1980 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 32nd Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1980

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

3331 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Hospital staff shortage. Mr. Cocke –– 3331

Stay of proceedings in Bellas v. CIPA Industries et. al. Mr. Lea –– 3331

Mr. Lauk –– 3332

Parimutuel tax. Mrs. Wallace –– 3332

Educational television equipment. Mr. Lauk –– 3333

Ministerial Statement

Pre-build portion of Alaska gas pipeline.

Hon. Mr. McClelland –– 3333

Mr. Barrett –– 3333

Routine Proceedings

Committee of Supply; Ministry of Health estimates. (Hon. Mr. Mair).

On vote 114: minister's office –– 3335

Mr. Cocke

Mr. Lea

Ms. Brown

Mr. Hanson

Division on a motion that the committee rise –– 3346

WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1980

The House met at 2 p.m.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Prayers.

MR. BARRETT:

Mr. Speaker, I have two guests in the House today from the great

constituency of Vancouver East, the constituency that has 60 percent of

its residents as homeowners without mortgage — hard-working people in

Liberson. I ask the House to welcome them.

HON. MR. ROGERS:

Mr. Speaker, Dr. Murray Newman, who actually needs no introduction to

members of this House, is here with us today. He is accompanied by Mr.

Ralph Shaw. Would members please make them welcome.

MR. HANSON:

Today in the members' gallery is a constituent of mine whose mother is

here visiting from Ireland, Mr. McKelvey and Mrs. McKelvey. Would the

House make them welcome, please.

MR. SEGARTY: Mr.

Speaker, in the members' gallery this afternoon is a guest from

Castlegar, Nesta Hale. Also in the gallery is the next MLA for

Nelson-Creston, Wally Penner, and his wife Dianne. I'd like the House

to welcome them.

MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, in your gallery today is a visitor from Prince Rupert, Phyllis Hankinson. I'd ask everyone to make her welcome.

MS. BROWN:

Visiting us from the province of Alberta is the president of the New

Democratic Party, Mr. Ray Martin, accompanied by his wife Cheryl

Matheson. I wonder if the House would join me in bidding them both

welcome.

MR. PASSARELL: There are two guests today from New Aiyansh: Nancy Bansgrove and her son Ashley.

MR. LAUK:

I have the honour to introduce to the House my cousin, who is in the

Speaker's gallery today, Bernard Morasky. Please make him feel welcome.

Oral Questions

HOSPITAL STAFF SHORTAGE

MR. COCKE:

Mr. Speaker, I have a great surprise. I have a question for the

Minister of Health, not the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing (Hon.

Mr. Chabot), because he doesn't know how to answer questions.

I brought to the minister's attention that each administrator of the hospitals

had authority to shut down the emergency

section of a hospital when they can't

safely cope with further admissions. Last night St. Paul's emergency ward

was so crowded it had to be closed. Vancouver General's emergency ward was

in the same state. Mount St. Joseph's emergency ward closes normally at

11 o'clock p.m. Ambulance drivers and supervisors were negotiating to get

patients in. A supervisor had to be called to get a stabbing victim into St.

Paul's. Cardiac patients were left on stretchers in the hall at VGH.

Mr.

Speaker, in view of the events last night, does the minister now admit

that there is a crisis in emergency care in Vancouver?

HON. MR. MAIR: No, Mr. Speaker.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, a few days ago the minister said: "I do not think it is accurate to describe the situation as a crisis."

I ask a supplementary. Part of the cause of the emergency

problem in Vancouver is the low priority assigned to the building of

the new emergency centre at VGH. Has the minister decided to expedite

that completion?

HON. MR. MAIR: My understanding is

that the new emergency ward at VGH will open in the spring of 1981, and

that it is proceeding at the pace that one could expect — at the

appropriate pace. As to the rest of the statements made by the member

opposite and the concerns that he has raised, without in any way

admitting the truth either of them or of the suggestions behind those

statements, Mr. Speaker, I'll be glad to take them as notice, look into

the matter, come back to the House and advise.

MR. COCKE:

Just to quote the minister, for a second, from the Blues of July 10,

1980: "It is necessary for hospitals to ask ambulance drivers to divert

patients to other hospitals for a period of time. This is only done

after hospitals in the vicinity have been contacted and alerted to

ensure that they are able to provide the service." Last night they were

all full. Mr. Speaker, what does the minister propose under those

circumstances?

HON. MR. MAIR: Mr. Speaker, I propose to take that question as notice and look into the matter and report back to the House, as I indicated.

STAY OF PROCEEDINGS IN

BELLAS V. CIPA INDUSTRIES ET. AL.

MR. LEA: I have a

question to the Attorney-General, Mr. Speaker. A fisherman from the

Queen Charlotte Islands, Frederick Charles Bellas, laid charges against

CIPA Industries Ltd., formerly known as Queen Charlotte Timber Ltd. The

charges were also laid against Jack Biickert of the provincial Forest

Service; against Thomas Michael Apsey, the Deputy Minister of Forests;

and against Waldo E. Johnson, an employee of the federal government. On

June 25 the provincial Crown entered a stay of proceedings in the Queen

Charlotte provincial court. Why did the Attorney-General instruct

counsel for the Crown to enter a stay of proceedings?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I did not give instructions to regional

Crown counsel with respect to the entry of the stay of proceedings;

they did so within the authority that they exercise as Crown counsel.

Stay

of proceedings was entered in this particular case because the charges

were brought under subsection (1) of

section 31 of the Fisheries Act,

but subsection (2) of

section 31 provides a statutory defence, in that

the conduct which is brought into question had the approval of the

federal minister. That's a statutory defence, and therefore the case

could

[ Page 3332 ]

not be successful and it was an appropriate instance for the exercise of the power of stay.

MR. LEA:

I have a supplementary question. Reading from the transcript of June

25, Queen Charlotte City, Masset court file, page 3, Mr. Miller,

representing the provincial Crown, says: "I need not have specific

instructions from the Attorney-General for the stay of proceedings; I

can assure Your Honour I have specific instructions from the minister.

I don't need to make those available to the public; I don't need those

available to anybody. This matter of directing a stay is a matter

between myself and Madam Clerk."

Was Mr. Miller telling the truth in that court?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

Mr. Speaker, all I can do is to repeat the response that I gave to the

member at the outset. I did not give specific instructions that a stay

of proceedings be entered in this particular case. It is the authority

of Crown counsel to do so, and it is not a matter that needs to be done

in an open court; it is done between Crown counsel and the clerk of the

court.

MR. LEA: On a supplementary, Mr. Miller, in

court, said that he had specific instructions from the

Attorney-General; the Attorney-General says he did not. Can the

minister then tell this Legislature what he thinks is going on? Why did

Mr. Miller say in the court that he had specific instructions from the

minister, when indeed the minister says he did not? Can the minister

explain how that would have been?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

Mr. Speaker, I can't explain it; but I'll be happy to take the question

as notice and ascertain from Mr. Miller precisely what he said and what

he intended by his remarks.

MR. LAUK: My

supplementary is to the Attorney-General, with respect to that

section

of the Fisheries Act. Although a statutory defence may appear in the

section, that defence was never pleaded by those accused, because the

charge did not proceed to trial before a court. A citizen is entitled

to initiate prosecution under provincial and federal statutes, and if a

justice of the peace accepts that information, even though it is

against the Crown, under the law the case should proceed without

interference. Is it the policy of the government to deny such justice

by instructing counsel in their employ to enter stays of proceedings?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

Counsel who have responsibility for the conduct of the case will

exercise the power of stay in the exercise of their proper discretion.

I suggest that what the member is telling the House is inappropriate.

It is not necessary to wait until the matter has been pleaded. If a

statutory defence exists, that is a factor to be taken into account,

and a stay would be properly introduced at that time.

MR. LAUK: The facts as stated by the Attorney-General do not accord

with the facts of the case. Mr. Evans, on behalf of the prosecutors, the informants,

did not agree with regional Crown counsel, who arrived at court uninvited and

entered a stay of proceedings. In other words, the lawyer in charge of prosecuting

the offence disagreed with the stay of proceedings. In those circumstances,

is it the policy of the Attorney-General to instruct regional Crown counsel

to act in that manner?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: It is the policy of the Attorney-General to have stays of proceedings entered in all appropriate cases.

MR. LEA: Had the Attorney-General read this transcript prior to my bringing it to the House's attention?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

MR. LEA:

When I asked whether the Attorney-General had directed a stay of

proceedings, was he aware that in court Mr. Miller had said he did?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

PARIMUTUEL TAX

MRS. WALLACE:

My question is also for the Attorney-General. Over a long period of

time the horse-racing industry has requested a 2 percent reduction in

the parimutuel tax rate. In other jurisdictions where this has been

done, the dollar revenue generated has increased for both the industry

and the government. Did the Krasnick report on the racing industry

recommend this reduction?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

MRS. WALLACE:

Instead of doing this, the government has designated part of the tax to

go to increasing the B.C. Bred Owners Bonus by 100 percent, although

this increase was never requested in any of the racing industry's

submissions. Does the Krasnick report recommend this?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

What the member refers to as the Krasnick report is, in fact, an

interim ministerial report undertaken by the Ministry of the

Attorney-General and the Ministry of Finance. The recommendations in

that report were given very careful consideration. It was my pleasure

and that of the Minister of Finance to indicate that we are prepared to

give special assistance to the horse-breeding industry in this province

by improving the Breeders' Incentive Fund and the B.C. Bred First

Settlement Fund. I would have thought that the member, as the principal

agricultural critic of the opposition, would have risen in her place to

express pleasure at this move rather than to provide more money for the

operators of racetracks.

MRS. WALLACE: The

Attorney-General seems unnecessarily exercised. I'm not saying what I'm

wanting; I am simply asking questions. He represents the government. I

am trying to find out whether or not the report recommended it. He has

not answered that question. I would ask the Attorney-General if he

agrees that doubling the B.C.-bred bonus is giving tax dollars to a

select group of thoroughbred owners.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

If I didn't answer the member's question with respect to what was

recommended, the answer is yes. Special financial assistance is given

to those people in this province who invest their money in the breeding

of horses and achieve the standard that will entitle them to be

successful on the racetrack.

[ Page

3333 ]

MRS. WALLACE: While the horse-racing industry had asked for the incentive

fund to be increased — and I congratulate the government on doing that — I am

not aware of any requests from any segment of the racing industry to double

the B.C. Bred Owners Bonus. The minister, I understand, has assured me that

the Krasnick report did recommend the doubling of the B.C.-bred bonus for owners

of B.C.-bred thoroughbreds, which has taken place. I wonder whether or not the

minister would undertake to file that report with the Legislature.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS:

As I indicated at the outset, it was an interministerial report

prepared for government purposes, and will not be tabled in the

Legislature.

EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION EQUIPMENT

MR. LAUK:

I have a question to a minister who is hopefully less secret about the

public's business, the Minister of Education. School District 30 — I

realize the minister is new in his job; that's South Cariboo — has been

trying to obtain authority from the Ministry of Education to replace

its outdated educational television equipment that's using black and

white half-inch format at a cost of about $30,000 to $35,000. The

equipment the district wants to buy is approved by the Provincial

Educational Media Centre. We understand that if the district agreed to

purchase the alternate three-quarter-inch equipment at a cost of

$60,000, shareable funding would be available. Can the minister advise

the House why the government refuses to approve the less costly

equipment at $30,000 as a shareable funding item? Why has he refused to

do so?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes or no.

HON. MR. SMITH: Even a sunshine minister would have trouble following that question, but I'll take it as notice and report back to the House.

