1988 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 34th 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, JUNE 15, 1988

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

5075 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Privatization of ICBC. Mr. Sihota –– 5075

Social assistance rates. Mr. Cashore –– 5076

Boundary-Similkameen by-election. Mr. Williams –– 5076

Late government payments on daycare centre billings. Ms, Marzari –– 5077

User fees in elderly-care facilities. Mrs. Boone –– 5077

Forest Amendment Act, 1988 (Bill 28). Second reading

Hon. Mr. Parker –– 5077

Mr. Miller –– 5078

Mr. Jacobsen –– 5082

Ms. Edwards –– 5082

Mr. Williams –– 5084

Hon. Mr. Parker –– 5087

Committee of Supply: Office of the Premier estimates. (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm)

On vote 4: Premier's office –– 5089

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm

Mr. Harcourt

Mr. Blencoe

Mr. Sihota

Hon. Mr. Brummet

Mr. Lovick

Mr. Williams

Hon. Mrs. McCarthy

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Transportation and Highways estimates.

(Hon. Mr. Rogers)

On vote 67: minister's office –– 5107

Mr. Lovick

Mr. Barnes

Mr. Gabelmann

Mr. Miller

Mrs. Boone

Ms. Edwards

Mr. Williams

The House met at 2:07 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. STRACHAN :

Hon. members and colleagues, I've been asked, on behalf of Mr. Speaker,

to introduce two guests from West Vancouver. Would you please welcome

Glen Pirie and Jeff Devins.

MR. G. HANSON : I'd like

to report to the House the result of an epic battle that took place

last evening on a softball diamond over in Esquimalt: the New Democrat

Indefatigables were edged out by a nose by the Scrum of the Earth. The

score was 24 to 18.

Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, I have to

report that ICBC has been watching these sporting events occurring

around Victoria and has indicated that the premiums on nose-insurance

for journalists has jumped by 300 percent.

The Premier, I know, sees himself as the No. 1 media basher of the province, but, Mr. Speaker, we're the real alternative.

HON. MRS. JOHNSTON :

In the gallery this afternoon we have two very distinguished gentlemen

with us: Mayor Lou Sekora of Coquitlam and the municipal manager, Jim

Tonn. I would ask the House to please make them welcome.

MR. ROSE :

I, too, would like to welcome the mayor, manager and engineer of

Coquitlam, Lou Sekora, Jim Tonn and Neil Nyberg. They are over here on

important business with the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and I am

sure they made an offer she can't refuse. I would like the House to

join with me in welcoming and congratulating the mayor, who, I am told,

has recently been made the chairman of the Lower Mainland Municipal

Association. They are up in the gallery. Please welcome them.

MR. CASHORE :

Mr. Speaker, I'm not into one-upmanship but I too want to welcome Mayor

Sekora and Jim Tonn and Neil Nyberg. We're glad to have you with us

today.

Also, with regard to the announcement that was made

by the first member for Victoria, I just wanted to announce that I was

never very good at sports, but I think the game was broken wide open

with my single in the last inning. I just want that to be acknowledged.

would like to introduce today some people who are single parents and

trying to raise their children on welfare. They're seeking the ear of

government here in Victoria today. The first person is Pat Chauncey,

who is spokesperson for the Child Poverty Action Committee. I would

also like to introduce Monica.

MR. PETERSON : Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the first member for Langley

(Mrs. Gran) and myself, it's a distinct honour for me to introduce to this

House a gallant lady who resides in Langley. She's been a member of the

Social Credit Party since 1952. I don't think she would mind

me announcing that this month she'll be.... How could I word it? Let me

see; I've got to be tactful about this because she may chide me. Let's

say that this month she is going to be 90 years young. May the House please

join me in welcoming Mrs. Matilda Mayo.

HON. MR. REID : Mr. Speaker, I too would like to add my voice to welcome His Worship Mayor Louis Sekora and also the municipal manager.

I'd

also make reference to the Seniors' Games in relation to the sports

announcement that was just made. The Seniors' Games were unveiled last

night in Vernon. Probably those competitors that were competing last

night would qualify, but I saw those people 55 and older last night in

Vernon — one 94-year-old — and you'd probably get whipped, But to

the delegation from Coquitlam, I may refer them to a request for the

Seniors' Games in the years to come.

MR. BARNES :

Further to the introductory remarks by the member for

Maillardville-Coquitlam with respect to the Child Poverty Action

Committee, I would like as well to introduce some of those people who

are here this afternoon: Diane, Irene and Wayne, Mania, Lorraine and

Katherine. Would the House join with me in making them welcome.

MR. HUBERTS :

In the gallery today we have a great constituent from Saanich and the

Islands, where the sun always shines, as you will all recognize today.

I'd like the House to welcome Marino Schicchi.

MS. SMALLWOOD :

I would like the House to welcome Linda and her son from

Surrey-Guildford-Whalley, part of the single-parent delegation, and

also Michele from the riding of New Westminster.

MRS. GRAN :

In the House this afternoon is Mrs. Matilda Mayo, and accompanying her

from Langley are Jim and Edith Greenwood. Edith was Bob McClelland's

constituency secretary for six years and is a good Social Credit

supporter. Would the House please welcome her.

MR. WILLIAMS :

I too would like to welcome representatives of the Child Poverty Action

Committee from Vancouver East — Pedro and Melanie, Colleen and

children, and Cora.

MS. MARZARI :

Point Grey also has its delegate here with the Child Poverty Action

Committee, and her name is Bev. I'd like the House to welcome her and

to repeat the welcome to all those people here with the Child Poverty

Action Committee.

Oral Questions

PRIVATIZATION OF ICBC

MR. SIHOTA :

A question to the Premier. The sale of the Insurance Corporation of

British Columbia was considered by cabinet some time ago and rejected.

Now it appears that the government is reconsidering the sale of ICBC.

Will the Premier assure the people of British Columbia that ICBC will

not be sold under any circumstances?

[2:15]

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

I've made it very clear — and it has certainly been said a number

of times — that ICBC is not on the list of items to be privatized.

What the member is asking me to comment on otherwise is future policy.

[ Page 5076 ]

MR. SIHOTA :

Surely the Premier must have learned something from the

Boundary-Similkameen by-election. The Premier should not be listening

to the interests of big insurance companies. He should be listening to

the common sense of ordinary British Columbians, and that common sense

says that ICBC should not be sold. The question to the Premier is: will

he give an absolute, uncategorical, unequivocal answer to the people of

British Columbia today and assure us that under no circumstances, at

any time — future or current — will ICBC be sold?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

I can only assure the people of British Columbia that we will consider

all matters carefully and that the decisions made will be in their best

interest.

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE RATES

MR. CASHORE :

A question to the Premier. We are all familiar with the fiasco of the

$50 the government tried to take away from welfare families, but the

fact remains that the government will still cut the income of welfare

families when children become six years old. Given your public support

to strengthen families, will the Premier now change his government's

policy and restore the $50 to those families?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

I'm not quite sure I understand the question. Therefore I'll defer to

the Minister of Social Services, the minister responsible for these

programs.

HON. MR. RICHMOND : The only change we made

in the status of single parents was regarding when they become

employable as opposed to unemployable. It was felt that when one child

becomes school age, the parent at that point reverts to employable

status from unemployable status. If a single parent has two children

under the age of six, he or she is still regarded as unemployable. Once

one of the children starts to attend school, we felt it was fair that

they revert to the same status as someone who has one child over the

age of six months.

MR. CASHORE : Supplementary to the

Premier. We all know where the Minister of Social Services stands on

this unfair policy, but we want to know where the Premier stands. In

the precincts today are 12 single parents who have come seeking

justice. They don't want their children to become latchkey children,

Mr. Premier. In the name of strengthening the family, are you now

prepared to direct your minister to take a second look at this unfair

policy?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : Mr. Speaker, all policy decisions are made by cabinet in cabinet as a group.

MR. CASHORE :

Supplementary, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to congratulate the government for

raising the foster care rates and for recognizing that it costs more to

care for older children. Given his support to strengthen families, will

the Premier now give his commitment to ensure that welfare rates

reflect the same reality?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : I am

very grateful for the recognition by members of the opposition that we

have a program for strengthening families and that the program is being

well received and recognized as a good thrust for the province. With

respect to any matter that relates to rates of welfare or other

benefits that might be provided to people in need, it is a question of

policy and will be determined by government in due course as part of

the process. Certainly that is a matter that is addressed as and when

required by cabinet.

MR. CASHORE : A supplementary,

Mr. Speaker. Surely the Premier must be aware that the rates for foster

children range from $262 to $387 a month, while the rates for welfare

children are as low as $61 per month for maintenance. In the name of

strengthening the family, what is the Premier prepared to do to ensure

fair treatment of these families?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

Mr. Speaker, if the member has a specific question for the Minister of

Social Services with respect to these matters, I would recommend that

he direct his questions to the minister.

BOUNDARY-SIMILKAMEEN BY-ELECTION

MR. WILLIAMS :

I'd like to welcome the Premier back after Boundary-Similkameen. After

the by-election you said you felt sorry for the voters of

Boundary-Similkameen. Was that a reverse bitterness about the results,

and could you explain why you would say that?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : It may be a personal observation, but I feel sorry for any group represented by the NDP.

MR. WILLIAMS :

Mr. Speaker, it's that level of arrogance that ended in the results in

Boundary-Similkameen. It betrays a misunderstanding of what the

democratic process is all about. After that defeat the Premier said

that when a member of the opposition serves a constituency, he's not

going to work too hard to get projects approved that make the

government look good. Most members on both sides of this House work

hard for their communities. Will the Premier reconsider his comments,

which were an affront to all members of this Legislature?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

I can only speak from experience, but I've certainly received many

petitions and requests from members on our side of the House with

respect to particular matters in their constituencies. I would

certainly urge the opposition to do likewise, and present these needs

in an intelligent manner. Frankly, I believe that those I've dealt with

on this side of the House do a more effective job in that regard.

MR. WILLIAMS : In view of statements by the Minister of Tourism and Culture (Hon. Mr. Reid) — with a capital K —

to the effect that it's a reality that the government would do nothing

for opposition members.... Have you reprimanded that minister?

