ORDERS OF THE DAY
ONTARIO MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES
RETIREMENT SYSTEM ACT, 2006 /
LOI DE 2006
SUR LE RÉGIME DE RETRAITE
DES EMPLOYÉS MUNICIPAUX
DE L'ONTARIO
Ontario Hansard - 21-February 2006
The Acting Speaker: Questions and comments?

Mr. Ernie Hardeman (Oxford): I want to thank the minister for another great rendition of what he had intended to do but, in fairness, what he somewhat missed in achieving. He speaks quite eloquently about all the consultation and the support of all the players in the OMERS plan, yet when I see all the players in the OMERS plan, the vast majority of both the employers and the employees are totally opposed to this approach that the minister has taken. So I find it kind of ironic that the minister would still refer to the massive support that exists for this piece of legislation. I'm afraid it is greatly limited in support.

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I just had the opportunity of coming back from the gathering of the municipal officials from rural and small-town Ontario at the Rural Ontario Municipal Association's conference, along with the Ontario Good Roads Association's conference. The room was full of people. The topic around the hall was not about the things that they were being told by the Premier; it was about Bill 206 and why the government would be doing that to them. So I find it hard to understand where the minister would still come from with, "Everybody in the plan supports it."
The big problem with this bill -- we'll get to it a little bit later, when I have an opportunity to speak to the bill -- is that it's about devolution, and they're making all the changes that the players in the plan don't want made before they devolve it, as opposed to letting those people who are involved in the plan make the changes that they deem most appropriate for both management and all the players within the plan. I would ask him to reconsider the approach he has taken with this, and to actually work with the players within this plan to make it work for the betterment of all the people in OMERS, as the minister has said he wanted to do
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The Acting Speaker: Further debate.

Mr. Hardeman: Normally I would stand up and say that I'm pleased to stand here today and discuss Bill 206, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act, 2006, but I'm afraid I can't say that today. I think it's somewhat a shame that we are debating this bill, which was called a housekeeping bill when it was introduced by the minister. We have managed, with what I would call incompetence and a total disregard for process, to turn it into a fiasco. In fact, of the people who are members of this plan, both the employers and the employees, there seem to be very few who are now ready to say they support the bill in its entirety the way it's written.

We keep hearing a lot from the government side that this bill is so complicated, we can't possibly have unanimity on it, but I think in every case, including the government's presentation, we tried for as close to unanimity or as close to a consensus as we could achieve.

As we went through this -- and we give the government credit for that; when the bill came up for first reading, it was immediately referred to committee, because it was a bill that affected a lot of people, affected their livelihoods, and they wanted to be part of it, to make sure they didn't raise the concerns in their pensions, as has happened. So the government put it forward, it went to committee and we started getting presenters.

All of a sudden, it came out that not only was there not total support for it, there seemed to be very little support for it. The government suggested that they would listen to the presenters and then make some amendments to the bill, and I think that's really where it ran off the rails. Rather than looking at what was happening to the integrity of the bill and the integrity of the purpose that was put forward in the bill, it just became a hodgepodge of bill amendments and amending amendments. In fact, there were times when the bill was amended or proposed to be amended in the same area for a third time, because they just didn't have it right.

I think it's a bit of a challenge -- yes, I guess the word is "challenge" -- that we're here today speaking on the bill when in fact we should have taken the advice that was given by our leader to sit down, call all the players together and see -- maybe the minister is right: Maybe we couldn't get total consensus, but at least we could get to some areas of improvement in the bill where it would serve the purpose better than it does now.

Having been involved in the committee hearings through the first and second reading, I find it very interesting that the things that are happening today and the concerns being expressed today, particularly by employees who are part of the plan, are not the same concerns that were expressed when the bill was at first reading. In fact, the concerns at that time were addressed by some of the amendments, but instead of making it better, they made it worse.
I guess I'd have to say that the reason I'm not really enthusiastic about standing here today speaking to this bill is because of the actions of the government and their refusal to look at discussing options with all the players to see if we couldn't come to a consensus.

Having taken that position -- and I've taken this position all the way through the hearings process, at first reading, at second reading and here in the House -- I suppose I should take this opportunity to thank the Premier. In the last two sittings of this House, the Premier made reference to a letter I had written a couple of years ago to the Minister of Finance as the discussions were taking place to revamp the bill concerning the firefighters and their wish to have the OMERS plan changed in order to allow for a negotiated supplementary plan within their plan; in other words, to separate their pension plan on paper, not by a different administration, but as a different entity within the same administration, as the police and fire plan, so they could have different levels of pension and different benefits negotiated with their employers.