MR. LAUK:

A new question to the minister: can the minister tell the House whether

it is now the policy of the government to compel local taxpayers to

pick up the whole cost on such equipment that would be shareable in the

regular way if only the district would agree to purchase the expensive

items that the government is forcing them to purchase?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon; member, I find very little difference between the two questions. The first one has been taken on notice.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I wish to make a short ministerial statement, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Proceed, hon. member.

PRE-BUILD PORTION OF

ALASKA GAS PIPELINE

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: After the House was given yesterday a motion of

urgent importance dealing with the pre-build matter, I was quite surprised that

there were no questions on it in today's question period; yesterday it was

the most urgent matter facing British Columbia.

thought that I might just set the record straight for a moment. I don't

wish to reflect on any ruling by the Chair or any comments that the

Chair has made, but in going through Hansard

today I noticed these words in the presentation made yesterday by the

member for Rossland-Trail (Mr. D'Arcy): "The B.C. government has made

no effort to protect the interests of B.C. by way of making a public

declaration of opposition to the pre-build." Then he went on to make

further....

Interjection.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Yes, it's a ministerial statement, Mr. Speaker.

wish to say that opposition was given in public on at least two

occasions and probably on many others, and it was there for the

opposition and for all other Canadians to see and to read about in

their newspapers and press releases if they had taken the opportunity

to do their homework. The first such public opposition was made on July

10, 1979, at the export licensing hearings. The second major

intervention was made by the province of British Columbia in an oral

presentation on March 24, 1980.

MR. BARRETT: On a

point of order to clarify this, Mr. Speaker, the minister is responding

to a motion that was defeated in this chamber yesterday. He is quoting

directly from a motion that was defeated. I want to go on record in

pointing out that in discussing that specific subject we are now

entering the possibility of a debate in the traditional response to a

ministerial statement.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members,

the point raised by the Leader of the Opposition is a most valid one.

While a ministerial statement permits certain latitude, it does not

permit the opening of a debate, particularly on a matter that was

decided as late as just yesterday.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, I fully accept that from the Leader of the Opposition and from you. I made mention of one sentence in Hansard , and I will not refer to it again.

statement refers to the opportunities that British Columbia had, which

were questioned in the newspapers yesterday and on other days. The

people of British Columbia have a right to know that British Columbia

made several interventions in regard to this matter, which has become

somewhat of a public controversy.

In a Telex to Minister of Energy Marc Lalonde on July 7, 1980, I said:

I MUST REITERATE AND AMPLIFY MY CONCERNS RELATING TO THE ALASKA

HIGHWAY GAS PIPELINE. YOU ARE CLOSE TO MAKING A DECISION ON THE PRE-BUILD SECTION.

FOR YOU TO DECIDE TO PROCEED WILL REQUIRE AMENDMENTS TO CONDITION 12 OF THE

PIPELINE REGULATIONS.

Later on we go on to say:

I AM CONCERNED THAT EMOTIONS RATHER THAN LOGIC WILL DICTATE THE

COURSE OF THE EVENTS. IT IS MY VIEW THAT IF THE PRE-BUILD IS AUTHORIZED IN

THE PRESENT SITUATION, THERE WILL BE NO INCENTIVE FOR THE CANADIAN AND U.S.

PROPONENTS TO PROCEED FURTHER.

[ Page 3334 ]

The final sentence in that Telex is:

I STRONGLY URGE THAT YOU DO NOT AUTHORIZE PRE-BUILD UNDER THE

EXISTING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Earlier than that, on July 2, 1980, a Telex was sent to federal Minister of Energy detailing the same kinds of things. I said:

I WOULD REMIND YOU THAT A MATTER OF BRITISH COLUMBIA'S CONDITIONS

RELATING TO OUR SIGNING OF A NON-DISCRIMINATORY BILATERAL WITH OTTAWA REMAIN

UNRESOLVED.

So again we have asked that the variance of condition 12 of the pipeline agreement be put aside.

October 11, 1978, a submission was put forward to the National Energy

Board by the Attorney-General of the province of British Columbia. I

wouldn't bore you with the entire written submission, but it said in

part:

"British Columbia does not object to the

Pan-Alberta proposal per se. In fact, if we were assured as a province

that the total pipeline project would be completed, and on the

understanding that the proposal assists that pre-building of a northern

pipeline, the province would support it. However, we are concerned that

that pre-build would displace British Columbia gas."

In that regard, Mr. Speaker, we put forward a formal intervention to the National Energy Board.

March 24, 1980, a representative acting for the Ministry of the

Attorney-General, Mr. Moseley, who is, I understand, a very prominent

west coast Liberal lawyer, put forward an oral presentation for British

Columbia in which he said that at that time the province of British

Columbia's position remained the same as it was at last year's omnibus

hearing with respect to the overall pre-build project. We don't oppose

the project providing that at the time it goes ahead there is adequate

assurance that the northern portion of the line for the movement of

Alaskan gas will ultimately be built and provided also that B.C. gas is

not displaced out of its U.S. markets.

It might be

interesting to understand what the National Energy Board said in

response to British Columbia's many public interventions. I'll find the

exact quotes so that I don't run the risk of misleading the House. On

page 25 of the National Energy Board's decision it says:

"The

board notes the concerns of the Attorney-General of British Columbia

with regard to the capacity of the United States' pipelines south of

Stanfield, Oregon, but considers the potential transportation problems

identified to be beyond the jurisdiction of the board and to be

problems more appropriately addressed directly by the parties

concerned."

So, Mr. Speaker, on the occasion of reaching

some understanding with our sources in Ottawa that the pre-build was

about to be approved — and may be approved at the cabinet meeting in

Ottawa tomorrow — British Columbia entered into some serious

discussions and negotiations with the government of Alberta to achieve

ways in which those concerns, which had been put forward publicly in

public forums before public national bodies on a number of occasions,

could be achieved. It's with that latter regard that we achieved

agreement with the province of Alberta that a joint committee would be

established, in which, among other things, we will look at ways in

which British Columbia's concerns can be put aside and guarantees can

be put in place that will assure that British Columbia's resource

revenues can be stabilized.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order,

please, hon. members. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum

Resources was allowed considerable latitude in his statement. I allow

the same latitude in response.

MR. BARRETT: Mr.

Speaker, I won't comment too long on the fact that a minister rose to

give a ministerial statement and immediately referred to a motion that,

had it had the government's support yesterday, would have led to a

full-fledged debate rather than a limited response to a minister's

statement, so that every member on both sides of the House, including

the Premier, could participate in this very important subject.

I can expect the courtesy of the House in my responsive statement, I'm

sure the time will go by much quicker. If people wish to interrupt and

yell, let that be a reflection on their own basis in dealing with the

motion yesterday.

I want to deal with a number of the

statements made by the minister. First of all, as I understand his

words the minister has announced in this House that the government of

British Columbia has taken the position that it is unequivocally

opposed to the pre-build

section of a gas pipeline to Alaska as long as

there's no guarantee that British Columbia's markets will, not be

disturbed. I understand the minister said that.

I find it

interesting that neither the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum

Resources nor the Premier found it necessary in coming out of a meeting

with the Premier of Alberta to state publicly in front of the Premier

of Alberta that British Columbia's position is unequivocally opposed to

that pre-build unless it's written in contract that there are no

intrusions.

I am led to believe that the motivation of the

ministerial statement is purely one that the minister has bargained

away B.C.'s position for a cheap weekend meeting on the political

coat-tails of Peter Lougheed and now the affair has come home to worry

the minister.

Interjections.

MR. BARRETT:

I find it interesting that the member has reduced himself to personal

attacks rather than logic. I find it interesting that the interjections

from the government side are most offensive but, nonetheless, I'll

press on.

Mr. Speaker, if I may have your undivided

attention, it is my opinion and the opinion of the official opposition

that the weekend affair between the two governments of British Columbia

has cost British Columbia a strong position in protecting its northwest

gas markets and will be a detriment to the income of British Columbia.

Mr.

Speaker, I am hopeful that, as a consequence of the minister's

latter-day conversion to the awareness of the dangers of losing these

markets, he will appeal to the federal government to protect him and us

from the avarice of the government of Alberta, which is pushing the

pre-build line to expand its own markets into the United States. I find

it ironic, and worthwhile to note, that the government of British

Columbia, which has for the last month been kicking the teeth out of

the federal government, is now crawling on its knees to ask the federal

government to protect it from its neighbour, Alberta.

The

consequences of unthinking, weekend political affairs have endangered

British Columbia's position of protecting its markets, endangered the

British Columbia Pet-

[ Page 3335 ]

roleum

Corporation's position on expanding, and the continued description of

the BCPC as a tax-collecting agency opens the avenue for the federal

government to bypass the protection of Crown corporations that we have

under federal legislation. Mr. Speaker, the debate should have taken

place yesterday. It was out of order because of yesterday's motion to

raise it today. It has been accepted because of a ministerial

statement. Let the record show that it took them 24 hours to understand

that they've lost at the political poker table with Alberta, and placed

British Columbia in a dangerous position with respect to its important

revenues through the British Columbia Petroleum Corporation.

Mr.

Speaker, I conclude by saying that, in my opinion, it will be illegal

for the federal government to proceed with the pre-build

section of the

Alaska pipeline without ironclad guarantees and written contracts from

the United States that they intend to proceed with the completion of

the Alaska pipeline directly to its source of Alaska gas, with a date

of completion attached to that. Any other discussion of prebuild is a

masquerade. It is not a pre-build, but a sellout, and a sellout of

British Columbia's resources and markets. We must stop the federal

government from allowing Alberta to beat British Columbia to the course

of having its own markets protected.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND:

On a point of order, I assume that.... Well, I was going to mention the

little meeting that Mr. Barrett had with Mr. Lalonde. But I was

wondering, Mr. Speaker, about the long-standing tradition of the House

that when a ministerial statement is made, it's generally accepted that

the opposition critic has the opportunity to respond. We all wonder why

the opposition critic was not allowed to respond to the statement from

the minister.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. Your point is not a valid point of order.

Orders of the Day

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Strachan in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

(continued)

On vote 114: minister's office, $165,162.

HON. MR. MAIR:

I'd like, if I may, at the outset today to answer one or two queries

raised yesterday by the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke). Of

course, this is information provided to me.

The first deals

with the question of the Pacifica situation in New Westminster. I

understand — I'm instructed — that its location in the YM-YWCA building

was always considered to be temporary, and it was always proposed that

they have a building of their own. I understand that this training

centre will be built by BCBC, specifically for the purposes of alcohol

treatment, drug abuse, and as a training centre. I understand that

Pacifica is still operated by the Fraser Valley Alcoholism Society.

Yesterday,

as well, the hon. member for New Westminster raised with me the

question of the annual report of the Alcohol and Drug Commission as

tabled in the House and pointed out that he had in his possession a

similar document which was somewhat changed from the one that was

actually ultimately tabled. I now have learned from my staff that what

happened was this: they had printed 4,000 annual reports — that would

be the most that they would have printed in any event — and they were

not completed in time to table in the Legislature in 1979. At that

particular point in time, shortly before the Legislature rose last

year, the Schneider case, while not reaching judgment, had reached the

end of its argument. I am not clear whether it was by agreement with

counsel or just as a matter of policy by the government, but in any

event the compulsory aspect of the Heroin Treatment Program was dropped

at that point. That would be some time in the late spring of 1979.

