Mr Garfield Dunlop (Simcoe North): My question is also for the Minister of Transportation. Your trial balloon on the NDP tax-grab photo radar is still floating around out there. Can you tell us today your position on photo radar?

Hon Harinder S. Takhar (Minister of Transportation): We are always interested in improving the safety of highways, so we are always prepared to look at any measures that will improve safety on highways. That's where this issue falls.

Mr Dunlop: I think I need to refresh the minister's memory on what two of his closest friends had to say about photo radar. On December 17, 1994, Monte Kwinter, your seatmate, and now the minister responsible for community safety -- what I mean by "community safety" is the policing of school zones, construction zones, hospital zones and our highways and streets. This is what Mr Kwinter had to say in the Toronto Sun: "All it's really done has made the coffers of the treasury swell with amounts of money that are starting to verge on the obscene." And just this year, your Ottawa Senators Premier, Dalton McGuinty, told reporters on the cabinet scrum, "It's a revenue generator, absolutely." Do you agree with your cabinet colleagues that photo radar is just another way for you to pick the pockets of hard-working people in this province and that it's not about community safety?

Hon Mr Takhar: As I said before, we consider highway safety a top priority. I want to quote from what Mr Runciman said once: "Maybe we should take another look at photo radar in those areas to monitor that sort of thing, because police can't be there 24 hours a day and that's part of the problem." So I'm sure if he's going to listen to his colleagues, I am very delighted to listen to my colleagues.