Authority projects, will come from nukes when all this plan is in placeÃ¢Â"53%. Eight per cent will be generated by those gas-fired power plants that Mr. Sousa should be fighting in his riding in Mississauga South, that I fought in my riding, that people are fighting in northern York region; that's 8% of the power in Ontario. Twenty-three per cent is through existing hydro. So 53%, 8%, 23%, and what's left for new renewable power in Ontario is about 14%, when in fact you could be producing an awful lot more of Ontario's power from new renewables.

The minister, when he was asked at the press conference about this actÃ¢Â"he was asked about the targets, about the caps, about the limits on renewable powerÃ¢Â"said that there wouldn't be any targets, and I remember clearly him saying that there would be no upper limit either, that you could just keep on building. I find that hard to believe, because the simple reality is that the process to build those nuclear power plants is on the way, and frankly, if you allowed Ontario to fully build out the capacity it has for renewable power, if you allowed Ontario to fully develop all the efficiency and conservation that is at hand, then those nuclear power plants that are going to be built at the cost of tens of billions of dollars would be simply redundant. There would be no market for their power. They would be irrelevant.





No targets were set for efficiency and conservation in that act. If you actually want to have efficiency and conservation in there, if you want to have the programs to spend the money, if you want to direct the bureaucracy to deliver the goods, if you want to send out a signal to the larger world that this is the direction you're going to go in, it's best to put it in the act. It's not there.

The Ontario Power Authority has repeatedly declined to take advantage of all the cost-effective efficiency and conservation opportunities that have been identified. Why? Why would you not take advantage of the lowest-cost, most environmentally beneficial option that's out there? The answer in Ontario is that if you're fundamentally committed to the development of nuclear power, then you don't want to take all those efficiency and conservation options, because you're investing tens of billions of dollars in new nuclear power plants. You want the market there for the electricity. You want the demand there. You want people to pay you cash for the electricity you put in the power line.


I have to say, in the course of hearing the presentations that we heard as we went around the province, one of the arguments that was made by those who are opposed even to the limited steps that are taken in this act were that in Germany and Denmark there continued to be investment in coal-fired plants, that there were authorities in those countries who were saying that renewable energy was not living up to its promise. I have to say to you that people should be fully aware that what we are engaged in here in Ontario and in countries around the world where the matter of electricity is being settled is not simply an intellectual game where people sit down, go through the dry statistics, look at the numbers and say, "That's the best option." In fact, what we're dealing with is a battle in a wide variety of countries over market share. When it is said that renewable power can't replace nuclear, that is the argument not being made on technical grounds, because I don't think that that technical argument will stand up. It is not an argument that is being made on commercial grounds because the numbers don't work for nuclear. It is being made on the question of market shareÃ¢Â"who will make a profit and who will not make a profit. That is the basis of this conflict over the direction for electricity and energy in this province and around this world right now.

People should not forget that in April in this province we produced more power than we could consume, so that in fact companies were paid money to take electricity. We actually had to send out a rebate to companies that were customers so that the nuclear power plants that have to run continuously at a particular level weren't cut back; the term is "negative price for electricity." We paid money to customers, a number of whom were across the border, to take our power. That's the reality of electricity in this province. Do we really need to be in a situation where we're continuing to overproduce? Do we need to be in a situation where once again, just as we did in the last generation, we assume a mammoth financial burden to build nuclear power plants? I don't think we do. Given that approach, this act needs to be much stronger and far more directive than it is. You need to know that in the attempts to amend the act in committee, the changes that were needed to make the act effective in the way that it needs to be effective, to preclude the ramping down of renewables and efficiency so that the nuclear market is protectedÃ¢Â"those amendments were not accepted.

I want to talk about some of the mechanisms that were used to protect the nuclear market in Ontario. For most normal people, talking about the details of electricity purchase plans is eye-glazing, but there's one point I want to get across to folks who are following this issue, and that's that if you want to build new renewable power, if you want communities to build it, if you want co-operatives to build it, if you want First Nation communities to build it, if you want local utilities to build it, they have to know that when they put the money in, they will get a return. So if you put in, say, $100 million, $50 millionÃ¢Â"a lot of cashÃ¢Â"into solar panels or biogas or wind turbines in your community, you're going to do the math and figure out what you're going to get back. One piece of the puzzle is probably going to be clear, and that's the amount that you will be paid. Those prices will be set by something called a feed-in tariff. But what is missing in the act is an obligation for the power company to actually buy what you produce.