After the Legislature rose and the Alcohol and Drug Commission

considered the report they had printed, they recognized that it

certainly overstated the case insofar as the Heroin Treatment Program

was concerned because it had in it the compulsory aspect and they

amended it accordingly. I understand that about 2,500 of the 4,000

annual reports then printed were taken apart and new pages were

inserted. The other 1,500 apparently still remain as they are. I

understand also that the total cost of the annual report — that is, of

the 4,000 volumes that were printed — was about $1,400. The cost of the

changes made, as evidenced in the booklet that the member for New

Westminster was kind enough to send me, would have been a very small

fraction of that.

MR. COCKE: I am very pleased that

the minister can come in today well informed on the subject. I would

have been much more pleased if the minister was informed yesterday. The

minister knew nothing about it yesterday, he said. The minister

followed the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon.

Mr. McClelland) into this portfolio. The Minister of Energy, Mines and

Petroleum Resources, who is getting this whole government into trouble

in another area now, has got this minister into trouble just by virtue

of the fact that he didn't tell him that there were two reports. I

suspect that his staff didn't know there were two reports. because had

they known at least he would have been informed on the floor of the

House. I think it is a shocking situation.

I'm going to

deal with Pacifica and I'm going to deal with the alcohol and drug

situation in New Westminster in a moment or two. I want to ask the

minister a question. How many more reports have been either rewritten

or withdrawn? This happened to just fall out of the sky into my hands,

but I wonder how many other aspects of this absolutely criminal waste

of money in the Alcohol and Drug Commission.... I am specifically

charging that it is the Heroin Treatment Program that has been the

author of the problem.

I am going to get back to this dating

thing. The minister says that the judgment, was not down. Let's note

the date of this report. This report is as of March 31, 1979. That is

the dating of the report. The McEachern judgment in the Supreme Court

of British Columbia came down on October 10, 1979. All the arguments

were in, and this department — not under this minister, however —

judged that the case would lose. Therefore they took out all the

sensitive material from the original report, which incidentally was

printed on their own printing press, and substituted therefore the

amended report which we received in this House sometime, I believe, in

April.

I think the minister had better go back to the former

[ Page 3336 ]

minister

and find out just what else has been withheld from him. I suggest that

that minister over there had a deal directly with Mr. Hoskin and other

people running the Alcohol and Drug Commission. I don't think there was

any connection whatsoever with the Ministry of Health. That's why this

minister was under-informed and that's why this minister was not

properly briefed by his predecessor. I think it is absolutely shocking

that he was not briefed properly by his predecessor.

Now let

me suggest one other thing. The minister tells the House today that

BCBC is building the Pacific Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centre in New

Westminster. I've checked with the records in New Westminster — I'm

talking now about the land registry — and that land was held by

Wolstencroft Realty as recently as less than a month ago; I didn't

check it last night, because I didn't think it was necessary. But if

BCBC are building it, maybe somebody should tell them, because my

understanding and the understanding in our community is that not only

is the land held by Wolstencroft, it's being developed by Wolstencroft.

It was certainly a situation that I'm given to understand was rather

peculiar, in that Mr. Hoskin was dealing directly with that as well.

You

see, that's our big problem here: I was rather hoping that the Minister

of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland) would

have continued to be Minister of Health long enough to answer for some

of the chaos that he created. It's very unfortunate that I have to deal

with this minister who, I suggest, was duped by that minister over

there, sold short, not informed, embarrassed — as he continues to

embarrass this government.

I just say that somehow or other

this Minister of Health we now have discovered that he did not like

what he saw around him. When he first became minister he gave Mr.

Hoskin a $4,700 increase — incidentally, retroactive to October 1,

1978, for the first part, and 1979 for the second part. That was before

he knew that things were in disrepair. I suggest that there was a

meeting, and while he still wasn't informed on everything that was

going on in that Heroin Treatment Program, he found out enough. He

became dismayed to the extent that Mr. Hoskin resigned. Then the

minister was quoted as having said: "He's going, he's retiring, and he

deserves a rest." I'll bet you, Mr. Chairman, that that minister wishes

that the rest had been four or five years earlier; but it was the

present Minister of Energy who got us into all the trouble.

So,

Mr. Chairman, with that, I just want to ask the minister: has he very

carefully checked on the Pacifica land? The fact that the "Y " program

— that is, the program at the New Westminster "Y" — had been set up as

temporary in the first place, but the fact that it was working well,

that there was space there, was obviously overlooked. Has the minister

satisfied himself that we should have gone this route? Has the minister

satisfied himself that we should have built a new building when there

was one there available, a staff there available — his own staff —

working within an edifice that was already created and that could have

been run relatively inexpensively, when you consider capital cost,

amortization of that capital cost, and how you're going to pay for that

building plus the program?

Mr. Chairman, as I say, it's

unfortunate that we have to deal with this minister. We would have

loved to have dealt with the former; but we don't have access to him,

so I have to ask the minister these questions. Can the minister tell us

whether he is positive about Pacifica?

HON. MR. MAIR:

May I bring the Chair's attention to the fact that I'm about to be out

of order, if you don't notice that I'm on my feet and recognize me?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Minister of Health.

HON. MR. MAIR: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Dealing

with the last matter first, the Pacifica: no, I have not looked into

the matter personally, Mr. Member; I haven't had the opportunity to.

You raised it with me yesterday — and I think that you would forgive me

for not having that as part of my general knowledge until yesterday —

and I have caused inquiries to be made. I gave you the answers that

were given to me as a result of those inquiries. As a result of what

you have said today, I have asked my deputy to inquire further. We will

do so, and I will get back to you as quickly as can.

Dealing

with the question of Mr. Hoskin and his increase, once again, Mr.

Member, I hope we understand one another. I can only tell you what I am

told. I did not personally give anybody a raise — I understand his

increase came as a matter of a general increase which was going to a

number of order- in-council appointments at that particular time. It

was not any particular reward by me as minister. As a matter of fact, I

would be very surprised if the fact that he'd had an increase in his

salary would have come to my attention as minister. It may have come to

my attention as a member of cabinet. But, as the first member for

Victoria (Mr. Barber) said yesterday, in view of the fact that the

Alcohol and Drug Commission is independent of the Ministry of Health —

although that is the ministry to which it is loosely attached — I

probably would not have known specifically that Mr. Hoskin was getting

that increase. It was certainly not something that I specifically asked

for or had anything particularly to do with.

Dealing with

the question of the report — to the member for New Westminster (Mr.

Cocke) — I think that a little confusion is being caused here, Mr.

Member. The only report that is an official report is that which is

tabled in the House. That's the one you had yesterday that did not have

the tick upon it. There may be other pro forma reports and there may be

other reports that have been completed but not distributed, but they do

not become reports until they are tabled; I think we all know that. I

would just put this to the member: if such a report was made up and not

tabled, yet I took a number of copies and distributed them to my

friends, I'm sure the member opposite would be the first person to

stand up and say that that's quite improper. You are not supposed to

distribute something which is holding itself out to be an annual report

until and unless it is tabled in the House.

I don't know how

the member opposite got a copy of the report that was not tabled, and I

don't care. But the fact of the matter is that it was not the official

report. It was changed, as I understand it. There were three paragraphs

deleted; there was one line deleted in the second paragraph under the

heading, "Heroin Treatment Program."

Let's not get ourselves

sideways, Mr. Member, on the question of the dates. March 31 — yes,

that's the date of the report. The fact of the matter is that it wasn't

tabled until some time after that. March 31 is the date to which it

goes; that's the ending date. I don't remember when it was tabled.

[ Page 3337 ]

Perhaps

the member for New Westminster's memory on this, or his research, is

better than mine, but it seems to me that I tabled the report sometime

this year. I could be wrong, but I think it was in April of this year

that I tabled it. So the date it was tabled is really the key date. The

March 31 date is just a date it happens to have on it because that's

the end of the fiscal year.

My understanding of the sequence

of events in the Schneider case is that when the matter had been argued

but not decided — there being an interval of some four or five months

between the closing of argument and the decision — at that point the

government decided that they would not proceed with the compulsory

aspect of the Heroin Treatment Program — sometime, and I can find out

when, between the day the arguments ended and the day the judgment was

handed down. At that point in time, they made a conscious decision not

to proceed with that aspect of it, although they proceeded with other

parts of it. It was that decision that made the original untabled

report inaccurate to the minor degree that it was. It was that fact

that gave rise to the changes that were made in that report, so that it

now is the report as tabled. I realize that is putting it rather

clumsily, but I hope the member opposite understands.

think that touched all the matters. In any event, on the Pacifica

matter, I'm having the questions that were raised by the member today

checked out further at this point.

MR. COCKE: I think

the minister will likely find that B.C. Buildings Corporation will do

the renting. I hope not. One of the reasons this government set up a

buildings corporation was so that they could develop their own

buildings but amortize them over a longer period of time. The old

Socreds were pay-as-you-go, but this government felt that it didn't

want to do that. That's fair enough. As a matter of fact, I subscribe

to that: a building doesn't have to be paid for the first day, because

it's going to be used for many years to come. I really want to report

on this particular aspect, because if a local developer in New

Westminster is doing this.... When I saw that a non-profit society like

the YM-YWCA, who offered the program proper accommodation, mighty good

accommodation.... For them to lose it so that a developer can put

together a proposition like this would be just a little bit much.

One

other thing: the minister indicated that he didn't know anything about

the Hoskin increase. He signed it; as Minister of Health he signed the

order-in-council.

HON. MR. MAIR: You told me that yesterday. I know that.

MR. COCKE: Oh, but you didn't know you were signing it.

HON. MR. MAIR: No, no. I just don't recall it at this point.

MR. COCKE:

I see. I'm going to read it out to you. It amended the former

orders-in-council by deleting the words — "$3,171 per month, effective

October 1, 1978" and substituting "$3,641 per month, effective October

1, 1979." This was March 4, 1980, so he got a six-month retroactive

raise. I think that the minister probably had a little chat with him

after that, and wished he'd never signed it. But in any event, he did,

so there we are.

HON. MR. MAIR: No, I said I did it as a member of cabinet, not as Minister of Health. I had to sign that. It's in my orders — you know that.

MR. COCKE: You signed it as Minister of Health.

HON. MR. MAIR: Of course I did.

MR. COCKE: Anyway, Mr. Chairman, I hope that when the minister starts

delving around in his Cadillac program called the Heroin Treatment Program

he really takes a good look at the whole province and what they've done

to the morale of drug and alcohol treatment and those who provide that treatment,

and what's happened to these other drug and alcohol centres and to those

societies assisted by the government, Because we know — and I gave you the figure

yesterday — that there were 14,000 people in this province treated for alcohol,

and they can't show us any more than 100 treated for a heroin problem. It's

a disgrace when we consider the money set aside — $14 million over the last

three years, and heaven knows what else — into a program that was absolutely,

totally uncalled for. It is a program uncalled for to keep in place at this

point.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE:

No, that Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr.

McClelland) is trying to get us into the same kind of trouble in energy

as he got us into in health care. I'm sorry for the province.

MR. LEA:

One of the things that the Minister of Health always appears to do is

to try to separate himself — whatever portfolio he's in — from the

Social Credit cabinet. We bring in a report and say: "But this isn't

the original report that came to the ministry." He says: "Well, it is

really; we didn't have time to get it in and all of a sudden here's the

report changed. Take my word for it and trust me; that's the way it

was."

It really isn't that simple. I'd like to point out to

the House that there are many areas in which this government makes the

statement suspect. If this was an isolated case then I'd say: "Sure,

this minister's never spoofed to us deliberately, that we know of, so

why not take him at his word?" But almost immediately, upon their

becoming government in 1976 we had another case of this. I want to

bring this up just to show you the similarity.