The firefighters made a presentation to, I think, many of the members here in the House. They in fact may have made a presentation to you. I have to say they made a good case, and I agreed with them. I sent a letter to the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Municipal Affairs and the Premier of the province, suggesting that I thought the government should be looking at allowing different sections of the OMERS plan to be applied differently to different employees.

The problem that arose, of course -- I guess I want to finish that. I do want to thank the Premier for bringing that up. Because of my concern with some of the other sections of Bill 206, there seems to be some question as to whether I still support a better pension plan for the police and fire. I want to say here in public, in this Legislature, that I do think that's a good idea, but not at the expense of the basic OMERS plan that has been in effect for a long time.

Before we get back to the plan, I would just suggest that the government could very well have introduced this in two bills. Then I think we would have had a debate with the employers and the employees as they relate to the emergency service sector about how you would implement supplemental plans, and you also would have had a debate -- and I expect it would not have been as contentious a debate -- about how you would effectively devolve OMERS from the sponsorship of the provincial government and put it under the control of all the people involved in the plan.

To my mind, there was no need to have put all this together. I think it really relates to, as I mentioned earlier, when I spoke on the presentation of the minister -- it's somewhat odd, in my mind, that the whole premise of the bill was based on wanting to devolve the operation and the control of the OMERS pension plan to the employers and the employees who are affected by it, who are paying into the plan and who stand to benefit from the plan.

If that's the thing to do, the reason for that -- and we had a presentation from the OMERS board -- was because the OMERS board felt that when there were needs to change the OMERS pension plan for changing the benefits that were received and available and so forth, when that was needed, under the present structure it has to go through the provincial Legislature. It has to be agreed to by -- actually, I don't think it has to be legislatively changed. I stand to be corrected there. I think it can be done by an order in council, but it has to go through the provincial government in order to happen.

The OMERS board said that was quite cumbersome and cited an example of a benefit requested to apply to the increased cost of living to beneficiaries of a pension of someone who had passed on. The family left, and their pension was locked in. The board wanted to change the pension plan so that it was more fair to the survivors. It was changed, but it required a long time and a lot longer than it should, while those people in need were waiting for some assistance. That made some sense, but the board thought they would like that to be improved. So this intent was to have that improved.

But the big issue that has been on the table in the discussion between employer and employee has been continually the supplemental plans for police and fire. Again, I think if this is to give autonomous control of the plan for the people who are in it, I would suggest that when you make those changes to the plan, you shouldn't make those changes before you devolve it. If the reason for devolution is to make the changes more fair and more in line with what all the players in the game are asking for, it would seem to make good sense to allow that to happen subsequent to the devolution. I think it would make a lot of sense to me to let the new OMERS sponsoring corporation make the changes. Having said that, I think the emergency workers do have some concern, and it may very well be justified, that it would be very difficult -- or it may be difficult; I shouldn't say "would be" -- but it could be very difficult in a case where it requires a change over the whole plan and yet you're asking for it to be negotiated within individual bargaining units. Maybe the act should allow a process that would be able to allow that to happen in a more equitable way. I'm not in the position to be able to tell us how it should be done, but I think something like that should have been looked at.

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Having said all that, and just in general terms of the problem I see, one other thing I just wanted to mention in the overall picture that seems to be causing the problem that we see there: We have just heard, in the last hour or two, the announcement that one of the bargaining units within the OMERS plan has set a date for when they're going to have a work stoppage to express their discontent. I want to say that I'm totally opposed to that. I don't think that's the way to settle a dispute over a decision, whether we agree or disagree with it. I don't support that. I guess I really have some concern that a government would let that happen.

When I read the comments in the paper from the people who are suggesting that, they also make some suggestions as to what could have been changed that would have avoided this in the first place. I think that's a fundamental problem that I have with this bill, that, as I look through all -- and we're going to go through some of this -- the Hansards of the committee hearings and go through the Hansards of the presentations made by the minister and the Hansards of questions answered by the Premier, I find that they have not only mandated the plan for the police and fire, but they have made it more difficult than the original plan for all other people within the OMERS plan to have changes made to their plan. That's not necessarily that they would have the same benefits, but that in fact they could have a different plan than what the basic plan is now. Very simply -- and I know, to most watching or to those of us in this Legislature, the numbers don't mean that much -- but the accrual benefits on the new supplemental plan would be 2.33%, whereas the legislation caps the other workers at 1.6%, or under federal law that could go up as high as 2%. Now, no one seems to talk about why the government has decided that it is not appropriate to allow those pension benefits to go to that, if it is the wish of both employer and employee. It makes it hard to see why they would do that.

