Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): I rise in the House on behalf of John Tory and the PC caucus to welcome the Ontario Association of Police Services Boards to Queen's Park.

The OAPSB met with John Tory and me this morning to explain their key issues in detail. We heard specific examples of how the lack of justices of the peace puts additional pressures on municipal clerks and causes cases to be thrown out of court. We learned, to our great astonishment, that Elgin county doesn't even have a JP and requires video conferencing to London for this service.

We learned that the OAPSB is concerned that Minister Kwinter has left too much up to regulations in his private security legislation, Bill 159. We also learned of yet another Liberal broken promise to the public safety community: the McGuinty promise to allow for local bargaining of some aspects of the pension plan for police and other municipal employees. Before this morning, I hadn't even heard of this Dalton McGuinty broken promise.

Anyone who has watched this House since October 2003 will know that I am fully aware of the McGuinty Liberals' broken promise to put 1,000 new police officers on the streets for community policing. I wouldn't be surprised if the Liberals took advantage of Police Week to deliver some sort of joke reannouncement to make it look like they actually care about keeping their word to police.

The other day we delivered a budget, and the words "police" and "community safety" were not even mentioned in the budget. Imagine how police stakeholders in this province feel about that type of budget. I'm expecting that Mr. Kwinter will make an announcement tomorrow on community safety and policing. I suppose he will reannounce his September 24 announcement on hiring new police, or maybe it will be an expert advisory panel on community policing. Anyhow, we expect some kind of announcement.