Let's say it's early June. The sun is out, the sky is clear; you're producing tons of solar power, and the Ontario Power Authority comes along and says, "Whoa, wait a minute. We're producing so much power, we have to pay customers to take it. We're not going to take power from you anymore. You're going to have to shut down. We're just going to cut off the mains; we aren't going to take any of the power that you make."


If you're running a wind farm and you're running it in April and the nuclear power plants are going full tilt and Ontario is producing more power than it needs and the Ontario Power Authority comes to you and says, "The nuclear power plants, we've just got to run them and we've got to take their power, so we're afraid we're not going to buy your power. You're out of luck, too bad, so sad, good luck"Ã¢Â"when you look at that issue, that's a central one for organizations to decide whether or not to invest in Ontario and invest in renewable power generation.

Tyler Hamilton, in the Toronto Star report on business, roughly a month ago talked about the impact of not having an obligation to buy that power that's produced by a renewable generator. He saidÃ¢Â"and it was a fairly straightforward columnÃ¢Â"having talked to a number of people who produced green power, that without that obligation in the act, their interest in investing in Ontario, making renewable power in Ontario, would decline very substantially because they wouldn't know over the next 20 years whether their power would be purchased or not and whether there would be a surplus of nuclear power that would in fact clear them off the table for years at a time. Who knows? The lack of that piece is a substantial concern for anyone who wants to see a lot of renewable power produced in Ontario.

The Green Energy Act Alliance, a group of environmental groups, a sustainable energy association that is profoundly supportive of this bill and did a lot of work to bring the government along and to sell the whole concept, had a panel of energy experts here in the Legislature a few weeks ago: speakers from Denmark; an unfortunate videotape from Hermann Scheer from Germany, who wasn't able to make itÃ¢Â"he's a legislator in Berlin and he couldn't get to the event. Those people from California, Denmark and Hermann Scheer in his videotaped comments all talked about the necessity of an obligation to buy, take-or-pay piece in this agreement so in that in fact there was assurance.

In Germany, the legislation to put in place this feed-in tariff requires a purchase of the power. Just go on the Internet, go to Google, google it up, and you can read it; it's in English. They are extraordinarily successfulÃ¢Â"over a quarter of a million people working in the renewable energy sector. They have that obligation to buy the renewable power.

When I put forward the NDP amendment to have that obligation put into the legislation, to make sure that in fact those who produce renewable power in the future will know that they can sell into Ontario's electricity system, I was told that the government couldn't support this because they needed to preserve flexibility. They wanted to look at other mechanisms.


If you look at the real experience that we've had in Ontario with renewable power in these last few years, you can see that we have underperformedÃ¢Â"that less renewable generation has been put in place than Ontarians expected, than Ontarians wanted. There was a report that was put out in March with a very dry title, Regulatory Risk in Private Investment and Renewable Energy Technologies: A study of the Ontario Wind Power Sector, by three writers with a fair amount of background in wind energy. They argued that Ontario would benefit from formalizing its wind energy strategies through legislation. They suggested the Green Energy Act should enshrine in law long-term targets for renewable fuel capacity levels and restrict the ability of the minister to revise such targets outside the scope of legislation. They talked about the elevated risk in regulatory areas for those who want to put money into renewable energy in Ontario. They said that, in fact, you wanted to have some sense that there would be continuity, that a commitment today to renewable power would be there in the future. They note that since 2004, the identity of the Minister of Energy has changed four times. For a post that is central to this province's well-being, you have to ask about the level of commitment if we're changing a key minister on a yearly basis. That is a substantial concern.

If you look at how we've actually performed, at investment levels, they say that "investment levels have fallen substantially short of initial expectations. At the end of November 2008, approximately 800 megawatts of new renewable capacity was in operation...." That was 60% of the target set in 2003, and frankly, far less than should be in place.

If you look at the American experience, American states that have put in place targets for the amount of renewable power that they want to have operational have done better than Ontario. In fact, at the end of November 2008, the investment in Ontario was approximately one third of the investment that's occurred in states that have a set target for the amount of renewable power. That's not good news for us. We have not done as well as was targeted. We're not doing as well as American jurisdictions. We needed to have in this act a commitment not only to an obligation to buy power, but targets.

The German legislation has targets so the government can be held accountable if those targets aren't met. You know as well as I do that if there are not targets in place, then it is very difficult for us to stand here in the Legislature and say that you didn't actually deliver the goods, because the government can say, "In fact, we got 20 of these things in place. That's a lot. You should be happy." We say, "No, you should have had 100 or 200 in place." They say, "No, 20 was all we ever expected. We didn't put it into the law; 20 was a good number. We're sticking with that number."