Interjections.

MR. WILLIAMS : The Premier suggested that it was his own moral views — and probably, in his perception, more righteous views —

that may have hurt in the Boundary Similkameen by-election, and in a

sense that reflects on the people that voted in Boundary-Similkameen.

Is the Premier

[ Page

5077 ]

prepared to apologize to the good people of Boundary-Similkameen for suggesting that they were less righteous than he?

LATE GOVERNMENT PAYMENTS

ON DAYCARE BILLINGS

MS. MARZARI :

I have a question for the Minister of Social Services and Housing. The

minister wrote to the Nanaimo Family Day Care Association in March and

advised them that child care centres invoicing the government would be

paid within two weeks of billing. As you know, day care centres don't

have a line of credit, although they do have a $10,000 budget every

month. Can the minister tell the House exactly how many weeks after

billing it's now taking for his ministry to meet its financial

obligations to day care centres?

HON. MR. RICHMOND :

Rather than make a guess which might be inaccurate, I'll take that

question as notice. I'll have to find out for you, but I'll bring the

information back to you.

MS. MARZARI : The fact of the matter is, Mr. Minister, that it's taking up to eight weeks — two months —

for those payments to be made after the coupons are received by the

ministry. Every child care centre is waiting on these receipts. I want

the minister to tell the House why the government is unacceptably late

paying its bills, and why it's asking child care workers, children and

parents to carry that burden while the government sits on its billings

from the centres.

HON. MR. RICHMOND : I did offer to

bring back accurate information to the House regarding the length of

time it takes to pay bills. But it's interesting to note that I haven't

had a complaint similar to what the member mentions. I am sure that if

day care centres were waiting up to eight weeks, as I think the member

said, I would have heard by now. If she has a specific complaint,

please forward it to me, and I'll look into it. If she has had a

specific complaint from a specific day care centre, then I can only

urge that day care centre to write to the minister responsible rather

than the member opposite. I will bring back the information to the

House.

USER FEES IN ELDERLY-CARE FACILITIES

MRS. BOONE :

A question to the Premier. During the Boundary-Similkameen by-election,

ordinary men and women spoke out against the unfair fee increases in

longterm care for seniors. Last night the Premier was told by seniors

in his own community that fee increases take unfair advantage of those

least able to defend themselves. Is the Premier prepared to start

listening to British Columbians and tell his Minister of Health (Hon.

Mr. Dueck) to immediately roll back these unfair fee increases on

seniors?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : Yesterday I met with a total of in excess of a

thousand people in my constituency. I think we had a turnout of around 300-plus

at a chamber meeting; we had something like 600 people at the seniors' meeting;

in the evening we had 100-plus people at another meeting; and in the course

of the day I had meetings in between. Perhaps I could provide the hon. member

with a lesson in listening to people, in communicating with people and meeting

with people, and yesterday was one of those days again when the Premier of the

province met with people, listened to people and received their thoughts on

a variety of subjects.

might say as well that I was tremendously impressed, and the seniors

were very helpful and courteous, and certainly, I think, very

supportive in their stance. As a matter of fact, I was impressed with

the reception I received upon arrival and again as I left that

particular meeting.

Generally, the citizens and the seniors

of our province are good thinking people and are well aware that we're

very fortunate to have some of the very best programs of any place in

the country, the continent or for that matter the world and that we are

leaders in that particular field. They are not only aware, but they are

appreciative of the programs and the assists provided them through

these various initiatives that have been introduced by this government

over the years.

MRS. BOONE : Well, that was a long

non-answer, Mr. Premier. You may have been there and you may have heard

people speaking to you, but we want to see that you have listened and

that you have heard and that you are going to act on their message.

That message that they are giving you, Mr. Premier, is that the fee

increases for long-term care for seniors are unacceptable. Will the

Premier today tell his Minister of Health to immediately roll back

these unfair fees on seniors? Will the Premier do that today?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

I would highly recommend to the member opposite that she obtain a copy

of a brochure entitled "Government of British Columbia: Services

Supporting the Independence of Seniors." It lists a number of services.

The income-related services are GAIN, the old-age exemption, the land

tax deferment, the pension income deduction, many health-related

matters — which the member was asking about — such as

Pharmacare, extended hospital care, community care services and

intermediate care facilities, and home support such as homemaker

services, home nursing services, adult day care, home care nursing,

physiotherapy and preventive services. Under the area of housing, if

you'd like me to go on, there's shelter aid for elderly citizens,

homeowner grants, the rent subsidy program, seniors' housing referral

and information programs and the wheelchair-modified housing registry.

Under recreation there are various programs. Under transportation there

are a number of programs. There are many information services.

[2:30]

would highly recommend this particular information brochure to the hon.

members opposite. I think it would be a tremendous help to them as they

try and inform their senior citizens about the many services that are

available in this province — made available by the resources of the people in this province.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. STRACHAN : Mr. Speaker, I call second reading of Bill 28, printed

in the name of the Minister of Forests and Lands.

FOREST AMENDMENT ACT, 1988

HON. MR. PARKER : I rise to speak in support of Bill 28, the Forest Amendment Act, 1988.

[ Page 5078 ]

The

amendments to the Forest Act reflect the major changes we have

introduced in the way we manage our forests on Crown land. The bill

focuses on one of the key changes. We are increasing our competitive

sales of timber from an apportioned volume of just over 7 percent to an

available volume of 15 percent of the provincial allowable annual cut.

This is being done by expanding the allocation to the small business

forest enterprise program over the next three years from 5.5 million

cubic metres to 10.5 million cubic metres per year.

We will

obtain this volume from various sources: (1) our existing provincial

reserve of unallocated timber will be strongly directed to competitive

sales; (2) we will recover 5 percent of the allowable annual cut upon

sale, transfer or assignment of licence interests and a total of 5

percent from all replaceable licences; (3) we will reduce up to 10

percent of a tenure holder's allowable annual cut when the tenure is

converted to a tree-farm licence status — the amount reduced will

go toward competitive sales; (4) we will sell annual and five-year

undercuts; (5) we will remove from a licence the five-year undercuts of

more than 10 percent; (6) we may make increased incremental annual cuts

available for our competitive sales program in opportunity wood.

are broadening the eligibility to harvest timber under this program,

and this will help to create a more competitive and diversified forest

industry. All revenues collected under this program will flow into the

small business forest enterprise account. We will draw money from this

account to construct roads for future timber sales and on behalf of

small business operators to reforest and protect current and past

timber sale areas to ensure the establishment of a healthy new growing

stock. Thus the small business forest enterprise program will become a

self-financing, profitable business program.

The bill also

deals with the new comparative-value timber-pricing system instituted

on October 1, 1987. It clarifies ownership of forest roads where the

taxpayers' moneys have been spent on access rights for roads on Crown

land, and disallows improper imposition of road-use charges.

This

bill reflects the major changes we are making in forest resource

management, particularly in the area of more competition in timber

sales and expanded opportunities for small-scale forestry and

manufacturing.

I move that the bill be now read a second time.

MR. MILLER :

We are disturbed by some of the provisions contained in the bill. There

is a wide variety of amendments to the Forest Act, and obviously we

will be getting into more detailed discussions on the impact and

exactly what those amendments mean when we get into committee.

want to address the issues raised by the bill, and particularly the one

outlined in the news release issued by the minister when the bill was

introduced. Quoting from that news release, the bill gives long-term

licensees "greater opportunities and more responsibilities...."

"We

will allow more tree-farm licences to be established: up to 67 percent

of the current allowable annual cut in return for greater forest

management commitments and for greater processing commitments. Through

the amendments, industry will have more responsibility and

accountability for the long-term planning and management of our

forests, and thus the government's costs and regulations will be

reduced."

It seems to me that it strikes at the heart of

the policy that this government is implementing in forest policy, one

that we disagree with quite strongly.

There are currently

some 31 TFLs in this province, with a combined annual allowable cut of

about 19 million cubic metres, covering approximately 6.5 million

hectares of our forest land.

Just doing some very rough

calculations in terms of what it requires to maintain a TFL, which is

based on the principle of sustained yield — in other words, that

the area of land set aside is capable of producing a certain volume of

timber, which can change through different applications of new

technology.... Nonetheless, the basic principle is that this given area

of land is operated on the sustained-yield basis, or at least that's

the way it is supposed to operate. Obviously, given the nature of our

forest land in British Columbia and the variety and quality of forest

land, all tree-farm licences are not equal. But we can draw some

conclusions based on a general or across-the-board look at it.

know that it requires a set amount of land. That would vary, but

roughly, if you use the existing figures we are talking about — I guess if you divide —

it's about a third of a hectare per cubic metre. That's not an absolute

figure, but that's a figure produced from taking the totals and doing a

little division. There are currently 171 forest licences in British

Columbia, with an annual allowable cut in total of about 40 million

cubic metres. Here we come to the nub of the argument, because if we

use that rough calculation — that one-third-hectare figure that I mentioned —

and we apply it to the volume currently produced in forest licences,

you obviously would require a significant amount of land to be set

aside in tree-farm licences if the rollover vision is to be enacted,

which is the stated policy of this ministry. I stress that the figures

I use are rough, but they are accurate in broad terms, in terms of

outlining the impact that this provision would bring about.

would see, under the policy, the increase to 67 percent of the AAC put

in the hands of tree-farm licences, and that would require the setting

aside of a significant part of the current Crown forest land which

would be alienated within these TFLs. Possibly as much as 75 percent of

the Crown forested lands would be alienated in this tenure form, a

significant portion.

If you look at the ministry documents,

the annual reports, although we do have listed some 26 million hectares

that are described as stock with mature forests, clearly there is the

fact that not all of those lands are accessible, for a variety of

impact that could follow from logging some of those lands on steep

slopes, so obviously not all of that 26 million hectares is available

for cut.