We've heard the Premier say a number of times, I guess to get by the debacle that we've caused here with an illegal strike on the verge of happening and nobody on the government side coming up with any suggestions of what we should do with that, the detriment that's going to cause in our schools and so forth -- nobody is doing anything about that. I think we need to look at that and say, "Wait a minute. It's right, but isn't there something we could do to make that happen?" If that is strictly to allow the one bargaining unit or the other employees that are not covered by the supplemental plans, together with their employers, to decide that they are going to have a higher level of pension available, I think it would behoove us all if the Premier would -- I think they usually call that "swallow his pride" a little bit and ask all the players to get to the table to see if there isn't a solution we could deal with.
I think, as we go back -- and that's where I was going, back to the start of the process -- we keep hearing from the government side, "We've heard so many presenters and we made so many amendments." I was there for most of them, so I'm not going to deny the numbers, but I guess I also would add what the government side doesn't, "We also have created so many more problems than we started with, after all was said and done."

As we look at the numbers, we see that the presenters weren't evenly split between the people who came in to support the legislation and the people who came in to express their concern about the legislation. In fact, it was overwhelmingly people coming forward to oppose the legislation. You would then suggest that the government's amendments would have dealt with those areas that were important to the majority of the presenters.

The main amendment makes the issues that were brought forward by the vast majority of the presenters, one being the cost and the other the ability to administer or to create further pension benefits beyond the ones that are within the bill. Those two items in the new bill are -- in fact, it's more difficult to get more supplemental plans. The issue of the supplemental plans, when we were in the original one, required a process within the new board to create supplemental plans. It was there as an ability to do, but it was not a mandate to do. The amendments caused it to be a mandate and, of course, that relates to the presentations from -- I can't say for a certainty, but I would suggest that near to 100% of the municipal presenters would have included somewhere in their presentation an issue with the cost of these benefits. We'll get to that later, too.

We have to remember that the primary reason why the municipal governments were objecting was the cost. The primary reason that a large portion of the workers are upset with this final result has to do with cost, but it's primarily not treating all the members in the OMERS plan the same. I used the words "the same"; I think it's rather important, because I think that's the message that's out there. I think there are differences in different occupations of different people, so being the same and being fair are not necessarily the same thing. I think it's important to distinguish that. The concern was with what was being distributed. The message that the government was sending out was in fact that we were going to treat one group, in their minds, better and give them greater ability to get higher pensions than other groups, and that was wrong.

I have here a quote from a letter. It was sent out by the minister. After the first set of hearings, this related to the problems that the municipalities have put forward about the cost of these new pension benefits. The letter was sent out in December. It says, "Bill 206, if passed, will not" -- and "not" is highlighted -- "impose any new cost or pension benefit on any employer or employee. It will require that the proposed new sponsors corporation set up, within 24 months, a supplemental benefit plan that will include the optional pension benefits outlined in the bill."

I don't know how we could suggest in one sentence that there are no pension benefits in this bill and there is absolutely no cost in this bill, and then say they will have to put this in place within 24 months. Obviously, there is at least, as the minister said, a point of discussion, a difference of opinion, on whether this bill will in fact increase the cost and increase pension benefits for someone.

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I would think that when we speak -- and the government has, and I'm not disagreeing with them on it, that police and fire deserve extra benefits. If police and fire deserve extra benefits in this bill, then I would say that the wording that there are no extra benefits in this bill is somewhat erroneous. That's I think what's causing, if nothing else, confusion in the general public as to what is happening with this bill, because it does deal with being able to create supplemental pensions.

To clear up the confusion for a lot of the pensioners who are involved with this bill, we need to do more in getting the message out as to what this bill does. At this point I'm not suggesting that I totally agree with the minister. But if the minister is right in that there is no problem with this bill, he should sit down with each one and explain what this bill does and everyone would then become happy. I think he should do that before we bring it to the House and pass it and then go on with life, and find out that all these folks have not had it explained at all. It was mentioned by someone else that they had CUPE representatives in to see them last Friday. I too had the privilege of having a group in my riding come to our office. I would say that as we spoke to them, there was some misunderstanding about some of the items in the bill that they interpreted differently from the way the government has been interpreting them.

I want to clarify that there was no mistake about it: The union that represents these workers says that it will be ever more difficult for future contracts or future employees to increase and get supplemental benefits. There is no doubt that it will be more difficult after this bill to get supplemental benefits for a CUPE worker than it is today. That's what their concern is as they're bargaining, and the government has said that it's all part of the bargaining process. The supplemental plans are not a given above wage increases. This will be negotiated when we negotiate pay. If that's the case, I think all workers within the OMERS plan want that ability. If it's negotiated, if it's not imposing it on anyone, then why would you restrict it for one and not the other?