Failure to put targets in this legislation means that, as opposed to American jurisdictions where they have targets, we're underperforming. It's not in keeping with the legislation in the leading state in the world that is moving things forward, and that's Germany. That is a huge problem for us.

In the course of debating this legislation, one of the issues that came up was the whole question of enforcing building codes. I said earlier that you need to have targets for efficiency and conservation. We didn't get those. In the course of the hearings it was pointed out to us that building codes in this province, when it comes to energy efficiency, are largely unenforced, and that's of consequence.


Bob Bach was the speaker for Sustainable Buildings Canada. He talked about the reality of building codes in this province. I just want to quote some of what he had to say: "In 1993, Ontario introduced an energy code into the building code. An energy code is a document that lays down the way by which energy efficiency will be established. It in fact sets a level of energy efficiency. Furthermore, in 1993, the province developed a compliance review and inspection manual for building officials and also trained building officials across the province in how to apply the energy code within the building code." He went on to say, "I led that work and I delivered the training, and I can tell you that many building officials had trouble understanding the issues required to establish energy efficiency in buildings."




The reality is that we can design wonderful building codes; we can say in this act that we're going to have wonderful building codes in place. But if they're not enforced, then it doesn't matter how lovely they are, it doesn't matter how advanced they are, it doesn't matter how green they are; it means nothing.


I want people to understand the scale of the energy issues we're talking about today. When we talk electricity, people think that's the whole energy picture. In Ontario, depending on the price of oil, we spend something like $36 billion to $46 billion a year on energy. That's for the whole shot: aircraft fuel, home heating, gasoline, diesel, hot water, everythingÃ¢Â"somewhere in that $35-billion or $40-billion-a-year range. We spend somewhere in the range $8 billion a year on electricity.

If the Ontario Power Authority supply mix media release was accurate and this bill only actually results in 14% of our electricity coming from renewable power, we're talking about 14%, maybe about $1 billion worth of electricity. A billion dollars is a lot of money, but compared to $35 billion or $40 billion, it's a small part of the spectrum. We need it to be much bigger in this act, because we import tens of billions of dollars' worth of energy fuel from across North America and around the world every year. That's money that flows out of Ontario and that is no longer in our economy, money that could be used to put people to work right here and is not used to put people to work right here.



We need a realization that we must go beyond the nuclear age. We are on the vergeÃ¢Â"and this act should never obscure thatÃ¢Â"of spending tens of billions of dollars on new nuclear power plants. Two of the leading contenders have substantial problems.

Areva, a French nuclear power company which is building a plant in Finland, is having huge problems. Questions have been raised about safety systems. There is now no confirmed date for the completion of that plantÃ¢Â"and this is one of the most sophisticated nuclear reactor companies in the world.


The government needs to hear a warning about the direction that they're taking. I have set out my assessment of this act, of where Ontario stands and what we have to do. The government needs to be warned that their approach to the bill and to electricity in this province is hugely problematic.

People in Ontario are in a difficult way. Depending on their current situation, they may be nervous because they can see family or friends in financial difficulties. If they have lost their job and can't find any other, they aren't just nervous, they are desperate. And they are looking for action. There are people who are nervous and desperate about the state of air quality in this province and about the prospects for climate change. All of those peopleÃ¢Â"the nervous, the desperate, the environmentally focused and the jobs-focusedÃ¢Â"look at what's being done in Europe, look at what's being done in the United States, and say, "We want to see that here in Ontario."




As written, this bill is set to underperform. The way it has been written allows the minister and any future minister to constrain investment in efficiency, conservation and renewables so that the market for nuclear power will be undisturbed. That is a mistake, because we need to prepare to go beyond the nuclear age. Even the Premier will talk about the fact that if he had a magic wand, if there was the opportunity that we didn't need nuclear, that would be wonderful. He doesn't believe the time is at hand. Well, frankly, if the time isn't at hand now, the time may never come. The time is at hand now.




Ms. Laurel C. Broten: The Green Energy Act, as has been said, has two priorities: bringing more renewable energy online and creating a culture of conservation. I want to speak to those two points and a number of the issues raised by the member from TorontoÃ¢Â"Danforth in that respect.

The certainty with respect to the ability to generate and sell that power arises as a result of the feed-in-tariff model, when combined with the right to access the grid and with certainty about regulation. The feed-in tariff is one of those mechanisms that have been used around the world, and Ontario seeks to use it in combination with a number of other initiatives that say that if you're willing to make the investment, we'll buy the power. If the project is economic, we'll connect it, and we'll do that in a faster fashion than has been done before. So it's not about targets and limits; it's about certainty and moving forward.