Really,

this move represents privatization on a

massive scale. It is the almost complete abdication of the

responsibility of the Ministry of Forests to manage the forest lands of

this province for the people of this province. Never before in the

history of this province has this kind of giveaway been contemplated

without the benefit of intense public discussion, normally through the

royal commission route. The last royal commission that was conducted in

this province back in 1975 is really the only document that we can

refer to in terms of an exhaustive study of the problems in forestry.

It deals with all the issues in terms of forest policy. So I am going

to quote throughout my remarks today — not extensively, but three

particular ones — references from Dr. Pearse's report in

[ Page

5079 ]

terms of the policy that the minister has now proposed to implement in British Columbia.

first reference from Dr. Pearse on page 379 of his 1976 report is aptly

entitled "Flexibility" and has this to say about the policy as

enunciated by this government:

"While the

tenure system must provide the forest industry with secure rights to

timber, it must also preserve the Crown's flexibility to reallocate

timber and redefine rights over time to meet changing industrial needs

and public priorities. This means that the duration of contractual

commitments should be no longer than necessary to provide the assurance

for systematic investment planning and resource development. They

should also afford regular opportunities for review, revision and

reallocation, without resort to arbitrary administrative intervention

or infringement on contractual undertakings."

contend that the advice offered by DT. Pearse back in 1976 — as I

said, after an exhaustive royal commission into forest policy in this

province —

is exactly contrary to what the government is proposing in terms of the

rolling over of forest licences into tree-farm licences — exactly

the contrary; and yet it is the only exhaustive study and reference

source we have now in terms of forest policy in British Columbia. The

policy that's being proposed now has been made somewhere in the back

rooms, but it has not been made in the public arena via the vehicle

that has been traditionally used in this province, and that's the royal

commission.

Dr. Pearse outlined his concerns about

concentration, and it was discussed briefly during the minister's

estimates. Again, I'm referring to a thesis I talked about during the

minister's estimates: Mr. Wagner's master's thesis on the subject of

corporate concentration in the forest industry of British Columbia. I

want to take some time to go through that, because I think it's of

vital importance in terms of the policy announced by the minister.

Mr.

Wagner basically outlined that the forest corporations of this province

have become increasingly concentrated, that they control a significant

volume of the timber that is harvested in this province, and that they

roughly fall into four identifiable groups. The first of those groups

is what Mr. Wagner refers to as the Bentley-Prentice group, with

control in this province over companies like Takla Forest Products and

Canfor and Canadian Forest Products. We see a company that has the

control over 4.4 million cubic metres of volume per year in this

province. The Mead-Scott group has 10.7 million cubic metres of annual

cut, with such companies as Western Forests Products and Finlay Forest

Industries. One of the giants, the Bronfmann-Reichmann-Desmarais group,

which controls Northwood and MacMillan Bloedel, has 13 million cubic

metres of cut in their control. And finally, the

Sauder-Champion-Ketcham-Fletcher group has 16.5 million cubic metres of

control of cut in this province, and companies such as Weldwood and

Whonnock Industries.

[2:45]

Together, these four main corporate groups control 26 million cubic

metres of cut in timber supply areas — lands managed by the

Crown —

and 18.5 million cubic metres of cut in tree-farm licences, for a

combined total of 45 million cubic metres of volume per year coming out

of the forest lands of British Columbia.

It's significant

to note that the target volume of cut in this province is 75 million

cubic metres per year. If we cut that, obviously these four corporate

groups control well in excess of 50 percent of the timber harvested in

British Columbia. The fact is that last year, 1987, we cut about 91

million cubic metres. So we're looking still at four corporate groups

that really have control over about 50 percent of the timber harvested

off the Crown lands of this province. As a matter of policy, the

minister is proposing to more than double the volume that would be

contained in tree-farm licences.

I want to again quote Dr.

Pearse in terms of that question. The policy of tree-farm licences is a

very old policy in British Columbia. It was developed in the mid- to

late-forties. It was designed to give forest companies or corporations

the stability that they thought they required in terms of long-term

financing, so that they could build some of the major forest products

processing facilities in this province. Primarily, they were dealing

with pulp mills and the significant amounts of money required to build

a pulp mill. The government and the corporations and Mr. Sloan are all

agreed that in order to have security of supply, in order to go to the

financiers, they had to have these vast areas of our province under

their control — and we gave them that right for nothing in

exchange for their commitment to build processing facilities. That was

it; that was the trade-off: alienate the Crown lands in exchange for

industrial development. It sounds simple, it sounds neat, but there are

problems with it.

Dr. Pearse dealt with the question of

tenure and licences rather extensively, and I could read a long time,

in terms of the things he had to say about that. I want to offer a

brief quote from page 118 of his 1976 report, dealing with the question

of the expansion of the tree-farm licence system. He says:

"Moreover,

new licences of this kind should not be issued if the effect will be to

concentrate further timber rights in the few large corporations, a

tendency that may arise from the fact that they hold much of the land

that might be contributed to potential tree-farm licences. Accordingly,

the government should consider sympathetically applications in these

cases only if the applicant will release other rights they hold in

public sustained yield units equivalent in annual volume to the

allowable cut of the lands to be contributed by the Crown."

Dr.

Pearse stated quite clearly that we should not repeat the policy

initiatives of the 1940s in the mid-1970s, and I think his argument is

just as valid in the late 1980s.

So we see that the impact

of the government's policy initiative is to further alienate . . . to

tie up significant amounts of Crown land in the hands of an

increasingly concentrated corporate sector, and a corporate sector that

is not established. . . . The home offices are not in British Columbia.

They are either offshore or they are back east. The control is not in

British Columbia, and we want to give them the overwhelming part of the

Crown forests of this province. And we're talking about significant

value.

Surely the issue of South Moresby — the question of value —

is appropriate in terms of the policy of this government. Once we turn

this Crown asset, these timber lands that belong to all British

Columbians, over to corporations, they become, in the corporation's

eyes, theirs. They see that — and the minister sees that — as

the same thing as private property. We are transferring an asset owned

by the people of this province to a private corporation. We don't

charge them, but what are these lands worth? This is a fairly

complicated question, but I want to deal quite simply, I hope, with the

question of how we establish a value for these lands, because surely

they have value. There is an argument, and I think a

[ Page 5080 ]

good one — and I'm not going to use it here in terms of the compensation question —

that there should be no compensation because we are simply giving

people the right to harvest a natural resource, not to make a profit

harvesting it. They shouldn't make a profit harvesting it; they should

make a profit processing it. That was the deal.

Let's look

at the question of value: TFL 24 on South Moresby. The minister's views

about South Moresby are well known. I won't go into that. It's a

tree-farm licence awarded to a company; 112,500 hectares of land, an

annual cut of about 430,000 cubic metres. We have two differing views

on what the value is. We have the initial value of $31 million arrived

at through some process that the federal and provincial governments

seemed to identify. That's the amount we would have to compensate the

owner of that TFL because it was deemed desirable by the people of

Canada and the people of British Columbia to create a national park in

South Moresby.

If we extrapolate that value and apply it to

the existing tree-farm licensed lands in this province, using the $31

million as the low end of the value if you like — the benchmark end of the value —

then by my calculations the current TFLs have a value of anywhere

between $1.3 billion and $1.8 billion. That's the land we've already

allocated in TFLs. It's possibly as high as $2 billion using the low

end. If we use the company's figures that they are entitled to $100

million — or maybe more — and apply that to the existing

TFLs, we come up with a value of anywhere between $4.5 billion and $6

billion. That's the value that the forest companies put on these TFL

lands.

The

policy as proposed would see an increase of lands in TFLs from 29

percent to 67 percent — far more than doubling the Crown lands

we've alienated.

What

would be the value, using the calculations I've outlined, of the lands

we're now proposing to transfer? Going through the same kinds of

calculations, on the low end of the scale we're looking at anywhere

between $3.4 billion and $4.4 billion. We're proposing to transfer that

in the form of tree-farm licences, perpetual tenures. At the high end

of the scale, we get to a staggering $11 billion to $14 billion of

value that we're prepared to transfer to these concentrated

corporations. I'm sure they're quite pleased at the prospect. Who

wouldn't be? That's the sum and substance of the policy proposal

outlined by this government.

The immense wealth, the

incredible value of this province would be transferred into that

intensely concentrated forest industry under a form of tenure; and

tenure is really the relationship, whether it's a lease or a purchase

or whatever, between the owner and the people that are using it. The

minister's own words in the estimates last week when he referred to

that TFL tenure. . . . I quote from Hansard : "We are getting as close as possible to providing almost the private land situation for the major licensees...."

MR. WILLIAMS : And proud of it.

MR. MILLER :

And they're proud of it. The policy of this government is to transfer

more than double the amount of land that the minister says is the

closest thing you can get to private ownership without outright selling

it, and they don't have to pay anything. They have to pay economic

rent, but everybody does. They have to build processing facilities,

hopefully; not everyone has performed when we've given timber out to

build processing facilities. That's what we get in return.

don't charge them for the land, yet when it comes to taking back that

land, if we decide for whatever reason that the land is better under

the control of the government or used for some other purpose, the

forest companies say: "We want $100 million." The people of British

Columbia and Canada have to pay $100 million to the forest company to

get back what we own. The implications for future policy are

mind-boggling in terms of turning over and alienating 75 percent of the

Crown timber land in this province.

This government has a

blind-faith commitment to privatization. Their belief is: "If we give

it to the corporations, we know they'll do a good job. We don't really

want to be in the business of government." This minister has stood up,

whether it's a simple reference to the CBC or whatever, and said: "I

like private enterprise."

HON. MR. PARKER : You've got'er, boy.

MR. MILLER :

"I like private enterprise so much, I want to give them the forests of

British Columbia. That's how much I like private enterprise." So what

happens when in future we might have a saner government in this

province who might make saner land use decisions, who might decide that

land should be used for a different purpose? I'll tell you what

happens: we can't afford to get it back, because they will have given

it away.

The government of this province was never given a

mandate . . . . I can't recall anybody on the government side saying in

the last election: "This is our policy. We want to give away a

significant portion of Crown land." Never once did I hear them say

that. If they had said it, they wouldn't have been elected, because the

people of this province wouldn't have stood for it, and I don't think

they're going to stand for it.