The other concern, of course, is the issue that the police and fire supplemental plans are connected to the arbitration system, I guess is the way to do it. If, after negotiations, the two parties, the employer and the employee, cannot come to a conclusion on the settlement of a contract, then it goes to arbitration, and then of course an arbitrator decides what the end result will be.

A lot of employer stakeholders have a concern with that because they believe that if they are, as they appear to be, totally opposed to negotiating supplemental plans for police and firefighters, the arbitrators will, I guess, arbitrarily include that in a settlement. Again, that's not any different from the way the present contracts will be settled as they relate to police and fire. But that would not happen in a CUPE contract, because obviously they don't have the ability to go to arbitration. They have mediation and then they must come to a settlement.
The issue of the cost: I know that the government hasn't done a sufficient job of pointing out the inevitable cost to the plan. It may be a cost that's not justified. It may be a good expenditure of dollars. If we're going to criticize the estimates of the cost that AMO made on the employer side -- the employees made estimates that are drastically lower than AMO's numbers. Obviously, one of them is not right, so I think it behooves the government, which actually put forward this bill, to come up with those figures of what the cost really is.

As recently as yesterday, again we had the opportunity of being at the ROMA/OGRA conference at the hotel uptown. The minister was there, and there were some questions about the cost of the plan. The minister, as he did in the House today, answered the individual at the mike to the extent of "not to worry" -- and I'm paraphrasing -- "because we have an amendment in the bill that says we can only negotiate one benefit every three years -- the first contract and then three years hence and three years hence -- before you can get all the benefits." So it's going to take that long to get to the number that AMO was using and that they said it was going to cost to have this plan. If that's the case, I guess that would mean that, at least at the end of the day, that's how much this plan could cost. If that's the case, I think the government has an obligation to come forward with that.

As we go through this bill, I just want to point out each one. If these things could be done, if the government has this information, if we could present it, then that would allay some of the fears that some of the users in the plan have. If this would help allay their fears, I think it would be appropriate that the government does that in order to stop -- not to concede to, "If you don't give us this, we'll strike," but if we could negotiate it and if the problem is gone, then it's not a matter of who caused it in the first place. If the information is there and people are satisfied, then I would say I'm glad you finally came to the table and talked about it and got things under control.

On the cost, I just want to go through a few of the presenters I found interesting at the committee. We have a number of them here. Of all the presenters, if they were municipal they were concerned about what the impact was going to be on their budget. Across the board, all the presenters agreed that the cost to the municipal taxpayer and to the people who live in the communities in Ontario could be as much as -- somewhere between 2% and 3% of the municipal budget would be affected by these plans. Again, those were the numbers that AMO put forward. The government says that those are not the right numbers, but the government has not put up any different numbers to say that's where it should go.

Dail Levesque, the human resources director for the city of Owen Sound,
made a presentation, and this is what he said:

"Our city budget is approximately $40 million. We get $16 million from taxes. Our current OMERS costs are about $875,000 a year. The cost to the city as a result of these proposed changes will rise from $875,000 to about $1 million or $1.2 million. That's a conservative estimate: $325,000 to $400,000.

"We have lost $2 million in the old CRF funding and the new OMPF funding grants. This loss is not uncommon among municipalities our size due to the failure of the province to consider small urban municipalities and our being sandwiched between the rural needs and the large urban areas.... The province is rushing to reform one of Canada's most important pension funds without a reasonable understanding of the potential repercussions and without sufficient regard to the best interests of employees, retirees, employers, communities and, most importantly, taxpayers, because that's where all of this OMERS money comes from." Then it says, "We respectfully request that the government scrap Bill 206 and go back to what the original OMERS devolution discussions in 2002 entailed; that is, increasing efficiencies in decision-making and streamlining OMERS board appointments."

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I think that is really where this is all coming down to. That's the same philosophy that the minister used when he introduced the bill: that we should introduce the bill and that the bill was going to go back to the original premise of 2002 of devolution. I think the minister mentioned the fact that this had been going on for years and that other governments couldn't get it done. In 2002, in fact, was when the discussion was going on about the devolution of OMERS, but it was not achieved. The minister did come to the table with the same principles to do that, but obviously, at least in the city of Owen Sound's position, he didn't achieve that.
On governance, we have Kenneth Todd; he was the director of corporate services with the city of St. Catharines: "With respect to the governance issue, in terms of the city of St. Catharines, we are not concerned about a movement away from the province's control over the plan to a sponsorship committee, but we don't feel that it's appropriate for the province, as it lets go of that responsibility, to place additional restrictions or conditions on that sponsorship committee before it even gets started." Again, that's what I was speaking to earlier. The problem is that we're giving devolution, but we make sure that they have no big decisions to make, because the province wants to make all those big decisions before they're going to pass the plan over and devolve it.