That leads me to the importance of the jobs being here in Ontario. I want to highlight another article. My friend opposite commented on a previous article by Tyler Hamilton. On May 9, this weekend, Tyler Hamilton wrote an article where he refers to "90,000 good-paying jobs over the next 10 years," and that comes from Robert Pollin, co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. He says, "In Massachusetts, we're talking about it but we're not doing anything." We're doing things here in Ontario.


Mr. Norman W. Sterling: The Green Energy Act does attract attention from a lot of people and the people of Ontario, but our caucus had a significant study done with regard to the claims that the government is making with regard to this act. We found that many of those claims are exaggerated, are very questionable and have no proof that they're going to work. I keep hearing these wonderful stories about Spain and Germany, how wonderful everything is in these two countries with regard to their efforts, with regard to their changing their energy mix and that kind of thing. As I understand it, in the most recent economic downturn, what country did the worst of all in Europe? Germany, because its energy costs are so high that businesses and manufacturers can't compete in that country anymore. So notwithstanding that we all are in favour of producing more electricity, more energy from renewable resources, it's kind of nice to have some jobs in the country as well.

As well, I'm told that all is not well in Spain with regard to their renewable energy projects. I'm told that it's a mess by people who have been there, who have seen it, with regard to what's going on in that area. So I ask, how much research and how much planning, by people who were objective and not trying to make a political statement but were really interested in improving our environment, were involved in this act?

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): The member from TrinityÃ¢Â"Spadina.

Mr. Rosario Marchese: I want to congratulate my colleague from TorontoÃ¢Â"Danforth for his insightful one-hour remarks. I've got say that this bill is not about building a vibrant and sustainable green economy, an energy system in our province. This is about nuclear. I'm really, really very keen on talking about this every chance I get. This government is not committed to a culture of conservation; this government is committed to a culture of nuclear and more nuclear. The member from CarletonÃ¢Â"Mississippi Mills, a Conservative member who likes nuclear as much as the Liberals doÃ¢Â"they're like this on that oneÃ¢Â"talks about the energy costs in some of these other countries being high. Well, it's nuclear that's been killing us for the last 20 years in terms of energy costs. We have this debt we cannot get rid of, have not been able to get rid of for a long, long time.

No one, not Tory nor Liberal, says how expensive nuclear is. They say, "Wind, solar, oohÃ¢Â"expensive. Look at Germany; look at the other places." But nuclear, "Oh, no, it's not expensive, and by the way, it's clean"Ã¢Â"please, please. You Tories and Liberals have it all wrong. Talk about how proud you Liberals are about your commitment to nuclear. Just stand up and say how proud you are and tell the environmentalists about your culture of conservation.

When the minister and the member from EtobicokeÃ¢Â"Lakeshore say, "We have a balanced approach," why is it that the Ontario Clean Air Alliance recently showed that the McGuinty government is willing to spend 50 times more for a kilowatt of nuclear energy than it is willing to pay for a kilowatt of energy conservation? Please, Liberals, your commitment is to nuclear and nothing else. Stand up and be proud of it. Don't be ashamed; don't hide it. Just say it at every chance you get. But I don't hear too many Liberals talking about it. Stand up; be proud; say it.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): The member from HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce.

Mrs. Carol Mitchell: I certainly will stand up and say that I'm very proud of the Green Energy Act. I'm very proud that nuclear is an important component of it. We understand that you need a solid foundation to work from. I have the largest nuclear generating station in North America located in my riding. I'm very proud of the work that they have done with the community. They are strong community partners, and I'm proud of the commitment that they have made to Ontario.

We generate 25% of the energy from my riding alone. We do it through nuclear, and we also do it through wind; 434 megawatts are generated from my riding of HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce. We're very proud of the contribution that we make to energy to ensure that we have safe, clean, affordable hydro, because we understand how important that is for a strong economy.



One of the things I wanted to talk about was how important it is to ensure that public consultation remains a strong part of the whole process, which will be included in the consultation with communitiesÃ¢Â"that will be a part of it. There's a working group formed right nowÃ¢Â"AMO, MOE, MNR, MAH and MEI are all working together on developing the processesÃ¢Â"and health and safety will be taken into consideration, as well as the science base, as the standards are established. That is a very important component.

I want to be quick, because I want to give a practical application of this. One of the things we have a lot in my riding is dead stock removal. We have another group that is 185Ã¢Â"unfortunately, I'm going to have to speak againÃ¢Â"

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): Thank you. The member from TorontoÃ¢Â"Danforth has up to two minutes to respond.