We had a

budget delivered in the House by the member for Vancouver–Little

Mountain (Hon. Mr. Wolfe), now the Provincial Secretary. We found out

later that there was one budget for us and another budget printed for a

nice list of other people: two budgets.

MR. CHAIRMAN:

Hon. member, I really must ask you to contain debate within the realms

of the administrative actions of the Minister of Health. If we could do

that, hon. member, the Chair would appreciate it.

MR. LEA:

What I'm doing, Mr. Chairman, is pointing out that this excuse has been

used by government before, and therefore this excuse becomes a little

bit lacking in credibility. It's this excuse that we're examining.

Also, if we were to look at the statement of the minister

[ Page 3338 ]

and

accept it at face value, we have to go back to the minister's own

words. When the Heroin Treatment Act was drafted the minister stood up

and said: "I am proud. I personally, me the minister, had a hand in

drafting the legislation." Yesterday he said he didn't. In 197 8 he

said he did, and two years later he says he didn't — another

inconsistency. We have the government bringing in one budget, then

having another one, printed differently, sent to other places. We have

a whole litany of these "oh, we're sorry, we didn't know" sorts of

things. We have it from Lettergate, from sending out letters with a

forged name on them.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, the

Chair cannot allow that discussion. We are canvassing the estimates of

the Minister of Health. Please, if all members would remain within the

confines of the debate for which this committee has been struck, the

Chair would appreciate it.

MR. LEA: Mr. Chairman, I

believe that it's allowable to use examples to show the point that

you're making. That's all I'm doing. I'm showing examples of why the

statement made by the minister is a little suspect. He cannot be that

island unto himself; he cannot always come into this House and say:

"Please don't confuse the member for Kamloops with the dirty Social

Credit. I'm different; I'm a minister who doesn't do that sort of

thing. Please don't confuse me with the government I belong to."

Another example of it: the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke)

says: "What about Hoskin? Did you agree with his wage increase, and the

retroactivities?" This minister says: "I didn't have anything to do

with it." The member for New Westminster said: "But you signed the

order-in-Council." "Yes, but I signed that as a Crown minister." We

didn't expect that he signed it as a lawyer, or a car salesman, or a

good guy, or a bad guy, or a person who likes to separate himself from

his own government. He signed the order-in-Council, but said he didn't

have anything to do with it. He said: "But I signed that as a Crown

minister." And in the by-play across the House, it's said: "What do you

mean, you signed that as a Crown minister?" "Oh," he said, "I signed it

as the Minister of Health, not as the minister responsible."

There are

too many inconsistencies. On top of that we have the situation that was

described to us in question period by the member for New Westminster,

who said: "Would you consider it a crisis that people are in the halls

waiting to be operated upon and can't get operated upon, and that deals

are made between the ambulance drivers trying to get people into the

hospitals for stab wounds?" He doesn't consider that a crisis. It might

be a good idea, Mr. Chairman, if we could get the minister to stand up

and tell us what a crisis is, in his mind — not, of course, as part of

the government that he belongs to, but apart from the government he

belongs to. He is the minister who doesn't belong to the government.

MR. LAUK: It's a crisis when it affects him directly.

MR. LEA: Well, if it affected him directly it would be a crisis only for him, maybe not for the rest of the people in the province.

MR. LAUK: No, but it would be a relief.

MR. LEA: It might be a relief to the health care industry.

It's

incredible that the minister expects us to view him as a separate

entity — separate and apart from the government that he belongs to —

but he would have us try and do that. He'd like us to forget that there

were two budget reports in 1976, the same as there are two reports of

the one that was tabled here on the Alcohol and Drug Commission. He'd

like us to forget that the Premier jumps out of his car and they say:

"Was there a seatbelt?" The Premier says no, and the TV cameras go in

and there's the seatbelt. Are we supposed to forget all of those

things, Mr. Chairman? Are we supposed to forget the past when dealing

with this minister? We don't separate him from that government. As far

as we're concerned, this minister is as responsible for what that

government did under the former Minister of Health as he is now as a

cabinet member. He cannot separate himself. He is now responsible for

the Ministry of Health, but as a cabinet member he is responsible also

for the actions of that government in terms of health prior to his

taking that portfolio. He cannot separate himself. It's not good enough

to have a minister that says: "I'm okay. Forget what the rest of them

have done. Forget what the government's done. Take my word for it.

There's no problem with the report. It's just a little thing. It just

didn't get in in time. Here it is, and thank you very much. Aren't I

glib?" It's not good enough.

I don't know, Mr. Chairman,

when this minister is going to start accepting the responsibility which

he swore an oath to do. He swore an oath, both in cabinet as a cabinet

member and as the minister responsible for health. So far, all he'd

want us to do is believe he's a good guy, that he's still an old

Liberal, and that he's not responsible for the actions of the Social

Credit coalition that he's a part of. He's not responsible for the

Premier not noticing that there was a seatbelt in the car. He's not

responsible for Social Credit and all of the letters that went out that

were forged. He's not responsible for the 1976 budget which was so

similar to the one we're looking at here now, and the Alcohol and Drug

Commission report.

There's a pattern. I won't mention one

other case, because it's in front of the courts, concerning what the

Social Credit did in misrepresenting the facts to the people. But I

can't see how we can sit here as the people of British Columbia and

have that minister say to us: "Take my word — I'm not part of this

government. I signed an order-in-Council, but I didn't sign it as

myself. I signed it as a minister of the Crown, so don't hold me

responsible. How would I have known about it?" Is the minister

expecting us to believe that he is so incapable, so incompetent and so

stupid that he cannot remember signing an order-in-council giving a

person six months' retroactive wages for $4,700? It's incredible that

he expects us to believe that. He can't have it both ways. Either he

knows what's going on and he won't tell us, which is unpardonable, or

he doesn't have any darned idea what's going on, which is unforgivable.

Either way he's guilty of not carrying out his duties as a Crown

minister and as the Minister of Health.

Don't try to tell

us, Mr. Chairman, that he's not a member of that government, and that

he's separate. He's part of it. He's wallowing in it, and he has to

accept responsibility, the same as any other minister for the

government that he's in.

HON. MR. MAIR: First of all,

let me make it clear that I don't in any way dissociate myself from the

government at all. I'm very proud to be part of the government. If the

government has made errors, then I accept my share of the

responsibility for those errors. I don't know that it's for the

[ Page 3339 ]

member

for Prince Rupert to decide what is error and what isn't, but in any

event errors are made from time to time, some of them serious and some

of them not. If they are made by the government then I bear my

proportion of the blame and I am very pleased to do so. I wish errors

didn't happen but if they do I have no alternative but to accept

responsibility. That is part of my job and I am happy to live up to

that responsibility.

I would like to deal for a moment with

two areas where I have either unwittingly or accidentally misled the

House or the members opposite have misunderstood me; I don't think it

matters much which. I'd like to talk first of all about the Heroin

Treatment Act when it came into the House. I expected that I would be

embarrassed in the House in the last few days by my speech on that

occasion being repeated to me. I took the time to reread it so I was

fully aware of what I said in that speech. When the member for Skeena

(Mr. Howard) said yesterday that I had helped draft the legislation, I

had, and perhaps wrongly, understood him to mean that I had been in on

the entire drafting of the legislation and involved in the actual

wording of each

section and things of that nature, and in other words

had been part of the legislation committee that had drafted it.

fact what had happened — I think I explained it at the time and am

happy to do so now — on the question of the civil liberties and the

incarceration of people suspected of drug addiction is that when the

matter first came to my attention as a member of cabinet I was very

distressed with the wording as it then was and did, indeed, help draft

the sections that eventually came to this House, which are very much

different than the ones that originally came to me. I am sure the

member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) will know that the principal theme

of the speech I made at that time was on the issue of civil liberties.

I was very concerned that people might think I hadn't cared, in making

that speech, about the civil liberties aspect of it, because it was

expected, I think, by some members opposite that I would have been

against the bill on that ground. In any event, to the extent that I may

have misled the members opposite or they misunderstood, I am very sorry.

the question of the order-in-council raised by the member for New

Westminster (Mr. Cocke) today, I don't think that the member for Prince

Rupert could have been listening very carefully. The member for New

Westminster mentioned the order-in-council to me long before I had made

any statement about Judge Bewley's salary. What I said — I think the

Blues will bear this out — was to the effect that I don't think that as

Minister of Health I addressed myself particularly to the question of

Judge Bewley's salary, although as a member of cabinet, no doubt, I

did. That's how I signed the order-in-council. In other words it was a

routine thing. Judge Bewley did not get an increase because the

Minister of Health wanted him to or because I personally in any other

capacity wanted him to. He got one as a matter of course and I signed

it. If I misled the House or the member for Prince Rupert or anybody

else, I am really sorry. I certainly didn't intend to do so but I think

it's more likely a misunderstanding.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

don't know what he means when he says that I would like to forget the

past or that I want the public to forget the past. I suppose there are

a great many members of the public who would like to forget the past

insofar as it involves 1972-75 when those people who are opposite,

including the member for Prince Rupert, were in government.

think that a tempest in a teapot is being created here with respect to

the Alcohol and Drug Commission annual report. I wouldn't normally do

this, but because so much is made of it I would like to read into the

record the changes between the draft — the one the member for New

Westminster mentioned yesterday, marked with a tick — and the one that

was actually tabled in the House.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MAIR:

Be that as it may, I think that the member for New Westminster must

understand that the entire draft was not thrown out. Some pages were

taken out and some pages substituted, which is quite a different thing.

I have already given the explanation that I have been given, which

seems reasonable to me as to why that should happen. The changes which

were made were as follows: The first three paragraphs of what I will

call the draft — just for clarification purposes — were taken out.

Those three paragraphs read as follows:

"The most important event in the development of the Heroin

Treatment Program was the passage of Bill 18, the Heroin Treatment Act, by the

provincial Legislature on June 28, 1978. The act was proclaimed into law on

July 27, 1978. The Heroin Treatment Act provides for the confirmation that a

person referred to the program is 'in need of treatment for narcotic dependence.'

Once this is confirmed it then provides for a period of three years of required

treatment. The act provides for procedures to refer to the individual assessment

by evaluation panels, committal, treatments and sanctions for failure to comply

with the requirements of the act."

place of that there is another

section put in which reads as follows:

"The Heroin Treatment Act, Bill 18, was passed by the provincial

Legislature...." I don't think I have to read this because this is

actually in the tabled copy so it is in the House. That is one change.

The

second change is in the second paragraph under "Heroin Treatment

Program," and the draft read: "Individuals may enter the program when

they come of their own volition, when they are referred by the courts

for assessment or when they are given a notice to appear by a police

officer." That was changed by deleting 13 words and adding another so

that it now reads: "Individuals may enter the program when they come of

their own volition or when they are referred by the courts for

assessment." Once again this is consistent with the fact that by the

time this report was filed the compulsory aspects of the Heroin

Treatment Program were no longer being proceeded with by the government.

The next change is under the heading — and I'm referring again to the draft — "Referral by Police." This says as follows:

"Under

section 13 of the Heroin Treatment Act a police officer

may issue a notice to a person that would require him to attend at an assessment

centre. A police officer would have to have reasonable grounds to believe that

the person was a narcotic dependent before he could issue such a notice. The

person receiving the notice would have 48 hours in which to comply."

[ Page 3340 ]

That

was deleted, because the government, as I said, had decided it would

not, at least for the time being, proceed with the compulsory aspect.