The motive is privatization.

The government amazes me with its . . . . They're in trouble for it,

and we all know they're in trouble for it. They put their ideology

ahead of common sense. They've decided what their ideology is; their

ideology tells them where they should go, and to heck with anything

else. "That's where we're going, boys" — and they're getting into trouble for it.

[3:00]

They're going to privatize. The reason they want to turn it over to

the corporations, as stated by the minister . . . . This is the last

part of the sentence. I quoted the minister a moment ago in terms of

private land: " . . . so that they will undertake the same level of

management" — "they" meaning the TFL holders, the corporations —

"as we see in . . . countries . . . where most of the . . . lands are

privately held." There it is. When something is owned, it's

managed. If it's owned by the Crown, the view of this government is

that they can't manage it. Quite frankly, I think they're right. I

think they've done a lousy job of managing the Crown lands of this

province. If they're so uninterested in government, and if they want to

privatize everything, I wonder sometimes why some of them wind up

sitting in these chairs over here. Are they here only to get rid of

government — to privatize government? Do they think we'd be better off if a corporation ran the province?

Privatization —

because only the corporations know how to manage. Surely that doesn't

always happen. For example, some of us are familiar with the Nass

Valley tree farm licence

[ Page 5081 ]

No.

1. It may be the biggest; I'm not exactly certain. It's not now, but it

may have been the biggest. We gave vast tracts of land to an American

corporation in northern British Columbia; in exchange, they built a

pulp mill.

In my community of Prince Rupert — I worked in that pulp mill —

we gave them vast tracts of land. The level of waste and destruction in

the Nass Valley has been outlined. You can read about it today in the Vancouver Sun ;

you can read the ombudsman's reports. The incredible level of waste and

inefficiency and bad management. . . . The minister wants to give them

some more to play with.

MR. WILLIAMS : Oh, but he was in charge of that management.

MR. MILLER : He worked there; he should be familiar with it.

MR. WILLIAMS : He's the guy who left that pile of rubbish behind.

MR. MILLER :

Surely good management is not the rather simple notion that we'll give

it to the private sector, and somehow they'll do a good job. Good

management starts with the regulations, the legislation and the

policies you develop in this chamber. It finishes with the commitment

by government to go out and apply those policies on behalf of the

owners of the resource, who are the people of this province. If there's

been a failure in management, it really is a failure of government.

It's not because the lands weren't managed by the private sector; it's

because the lands were not managed well by the people who should have

done the job — the government of the day.

If you want

to talk about principle, there's the principle: privatization. We had a

bill introduced in the House. We all recall the great experiment in

privatization. The minister must recall it; he worked for the company.

B.C. Resources Investment Corporation — how many took a bath on

BCRIC shares? Five free shares were worth $6. I remember the Premier .

. . . You can't do that under the normal rules of investment. You can't

go and shill a stock without having a prospectus; that's giving false

advice. The Premier of this province went on TV and told all the people

of this province: "Buy those shares. They're going to go up in value."

That was the experiment in privatization. We turned over corporations

and companies of incredible value, which were owned by the people of

this province and were providing a return for the people of this

province, and we gave them to BCRIC. We privatized them because we know

that the private corporations can run it better. We privatized them,

and then we took a bath.

think that was the biggest

capital drain in the history of British Columbia. They took $400

million or $500 million out of the pockets of B.C. people, who rushed

down to their credit unions and their banks and bought those BCRIC

shares, because they saw the Premier on television telling them to

buy — "it's a good buy." They rushed down. I worked with lots of

people; they invested, for them, significant amounts —

$2,000 or $3,000. The fellows I worked with in the mill thought about

"the growing sense of confidence," and they took a bath. That money was

dumped in

part in the chilly waters of the North Sea in a little

corporate adventurism, and now we come down to the . . . .

MR. REE : Order!

MR. MILLER :

We're talking about principle, Mr. Member. We're talking about the

principle of this government's policy. I'll read the minister's news

release, if you want me to outline it again.

now we're bringing in the sorry end of the first experiment in

privatization — the Westar bill. We abandoned BCRIC. BCRIC doesn't

exist anymore, right?

MR. SPEAKER : I would advise the member that his time is up, unless he is the designated speaker.

MR. WILLIAMS : He's the designated speaker.

MR. SPEAKER : Okay.

The second member for Kamloops is asking leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MR. S.D. SMITH :

Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce a person who is a longtime

friend of mine, with whom I went to school in Clearwater, and whose

family were pioneers in providing the tourism infrastructure in that

community. Would the House join me in welcoming Connie Knight.

MR. REE :

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I'm looking at our rules and

practice recommendation No. 9, standing order 45 (a), "Designated

Speaker." I think it reads that a member who wishes to speak as

designated member should advise the Chair as early as possible after

the commencement of a speech, not after the conclusion of a speech.

MR. MILLER :

I was speaking about the first experiment in privatization —

the experiment that saw a number of valuable assets owned by the people

of this province taken away and sold back to the people, culminating in

the fact that we now have a bill in the House — which I'm going to

enjoy talking about — that formally dissolves BCRIC. BCRIC no

longer exists.

guess we have to conclude that the privatization was a failure, that

privatization doesn't always work. Even the casual observer would have

to conclude that. We took an incredibly valuable pulp mill in Prince

Rupert and virtually gave it away for $75 million, at a time when pulp

prices were going up like that. The company that bought it immediately

put a new value on it. They jacked it right up to $200 million — just

like that. A nice way of making money. I wish other people had that

opportunity. Two hundred million dollars, and we gave it to them for

$75 million. Those are the resources of this province. A pulp mill in

Castlegar: again, sold for a modest sum. So privatization doesn't

always work. When you put your ideology ahead of common sense, you get

into trouble. It's a message that this government has a great deal of

difficulty understanding, despite ample evidence.

I believe

we have a responsibility to manage the timber resources of this

province in the best possible manner for the people of this province. I

don't believe we've done a very good job in that regard.

MR. MICHAEL : What about Manitoba?

[ Page 5082 ]

MR. MILLER : That member always wants to talk about Manitoba, but I've never heard him say Boundary-Similkameen.

MR. MICHAEL : Boundary-Similkameen isn't in the financial mess that Manitoba's in.

MR. MILLER :

Do you know where Boundary-Similkameen is, Mr. Member? That's in

British Columbia. So watch your riding. You'd better spend some time

there, because it'll go the same way. If you keep talking about

Manitoba, they're going to wonder why you're there. You'll have to come

up with some better lines than that.

To continue on

privatization, not only are we moving in terms of alienating our Crown

land, our resource, our heritage, to this concentrated industry; the

minister has also indicated — he has obfuscated about it, but indicated —

that he intends to privatize the Forest Service. All the new work

that's going to flow to the small business forest enterprise program

will be done by private companies, because somehow they have this

ideological fixation that they can always do it better.

last reference to Dr. Pearse in this discourse, if I can call it that,

is a little longer than the previous quotes, but I think it's quite

important in terms of privatization of not only the assets — the land —

but the management function. What Dr. Pearse had to say about this is

quite important. It's in

chapter 11, and the title is a good one:

"Responsibilities for Management and Development:"

"Policy

relating to the division of responsibilities for forest development and

management between licensees and the Forest Service has not been well

articulated, except in connection with tree-farm licences, which were

deliberately designed to delegate most managerial activities to the

corporate holders. But over the years, in the face of its own

inadequate financial resources, the Forest Service has tended to rely

increasingly on licensees to carry out functions ranging from access

development to cruising, planning and reforestation . . . .

"This

reliance on the private sector is now very heavy relative to other

important forest jurisdictions with extensive public ownership. To some

observers our present dependence on licensees to not only carry out

management and development functions but also to initiate their

planning and determine their priorities is alarming.

"Within public sustained yield units" — which are now the timber supply areas —

"the Forest Service has largely left it to the licensees to divide up

their areas of influence and to identify tracts to be harvested. The

Forest Service looks to licensees to do most of the cruising required

for its stumpage appraisals and other purposes, and to propose and

execute road building, operational plans and many forestry practices. I

share the concern that the Forest Service is in danger of losing the

initiative and effective control over the development of the public

forests through excessive reliance on licensees."

This

document, the result of a royal commission by one of the foremost

British Columbians in resource management, identifies and is completely

contrary to the path that this government is now proposing we follow in

forest management, and the danger is clear. I don't know if at this

date it is possible to have the government reconsider that policy. I

think it's a dangerous one; I think it has repercussions for future

policy. It ties our hands.

The concept of transferring this

incredible value to licensees who at some point in the future, as we

are now faced with in South Moresby.... The stalemate in South Moresby

is that the corporation that eventually got control of that tree farm

licence is now saying to the taxpayers of this country, "We want in

excess of $100 million from the public purse for you to have it back,"

and we do not agree with that.

HON. MR. STRACHAN : That's not relevant.

MR. MILLER : It's quite relevant.

I'm

going to conclude now. There are a number of other features of the bill

that we have concerns about. Hopefully, clarification will come in

committee stage, but there are a number of.... As examples, I mean the

arbitrariness in the stumpage section, the questions of appeals, the

contracting out of management, the deletion of references to the chief

forester, what looks to be a kind of political change in direction in

the way the legislation is written, and the small business forest

enterprise program. We support the increase, but we think there are

some problems that have to be resolved in terms of pricing and

surrogate bidding.

There are some issues in terms of roads,

now that the Forest Service will not be paying for roads. We are coming

into a situation where roads will be private, with the attendant

problems that could follow from that.

[3:15]

I've

tried to outline in broad terms what I see in terms of the differences

in principle we have with the direction that this government is taking.

As I said, we think it's folly to proceed in this direction, but we

will be debating the bill further in committee. I know that some of my

colleagues also wish to make a contribution to the second reading

debate.