Mr. Peter Tabuns: Thanks to the members from EtobicokeÃ¢Â"Lakeshore, CarletonÃ¢Â"Mississippi Mills, TrinityÃ¢Â"Spadina and HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce for their commentary. I want to talk first about the comments of the member from EtobicokeÃ¢Â"Lakeshore. When you look at what is in place in other jurisdictions, when you talk about a feed-in tariff, there are three components. There's the right of access to the gridÃ¢Â"no questionÃ¢Â"and price that is set high enough to induce investment. But there's a third piece, and that's take-or-pay, the obligation to buy. You need all three of those, and the people who were here speaking on behalf of the Green Energy Act Alliance were very clear about the need for all three pieces to be in place to actually have the results you want to have.

The member refers to the study that was cited by Tyler Hamilton in Saturday's Star. I actually went to take a look at the study. The writers talk about 90,000 jobs, not based on the Green Energy Act before us, but based on the scenario of Green Energy Act Alliance extended investment in conservation and efficiency. Effectively, you wouldn't get those jobs if you went ahead and refurbished the Pickering B nuclear power plant. That has to be dealt out if you want to get those 90,000 jobs. That's the choice. So when you say 90,000 jobs, be very clear that it's because you've got 90,000 green jobs, not a whole bunch of jobs that get eaten up by the nuclear establishment.

The member from CarletonÃ¢Â"Mississippi Mills talked about electricity prices in Germany. Just to be very clear with him, electricity prices for the manufacturing sector are set at an industrial rate of about six euro cents a kilowatt hour, which is substantially less than their general electricityÃ¢Â"




Mr. Phil McNeely: The Green Energy Act is progressive yet practical. It builds upon all the work this government has already done to build a reliable electricity system to increase Ontario's supply of renewable energy. Ontario has been the leader on this front, and if passed, the Green Energy Act would help us continue to lead, establishing this province as the North American leader in green energy.

Last week, British economist and former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern predicted that the Green Energy Act would be "extremely persuasive" to other jurisdictions and called the opportunities ahead an "economic no-brainer."






Our government has begun discussions on domestic content provisions for wind energy and solar projects. Those provisions, in turn, would support jobs in Ontario in manufacturing, design, engineering and other related industries. A feed-in tariff model, combined with the right of access to the grid and with certainty about regulation, is not about targets or limits; it's about creating certainty. It says to investors, "If you're willing to make the investment, we will buy the power. If the project is economic, we will connect it. We will do so more quickly than has been done before." That's why we have a renewable energy facilitator who will be appointed.


To boost Ontario's attraction to renewable energy developers even more, the proposed Green Energy Act would ensure a clearer, improved approval process that would eliminate red tape and duplication, and offer service guarantees while continuing to protect public health and safety. Our government's goal of building more green energy projects faster in a timely way will always be balanced with the equally important objective of preserving and protecting our land, air, water, ecosystems and wildlife.





If passed, our legislation would eliminate local barriers in some jurisdictions that currently restrict renewable energy technology such as rooftop solar panels or ground-source heat pumps. We're also looking at ways to help community-based groups with some of the soft costs of project development so they could get up and running faster.





Indeed, at the heart of the proposed Green Energy Act is a recognition that LDCs must be in the driver's seat when it comes to delivering the conservation message to their customers. The Green Energy Act would give them more responsibility for provincial conservation efforts, including reaching targets.




If passed, the act would also green Ontario government and broader public sector buildings and other facilities, establishing regular public reporting on energy use and establishing minimum standards for the new buildings that are equivalent to LEED silver. I've been at Humber College to see what the colleges have done in being able to measure energy use and reduce energy use. It's just tremendous how forward they are. Moving to a LEED standard will require skilled workers in the area of retrofitting, as well as workers with expertise in energy-efficient construction.


On the homeowner front, I'm proud to say that last September I proposed a private member's bill concerning home energy audits which received all-party support. I wanted to ensure that consumers would be protected. The bill would have required a home energy audit report for all home sellers in the province. I'm sure you are all aware that the Green Energy Act contains a provision on home energy audits.

After listening to the views from across Ontario, we've added flexibility to this provision through an amendment that would address situations where the seller and buyer of a home agree that a home audit is not necessary. Under the amended provisions, the buyer could waive his right to receive a rating. Buyers and sellers are encouraged to go ahead with the energy audit; it is a small shared investment that would give a buyer a wealth of knowledge about their new home's energy use. To further help Ontarians make their homes more energy efficient, policies engendered by the Green Energy Act would establish Energy Star as the enhanced energy efficiency standard for household appliances.




