Mr. Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): My question today is for the Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services. It's about outstanding order paper questions. Minister, in late June you received five questions that should be simple for your ministry to answer. You've had all summer to prepare the answers, and last week we were informed that the answers would not come until on or about December 15, the day after the House is scheduled to adjourn. Minister, you should be ashamed of yourself for this blatant attempt to cover up information.

Like Bill 107, you are muzzling Parliament. Not only do you not answer questions in question period, now you don't have the courage to answer order paper questions when the House is sitting. Minister, can you explain to the citizens of Ontario why you can't answer order paper questions that were tabled six months ago?

Hon. Monte Kwinter (Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services): I thank the member for his question. I don't know the order papers that he's referring to, but I will certainly look into it and guarantee the member that I will get a response for him.

Mr. Dunlop: If that is the case, I hope you will be able to get that answer by the end of this week. Many of the questions involve the costs associated with Caledonia. They included how the funding was allocated for the 1,000 police officers in the province because, as you know, the Ontario Provincial Police received not one of those police officers unless they were under municipal contract policing. Those are the kinds of questions we wanted answered. We didn't want to see this House run until December 15 and then prorogue, and you not ever having to answer the questions. Minister, can we expect those by the end of this week?

Hon. Mr. Kwinter: Now that you've given me an idea of the kinds of questions you're asking, I can understand why you didn't get the answers. Just so you'll know, when we talk about Caledonia, we have tabled the ballpark figure on that. We are in the middle of the fiscal year; we don't have them broken down to that point.

The other thing is about funding for the OPP officers. As you correctly said, those who are under municipal contract were included, but for us to include funding for officers who are already covered in our budget is like taking the money out of one pocket and putting it in the other. We are already funding them 100%, so why would we provide money to fund them additionally?

Now I understand why those questions haven't been answered.