MR. JACOBSEN : The previous speaker has spent

a lot of time talking about the increase into tree-farm licences, the

rollover of forest licences into tree-farm licences. As I understand

it — and I've looked at the bill very closely — I don't think

that Bill 28 itself provides any basis for doing that. Certainly I

admit that in the discussion of the bill by the minister there was a

great deal of discussion about the possibility of the rollover of this

forest licence tenure into tree farm licences, but I don't see that in

the bill.

don't have any problems supporting Bill 28 as it stands, on the

understanding — and I will ask the minister to provide this

understanding —

that it in itself does not provide for the rollover into TFLs. I have

to tell the minister that I am entirely, absolutely opposed to the

rollover of even one forest licence into another TFL in British

Columbia.

MS. EDWARDS : The main problem, I think,

beyond the fact that my colleague the member for Prince Rupert has laid

out — which is that we are dealing with a major giveaway of the

control of provincial lands —

is that we're dealing with legislation that could allow some major

politicization of the decisions; I mean even more politicization of the

decisions that are made vis--vis forest licensing and so on.

mention this because in a number of cases in the legislation the chief

forester is removed as the person who has to make decisions, and

sometimes regional managers and so on are removed. In fact, this is

left far more open than it was

[ Page 5083 ]

before.

Just to lay it out before I go further into examples of what's

happening in the bill itself, probably . . . . I have to be hopeful on

this, because I'm making several assumptions in supposing it to be

true. But I do suppose it to be true that the chief forester was made

to be the centre of most of these activities: the activities of

allocating cuts, giving licences and allowing tree-farm licences and so

on to be given based on an understanding that a bureaucrat rather than

a politician has a certain continuing and objective look at things.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

With

this bill, the chief forester loses a number of the requirements and

the duties that apply. What happens then is that the decisions made by

the minister can more easily escape a continuing and strong position

within the ministry. I think that that's an extremely important thing,

Mr. Minister, when you put that together with your avowed interest in

privatization, and also what seems to be possible under this bill,

which is that the minister himself can designate people — they may

not necessarily always be within the ministry — to carry out some

of the functions of allocating the wealth that is owned by all British

Columbians.

think you have to look at situations where there are differences in the

way that some licences are allowed to be given out, and in fact some

requirements are different from one licence to the other. I'll deal

with that a little more in a minute. That is not a principle that

should apply when we're talking about the variations from a timber

licence and a timber sale licence and whether it's a small business or

whether it's another licensee.

Section 9 — oh, I'm not to talk about sections —

is an example of what happens. We have no explanation at all of how the

amount of timber that is reserved for sale will be directed. It is to

be directed, but there is a vagueness in the legislation that allows

the possibility of far more political action. It's an example of what

goes on throughout the bill.

In other parts of the bill

there are phrases such as "the amount directed by the minister," where

there is no particular explanation of how the minister would arrive at

that decision or how he will make that directive. There are parts in it

where it talks about reasonable payment where there is no attempt at

all to define what would be reasonable under the circumstances.

We have situations where the decisions that are to be made and the announcement of how that is to be made —

for example, for stumpage. . . . It is to be set by directives which

are no longer regulations. Stumpage was set under a set of regulations

previously. Now we have directives which will come from the ministry.

That becomes a situation where a decision can be made which can move

much further beyond a centre or an understood position than if you have

stumpage decided by regulations.

We have sections where,

for example, the regional manager is no longer the person who is to

grant an exemption of permits for unmanufactured wood.

Those

kinds of things, Mr. Minister, put together with the vague parameters,

create a situation where again we have politicization of the

decision-making process; and in fact we could have the minister making

decisions out of his office based on, shall we say, evaluations and

information that have been brought to his office perhaps by people who

are not even in the ministry. That creates a situation that does not

create trust.

Another problem with the legislation is that

there seems to be no recognition that the public needs to know what's

going on. In fact, there is far too little public ability to

participate in what's happening or to actually see what's going on.

There's

no explanation at all of how the amount of timber that is reserved from

TFLs, for example, for sale to others will be decided. This is not only

another example of the kind of power that now goes without regulation

into what could be a political process, but it's also an example of how

the public is not going to know, because it won't be laid out exactly

how decisions are made.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Previously

the regulations as to how stumpage rates were arrived at had to be,

within 30 days after the minister approved them, filed with the

regional manager for the forest region, who was to make them available

for inspection by any person. Now that no longer applies. If there are

no expressed policies and procedures and no requirement for public

availability even at the regional level, how is the public to know

what's going on? How are the companies who want to apply for licences

to know what the rules are going to be? Instead, a directive shall be

filed with a registrar and it will take effect right after that with no

examination process required by the legislation.

The whole

business of there being no appeal, and the arrogance of setting out a

situation where we assume, since September of last year, that all

appeals have been correct, sets up a situation where there is nobody

making decisions except the centre of the world. The minister and his

office can make those decisions. If they don't make those decisions and

if they are made quite correctly and on a basis of regulations that are

open and they believe fair, then there is no reason in the world that

there should not be within this legislation requirements that they be

laid out so that everybody who will have something to do with this, who

may want to be a business person in the forest industry, can take a

look at them, and so that the public, who own the resource, have a good

way to look at the regulations and know how things are going to be

decided.

If you go further and look at what the minister

says the reason for this legislation is . . . . He wants to make it

easier for small businesses to get into the forest industry and have a

better chance to make a living; he wants to increase their share of the

annual allowable cut and therefore make it easier for them. I point out

to the minister that there are some problems with that, because there

are some requirements where the small business people suffer a greater

loss of what they might have. In other words, they lose more than their

licence, where other licensees would lose only the . . . . What I'm

talking about is with cut. When a small business owner doesn't cut

enough — it is undercut — he loses not only his cut but more

than any other licensee would lose. He also loses his status. That

seems to me to militate against small businesses rather than making

them more able to compete.

There is some wondering about the small business revenue fund —

I don't think I have the name right, but the fund that is set up in the

legislation to cover the costs of silviculture and building roads. That

fund is up for grabs. In other words, the money that's there can, by an

undefined process, be raided and some of the money which is not deemed

necessary

[ Page 5084 ]

will

be put into the consolidated revenue fund rather than being there.

There is some question whether that is the fair way to deal with how

the minister is going to approach small business.

Small

businesses, of course, do not have replaceable licences. That is a long

time thing. It means again that they suffer from a problem that larger

licensees do not suffer from.

I point out that in the

legislation there are some problems and an extreme lack of clarity when

we deal with roads. I think the legislation is not ready to go forward.

It seems that there is no clarity about the problems of having private

and public roads needing to go to the same place or about who is going

to be able to use the roads. It seems that there is some suggestion, by

my first reading, that the roads that are going to be built by private

companies will be there only for use by foresters or other industrial

users. That attitude fits in with the whole other business of "we'll

decide later." It doesn't seem clear in the legislation what is going

to be done. It looks like decisions will be able to go back, and they

are not going to go back to a bureaucracy which, as I say, has the

quality of being somewhat objective and long-term; they are going into

the minister's office. There will be some questions as to whether the

minister again is taking too much power unto himself in deciding the

use of roads.

[3:30]

With all these things put together, I would like to say on principle

that the bill in many ways does not achieve what the minister says he

wants it to achieve. It sets up some situations where the small

business person in the forest industry will not be able to do as well

as the large companies again, and where we have more opportunity for

the politicization of decisionmaking and the horrible fear that if the

minister goes ahead with his strong commitment to privatization, if he

has some of the functions of the ministry privatized and then, by

legislation, has only his own office to decide what shall go ahead, we

are set up again for the kinds of problems, of political decisions,

that have plagued this province in the past and that we should not have

again.

MR. SPEAKER : The second member for Dewdney seeks leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MR. JACOBSEN :

I don't know whether they're still here, but we have with us today

visiting from Fraserview Elementary School in Mission about 70 grade 7

students with their teachers, Mr. Ray Jung, Mr. Russell Savage and Mr.

Frank Dunham and seven escorting parents. On behalf of the first member

for Dewdney (Mr. Pelton), I'd like the House to give them a warm

welcome.

MR. WILLIAMS : I just wonder if the minister saw the cartoon in the Province

on the weekend. That was the one with the scar on the forehead and a

woodpecker pecking away. Good! It seemed to sum up a lot of our current

problems with this minister, and it would almost be gilding the lily to

proceed after the cartoon has hit the newsstands — but we will anyway.

What's

going on in this bill is somewhat schizophrenic. You're moving in one

direction toward greater concentration, more tree-farm licences, the

rollover provisions and related features tied to the rollover game in

terms of moving present licences into tree-farm licences. At the same

time, there's this other direction of picking up some of the timber and

reallocating it through a competitive bid process. Well, which is it,

Mr. Minister? Which is the right direction for British Columbia?

You're

saying, on the one hand, "Yes, we're opening up the opportunity to move

to about 70 percent in the form of tree-farm licences," which is a

concentration of ownership, without access, without real free

enterprise at all. On the other hand you're saying: "But in this modest

direction we'll actually be free enterprisers, and we'll go for 5

percent or 10 percent of the cut on a bid basis, and expand the small

enterprise business program." That's what it is. It's really like

Stephen Leacock's horse, running off in all directions or at least two

very different, diametrically opposed directions.

I wonder

if the minister has reflected on that. I wonder if he has really

reflected on a lot of aspects of this bill, some of which I won't get

into. I wonder if he has reflected on them. A true believer, a true

ideologue like this minister — "ideologue"; it almost has a forestry ring to it, doesn't it? —

might wonder how much of the true beliefs are in this bill. But I don't

want to elaborate on that too much; it might confuse the minister, and

that seems to be easy to do, after the meetings that have been held up

in Hazelton in the last little while. He can't quite remember what he

said on particular occasions, especially when they are embarrassing

statements.

The

nature of the bill is schizophrenic; it

does go in these two very different directions. It has some incredibly

discretionary clauses, particularly around the stumpage question. I

find that it's very unacceptable, simply unacceptable, to see that in

legislation: for legislation to define the right of the minister to

discriminate between persons — just persons! — in terms of

what they pay for the public's timber. Maybe the minister can provide

some rationale for that — the legislation may mean "persons" in a

very different way than in normal conversation —

and I hope he can do that. To have open discrimination between persons

with respect to the pricing of Crown timber is totally unacceptable in

an honest, democratic system. But that's what this allows. That's bad

news indeed.