The next change is on the opposite page and it's under the heading "Committal." It reads as follows:

"There are two ways that a person may be committed to the

three-year treatment program. Before anyone can be committed, however, it is

necessary that the panel be unanimous that the person is in need of treatment

for narcotic dependence. If the panel is not unanimous the person must be released.

When the panel members are unanimous the report of the panel will be discussed

with the individual, and he then has the option of giving his written consent

to the three year program. If the person does not consent, then the director

of the program must make application to the Supreme Court of British Columbia

for a committal. Under the legislation a judge of the supreme court can direct

that the person be either committed for three years or released. This decision

can be appealed to the appeal court of British Columbia."

That

was deleted because the government, as I have said, had already

indicated it was not going to go through with the Heroin Treatment

Program, at least for the time being, while the court case was on.

There

is one other minor amendment on page 5 under the heading "Residential

Treatment Centre," which is on page 4 of the tabled report. The date

April 1, 1979, was changed to April 14, 1979.

The last change, as far as I've been able to determine — and

I don't pretend that I'm the world's greatest proof-reader — is on page

6 of the draft under "Geographic Distribution of Services." There was a

line at the bottom of the second paragraph, which said: "An evaluation

panel will be appointed for each centre." For the reasons that I've

given before, that was deleted. That paragraph appears otherwise intact

in the document that was tabled.

Because of those deletions

an extra page appeared, and in order that the filed report could be

accommodated without reprinting it — so that we could just simply

replace pages, so I'm told — a photograph of a pretty young lady

looking out the window or looking at something was substituted for the

blank space that otherwise would have occurred.

I think that

while the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) may criticize whatever

a fractional cost of $1,400 is — and I can find out, I suppose, with

some greater accuracy what it actually cost to replace those pages and

to add the photograph to the 4,000 copies — as a criminal

overexpenditure, I rather suspect that it's really a minuscule thing.

If Hansard knew the great

amount of Latin I did, which is confined to the words I'm now going to

use, it would say: De minimis non curat lex — the law does not concern

itself with trifles. It seems to me that that, in terms of financial

implications, is a trifling matter.

How many reports have

been rewritten or withdrawn? I haven't the faintest idea, Mr. Member. I

suppose from time to time reports are prepared that are inaccurate, not

up to date. Maybe even a government changes, as happened in 1972 and

again in 1975, and the new government feels that a different matter

should be accentuated or deleted. I don't know, I have no way of

knowing. All I can give you is the explanation I have been given and

what I have been able to glean with respect to the inconsistencies

brought to my attention by the member for New Westminster.

would like to say one more thing to the member for New Westminster on

the question that he raised with me on the YMCA-Pacifica thing. I must

say, in light of the information I am now receiving — and I won't have

the full information probably until tomorrow, Mr. Member — I'm not

satisfied that I have got the full story on that matter. I am now going

to do everything I can to get that as quickly as possible for you, so

if I don't give you any further information at this point it's only

because I'm not satisfied that it's up to date. As soon as it is up to

date, which I assume will be by tomorrow, when we meet again, I will

give it to you then,

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I'm

delighted with the last answer to a question that the minister gave,

and that's with respect to Pacifica. I really did want that looked

into. I'm informed that there were arbitrary decisions made in that

particular situation and I just think it was most unfortunate that it

proceeded the way it did — in a rather unusual way.

As far

as this aspect is concerned — and I'm going to drop it at this point —

I'm not particularly concerned about the cost. I guess the minister

knows that they have their own printing press down there. So I suppose

that when they're not busy doing something else they can be doing that.

The thing that disturbs me is his total lack of knowledge of what was

going on out there. I just want the minister to be warned that that

most unusual program set up by the former Minister of Health needs some

very careful scrutiny by the present Minister of Health. I just want to

remind everybody that I've stood in my place in this House each year

since the White Paper came out in the first place, stating that the

government was on the wrong track. Thank heaven it's now being looked

at. Unfortunately it's four and a half years too late.

Having

said that, I think there are other members of my caucus who would like

to have some words on this particular area, after which we'll be moving

on to emergency health services or something along that line.

MS. BROWN:

Mr. Chairman, I would like to say, as the member for New Westminster

just said, that it's very, very clear that the new minister was just

not fully briefed and not fully informed about the Heroin Treatment

Program when he took over his responsibilities as Minister of Health,

and I think that this should really cause him some concern. I'm not

quite sure how these transfers take place, but surely the ex-Minister

of Health, the person who masterminded that horrendous program, the

person who was responsible for the wanton spending of millions of

dollars on 100 addicts, must have informed the new Minister of Health

in some detail about the program. It's very disturbing to find that in

the same inconsistent way in which the government relates to the

community at large, the cabinet ministers also relate to each other.

There isn't any question that the Minister of Health has been duped;

he's been tricked. He thought he knew everything that went on in this

program, and he obviously doesn't.

Maybe one of the first

things he should do, as soon as his estimates are complete, is to have

a meeting with the Alcohol and Drug Commission, those people who are

still there from the original Heroin Treatment Program. I recognize

that now that Bert Hoskin has resigned or was fired or whatever the

term is — rewarded and sent to his much-deserved rest, as the minister

referred to it when he was terminated — the program is now headless.

But there are a number of people still around who were a part of that

original fiasco, and there may be — and I would like to suggest to the

minister that there are —

[ Page 3341 ]

other

reports and other information about that program that he should get,

because if not he's going to be continually surprised; every day there

is going to be a new surprise coming his way. I don't think it's fair;

it's just not fair to the present Minister of Health. I think he's got

enough problems as it is without having to be a victim, really, of the

previous Minister of Health.

It's interesting that when that

program, that debacle, that fiasco, is being debated on the floor of

this House, the previous Minister of Health makes it his business not

to be around. I don't know how the present Minister of Health feels

about the way in which he has been used by his colleague, but I think

it's pretty shabby, and he shouldn't tolerate it. Obviously against his

will, his arm twisted, he was forced into accepting the Health

portfolio. It was not his first choice. It's not a portfolio that he

wanted. Then, to have been seduced into accepting it, and then to have

found that he was not fully informed, not given all the information

that he should have in order to deal with his estimates on the floor of

the House, I think is quite unfair to the present Minister of Health,

and he should certainly take it up with his colleague at the first

opportunity he gets.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest

in all humility that at the first opportunity he has he sit down with

the remaining members of that program and get as much information out

of them as possible — get all the details of what went on during the

establishment of that original program — that horrendous, disgraceful

fiasco which passed as a heroin treatment program — so that there won't

be any more surprises for him. It can't be any fun for the minister to

be made to look like a total and complete idiot on the floor of the

House simply because he was not informed by his colleagues about the

situation that was really taking place.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

The

idea, Mr. Chairman, of earmarking $14 million to be spent on the

treatment of 100 addicts really takes on criminal proportions when you

realize what services went by the board and weren't instituted, weren't

designed and didn't come on stream, because the government said there

wasn't any money for them. I want to deal specifically with the ways in

which the Ministry of Health, by squandering $14 million on this

ridiculous program of theirs, really so deprived the young people and

adolescents of this province of basic services which they needed that

he ended up, really, abusing the Ministry of Human Resources by his

action. I want to give a couple of examples of this.

The

Ministry of Human Resources is the end of the line in terms of

services. When all else fails, when there is nowhere else to go for a

young person or an adolescent, they end up as a ward of the government,

administered by the Ministry of Human Resources. The Ministry of Human

Resources cannot turn anyone away; it's not possible to turn anyone

away. That is the last line. What we are finding is that more and more

of the young people who are ending up as wards of the Ministry of Human

Resources are there because there are no health facilities, no health

resources to deal with their particular problem.

At the same

time, Mr. Chairman, keep in mind that $14 million was earmarked by this

government to be squandered on a totally ridiculous program which they

were told over and over again could not and would not work. So what

happened is not that $14 million was squandered, but that the lives of

a number of young people in this province really were destroyed through

lack of services which could have been provided with some of those $14

million. They were sacrificed to the ridiculous program which the

previous Minister of Health ramrodded through this House, which finally

had to be thrown out by the courts. and which was foisted onto the

present Minister of Health, and which, of course, he was not fully

informed about.

I have in my possession an analysis which

was done on the Interministerial Children's Committee. This analysis

was really supposed to look at some of the problems which the

Interministerial Children's Committee was having to deal with in terms

of services to young people in the province. The two things they dealt

with primarily were lack of services and insufficient funds. They

talked about the resources for disturbed children. That's one of the

number one things that they mentioned. I want to remind you again, Mr.

Chairman, as I said before, that these children eventually end up as

wards of the province, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Human

Resources, not the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Human Resources

bears the brunt for the lack of resources and lack of facilities. Now

why the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) tolerates

that, I do not know. It could be that she is as disinterested in the

Ministry of Human Resources as the Minister of Health is disinterested

in the Ministry of Health, and that's the reason why she tolerates this

abuse. It is a clear, straightforward case of the Ministry of Health

abusing the Ministry of Human Resources. Why the Ministry of Human

Resources tolerates this, why the Minister of Human Resources does not

insist that the Ministry of Health meet its responsibilities, I do not

know. But here is one of the analyses of the lack of resources for

disturbed children. And this, Mr. Chairman, if I can again remind you,

is an interministerial committee which deals with services to children.

Human Resources, Health, Education — everyone — sits on this committee.

HON. MR. MAIR: And the Attorney-General.

MS. BROWN:

And the Attorney-General, that's right. They talk about the lack of

resources for disturbed children — "a shortage of facilities for

severely emotionally disturbed children." It talks about The Maples. It

talks about the Fraser Valley. It talks about insufficient interim

resources to meet the needs of case referrals such as in the Victoria

and other areas. It talks about the non-existence of therapeutic group

homes in Prince George and the Cariboo. It talks about the failure to

identify long-term containment, or even to develop a place which gives

psychological support for young people in the Okanagan. It talks about

these things.

Put it in perspective. Mr. Chairman. We're not

talking about a government that doesn't have the money. We're talking

about a government which made a policy decision to squander $14 million

on a totally ridiculous program which could not and would not work,

which they were told has never worked anywhere else. However, the

decision was made to go ahead and earmark $14 million which we are

told, after all is said and done, that in fact dealt with 100 heroin

addicts. I don't want to leave the impression that I don't believe that

there should be some service for heroin addicts. I believe there should

be a resource and some service for heroin addicts. There's no question

about that. But when it's done at the cost of developing the kinds of

therapeutic resources which the province needs for emotionally disturbed

[ Page 3342 ]

children,

and when those children end up as wards of the Minister of Human

Resources, I'm saying two things are happening. One, the Minister of

Health is deliberately and callously abusing the Minister of Human

Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) because the Ministry of Human Resources

is unfortunate enough to have a weak and incompetent minister.

Secondly, I am saying that the government, in terms of developing its

priorities, is prepared to sacrifice the young people and the

adolescents of this province in order to allow a minister to proceed

with a totally ridiculous and irresponsible program rather than deal

with basic services which are needed for the young people of this

province.

There are some therapeutic resources. There is The

Maples. And now the minister has made his brilliant announcement about

an additional ten beds. What a fiasco! Listen to the kinds of

statistics that come out of the Ministry of Education in terms of the

young people who need those kinds of services, and then talk about ten

beds. Read the kinds of statistics that the Ministry of Human Resources

has in its annual report about the emotionally disturbed children in

its care, and then stand up in this House and talk about ten beds. The

Maples does not now, and ten beds later will still not be able to, meet

the very basic need even for the young people in the lower mainland,

and The Maples serves the entire province. It doesn't just serve the

Burnaby–New Westminster–Vancouver catchment area. Everybody goes to The

Maples because that's all there is. To brag about an additional ten

beds is a disgrace.