Ms. Lisa MacLeod: It's a pleasure to rise today in third reading of Bill 150Ã¢Â"as my party calls it, the tax and power grab. It was a member opposite who's quite a good friend of mine who did indicate prior to an amendment to this legislation that the government would be removing the mandatory home energy audit, which hundreds of thousands of Ontarians opposed so vehementlyÃ¢Â"before they would then find that they would be slapped with the harmonized sales tax.

Of course, one of our concerns in the official opposition is how this information could get out in the city of Ottawa with the consumer affairs minister, Harinder Takhar, that this home energy audit would be removed, prior to public hearings. That's a valid question for us to ask.

We in the official opposition had, as you will recall, asked for this legislation, this omnibus Bill 150, to go to committee hearings after first reading, something that the previous environment minister, Dwight Duncan, who's now our finance minister, did with another previous energy bill. This is a complex piece of legislation and, we're going to see, something that's going to have ramifications well into our future, impacted in a very truncated period of time, I believe within the last two and a half months.


The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): The member for TrinityÃ¢Â"Spadina.

Mr. Rosario Marchese: I've got a couple of questions for my friend from OttawaÃ¢Â"OrlÃÂ©ans because I know he's an engineer. As I understand engineers, they're mathematical in their thought, they're analytical and they're dispassionate, generally speaking. I want him to answer a couple of questions because I know that he will be fair in his response to my comments and that he will look forward to refuting some of the arguments, as an engineer would.

You Liberals have in the works the construction of two new nuclear stations in the immediate future, and then, after the 10 years, you probably have a lot more. As I understand it, based on the experience of Darlington, these two new nuclear stations are likely to cost, with cost overruns, anywhere from $30 billion to $40 billion, we believe. That's a conservative estimate, with all due respect to the Conservatives. If that is true, how do you deal with these numbers? Don't you find it expensive? Don't you find it truly, genuinely expensive? That's one.


Secondly, the nuclear waste: As an engineer, how do you deal with that? How have all of you engineers been dealing with nuclear waste in terms of the issue of safety? Because I happen to think it's not safe, and I don't know what they're doing with it. You might want to comment on that.

Thirdly, if you're building two new nuclear stations, in my view, with that extra capacity you are automatically building in a cap or a ceiling on renewables. That's how I see it, from a dispassionate point of view as well, of course, not being an engineer. But you look at those numbers and you say, "Hmm. If you've got two new nuclear stations, there's only so much of the renewables that you can put into the system." So if you could help me out and help the citizens to refute some of these arguments or to elucidate, for that matter.


Mr. Jeff Leal: It was a delight to hear the speech from my colleague the member from OttawaÃ¢Â"OrlÃÂ©ans, who makes a very compelling case for reasons to support Bill 150 in third reading.

I just recently had the opportunity to attend the Green Expo in Peterborough, and I want to talk about a small company that's owned by my friend Simon, who lives on Maria Street in Peterborough. He owns the Generation Solar business. He looks to Bill 150 as being a real catalyst for him to get additional and new business for what has become a very thriving small business in Peterborough, providing solar panels, solar technology to a large client base in the Peterborough area. He effectively looks to see that business building considerably over the next number of years. He'll also take advantage of the budget provisions to eliminate the PST for component costs in some of the technology that he will be purchasing in order to supply a rather large customer base.


This bill, as clearly articulated by my colleague from OttawaÃ¢Â"OrlÃÂ©ans, provides a real framework for the future that will generate and provide the next generation of jobs in Ontario.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): The member from CarletonÃ¢Â"Mississippi Mills.

Mr. Norman W. Sterling: It's interesting, this Green Energy Act has a lot of numbers in it, a lot of complication to it etc. I just want to relate to the members here, because I sit in a committee and I'm responsible for my party on Bill 162, andÃ¢Â"surprise, surpriseÃ¢Â"this week, the government lifted part of that bill. They've taken their section dealing with advertising out of that Bill 162. They put in more restrictions as to how the government could advertise and spin a particular subject

Under the new actÃ¢Â"the act that they're now going to wipe out, even though we passed it in second reading in this Legislature, and we publicly stated that we supported this particular actÃ¢Â"it says, "The following are the standards that an item"Ã¢Â"an advertisementÃ¢Â""is required to meet:


"2. It must not be partisan as determined under subsection (2)." And here's the real kicker:

"3. Any numerical data in it must be supportable"Ã¢Â"they're wiping that out.

What they want is the right to go to the Auditor General and say, "We're going to say that this new Green Energy Act will create 50,000 jobs, but we won't have any supporting evidence for those 50,000 jobs." So here we have the government opposite and the members standing up and saying that all of these jobs are going to be created, and on the other hand, what the government is doing and saying is, "We can spin this now without having to support the numbers that we're spinning out."