Again, on representation: "I'm sure you're going to hear this from other groups -- we feel that the representation is dramatically skewed toward certain groups in the plan. For example, CUPE, which has about 45% of the members in the plan, gets one member. Fire has 4.75% of the members, and they get one member." This is the type of discussion that you need to have if you were just devolving the plan. All the players would be in. To the credit of the government, some of that discussion took place because these people made presentations. The representation has changed somewhat, not sufficiently in the eyes of a lot of people, but the representation on the board has changed somewhat between the readings of the bill because these presentations were made. But the government didn't look at the areas where the greatest need for that was.

That same quote goes on about the 4.75% -- that's the firefighters. That means "they have about one tenth of the representation that CUPE has, yet they have one full member at the table. In addition, the police have about 10% of the members in the plan and they get one representative as well. The non-union groups, which many small municipalities across the province have, represent about 20% of members in the plan, yet they get no representation other than the possibility of somebody representing them through the three at-large members." Again, this is the type of discussion that should take place to make sure, as we devolve the plan, that we get these things right. That's the way it was supposed to go.
Here's a quote from Mr. Clarence Zieman. He's the warden of Hastings county and mayor of Deseronto. "My colleagues and I of Hastings county continue to have a very serious concern about this bill. We also share the view that the Eastern Ontario Wardens' Caucus and AMO hold on Bill 206. Let me be clear: We do not support this bill....

"First and foremost, the property taxpayers we represent in Hastings county cannot and should not bear the financial burdens this bill will impose upon them. There is nothing in it for them except new costs to be borne. It should be no surprise to any members of the standing committee that our property taxpayers are increasingly voicing their concerns about how much more they can pay to support local services. We hear it week in and week out at our council meetings. Our taxpayers understand that their contributions fund services like roads and bridges, garbage collection and recreational programs. I believe they are also beginning to understand the significant amounts of property taxes that are subsidizing provincial programs like social services, ambulance and disability programs. That subsidy now stands at $3.2 billion annually," according to AMO.

This goes on. It's all about their frustration with the inability to control their expenses. They see this OMERS devolution as another impediment when it comes to budget time, when it comes to contract time, to their ability to function as they should because of the mandated things they must do.

Another one was brought up by the third party at the committee hearings concerning the voting pattern. We may get to that a little later in the presentation, but it requires a two-thirds vote. If the two-thirds vote fails, we can have another vote, and if half of it passes, if it gets 50%, then it goes to a mediator. If the mediator has a decision, it goes back. If it can pass by a two-thirds vote, then it stays, and if it can't get a two-thirds vote, then for a 50% vote -- I'm not sure how many times we go through that, but when we get to it, I'll have it written down so I'll be able to follow it very closely.

One of the things the third party suggested was that we should have a look at the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, at the teachers' pension plan. We had a presentation from the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation. I suppose that in general terms one would make an assumption on a bill like this, where we have a labour-management debate going on, as the bill was introduced as a devolution bill -- I would suggest that that would have been the two sides of the debate. I don't think it's unreasonable to then assume that the secondary school teachers' federation would likely have made a presentation in support of the workers' side of the bill.

This doesn't actually go there:
"Some of the optimism that we felt is gone. The amendments that have been made to this bill do nothing to address the concerns we brought forward with the details of joint trusteeship. In fact, amendments have, we believe, absolutely undermined the concept of shared ownership and decision-making on the plan's benefits and contributions. Employee plan members will not have an equal say in determining their pension plan with the proposed two-thirds majority vote.... We would conclude that perhaps the best end result of this is that the government itself take over the employer side of the partnership and deal directly with the employee representatives. If the government is going to put forward what we believe is a flawed governance model, then frankly, we believe it would be better for the government to take more direct responsibility."

We have the teachers' federation coming in and saying, "We've looked at what you introduced. We've looked at how you amended it, and, folks, it isn't salvageable. You should go back. If you can't do better than this, you should just leave it alone." I think that's kind of a shame.

I have another quote, and this is another one that's very interesting, because as I said, I'm supportive of it, but the police and fire supplementary plans have been the major part of our discussions at committee and here in this House. We had a presentation from the Police Retirees of Ontario Inc. I have a one-liner on that. I find it rather interesting. "Bill 206 is cumbersome and unworkable and will create more problems than it is intended to resolve." I think that's quite an indictment by the retired police services who have got to the pension plan.

We see that it's not all one-sided, even in the objections. We have a lot of people on the receiving side of the pension plan who have grave concerns that are as plentiful as those who are on the management side.