The member for Prince Rupert has elaborated on

his concern about the concentration and movement of more of our forest

licences into this TFL category. The reality is, as the truck loggers'

group advises us, that when you get right down to it, it's a

three-price system, in a way, between the small business enterprise

program, the forest licences and the TFL, so that there's already rank

discrimination between forms of tenure and the players. This

legislation will allow even more discrimination between the players in

an arbitrary way, and that doesn't make a lot of sense.

But

as you move more and more of our forest lands in British Columbia....

And we're talking about the great natural land heritage of British

Columbia here — most of the province, in fact, because most of the

people in this province only live in the narrow valley bottoms, the

communications systems of the province. The rest of the province is

locked up in various forest licences. In a sense, we are in a kind of

narrow economic straitjacket in British Columbia, tied to this forest

tenure question, so that we don't see a pattern of new towns or

villages flowering in an open, pluralistic society. We have closed the

gate to settlement in most of British Columbia by allocating forest or

tree-farm licences across the board.

[ Page 5085 ]

Nothing shows it more clearly than Vancouver Island — right

here on this island. You look at the pluralistic scattering of people

in the southeastern part of the Island from Campbell River to Victoria.

It's a rich, diverse economy. You look at the western half of Vancouver

Island, and there's hardly anything there. You look at the northern

half of Vancouver Island, and there's hardly anything there. There's

not a dramatic transition from Campbell River to Port McNeill.

HON. MR. PARKER : Yes, there is.

MR. WILLIAMS :

Oh, he's going to be the expert again. There is not a dramatic

difference in terms of three-quarters of Vancouver Island. The reality

is that through your tenure system you've closed the gate to a

pluralistic system of a variety of settlement. He can shake and rattle

his head and invite the woodpeckers around all he likes, but that's the

reality of Vancouver Island.

Look at the Nimpkish in terms

of old villages there. Your predecessor, the former minister, the

lobbyist for the mining industry now, closed down villages within the

tree-farm licence, old villages that had been there for some time,

because the company didn't want them there. So the workers commute 35

miles to Port McNeill. They're shut off, closed out of their own land.

They wanted to live on the lake 30 miles south of Port McNeill. They

never had the choice, because under the TFL system it was locked up,

closed up — keep out.

When I became minister in 1972,

there was a gate at Gold River, and they actually charged a toll to go

on the public roads through these licences; they charged a fee on bread

and groceries going north on Vancouver Island in 1972. Your

predecessors in an earlier administration lived with that. We still

have the same form of tenure — not so cruel, not so harsh, not so

terribly uncompromising, but very real and harsh in terms of truly

pluralistic involvement in and on those lands by the people of British

Columbia.

They are allocated to a handful of corporations

that handle them like banana republics. They were more like banana

republics before '72, but it still leaves much to be desired. And you,

through previous legislation and amendments here, are opening up the

door to more and more of those licences that closed down wide economic

opportunity. Our forest sector is not as sophisticated, not as diverse,

not as competent as it should be, I'm sorry to say.

Beyond

that, many of these forest lands have a potential for other uses —

recreational, commercial, village, urban and whatever —

that could be more productive economically; but they are closed, in

terms of carrying on those diverse activities, by the form of the

licence. We are all losers within the provincial economy as a result of

your tenure system. You want to wallpaper that tight tenure system over

the landscape of British Columbia, and it does not make sense

economically. It does not make sense in terms of the diverse human

population we have, which could do so much more on those lands than

those who control the licences now.

You are really privatizing the public lands through this process. It's privatizing, but we get no scratch for it —

we don't get any money. You're willing to give them these licences that

are virtually private property, and they pay nothing for it. The

average householder in British Columbia has to pay $50,000 at least for

a little 50-foot lot to build a house on. But you're willing to

allocate hundreds of thousands of acres with no fee, no charge. That's

brilliant stuff for free-enterprisers. It doesn't make any sense.

Once

we've allocated them, once you've signed the contract, then if we want

it back, as we do in South Moresby, we pay through the nose. The member

for Prince Rupert (Mr. Miller) has indicated that. Western Forest

Products is arguing for $100 million because we want that land for a

national park. As the member for Prince Rupert said, if you stretch

that across the province, then you're allocating as much as maybe $15

billion in terms of this form of forest tenure — $15 billion if we

want to get it back. That really doesn't make any sense at all.

Indeed,

the royal commissioner Peter Pearse made it clear that he had trouble

with this form of tenure, and he could see no reason for extending it,

because of the kind of tight contractual obligations and commitments it

had, hamstringing the Crown. He's right: it hamstrings us in terms of

the future.

You look at this legislation, and then you ask

yourself whatever happened to the Forest Service of British Columbia.

Where are they? I expect only shadows to be beside you in the future,

when we deal with legislation, because I don't even know if we'll have

a deputy minister or an assistant deputy left if you guys keep on the

way you're going. You've been giving up the forests, and there's

nothing left of the ministry. Everything's contracted out. Half of the

old ranger stations I knew as a young person in this province have

gone. You probably wouldn't even call them ranger stations anymore.

What do you call them — bureaucratic outposts in regional towns?

HON. MR. PARKER : They've had a different name for eight years. Where have you been?

MR. WILLIAMS : I didn't think there was anything wrong with "ranger stations," as a matter of fact.

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS :

This clever minister changes the name and thinks that if you haven't

got the new name, or the latest bureaucratic turn, you're a dinosaur.

Well, fine. I think that tells us more about the minister than anything

else.

The reality is we now have half of those ranger

stations. There used to be 90-some; I think there are about 45 left

around the province. That means that in small communities like Carmi,

Beaverdell, New Denver and Rock Creek — you name them — they're not there anymore.

paid the price in terms of forest fires just a few years ago. You

didn't have anybody out there to took after the forest fires, and we

lost more in timber through fires than we ever would have saved in 20

years of staff-cutting. We lost 35 percent of the Ministry of Forests

staff with so-called restraint under that last loser Premier, Mr.

Bennett. How many have you lost under the golden handshake routine of

this spring — 10 percent? Again, more people lost. And we're

talking about talented people, with a history in the ministry, who have

a lot to deliver and some real background. We're talking about human

capital that's been lost.

[3:45]

This legislation allows more and more contracting out of the normal

work of the Ministry of Forests. It begs the question. You remove all

references to the chief forester and

[ Page 5086 ]

other

senior members of the staff of the Forests ministry, and the minister

can simply designate people to carry out any of these functions. As I

read that, that allows you to designate contractor X, Y or Z to do the

normal work of the public service. That's not acceptable, at least on

this side of the House.

More

and more we get the monitoring

and all the rest of it by the private sector instead of the Ministry of

Forests. It's like Safeway allowing the customers to check out their

own groceries. We can't rely on that. There have been enough studies to

show that it won't do. I know this minister, as a registered

professional forester, will say: "Well, they're professional foresters,

so there's simply no problem. What are you complaining about?" That

simply ain't so. The one professional forester in this province that

blew the whistle on shoddy work by other professional foresters was

harangued for three years, and they tried to drum him out of the

profession. That's what happened to Mr. Herb Hammond of Silva

Consultants, who works with Indian bands and comes out with reports

that don't make you look very good, Mr. Minister — and rightly so.

But your colleagues in the profession tried to drum him out of business.

What

does that tell you about that so-called profession of yours? It tells

me that there are a few more people with sawdust in their beans — just as the cartoonist in the Province

suggested the other day. Then you get other professional foresters

standing up, wringing their hands and saying: "Well, in recession times

we really can't practise good forestry." The issue for the professional

is saving money for the company and making sure there's profit for the

company. I tell you, Mr. Minister, that's got nothing to do with

professionalism at all. It might for you, and the kind of people like

you in the forestry profession; but it makes no sense, and the people

who think that way should have their licences lifted real fast, because

they're carrying out no service for any profession whatsoever. I don't

want those people claiming to represent us in the Legislature and the

Crown provincial, managing the public lands in the name of a

profession, when they are mainly concerned about the bottom line of the

company instead of good forestry practice.

This legislation allows more and more of that. You can say your people will audit it —

if you have any left in the Ministry of Forests. But what does that

mean? One audit in 100? One in 50? One in 30? If that's the case, then

it means 99 or 49 or 29 will go unchecked, and that isn't satisfactory,

Mr. Minister. That's what this legislation allows more and more Of.

see no reference in this bill to the chief forester. I don't see any

reference in it. Historically, since the establishment of this ministry

in this province, throughout most of this century, the chief forester

has had significant roles to play in terms of seeing that the forests

of the province are protected and that he had some independence. But

this allows you to allocate the chief forester's function to any Tom,

Dick or Harry that has a licence and is out there making a buck in the

private sector.

Let's face it, these guys that are supposed

to be doing the ministry's job get their paycheques from a company once

or twice a month, and where is their loyalty going to be in the

crunch — to the person that gives them a paycheque or to the

people here in parliament? I will tell you, in most cases it's going to

be with the origin of the paycheque. That's not good enough at all.

The

varying rate of stumpage thing that's in this statute blows you away.

It allows discrimination based on different persons, different places,

different classes of timber, which is reasonable, and different

circumstances.

HON. MR. PARKER : It's all reasonable. That's why it's there.

MR. WILLIAMS :

All reasonable? "Trust me; I'm reasonable. I did all that wonderful

messy work for Westar up in the northwest that Mr. Hammond reported on.

Trust me." That's what the minister is saying. Come on!

Not

only do you allow all this discrimination in terms of between persons

with respect to what we charge for public timber, but then you say:

"Once we've determined the price, there is no appeal." That's a pretty

neat short circuit in terms of what normal process is in this sort of

thing. It's carte blanche powers of discrimination that the minister is

taking to himself here. There is certainly a need for a detailed

explanation, because on the surface it doesn't wash. You can't justify

those kinds of discriminatory powers.

You're already moving

in with an arbitrary system of stumpage in terms of the program you

currently have, where you have some annual goal in terms of revenue.