Listen, guys, if you want to talk about numbers, support them and don't give yourself the rightÃ¢Â"

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): Thank you. The member from OttawaÃ¢Â"OrlÃÂ©ans has up to two minute to respond.

Mr. Phil McNeely: I wish to thank the members for NepeanÃ¢Â"Carleton, TrinityÃ¢Â"Spadina, Peterborough and CarletonÃ¢Â"Mississippi Mills for their comments. I'd like to go into the details of how nuclear has formed 40% of our base power for almost 40 years and will continue to do so, and then the other question he asked. I just want to concentrate more on the home energy audit because I had more impact in there.


Your alternative, of course, is to pay energy, moving forward, with your home, that is not as energy efficient as it should be. There's about $25 billion of expenditure that we can give to the oil companies or we can put in our own homes and make them cozier. Of course, if we put that in our own homes and make our homes cozier and more energy efficient, then we have these energy savings, moving forward. Not only that, but we will create something like 250,000 jobs over the 10 years, say, that it would take. We'd reduce greenhouse gasses by four million to five million tonnes per year. It would be a great thing to do.


Ms. Sylvia Jones: I rise today to speak once again on Bill 150. This is not the first time I've spoken in the House about Bill 150 and my opposition to the many, many holes that exist within it. I will focus on two concerns for this debate.





"Whereas the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing was poised to approve much of the township's new policy until an appeal of the amendment was launched by a wind farm developer; and









The township of Mulmur urges the province "to allow municipalities ... to continue to deal with and make decisions on proposals that have been initiated prior to the implementation of Bill 150."


The resolution that Amaranth passed reads as follows:









Ã¢Â"a requirement that the proponent consult with the subject municipality prior to submitting an application under the Environmental Protection Act;

Ã¢Â"a notification of the receipt of complete application and of any subsequent changes to that application to the municipality and to landowners within 400 metres of the proposed facility;

Ã¢Â"circulation of all related documentation to the municipality for review and comment;

Ã¢Â"municipal and public notification of the ministry's decisions and directives on the application and on all other relevant matters;

Ã¢Â"municipal and public notification on any changes in the terms and conditions of approvals; and

Ã¢Â"municipal and public notification of any appeals, related hearings of the Environmental Review Tribunal, any appeals of the minister, and the related decisions.

The town of Caledon has also passed a very similar resolution. They've requested that the town be involved in the development of regulations of the act, particularly as they relate to new renewable energy project approval processes to ensure appropriate municipal consultation. They're asking for a seat at the table.

Not only are municipalities concerned, but so are Ontario residents. They are concerned about their health. I know I've received at least 100 e-mails from those concerned about the health impacts of wind turbines, mostly because these are the people suffering from various health issues.



Another one of my constituents has a very similar concern:




"Premier McGuinty has assured the residents of Ontario protection from adverse health effects by stating:


"In spite of these assurances, Mr. Smitherman has demonstrated his contempt for this process by publicly stating regarding setbacks 'the distance currently envisioned is 500 metres.' Clearly Mr. Smitherman has a preconceived position and bias that setbacks are to be based on economics rather than health or safety of Ontario families.

"This interference clearly demonstrates Mr. Smitherman's disdain for the consultative process."

Dr. Robert McMurtry, dean of medicine at the University of Western Ontario, appeared before the Standing Committee on General Government regarding Bill 150, and he had this to say: "Dr. Amanda Harry reported on 39 cases.... For these people, whose health and quality of life were compromised, she concluded that people 'living near wind turbines are genuinely suffering.'

"Let me be clear, however, as to" my deepest concern. "Adverse health effects are occurring as we speak."

Most disturbing of all are the comments describing the sheer anguish and sense of betrayal that many feel. No one seems to care, and you certainly get that impression, listening to all the chatter that's going on in this House. No one appears to be listening to the residents' plight. They feel they are losing their homes and their lives.


A company in Germany with the mission statement to "enhance the international promotion of environmental technology within the fields of recycling of ash and waste energy sources, renewable energy, environmental industrial development" says this about the location of wind farms: "The location under consideration should first be wind-intensive during the whole year"Ã¢Â"makes sense.


Ms. Sylvia Jones: Thank you, Speaker.

From a company in Germany, talking about the siting of wind farm locations: "The location under consideration should first be wind-intensive during the whole year. Buildings, particularly housing, should not be nearer than two kilometres to the wind farm." Remember, this is in Germany, from which the Liberals love to cite examples.