The Canadian Auto Workers: "We're very concerned, of course, with Bill 206 and the revisions that were made to it. We believe that this revised bill is actually worse than the first one, and we also believe that our members are worse off under this bill than compared to the status quo arrangement." We have the auto workers coming in and saying, "If this is the best you can do, don't do it." That's plain and simple.

This is the side of the bill that, when it was introduced, was considered a housekeeping bill, with amending and putting a lot of time in -- I was going to say "putting a lot of effort in." Everybody is coming in and saying, "We presented last time. We made some recommendations. Now let's see what you've done," and the answer is, it is worse than it was before.

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I have another one here that I find interesting. It was from the city of Mississauga, the mayor. The name will come to me in a few moments, but --

Interjection: Hazel McCallion.

Mr. Hardeman: Oh, that's right. Hazel McCallion was in and made a presentation on behalf of the city. She said, "I'm not sure I'm pleased to be here today. I thought maybe the last time we were here we might have done some good, but when I read the changes that were made, it went from bad from worse, so it forced me to come back because of the grave concern."

Now we've got the labour side and we've got the management side coming in and saying, "I didn't want to have to come back. I thought I gave you all the advice I could. But it was so bad, I decided I had to come back again and see if I couldn't convince you to do it."
Now, this one is the other side. Again, I don't condone or support the approach that we're using but, at the same time, this was the presentation made by Mr. Sid Ryan:
"My name is Sid Ryan. I'm the president of CUPE Ontario....
"Let me begin my remarks by saying that I guess it's only the Liberals in Ontario who could put Hazel McCallion and Sid Ryan on the same page when it comes to the radical surgery that's required with this legislation. Clearly, you've strayed far away from the indications that at least the Premier gave to me when he first got elected, that he wanted to get both parties to sit down and negotiate what a pension plan governance model would look like."

After attempting to get the Liberal McGuinty government to talk to them, " ... we find ourselves being invited to a press conference held by all the people" -- Hazel McCallion and Sid Ryan.

I think that really says it. I wasn't there to know whether the Premier promised to have negotiations with them prior to this, but obviously if the players that are so opposed to this piece of legislation now believe that that would be helpful, to get to the table and have some discussions, and think that there is some way of meeting some of the irreconcilable differences, I think we should do that.

I have a quote here from Mayor McCallion at the press conference they held. It went so far that Sid Ryan and Hazel McCallion did hold a joint press conference.

"Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion criticized a provincial bill that would reward Toronto's police officers and firefighters" -- and I'm not sure why it's just Toronto -- "with a better retirement package than other government workers covered under the Ontario municipal employees retirement system....

"She said the plan will force cities to raise property taxes by up to 3% to cover the costs.
"`I beg the Premier to do his homework on it because, if it goes through the way that it is planned, I can assure you it will be a property tax increase.... We have done the calculations.'"

Again, I'm not suggesting that the calculations that all the deputants were talking about are accurate. I don't know how many times I asked for the government's projections, and I'm sure they wouldn't make a major pension bill change like this to one of the biggest pension plans in the province of Ontario without doing some calculations as to the financial impact. I understand we have put in a request under freedom of information to get the numbers, but so far we have been unable to get the government to turn over the numbers that they would have received when they decided to proceed with this bill.

I also want to say that our leader, John Tory, has asked this government day after day to come back to the table. Again, I think, along with all the players within the bill, those members on this side of the House believe that we should do all we can to negotiate an equitable pension plan to replace the present OMERS structure. If that requires taking a little longer, if that requires saying, "Let's hold off and see if we can't get more of the issues dealt with," then I think that's what should be
done. John wrote to the official opposition just to keep them talking.

I had the opportunity to be on a panel last Friday night. My good friend Mr. Duguid, the parliamentary assistant, was there with me. When asked about holding it up -- or slowing it down, I suppose is the right word -- but having some discussions with all the players, the parliamentary assistant said, "Well, it's too late for that, because it's in third reading. You can't make any changes in third reading because that's how the House process works." I don't purport to be an expert on process here, but I was told not too long after I arrived that when you have unanimous consent, you can do anything in this place that this House wants to do. I'm sure, if the Premier could get the parties together and come up with some changes that would avoid the work stoppage that's going to dramatically negatively impact the population of this province, if we can do anything to stop that from happening by getting the people together and negotiating something different than what's on the table, I'm sure that there would not be much opposition to that from anyone in the House. I don't think anyone wants whatever the solution is to be achieved by causing this much hassle in our society. I'm sure that that could be arranged.

The problem is, the Premier, when questioned about it, keeps insisting that we have reached the negotiated settlement. This is as close to a negotiated deal as he believes his government can achieve. I'm here to say that if this was a negotiation without the ability to arbitrate, this is not where this process would stop. I don't think in any negotiation process you would stop the negotiation and say, "This is as far as we're going," if at that point neither side would say it that way, neither side suggesting that proceeding with the bill the way it is is better than doing absolutely nothing at all. I think this really is the wrong way to go.