You've walked away from the Rothery formula, which was the traditional

formula applied in most of North America. You started out with an

arbitrary base and now you're coming forth with an arbitrary system to

discriminate between people with respect to that base in terms of what

you charge for timber, and you cinch it up by saying: "And there is no

appeal."

We know that there are a lot of people out there

in this business who are members of your particular political party,

Mr. Minister. We know a lot of them show up at your meetings in Terrace

and elsewhere, and we know that a lot of them were at the leadership

convention where Mr. Vander Zalm won, with the support of log

exporters, for example. The idea of being able to discriminate between

people, particularly some who may be your staunch party supporters, is

simply not acceptable.

Then there is the undercutting

provision in terms of timber coming back to the Crown where, over the

five-year period, they actually haven't cut as much as they are obliged

to under their permits and contracts. I suggest this is long overdue,

but when we went through this last recession, all kinds of people were

not living up to their cutting requirements, and nothing was done about

them in terms of getting timber back and reallocating it to productive

people in the economy that would have been ready to work and to use the

material.

It's all pretty ironic, because when your

predecessor Mr. Waterland came in with the legislation in 1977, he said

the principle behind the legislation was: use it or lose it. Well,

nobody ever lost it, Mr. Minister. That's the problem we have here.

There doesn't seem to be any strength in terms of follow-through on the

part of Social Credit ministers. Nobody ever loses it. They can abuse

it, they can have waste levels of 27 percent as they currently have in

the Queen Charlotte Islands. They can never, ever build the pulp mill

that they were supposed to, which is the reason they got the timber in

the first place, and they still don't ever lose the timber. They never,

ever do.

Mr. Doman promised a pulp mill at Nanaimo some

dozen years ago. He cut the timber for a dozen years and never produced

a pulp mill. Instead, he exported it and made a lot of

[ Page 5087 ]

money,

paid off his debts at the bank and all that sort of stuff. But we've

never seen the pulp mill. Meanwhile, there is another bald valley and

another bald valley in the mid-coast. We performed in terms of

providing the timber, but he never performed.

You have

these same kinds of clauses in this legislation again, requiring at the

time of rollover that they promise they will create new jobs, etc., and

so we will give them the new licence for free. And then you can change

the terms. That's what you did with Mr. Doman. We have some puny $2

million sawmill instead of a multimillion-dollar pulp mill, which was

the original promise. You kept changing the rules. But Mr. Doman has

been a pillar of the Social Credit Party year in and year out. I'm sure

that many of the people in government are familiar with him because of

his nice condominium in Maui, which is very pleasurable for them. But

the reality is that he's a pillar of the party; the reality is that

he's a close friend of cabinet ministers; the reality is that he was

able to change the contracts year in and year out over the last decade.

We never got what he promised. He exported the timber, and we got zip.

No pulp mill.

We go through the same exercise in this

legislation. In your press release you actually say: "We want the

higher returns and increased jobs that come from value-added products."

Ho, ho, ho! It ain't so. When it comes to your friends, you look after

them. When it comes to your friends, they don't have to perform. When

it comes to your friends, you junk the contract. That's the reality in

the British Columbia of today, I'm sorry to say.

You have

the goal of the undercutting provision, in terms of its coming back to

the Crown and reallocating it. That's good news if you ever do it. But

then you say: "Well, in some cases we'll let them roll it over into the

next five years." You can be sure that if Mr. Doman gets into trouble

in the next recession it will get rolled over into the next five years.

It's just more wonderful, discriminatory power for the minister.

Chances of delivery are pretty modest.

Then you allow

transfers of cutting rights from one timber supply area to another. I

hate all this jargon, because the public doesn't know what it means.

Timber supply areas are huge basins of river valleys, generally centred

on a major community. Some of them are as big as two maritime

provinces; the one in Prince George is the equivalent of a couple of

maritime provinces. You're going to allow people to move their cutting

rights out of that huge provincial territory and into another one.

there are problems in the TSA and you have to cut back, Mr. Minister,

you should cut back. That should be that. You shouldn't allow them to

leapfrog into some other TSA with their free timber rights and go at it

again. A lot of these problems are created by the people in those

regions anyway, and they should have to live with them. To move from

New Brunswick to Quebec with your timber rights is a pretty neat deal,

and that's the equivalent of what you're doing under this legislation.

That doesn't make any sense either.

The other question is:

will there be consistency in terms of the 5 percent withdrawals? Will

there be consistency on your part so that they are all always 5 percent

and not 3 percent or less? Again, it's an opportunity for

discrimination.

There's also the possibility of taking

money back from these companies instead of the cutting rights at the

time of the rollover of the timber rights. I don't know why we should

ask for money. We have a desperate need for reallocation of resources

in this province, and I can't see any case where we should take money

instead of resources. This is a rich province. There are many sources

of funds. There is a desperate need to reallocate timber resources and

get a more pluralistic system going. Maybe you can explain that.

the end, it's the Big Brother solution from this minister. You

establish yourself a registrar of directives. Now if that doesn't sound

like Big Brother, I don't know what does. This free enterprise minister

is herewith establishing, Soviet style, a registrar of directives who

will determine what the stumpage rates will be, based on discrimination

between persons, if the registrar wants. Those directives will go out

to the regions, and that will be it; that will be the order.

Presently

there are at least 30 days of preliminary process and inspection and

all the rest of it, but we're going to have a registrar of directives.

It will be interesting to hear the minister explain why he feels this

is the right approach. Maybe you can explain how establishing a

registrar of directives under the ministry is a whole new free

enterprise concept.

[4:00]

AN HON. MEMBER : It sounds like Tolstoy.

MR. WILLIAMS : Yes, it does have a bit of a Tolstoy ring to it — or a tall story ring to it.

any rate, there are a range of concerns here, and we are not reassured

by what we have heard to date from the minister regarding this

legislation. I look forward to his detailed explanation, his erudite

comments and his sophisticated wit in support of this bill that he

brings forth.

MR. SPEAKER : Pursuant to standing orders, I advise the House that the minister closes debate.

HON. MR. PARKER :

I'll just skip over some of the points raised by members opposite.

Touching on tree-farm licence rollover, all the bill provides for is an

amendment to the Forest Act to allow the Forest Service, the licenser,

to retract up to 10 percent of the allowable cut. It also provides,

though, that the proponent for a tree-farm licence must in his proposal

for the rollover consider such things as full forest renewal, full road

access, full recreational development, full close utilization and very

high levels of conversion of the raw materials. So it's not really a

giveaway by any stretch of the imagination. There's going to be a

substantial amount of commitment on the part of the licensee, because

he has to carry that into a public forum, a public hearing, where he

has to defend his case for rollover to a tree-farm licence. After he

has gone through those hoops, should he be awarded a tree farm licence,

every five years his management and working plan is subjected to public

scrutiny. This is quite a public process.

The

tree-farm

licence program is an area-based licence, but it is not an alienation

of the land. Land remains with the Crown, but the allowable cut is

defined over a piece of geography rather than just a volume-based

tenure such as a forest licence, and the forest licence is also a

tenure, as is the timber sale licence and the timber licence — one

of the old temporary tenures. They are all licences and obligations on

the part of the Crown to a licensee.

What's

important when we consider whether or not a licence has any value is

whether the enterprise is a going concern. The member for Prince Rupert

(Mr. Miller) says there should be no profit made in logging; there

should only be profit made in processing logs. In other words, only the

[ Page

5088 ]

millers of the world should make a profit, but the

loggers aren't supposed to make a profit. In his constituency there is

a substantial number of independent loggers who really rely on making a

profit, to return some revenues in his constituency to support all

kinds of secondary and service industry, but I can't understand why he

doesn't want them to make a profit. That's amazing.

There

is certainly some value to a licence when it is supporting a going

concern, supporting the logging operations, the conversion plants, and

the marketing, transportation and forest renewal functions and

everything that goes to support that. Those are going concerns, and

there is a real loss when allowable cut is taken out forever, and there

is a price to be paid. I guess that in the not-too-distant future we'll

have an idea of what that's worth.

I take exception to the

slam on the British Columbia Forest Service and the people who work

there when the member from Prince Rupert says they do a lousy job of

managing their Crown lands. That isn't necessary and it's not

appropriate in this House.

Privatization doesn't work, he

says. It sure worked for him, because all the time he was working, he

was working in a privatized concern. That pulp mill in Port Edward

where he was working is a very successful operation and it's still in

private hands. It's in different private hands, but it is working very

well. I'm sure that the member will agree that it is doing good things

for his constituency. It's certainly doing good things for my

constituency and the whole of the northwest. They have just completed a

brand-new sawmill in Terrace and it's in the process of just starting

up. That's pretty exciting stuff for the people of the northwest, but

that's, by the way, a private enterprise concern.

Concern

about whether the Forest Service will be expanded, whether it is being

reduced in size or whether its work is being contracted out —

these are his concerns, after he slams them. I'll tell you that the

small business enterprise program in the province is a new initiative.

It certainly wasn't one that was promoted by the members opposite when

they had the opportunity. But it has been promoted and expanded by this

government, and the incremental work that that program brings in will

in many cases be done by contract. Extra work that needs to be done

will be by a contract arrangement, and when that's over the person is

free to go somewhere else and take his opportunities where they are.

The cost to the people of British Columbia is kept to a minimum, and

the returns from the small business enterprise program accrue to the

Crown. There is a special account set up for the small business

enterprise program to make sure that access is provided and that the

forests are renewed in those areas. The surpluses from the fund go into

consolidated revenue.

The member for Kootenay (Ms. Edwards)

had some concern, as did the member for Vancouver East, about the fact

that the chief forester is no longer referred to in the legislation.

That is incorrect, and a simple perusal of the Forest Act and Bill 28

will show ample sections where the chief forester is responsible for

the things that fall within his purview. However, matters of evaluating

applications for forest licences such as is laid out in

section 11 of

the Forest Act, and of evaluating applications from the standpoint of

creating or maintaining employment opportunities and other social

benefits in the province, are rightly in the hands of government. The

technical issues are rightly in the hands of the chief forester.