This study offered some solutions. It

suggested, for example, that treatment resources need to be developed

in Prince Rupert and the Bulkley Valley. It talked about converting

Brannan Lake from its present addiction treatment program to a

residential facility for disturbed youth. That was one of the

recommendations which was made in this report.

HON. MR. MAIR: What's the date of that report?

MS. BROWN: June 12, 1980, was when that recommendation was made.

The

main thing is that here we have a Ministry of Health which is not at

all meeting any of its responsibilities to adolescents. It says in this

report that it is not known how many emergency cases are not referred

to The Maples simply because The Maples has a current waiting list. I'm

paraphrasing. "The Maples expansion program will only provide a partial

solution, and when this expansion is completed in two years it still

will not meet the demonstrated need by the population presently in

juvenile containment in this province."

You have to realize

that Human Resources fails in terms of relating to young people because

it has no resources, and it's not supposed to have the kind of health

resources which these young people need. When Human Resources fails,

those children end up before the courts and they are placed in

containment centres. That's what happens. You have a young person with

a health problem, an emotional disturbance, a behaviour problem, a

psychological problem. They need a resource, and the Ministry of Health

totally fails to provide this resource. That young person is then

shunted on to the Ministry of Human Resources, which has to accept that

young person; it cannot turn that person away. The young person is then

placed in a foster home or a group home which is totally and completely

inappropriate and does not meet that person's need. Whatever the

problem was is exacerbated, the acting out continues, and the Ministry

of Human Resources then says: "Aha, the person is now 17, 18, 19. I no

longer have to take responsibility." The person is shunted off before

the courts and into a containment centre.

Have you any idea

what a difference there would be in the budget of the Ministry of Human

Resources if the Ministry of Health discharged its responsibility to

the number of young people and adolescents in this province in need of

psychological and emotional resources? It's an absolutely callous and

crass decision on the part of the Ministry of Health not to meet its

responsibilities to this segment of the community, knowing full well

that that weak Minister of Human Resources is going to end up accepting

responsibility for those children, knowing full well that the Ministry

of Human Resources will not have appropriate resources to deal with

them.

It is impossible to actually think of a way to

describe the decisions of that Ministry of Health in pouring that kind

of money into meeting the needs of the past Ministry of Health. That's

all the Heroin Treatment Program was: an attempt to meet a basic need

of the Minister of Health to have some kind of monument to his own

stupidity. In exchange for that, the adolescents and the young people

in this province were sacrificed. When he totally bungled the thing, he

was fired, and it was foisted onto the present Minister of Health. As

we are now beginning to find, he was not even fully informed about the

extent of the bungling and stupidity that went on in that program while

it was in process. He better get his act together and get together with

the survivors of that horrendous debacle and get all the information on

it prior to phasing it out completely and directing some of the

resources towards developing some of the resources which we need for

young people in this province.

The report, dated January 22,

1980, goes on to talk about the lack of facilities for

multi-handicapped children; but I want to deal with that under another

area.

In the Burnaby–New Westminster area some kind of

survey was done of the entire lower mainland area. What it pointed out

to us was the increasing use of alcohol at almost a crisis rate by

young people at a younger and younger age. You know this report,

because we corresponded about that. So the Burnaby–New Westminster

out-patient clinic came together and they assigned an alcohol

counsellor to Burnaby. They recognized the problem, as outlined in this

report, that we are dealing with children 13 years of age and younger.

Mr.

Chairman, I have been asked to yield to one of my colleagues for five

minutes; also to give the Minister of Health a break to think about the

terrible dilemma he's in. I yield to the second member for Victoria.

MR. HANSON:

I'd like to thank my colleague from Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) for

giving me this opportunity. I'm in a bit of a time bind at the moment.

I'm on my way to the minister's riding for the United Native Nations

conference, which is interested in my language bill — which I hope the

minister is going to support when it is called before the House. It is

a non-partisan bill. I'm sure all the members will support it.

Interjections.

MR. HANSON:

I'm going to be very brief. The kind of comments I would like to make

to the minister relate specifically to two proposals which I think will

benefit health care in

[ Page 3343 ]

the

province. First of all, the background: there is more and more medical

evidence to indicate that a large percentage of disease has an

environmental or occupational origin. This is of interest to the

Minister of Health, I am sure. It is now suspected that possibly over

60 percent of all cancer has an environmental or job origin. We have a

great advantage in Canada in that we have socialized medicine with

centralized records; but a person's occupational history is not a part

of those records. In other words, when a person is ill and is admitted

to hospital, he is asked: "What type of employment do you carry out?"

But in routine visits to a physician, throughout the life of an

individual, it is not a diagnosis line whether a person is a welder,

clerk-steno, pilot or coal miner, etc. The advantage of having that

information is self-evident. If we do not know what types of exposure a

person has been subjected to during their working life, it is very

difficult for that individual to then go to the Workers' Compensation

Board and clearly demonstrate the causative relationship between their

respiratory problem and their career as a welder, etc.

What

I am suggesting, first, is a very simple suggestion: that employment

history be incorporated into the medical record in a confidential way

with all the safeguards and protections that birth, death and other

medical information is protected by, to incorporate the environmental

and occupational conditions of a person's life into his medical record.

We would save ourselves great difficulties at a later date when a

person is trying to demonstrate that causative relationship. That's

point number one.

Point number two is that in the province

of British Columbia we have three separate agencies collecting

information on health: the cancer control agency, the heath

surveillance and the record linkages. My suggestion is that we must get

those three agencies in a coordinated, integrated way into one

health-hazard or health-surveillance registry. That registry would not

just be the repository of information on the occurrence of disease but

would also note the occurrence of disease, try to anticipate or detect

trends, and advise the government on remedial action to correct or

protect health in a particular region.

As the minister is

aware, I brought to his attention and made public information which

indicated that there are high-risk cancer areas in British Columbia:

greater Vancouver is a high-risk lung cancer area for men and women. I

pointed out three other areas which are in the top 10 percent in terms

of risk in the country: ovarian cancer here in greater Victoria; lymph

cancer in the Comox-Strathcona census area and also in the central

Okanagan. Now I want to point out that the minister made a comment at

that time that the information I had brought forward was judged to be

statistically insignificant; that was incorrect. More correct is that

the three cancer areas, outside of greater Vancouver, were

statistically not significant in that they could not be demonstrated by

all statistical methods to be proved forever and a day to have that

causative relationship.

That sounds very difficult and

cumbersome, but what it means is this. We all know that cancer is a

great killer in North America, but the emergence or occurrence of a

cancer in a particular region in terms of the general population is a

relatively major event. If there are only ten occurrences of a certain

type of cancer in a census area and the population is 100,000, then

statistically that is insignificant; but in terms of the magnitude of

the problem and the environmental cause that may be bringing that to be

— in other words, pesticides, herbicides, toxic waste, radiation, dust,

any other conditions — that epidemiological information must be

centralized; it must be brought together so that research can be

carried out. Here we are in l980 in British Columbia, and we have no

information that will plot the occupational history of a worker or

centralize the epidemiological information on disease in one region

where there can be testing, scientific research and remedial action.

The

future for health care research is not in building more hospitals; it

is taking action in the environment and in the workplace to ensure that

fewer people are subjected to illness and disease. That is the future;

it is an expansion of the preventive area of health into making the

workplace and the environment safe so that those toxic substances,

dusts, chemical, etc., don’t cause the cancers, rather than building

larger and larger cancer centres in the future for people who have

contracted the disease.

I hope I have made my point — it’s

very brief. Those are just the two main points. I think they would go a

long way in the future to making B.C. a healthier place.

HON. MR. MAIR:

Mr. Chairman, I was very interested in the remarks of the second member

for Victoria. I agree that we've got to find a way to include

employment history in the medical records of people whose records are,

of course, centrally recorded. I think this is a field that we're

perhaps not as far into as we ought to be. I am very grateful to him

for the comments he's made, and we will — and I mean it look into his

suggestions.

MS. BROWN:

Mr. Chairman. I was discussing ways in which the Ministry of Health has

been abusing the Ministry of Human Resources, specifically by not

developing the kinds of resources needed by young people and

adolescents in the province but rather by allowing the $14 million to

be earmarked for the Heroin Treatment Program. I started out to speak

specifically about the Burnaby area and the problem we're having with

the increasing use of alcohol by people of a younger and younger age.

referred to a survey which was done by the Alcohol and Drug Commission

in November 1979, which was an assessment of the need for service to

alcohol- and drug-dependent young people in the lower Fraser Valley

region. There isn't any question that the minister surely is aware of

this report, even though he said that the Alcohol and Drug Commission

is independent. I certainly agree with him, but surely he has read this

report.

One of the things the report reveals to us is the

fact that so many of the alcohol abusers in the lower Fraser Valley are

13 years of age or younger. When we put that into an education context

we are talking about kids in elementary school. We are talking about

kids in grade 7 and grade 8 and probably even grade 6. This is really

frightening, when we think about all the damage alcohol does to the

human body, even if one starts drinking at the legal age of 19. Imagine

what it is doing to people who start drinking below the age of 13. When

they start abusing alcohol below the age of 13 we have a real problem

there.

However, as a result of that there was a recognition

that one of the things that probably should happen was to attach to the

school system an alcohol and drug counsellor. In the Burnaby area we

had — certainly in East Burnaby, in Stride Community School in

particular — a counsellor two days a week. We were told that this was a

pilot project. Fair enough.

[ Page 3344 ]

On June 15 the pilot project came to an end and the counsellor was removed.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Mr.

Chairman, I want to bring to your attention that the budget, in terms

of services to adult alcoholics, is $12 million annually. The budget

for young people who abuse alcohol is $250,000. There is something not

quite right about earmarking $250,000 for preventive services — we are

talking about the kind of services that would keep these young people

from becoming alcoholics in the first place. I am not saying that a

budget of $12 million for adult services is an outlandish budget,

certainly not if you compare it with $14 million to treat 100 drug

addicts. If you were using the same criteria for treating alcoholics,

the budget earmarked for adult alcoholics would zoom right out of

existence. But $250,000 to begin with is just not good enough. That is

the first thing.

The counsellor who was attached two days a

week to the East Burnaby school system discovered a number of things.

He discovered, for example, that most schools are not even aware of the

amount of heavy drinking that is going on among the student population.

Presumably these young people are not drinking before they go to school

in the morning. Again, I want to remind you that we are talking about

kids in grades 6, 7 and 8. The referrals that go from school to alcohol

counselling are very low because the students hide their dependencies.

was said, for example, that the young people found it easier to obtain

alcohol because it was in their homes. It is not even necessary to use

the kind of underground way of purchasing the stuff that they would

with other forms of drugs. Alcohol is available. It is in their homes,

it is in their friends' homes. It's a socially accepted drug. No one

gets upset to the extent that you would, for example, if you noticed a

young person using another form of drug. When you see a young person

drinking a beer you say: "For Pete's sake, that stuff is not good for

you." If you see a young person shooting heroin into his arm you get

hysterical, or if you see him smoking a joint or something you get

upset about it. But with alcohol most people say: "Well, thank God they

are not using some other kind of drug." That is the wrong attitude to

take.