To go back, as I said I was going to do, when the committee hearings started, the Minister of Municipal Affairs came in to present to us what the intent of the bill was and what he hoped to accomplish with the bill. The cause was noble, but the results were dismal. Anyway, I just thought I would go over that, and he makes supportive remarks for the staff that were with him. It says, "On June 1, I introduced for first reading Bill 206, An Act to revise the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Act. It's my pleasure to now bring this bill to this committee. If passed, our legislation will enable OMERS stakeholders to determine for themselves what is best for their future."

I think on that part my problem is where it says, "It will enable OMERS stakeholders to determine for themselves what is best for their future." If that's right, then I can't understand why the majority of the debate is about changing the plan to affect the people in the plan. There is absolutely no connection with the provincial government -- no cost, no liability, no benefit. There is nothing for the provincial government in the change that we're talking about here. In the devolution, there may be; I'm now talking about the supplemental plans. This is an issue that is, in its entirety, there for the purpose of the stakeholders in the plan: employer, employee, and the different types of employees. In my mind, if the intent was to let the stakeholders in the plan -- which the province is not -- make the decision for themselves what is best for their future, then this bill doesn't do that. I would suggest that that should have been one of the first amendments: to make sure that nothing was going to happen because of the devolution; that in fact we provide in the devolution the ability of the stakeholders of the plan to make the changes that they deem appropriate. Having said that, those changes may very well be the same changes that the province is now making, but I don't believe they should be making them if their intent is to allow the plan participants to do it.

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This is kind of a history lesson, I suppose: "OMERS was established in 1962 as the pension plan for employees of local governments in Ontario. Today, OMERS is the pension plan for about 355,000 current and former employees. They are from a diverse range of about 900 employers, which include municipal governments, school boards, police service boards, children's aid societies and other local agencies throughout Ontario. The plan members are represented by about 50 different unions." OMERS manages approximately $39 billion in assets. This points out the magnitude of the plan and the impact that a mistake is going to have on the future of the people in the plan.

Then he says, "At this time, I'd like to share with you the government's intentions regarding the bill and the legislative process that we're currently engaged in." Then he speaks about how this bill, if passed, "will devolve governance responsibilities from the province and, instead, place responsibility for the plan with those who pay for it, who pay into it and who benefit from it. We believe that devolving the responsibility of OMERS governance will place greater authority in the hands of the contributors." Going back to that statement, the total purpose of this plan was to devolve the operation of the plan so the people who own it make the decisions about it.

It goes on: "Over the last two years, our government has built a new relationship with our municipal partners, one that acknowledges their expertise and fosters municipal autonomy. This bill is another example of how we are providing municipalities, along with other members of the municipal sector, an opportunity to make their own decisions in areas that impact them." Again, we heard from Hazel McCallion and all the municipal people. We heard from labour and the CUPE folks, and that's what they're saying: "We want to be able to make the decisions, which the minister said this bill was going to do. Allow us to make the decisions as they impact our lives and our pensions."

The last line of that paragraph says: "In response to requests over the years by stakeholders, this bill, if passed, will give the members control over their own plan." But the municipalities tell us that the plan they'll be given is going to be, in their opinion, an uncontrollable plan that they have to deal with.

Then we get to the next paragraph, and I guess we get to the part where we keep our promises. That's why I think it is rather an important section, because it's not necessarily a common thing from the government that we can have a bill where we are actually keeping a promise. "This bill also addresses a commitment made by Premier McGuinty, while Leader of the Opposition, in response to that report, and addresses several issues that remain outstanding in the report." Again, this deals with the supplementary plans, and I commend the minister for dealing with that. Again, a promise made, a promise kept.

But in this paragraph, he does refer again to the 2.33% accrual rate cap. The reason I mention that one is because nowhere in here does he talk about, as an intent of the plan, capping the rest of the plan at a lower rate. When I say "lower rate," I'm not suggesting that all the rates have to be the same, but why would we have one that is going up, as mentioned in his presentation, and then, as we review the bill at committee, we find that they are actually locking in the other pensions at a lower rate than the federal government suggests should be the cap?

As we go through the bill -- I don't want to go through the whole Hansard, but there's a paragraph here: "At this time, I would like to summarize some of the key events that have taken place between the time the legislation was introduced and these hearings. Ministry staff conducted technical briefings for stakeholders so that they would have a clear understanding of the draft bill and would have time to productively discuss this issue within their respective organizations." I don't know whether it's a play on words, but my problem with that is the part -- incidentally, the ministry did a good job in explaining to us at committee. The minister's staff conducted technical briefings for stakeholders, so it would seem to me that he's suggesting that he already had the bill written before he talked to the stakeholders. Then he went around and had technical briefings to tell the stakeholders what he was going to do.