Riverside county in California has stated: "Restrict the placement of wind turbines within two miles of residential development unless the applicant supplies documentation that the machines will not produce low-frequency impulsive noise."



One of the many e-mails I have received states, "The removal of individual rights through the centralized and fast-tracking of the approval process is alarming and undemocratic." I couldn't agree more.

It is unusual that an important piece of legislation such as this, with no less than seven pages of explanatory notes and 65 pages of clauses opening up and amending over 15 pieces of legislation, including the Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act, which would greatly effect my constituency of DufferinÃ¢Â"Caledon, would be called for second reading debate within 24 hours of being introduced for first reading. Now, a short couple of months later, here we are at third reading with no answers, just more questions for Ontarians. What a shame. Once again the Liberals have had a chance to get it right and instead they're using their majority to trample over municipal and individual rights.





The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): The member from NepeanÃ¢Â"Carleton.

Ms. Lisa MacLeod: I would like to congratulate my colleague from DufferinÃ¢Â"Caledon. As always, she has entered this chamber with a very thoughtful prÃÂ©cis of not only the bill but her views on the legislation before us. She comes to the table with some very valid concerns on how Bill 150, the tax and power grab, will impact Ontario's municipalities.


My colleague from DufferinÃ¢Â"Caledon again speaks to the need for greater support for municipalities as a result of this legislation and what it might do. As we know from the legislation, all municipal encumbrances, condominium bylaws and any agreement on real property can be overwritten as a result of this legislationÃ¢Â"


Mr. Peter Tabuns: I wanted to comment on the remarks of the member from DufferinÃ¢Â"Caledon. Although I may be taking it from a different perspective, I did have concerns as well in the act about the overriding of municipal processes for planning and zoning.

Mark WinfieldÃ¢Â"formerly of the Pembina Institute, professor in the environmental law faculty at York UniversityÃ¢Â"who spoke to our committee, addressed this very issue of municipal planning approvals and the need to maintain the involvement of municipalities in this, both to ensure buy-in and also becauseÃ¢Â"he made the argument, and I thought he made it wellÃ¢Â"if you think you're going to set up a whole other process for permits, building inspections and assessment, you are in a situation where you may well create a much more difficult process for wind developers than you have now. He had suggested that the province send out a policy directive to municipalities that would shape the environment within which they made determinations on wind turbines or other renewable energy projects, but that the mechanism used in the act was one that would ultimately frustrate not only municipalities but renewable energy developers.


The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): The member for HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce.

Mrs. Carol Mitchell: I wanted to respond to some of the comments made by the member from DufferinÃ¢Â"Caledon. Specifically, as I stated in my previous two minutes, 434 megawatts are what is produced, energy from wind, in my riding of HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce. One of the barriers that wind development has experienced is municipal bylaws that are in place with regard specifically to setbacks. If we want to see the wind development go forward, and clearly we do, we have to establish provincial standards.


So we understand in my riding, and this is one of the things that I'd like to talk about, that we can harvest the wind. We can reap the financial security from the wind while we also harvest the crops, and the two work hand in hand, glove in glove.

That brings me to agriculture. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to tell my story about the deadstock and how it's so important. It's a part of renewables. I have one deadstock collector who is now producing biodiesel. He charges $50 to pick up the carcasses of cattle or whatever. He takes it all across the board. He's able to do that at $50 because he understood a number of years ago that you must look to the future, and the future was in producing green energy. On the other hand, I have another deadstock collector who unfortunately has gone out of business now. It was $185 for him to pick up a carcass. So we have oneÃ¢Â"Atwood is what it's called, Atwood Pet FoodsÃ¢Â"

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): Thank you. The member for DufferinÃ¢Â"Caledon has up to two minutes to respond.

Ms. Sylvia Jones: I have no idea what the member from HuronÃ¢Â"Bruce was trying to tie in to Bill 150, so I won't comment on it. EtobicokeÃ¢Â"Lakeshore, NepeanÃ¢Â"Carleton, TorontoÃ¢Â"Danforth: Thank you for participating in the debate.


What we have here today is, again, the Liberals choosing to ignore what people are asking, what they want to raise, what they want to talk about. Instead, they will use their majority and steamroll ahead and forget about opposition because it's not important: "We don't care, municipalities, how you feel or whether you want your municipality to be unique. We'll just steamroll ahead and use our majority to plow through with Bill 150." I think it's a very unfortunate situation and does not bode well for what debate in this chamber is supposed to be all about.

Third reading debate deemed adjourned.

The Acting Speaker (Ms. Cheri DiNovo): It being 6 o'clock, I declare this House adjourned until tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock.

The House adjourned at 1801.