The other thing is that it is not as expensive. This

is what the counsellor found. It provides a quicker reaction. The most

important thing about it is that it's not illegal. There is no law

against the use of alcohol by anybody in this province. There is a law

against being seen in a beer parlour or being served a drink in a

public place if you are below a certain age; but if you drink the drink

at home or at your friend's house or whatever, it's not illegal. For

those reasons more and more young people at a younger and younger age

are turning to alcohol as their drug of escape, and they are abusing

it. The counsellor identified this and the whole business of working

with these grade 8, 7 and 6 kids. I'm talking about an elementary

school and not about the high-school kids. I'm speaking about the

13-year-olds and younger, even though most of the drinking was

15-year-olds and younger. The project came to an end on June 15. That

was it.

The community was very upset about the removal of the counsellor. They contacted

the alcohol and drug counselling service on Broadway to verbalize this situation

and ask that the counsellor not be removed. In my own office a letter was received

which was signed by the program director, Walter Moy, of Youth and Family Counselling

Services; by Don Jarvis, supervisor of alcohol and drug counselling services,

Imperial Street, Burnaby; and Henry Kroeker, program director, alcohol and drug

counselling services. The letter said that it wasn't going to be possible

to continue due to a staff shortage. It says: "The appointments scheduled"

— and he's talking about an alternative way of referring the young people

— "was put into effect and will allow clients to receive service in this

area and not make undue demands on our current staff shortage."

The

reason that the counsellor was removed was not that the pilot project

was a failure; it wasn't that the counsellor was not doing a good job;

it's not that the community was not benefiting from the presence of the

counsellor. It was because of a staff shortage, no money — not enough

money to keep enough people on staff so that this particular counsellor

was working in the East Burnaby area via the school system and picking

up the alcohol abusers at the very first opportunity — at the beginning

— while they were still in elementary school and before they really had

become a statistic in our community. That was being terminated because

of a lack of money.

Everyone got upset about that. The

advisory committee to Stride Community School had a meeting and talked

about what it would mean to the school if this counsellor was

withdrawn. The advisory committee has representatives from just about

every community group.

A couple of things evolved. One was

that the Human Resources ministry again was going to have to end up

picking up these kids, and again was not going to have the resources to

deal with them, and again was going to be making inappropriate and

unsatisfactory arrangements for dealing with them. Once again, a

decision made by the Ministry of Health was going to be abusing another

ministry, and again it was the Ministry of Human Resources. Again the

Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) was silent on the

topic.

But I'll tell you, the workers in the Human Resources

office in East Burnaby were sufficiently concerned about the decision

of the Alcohol and Drug Commission to withdraw that counsellor to say

so and to itemize and talk about what was going to happen to these

young people as a result of the decision being made. When they needed a

counsellor the New Westminster–Burnaby outpatients clinic was going to

try and make sufficient arrangements so that when there was a referral

a counsellor would be placed at their disposal. That doesn't work. What

this drug counsellor did was to work within the school system. The

counsellor was there to identify and then to work with the young

people. They didn't wait for the school to identify and then to refer,

because one of the things that surfaced is that the school does not

identify most of these alcohol abusers. Sometimes these young people

are sufficiently cunning and clever to keep their dependency hidden

even from the schools. That was the reason why the alcohol counsellor

was introduced directly into the school system in the first place, to

be available two days a week to deal with and work with the young

people at that stage.

As was said — and this is a very nice

letter that we got: "The development of a Burnaby–New Westminster unit

allowed us to decentralize one part-time youth counsellor to you, and

we've monitored the service closely, and we agree that it warrants a

full-time youth counsellor to work directly and jointly with

counsellors and other resources in the agencies." That is what the

letter from your own Alcohol and

[ Page

3345 ]

Drug Commission stated: having monitored the pilot

project the decision has been made that the service warrants a

full-time youth counsellor. Even the two days a week was not sufficient.

You

have a problem in East Burnaby. The kids really are drinking too much,

and they're starting to drink too young. Two days a week is not good

enough. What you need in order to nip the problem in the bud, before it

becomes a full-blown crisis, is a full-time youth counsellor. But that

is not possible. It says, "We will attempt to be responsive to your

referrals," and "We will have regular weekly appointments." They are

going to bend over backwards and twist and turn and adjust and readjust

and do all kinds of things to try to deal with the reality, which is

that they have a staff shortage because there isn't any money in the

budget to deal with the whole delivery of services to young people who

abuse alcohol. A quarter of a million dollars is all that has been

earmarked, but $14 million was set aside to work with what turned out

to be 100 addicts.

In establishing our priorities as a

community and as a society, how do you decide what is more important?

How do you decide that it is more important to put $14 million into one

program as opposed to $250,000 into the kind of resources needed by our

young people? How do you make that kind of decision? What does that say

to us about the way this government responds to the needs of young

people in this province? The report is here, pages and pages and pages,

itemizing the abuse of alcohol and other drugs in one small area, the

lower Fraser Valley region, alone. It says there appears to be a wide

discrepancy between the need for service and the provision. The report

says it on the very front page. There are no residential treatment

facilities, no supportive recovery homes, no detoxification facilities,

no outpatient counselling services; there is definite dissatisfaction

with the overall adequacy of service for alcohol- and drug dependent

young people. One-third of the informants they surveyed were 13 years

of age and younger. The average age of the people involved was 15 to

17. Drug workers reported that these youngsters often had a problem

with alcohol and drugs since their pre-teens. These are our children we

are talking about.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN:

Mr. Chairman, if I can get your attention while the Premier is.... Is

it okay to proceed? I just find it unreal that anyone would try to

disrupt something like this, but anyway....

They talked

about problems with finding living accommodations conducive to

therapeutic progress, difficulties in providing out-patient counselling

even to those who are physically ill from malnutrition due to poor

dietary practices and other side effects of alcohol and drug abuse. It

said it is virtually impossible to restore and maintain a good level of

health on an out-patient basis because of the lack of environmental

control. It goes on and on. As a result of this report, East Burnaby

gets one half-time counsellor two days a week; that's all. It was such

a great success that Walter Moy, Don Jarvis and Henry Kroeker monitored

it and said it warrants a full-time youth counsellor, but due to the

staff shortage it is not going to happen.

I will tell you, the Elizabeth Fry Society was upset about that, and they wrote

a letter to Don Jarvis saying: "We want to express our concern that the

counselling service provided for adolescents will no longer be offered in Burnaby."

That letter was dated June 3, 1980, and was signed by Terri Miller, the supervisor

of the juvenile residential program, Ann Berry and Joan Sprague. The Ministry

of Human Resources — not the minister, who is silent, but the district supervisor

for that area, at 7621 Kingsway — wrote: "Dear Mr. Moy: On behalf of the

workers of Burnaby East Ministry of Human Resources Office, I would like to

express concern over the decision to terminate your local services to Burnaby

youth." It's a real crisis. I could tell you a thing or two about

the crisis situation of the young people in that particular area. They don't

use alcohol just to socialize; there's a real alcohol abuse problem, and

all of the contingency things that come with it. The vandalism and delinquency

are all there. One counsellor working two days a week was trying to come to

grips with that.

The

East Burnaby Community Workers group wrote: "Dear Mr. Moy: We of the

East Burnaby Community Workers group are very disappointed and

concerned that the commission has decided to withdraw the Burnaby

alcohol and drug counselling service for youth under 19 years of age.

This service, through Mr. Dave Coverdale, has been of great assistance

to the individual agencies — the agencies as well as the young people —

"because they've been using it on a referral and consulting basis."

The

probation officer from Burnaby Juvenile Probation and Family Court

Services expressed their concern. A number of these kids end up on all

kinds of petty offences, and some serious ones too, so the probation

officers also added their voice to that. And on and on it went.

raised a question in the House, if the minister will remember, on this

particular topic. I think the minister, after taking it as notice for a

while, brought back a response to the effect that what we were dealing

with was some redesign or redistribution — I think that was your

response when I raised my concern on.... Oh, there isn't a date on it,

but I asked a question in the House about the fact that this counsellor

was being withdrawn, and your response was that it was really a

the redesign and restructuring is is that there is no counsellor there

now. Once again the Ministry of Human Resources is going to pick up the

pieces and not be able to deal with it, and then it goes on to

probation and these kids end up in containment centres. Really, with

prevention, it could have been avoided.

I want to refer

also, again talking about the abuse of the Ministry of Human Resources

by the Ministry of Health, to a letter which was sent to the Premier

with a carbon copy to me. It's a very long letter which tells a story

of a young man who started drinking at a very early age. His foster

parents were so distraught with his drinking problem that they wrote to

the Premier. It says: "I am addressing this letter to you in the hope

that you will take some note of the problems outlined below, and

instruct your Minister of Human Resources and other workers down the

ladder to try and deal with this type of problem." It talks about this

young man being placed by the Ministry of Human Resources in this home

as a foster child because his own parents couldn't deal with his

drinking. The letter attacks the Ministry of Human Resources and the

social worker. Why? Because there was not a resource available to deal

with a drinking adolescent. Now who is responsible for developing that

kind of resource? The Ministry of Health. But in northern B.C. — the

Houston and Smithers areas — there was not such a resource. So this

child ended up as a ward of the Ministry of Human Re-

[ Page

3346 ]

sources. The Ministry of Human Resources placed

this young man in a foster home. It goes on to say: "On every occasion

we have requested assistance from Human Resources we've been informed

that there is no program in the province for teenagers with drinking

problems, and that the Department of Human Resources has no funds or

provisions for foster children with this type of problem."

But

Human Resources isn't supposed to. It's the Ministry of Health that is

supposed to be responsible for this, but the Ministry of Health knows

that when it comes to services to children and young people it does not

have to discharge its responsibility, because there is a Ministry of

Human Resources which will have to accept it anyway and take all of the

blame for it.

The Ministry of Health does nothing. It uses

its $14 million on heroin addicts. Not that I don't believe that heroin

addicts need to be served; that's not what I'm saying. I'm talking

about your priorities and the cold and callous way in which the

Ministry of Health continues to abuse the Ministry of Human Resources

by simply not providing the kinds of resources and services that young

people in this province need, knowing full well that the Ministry of

Human Resources, weak as it is, will end up having responsibility for

these children and not be able to do anything about it either.

want to repeat the question. Have you any idea what the budget of the

Ministry of Human Resources would be like if it did not have to rush in

continually and pick up after the incompetence of the Ministry of

Health? It's a total lack of resources. It's a little bit of surface

business here and there and cosmetic services here and there. We've got

a real health problem in this province with young people — emotionally

disturbed, psychologically ill, alcohol abusing and drug abusing young

people — and the Ministry of Health is not addressing itself to that

problem. It is failing to do so simply because the Ministry of Health

knows that in the final analysis it's the Ministry of Human Resources

that gets blamed when these children are not served and end up before

the courts and in containment centres, and not the Ministry of Health.

That's the reason why the Ministry of Health can continue to avoid its

responsibility and continue to abuse the Ministry of Human Resources in

that way. What we really need in this province is a Minister of Human

Resources who can deal with the Minister of Health. That's what we

really need. That's what the young people of this province really need.

continue with the story of Ben, sure enough he ended up at age 17

breaking and entering and going before the courts. Now he has a

probation officer and some kind of service is being delivered to him as

an adult which wasn't there originally. What the letter says is: "Are

you aware, Mr. Premier, that in the Smithers area alone there are

approximately 46 teenagers with severe alcohol problems and that the

only help available to them is their child-care worker?" This is

absolutely ludicrous. What does a child-care worker know about serving

a young person who abuses alcohol? Does the Minister of Health know...?

Is my time up?

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I have a

number of questions to ask the Minister of Health. However, I believe

that my colleague needed an intervening speaker in order that she can

proceed with her very provocative and interesting line of questioning.