Of course, in my vision, that's not the way you go out and consult to find out what the stakeholders think is the appropriate thing to do. You gather that, you put together a piece of draft legislation and then you review it with them. I suppose that's why we generally do not have public hearings after first reading; we generally have public hearings after second reading. The minister decided we needed them after first reading. I suspect it's because of that section that he had to have them after first reading, because when they did the technical briefings, they immediately found out that the stakeholders, the people who were going to get this plan devolved to them and the people who were going to create the new plan, didn't like it and didn't believe that what was being proposed was the right thing to do.

Then the minister says, "What is quite clear is that various OMERS stakeholders have different views on many matters relating to the bill. We are pleased that these hearings are being held, and that there will be an opportunity for full input. We expect and encourage debate on this legislation."

Again, that's a good idea. I support that. I also thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to be part of the debate as we debate this bill this afternoon.

The problem is that having public hearings is not just about allowing people to speak; it's about listening to people and then trying to accommodate as many of those requests as is appropriate in order to still accomplish the goals the minister has sent in. I believe that if the minister had taken the time and reviewed all the presentations and made all those changes they were asking for, even if he left out the ones that were going to negatively impact others, we would have had a much better bill.

In the few moments I have left, I want to say that the one area that really struck me as strange as we went through it -- and, as we mentioned earlier, the New Democratic Party put forward a number of amendments to change this -- had to do with the part that requires the ability of other participants in the plan to have supplemental plans, and the need of the voting, the two-thirds majority. Municipalities said that if you have supplemental plan abilities, you should have at least a two-thirds vote, or unanimity. CUPE said it should never be more than 50% plus one. At that point, the police and fire also said it should never be more than 50% plus one. When they were looking at the amendments, they decided to go with the two-thirds vote, but that would create a problem with the supplemental plans. They were all in agreement that they were going to be in the plan, so we mandated them. So they are there now. They do not require any vote.

What's interesting is that the municipalities looked at those amendments and said, "If we don't have the ability to have the two-thirds vote on the mentioned supplementary plans, the two-thirds vote on the rest is somewhat irrelevant." They never expressed a concern that they needed more than 50% plus one to deal with supplemental plans in the rest of the plan. It was only in the area where they were arbitrable that they wanted that two-thirds vote. In fact, the change could quite easily have been made back to the 50% plus one and made a lot of other people within the plan more content with the way the plan was written. But that was not done. I think that's the problem I have when the minister speaks about the intent to devolve the plan over to the people who can manage and control it. After we heard from the public, there were areas where that could have been done to accommodate what he heard. The minister came to the conclusion, "No. We have a plan and we have already made 100 amendments. We're not going to make any more. We're going to fly by the seat of our pants and we're going to implement the plan the way it's written." I think it's wrong, and I think they should do as John Tory told them: "Hold more meetings to see if we can get a consensus on this. Don't pass it until such time that that's done."

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. You haven't noticed, but I noticed my time's up.
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The Acting Speaker: I regret to say that I noticed it as well. It's time for questions and comments.

Ms. Horwath: I just want to say how impressed I was with the hour's speech by the member for -- what's your riding again?

Mr. Hardeman: Oxford.

Ms. Horwath: The Oxford riding, the number one riding. There you go.

I think it was very instructive in that we finally got some understanding from a member in this Legislature on what the real issues are around Bill 206, because the minister would have us believe that all of this concern out there in the community is for naught, that in fact there's no problem at all with Bill 206, that it's a wonderful bill. Anybody just needs to take a little bit of time to look through the Hansards and they'll find that the vast majority of presenters at committee in both hearing processes didn't think that everything was fine and wonderful with Bill 206. I have to say that the member from Oxford spent a considerable time in his speech trying to outline where the fault lines lie, if you will, in this legislation. I'm looking forward to spending some time discussing that as well.

I think it's ultimately a poor reflection on the minister and the government that they're prepared to bring this seriously flawed legislation forward, particularly when, through tonight's debate and the debate over the next couple of days, we're all going to find out how quite easy it would have been to fix this legislation or at least make it palatable for the people who are very concerned about their pension plan. Let's face it: Pensions are extremely important to people. Pensions are viscerally important to people when it comes to their ability to retire in dignity and with a decent quality of life. That's why everybody in this chamber, I'm sure, supports the efforts that have been made by a group of employees, particularly police and fire. We want to see the same thing for other workers.