MS. BROWN: Thank you to my colleague from New Westminster for giving me this time.

The

question again that I am dealing with is the way in which the Ministry

of Health fails to provide services to young people in the province —

young people who are ill, who have health needs — in terms of

psychological services, mental health services and alcohol and drug

services. These young people are not being served and consequently end

up as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 21

Barrett

Howard

King

Lea

Lauk

Stupich

Dailly

Cocke

Nicolson

Hall

Levi

Sanford

Gabelmann

Skelly

D'Arcy

Lockstead

Barnes

Brown

Barber

Mitchell

Passarell

NAYS — 28

Waterland

Nielsen

Chabot

McClelland

Rogers

Smith

Heinrich

Hewitt

Jordan

Vander Zalm

Ritchie

Brummet

Ree

Wolfe

McCarthy

Williams

Bennett

Curtis

Phillips

McGeer

Fraser

Mair

Kempf

Davis

Strachan

Segarty

Mussallem

Hyndman

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman,

I'm really pleased to see the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs.

McCarthy) in the House, because, as I said, I've certainly been

speaking on behalf of Human Resources in terms of the way in which the

Ministry of Health, by failing to discharge its responsibility and by

failing to develop the sorts of resources needed by young people in the

province, is creating a burden on Human Resources. More and more of the

adolescents and young people are ending up as wards of the community —

they're really not wards of the courts or even wards of the ministry,

they're wards of all of us — when, in fact, they are where they are

simply because Health has not met their requirements in terms of mental

health facilities, facilities for emotionally disturbed young people

and facilities for young people who abuse alcohol and other forms of

drugs.

Mr. Chairman, if I can quote from a national

newspaper of May of this year, it talks about girls of 12 and 13, beach

rowdies, so drunk that they cannot even stand; it talks about roaming

bands of drunken teenagers who've been drinking all day and into the

evening too, and creating a nuisance in the West Vancouver area. It

says: "It's not good for a community to see girls of 12 and 13 so drunk

that they don't even know what they're doing." It talks about the fact

— and they're not talking about one or two; they're talking about kids

who move in gangs of 50 and 75 — that there are not sufficient

facilities developed by the Ministry of Health

[ Page 3347 ]

anywhere

in the province — not in the lower mainland, not in the interior, not

in the northern parts of this province. Nowhere do we have sufficient

health facilities to deal with the problem of young people who abuse

alcohol.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

I quoted

the fact that the budget has earmarked $250,000, as opposed to $12

million set aside for working with adult alcohol abusers, and I don't

even think that $12 million is enough, certainly when we put it into

the context of $14 million spent on a program to meet the needs of the

member for Langley, the past Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland).

"For Canada's Children: National Agenda for Action," a report

which was commissioned for the International Year of the Child in 1979, talks

about the fact that more and more studies indicate that increasing numbers of

adolescents and young people are using alcohol and tobacco in ever increasing

amounts, and the fact that we need to relate ourselves to the harmful effects

of alcohol and drug abuse among this particular group of people. No longer do

we have to think of an alcoholic as an adult or as an older person; we have

a crisis in our society today of alcohol being abused by younger and younger

people. The Tonkin child health profile talks about children 15 years of age

and younger, and as I said, the study done on behalf of the ministry about alcohol

abuse among young people in the lower Fraser Valley talked about children below

the age of 13, children in elementary schools who were using and abusing alcohol.

What

I have tried say, Mr. Chairman, for the benefit of the Minister of

Human Resources, who is here, is that the reality of the situation is

that Human Resources is the last line, that it doesn't matter what goes

before. Whenever a child does not receive services through any other

ministry, and he ends up in some kind of trouble, Human Resources

always has to be there to pick up the pieces.

As a direct

result of the callous and thoughtless way in which the Ministry of

Health has failed to develop mental health facilities and resources in

the communities to deal with these young people, Human Resources is

having to pick up the pieces and place them in totally inappropriate

group or foster home settings until they become adults. Then they reach

that magic age where Human Resources is no longer responsible for them,

and what we find is that they end up before the courts, and they move

onto the care and keeping of the Attorney-General's ministry, through

our prisons or whatever.

If the Ministry of Health would

re-establish or rearrange its priorities and start making some serious

commitments to the health needs and the emotional health needs of the

young people of this province, the budget for Human Resources and the

kinds of resources that Human Resources has to develop would diminish

considerably. So I'm accusing the Ministry of Health of actively

abusing the Ministry of Human Resources.

Mr. Chairman,

I had a meeting recently with a number of people who work with the

young people who are being sexually exploited and sexually abused in

the Vancouver area. One of the number one concerns that they have is

the absence of sufficient health resources to deal with those children.

A number of those children — 40 percent of them — are wards of the

Ministry of Human Resources. They have no business being wards of the

Ministry of Human Resources, because we are talking about emotionally

disturbed children for whom there are no facilities and no services.

They end up in the care of the Ministry of Human Resources, which has

no facilities and no resources, and should not have it should not be

called upon to develop the facilities and resources to deal with those

children, because they should be developed by the Ministry of Health.

Even now, when they have become a disgrace to the province of B.C. and

to the city of Vancouver, the Ministry of Health is still failing to

develop the kinds of resources which those young people need,

It's

not just mental health facilities, but physiological health facilities

too. There is one clinic that is trying to deal with all of those

children with the kinds of problems they have through using dirty

needles, in terms of their drug abuse — hepatitis; kids with VD: all

those other kinds of health facilities. The clinic is not enough.

There

is no adequate or sufficient health counselling for those young people.

It is ludicrous and ridiculous to expect the Ministry of Human

Resources alone, Mr. Chairman, to deal with that problem. It is a

problem which a number of ministries should be getting their heads

together on and dealing with. That's what the interministerial

committee is supposed to be all about. Yet the report from that

committee, which I read from earlier in the House, when it starts to

itemize the lack of resources for dealing with some of those children,

as a group, itemizes over and over again that it is health facilities.

mental health facilities, and mental health counselling that are

missing. Throughout the entire province, not just in Vancouver the

Okanagan, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Smithers. Houston, Terrace —

the Ministry of Health consistently fails to meet its responsibilities

to the young people of this province.

Even when there is a

crisis, as we have with young people from all over the province ending

up in Vancouver as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources. ending up

being sexually exploited and abused in our cities, we find that the

Ministry of Health cannot even deliver in that one area a much-needed

resource. Instead. we have the Ministry of Human Resources being

expected to carry the whole can, and the Attorney-General is saying

Ottawa~s got to change the law. While we're waiting for Ottawa to

change the law we have one clinic trying to deal with those young kids,

with their hepatitis. their VD, their drug abuse, and everything else.

This

is the same ministry that found $14 million to earmark to meet the

needs of the previous Minister of Health in terms of his own delusions

of grandeur — because that's all that that heroin program was all

about. It was his problem in terms of his delusions of grandeur that he

really could use a program that has failed everywhere else in the

world, he could make it work. So $14 million was sucked out of the

health budget, taken away from other areas in health, to design and put

into place that fiasco for that delusional previous Minister of Health.

We have young people in this province ending up as wards of the

Ministry of Human Resources not because they need Human Resources

services but because the Minister of Health has failed to develop and

design the kind of health resources that they need. It is about time

somebody placed the blame where it belongs. It belongs with the

Ministry of Health which sloughs off its responsibility because it

knows that the Minister of Human Resources will, in silence, accept

that kind of abuse. What the Minister of Human Resources should do is

stand on her feet and lay the

[ Page 3348 ]

blame

squarely where it belongs, on the Minister of Health, who has made an

absolutely callous decision in terms of establishing the priorities in

his ministry.

The Victoria Times

of March 29, in speaking about a ward of the Ministry of Human

Resources, a 15-year-old drug user, says: "No Home for a 15-year-old

Drug User." The courts tore a strip off the Ministry of Human Resources

and the social workers who are being asked to do jobs that should be

done by the Ministry of Health. The Minister of Human Resources did not

stand up and defend her workers. It is about time that somebody did. It

is Health that is supposed to be developing these resources, not Human

Resources. Human Resources ends up picking up these kids and trying to

develop some kind of placement for them, taking them off the streets

when everyone else abandons them, because we have a Minister of Health

who didn't want the portfolio, still doesn't want the portfolio and is

not doing anything about it. The children of this province are

suffering as a result of that. That is a total disgrace.

have in my possession a letter from the coordinator of health services,

employee assistance program, of Mac-Blo to the Minister of Health about

his decision to discontinue funding for an alternative drug-dependence

program for Vancouver. That is a service to adults. The CJOR radio

station had a program called "Street Talk," an incredibly outstanding

program, in March 1980. I am not in the habit of saying nice things

about CJOR, but really, it talked about the problem we are having with

drug abuse among young people. There really is a problem. Even CJOR was

sufficiently exercised by the crisis in drug abuse among our young

people.

Do you know what we are talking about? We are

talking about the future. We are going to turn this nation over to a

bunch of drunks. That is what we are going to do if our alcohol-abusing

young people grow up to be alcohol-abusing adults. That is what we are

ending up doing. So we are talking about our future when we say to the

Minister of Health that failing to deal with drug and alcohol abuse

among young people is failing to deal with, in the abuse of the future,

people who are going to be running this province.

CJOR, when

it had its series called "Drug Probe," was very clear about what

resources are needed and stated as a priority the kinds of resources

that the Ministry of Health has to put into place. Over and over again

it talks about acute-care wards for adolescents in immediate crisis to

be established immediately in one or more of Vancouver's lower mainland

hospitals. This program is only talking about the lower mainland but I

don't want to leave the impression with anyone that the drug and

alcohol abuse problem of teenagers and young people is a Vancouver and

lower mainland problem. It runs throughout this entire province. But it

is talking about immediately putting into place acute-care wards.

The

minister is going to stand up and tell us about the ten beds which are

coming on stream in Burnaby. It is talking about psychiatric wards for

adolescents, but that is another story. I am going to deal with the

lack of psychiatric facilities for young people at another time. I'm

only speaking about drug and alcohol abuse now. In terms of the

psychiatric needs of young people and the total, utter and complete

failure of that minister to deal with them, it is a whole new topic.

It's talking about establishing diagnostic, assessment and therapeutic

centres to accommodate numbers of adolescents suffering from drug and

drug-related problems on both a live-in and out-patient basis.

The

Ministry of Health shouldn't need CJOR to come up with this kind of

information. The Minister of Health shouldn't need that. The Ministry

of Health has sufficient information, based on its own research and

done by its own personnel, to indicate the kinds of resources

necessary. The only reason that Health has not discharged its

responsibility is because the Ministry of Health knows that the

Ministry of Human Resources has to pick up the pieces, that the

Ministry of Human Resources has no alternative, that the Ministry of

Human Resources, in the final analysis, is responsible for every child

in need in this province.

When Health fails, through a

callous decision on the part of its minister not to spend the kind of

money needed to develop the resources, we end up with children in need.

Then that child becomes the responsibility of the Ministry of Human

Resources. That's what's happened. So Health continues to abuse Human

Resources, and Human Resources says nothing. In the final analysis,

it's the young people, the adolescents, who suffer. Do you know what we

do, Mr. Chairman? We go out and we build more containment centres. We

lock them up until they're old enough to get into real jails and real

prisons, and then we lock them up again.

Preventive services

— that's what Health is all about. He's not a minister of sickness;

he's a Minister of Health. That's what he's supposed to be. Prevention

is where it's at, Mr. Chairman; that really is the first line. If

you're going to put money into the system, you put it into developing

those kinds of counselling services, those kinds of preventive

services, thos