I'd

like to point out that stumpage in the past has not been set by

regulations; it has been set by policy and will continue to be set by

policy. But the policy directives will be registered. We'll have a

record, a registrar of directives and a register of directives, so that

everybody — the public and government personnel alike — will

know and will have a record, speaking from exactly the same recorded

directive, as to what the stumpage change has been. There's nothing

secretive about it. Anybody interested in receiving copies of forest

policy need only subscribe. There's a fee for the books; there are

three volumes, and you get a continuing update. Those of us who have

those books know that they never cease. It's a dynamic business, and

there's always revision. All directives are public information, Mr.

Speaker.

Tree-farm licences do not close this province to

settlement. Our policies provide for reclassification of lands to

higher economic use whenever that use can be identified. That is

provided in the Land Act. Members opposite know that, and that is

misinformation. TFLs are referred to as land alienation with no fee.

There is no land alienation; the land remains with the Crown, although

it is assigned as an annual allowable cut based on performance. The

award of a tree farm licence will only be done on the basis of a public

hearing and on the licensee's stating obligation for full forest

renewal, full road access, full recreation opportunities, full

integrated resource management, full close utilization, and very high

levels of conversion.

I take exception to the member for

Vancouver East telling the world that I was responsible for the mess in

the Westar lands in the Nass Valley. I went in there in '83 as woods

manager with the woods division there, in the bottom of the recession,

and my first action was to set crews to cleaning up the felled and

bucked in the Nass Valley. My next move was to provide for a timber

supply to the local sawmill, the Canyon City band of the Nishga Tribal

Council. They had not been able to obtain any timber from tree-farm

licence 1, although they lived in the centre of it, until I arrived.

The next thing I did was to provide for a contract under the terms of

the TFL contract for a logging contracting firm established by the

Canyon City band. Right after that we received a partial order of

seedlings from the Forest Service for reforestation. We planted all

those in TFL 1. That year the Forest Service did not have the funds to

carry out the planting of the seedlings they had ordered, and the

licensee in the area — Westar was the TFL 1 licensee —

planted those trees at their cost. I was with them in that capacity for

one year before moving into wood supply for the pulp mill that the

member for Prince Rupert mentioned earlier. So at the bottom of the

recession, with the team that was left that I had the opportunity to

work with, we met our obligations, and we met them very well. That is a

matter of record.

The member for Vancouver East has been

telling the House that this legislation provides for the moving of

timber rights from one TSA to another. That's not correct. What this

provides for is redirecting licensees into areas of emergent cutting to

make sure that salvage is taking place in areas that have been

devastated by fire, insects, disease, blow down or some other natural

problem. We have to be able to move to retain that value for the people

of British Columbia, and we have to be able to move quickly. So we have

to provide for redirecting forces in an emergency, and this legislation

does that.

A further misleading statement: money for transfers, other than 5 percent recovery, of licences. The legislation

[ Page

5089 ]

deals with old temporary tenures in that issue.

That's a finite cut, and it is for a finite period of time. It is a

sunset on the old temporary tenures; they were first issued at the turn

of the century. They will be all but gone at the turn of the next

century, Mr. Speaker.

This is good legislation. I am proud

of it. It has been well thought out. It is the result of much public

consultation by my predecessor and me, and by the British Columbia

Forest Service in carrying out their mandate as responsible forest

managers of the province. I am pleased to say that Dr. Peter Pearse, so

often quoted today, has been most complimentary on our initiatives.

I move that the bill be now read a second time.

[4:15]

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 26

Brummet

Savage

Rogers

L. Hanson

Ree

Dueck

Parker

Michael

Pelton

Loenen

Rabbitt

Veitch

S. Hagen

Strachan

Vander Zalm

B.R. Smith

Couvelier

Davis

Johnston

R. Fraser

Weisgerber

Gran

Ree

Peterson

Huberts

Messmer

NAYS — 16

G. Hanson

Barnes

Marzari

Rose

Harcourt

Boone

Gabelmann

Blencoe

Edwards

Smallwood

Lovick

Williams

Sihota

Miller

Jones

Cashore

Bill

28, Forest Amendment Act, 1988, read a second time and referred to a

Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of

the House after today.

HON. MR. STRACHAN : I call Committee of Supply, Mr. Speaker.

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

ESTIMATES: OFFICE OF THE PREMIER

On vote 4: Premier's office, $6,756,134.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : Mr. Chairman, it is a time-honoured tradition

in this House that debates on estimates, whether of a minister or of the office

of the Premier, be free-ranging and unconfined. Hansards of the past show that

discussions cover a wide array of issues, including the policies of government,

in addition to the specific operations of the offices themselves. As Premier

of British Columbia, I welcome that tradition because of accountability and

a willingness to stand up and defend a particular policy or course or action.

That is what the parliamentary system is all about.

Mr.

Chairman, before I continue with my remarks, I would like to inform the

House that today I have presented to the Clerk of the House a

resolution on the Meech Lake constitutional accord. I have further

asked that the resolution be placed on the order paper for future

consideration by the members of this House. Having said that and in

keeping with the tradition I refer to, I'm proud to stand here today to

discuss not only what our government has accomplished, but what lies

ahead.

Mr. Chairman, first I want to reaffirm our

government's intention to bring together and to mobilize all British

Columbians in a commitment to excellence. That commitment is strong

because our shared goal — whether we live in Victoria, Prince George or Cranbrook —

is a stronger, more secure future for us all. The task is too essential

to leave to chance, and the goal too important to do other than give it

our very best effort.

Economic development — the

creation of job opportunities for British Columbians and the

development of a climate in which individual effort and initiative is

rewarded — is a priority. It's a priority because it's a

prerequisite if we are to retain and enhance the quality of life that

British Columbians want and deserve. Only by developing a healthy,

growing economy can we generate the revenues we need in the areas of

health, education and social services. Only if we have an economy that

offers opportunities for investment and new business activity can we

meet the needs of our young people and our seniors. We must have a

strong economy if we are to make good on our drive to ensure that all

our people get their fair share of the value, quality and security that

British Columbia offers. At the same time, Mr. Chairman, we must

continue to work towards a reduction and the eventual elimination of

the deficit and its legacy of interest charges that year in and year

out must be paid and met.

Mr. Chairman, our government is

delivering. We are making great progress, both in building a strong and

dynamic economy and in cutting the deficit. When we took office, and

when the people of this province gave us their confidence and their

trust, we saw that things needed changing. The change had to start with

government in its style, its methods of operation and its structure.

The process is continuing through privatization, regionalization or

decentralization and an ongoing review and rationalization of programs

and policies.

Mr. Chairman, government in British Columbia

is no longer a static, immovable and bureaucratic structure. Changing

conditions, changing times and changing needs dictated that government

become increasingly flexible and responsive. That's happening, and it

will continue. But government can't go it alone, nor would I want it

too. I believe all British Columbians want the chance to share great

values and great visions and to play a real

part in turning these

values and visions into reality. The essence of leadership of this

government is to help the people of this province share that vision.

Only by getting people involved and getting them to participate can we

realize our goals.

Mr. Chairman, good government doesn't

mean being a giveaway government. It doesn't mean doing what's

politically expedient or comfortable simply in order to stay in a state

of grace or favour. Rather, it means doing what is right, even though

from time to time that brings criticism and unfavourable comment. That

goes with the territory, and it's to be expected, although at times the

degree and the intensity of that criticism goes beyond the bounds of

fairness and balance. Too often the preferred focus is on the problems

[ Page 5090 ]

rather

than on the potential. I believe the time has come to sound an upbeat

and positive note about the future of our province and its people.

[4:30]

Our economy is doing very well, and all indicators point to it doing

even better in the year ahead. More British Columbians than ever before

are working. Retail sales are increasing by the month. Housing starts

are up sharply over last year. Industries like forestry, mining,

tourism and manufacturing are showing continued strength, and the

forecasts for continued growth may well prove conservative.

The

prospects are bright and will grow brighter as we expand and enhance

our trading relationships. Today's world is the world of the trader,

and British Columbia's potential to grow and prosper looms large

because of the free trade agreement with the United States. This

historic agreement and our government's drive to increase and

strengthen our trade relationships in the Pacific Rim and elsewhere

around the world will open new doors for British Columbia's industries.

This expansion in our trade, along with the development of new

value-added products, will bring new investment and new growth in our

manufacturing sector and new jobs for British Columbians.

There

is a degree of prosperity in our province today that has never been

matched, but we can and we will do better, because as our population

increases, as our senior population grows, the demand for services will

increase. In a few short months, because of a steady influx of people

to our province and the birth of new British Columbians, our population

will reach and surpass the three million mark. While that will be a

demographic landmark, it reinforces the very real need to follow a

long-term game plan not just for economic growth but to ensure that we

retain and enhance our quality of life. We are developing that game

plan, and all British Columbians will have an opportunity to review it

and make a contribution sometime in the fall. The plan will identify

social and economic trends and offer avenues and ways that will allow

us to take maximum advantage of the opportunities which will be laid

out in this long-range strategy.

The time has come for the

professional doubters, the individuals who prefer negativism to being

positive, the pessimists, to honestly evaluate the state of the

province. It's time for them to set aside their partisan beliefs and

their dogma and help strengthen the environment for success that our

government is creating and building.

The

saddest thing about the professional knockers — those who deliver

knee-jerk negatives to everything our government does —

is that they underestimate the drive, the determination and the

abilities of British Columbians. British Columbians are smart people;

they work hard and they welcome both goals and challenges. If we give

them the freedom and encouragement to be creative and innovative, they

can accomplish the toughest tasks. Our government believes our people

can only reach and attain their full potential if they are freed from

the narrow confines of a detailed and restrictive program that's

dictated from the top. No society can flourish . . . .

Interjections.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : I know this is difficult for the socialists, but I'll try it again.

society can flourish, nor can the entrepreneurial spirit, if government

imposes and intrudes its presence in the everyday affairs of

individuals. I want the members opposite to really think about this. As

we've listened to the debates over the many months, and as we've

listened to the suggestions made by individual critics, what comes

through time and time again is that you don't really have a faith in

the abilities of individual British Columbians, in their ability to

build an economy, regardless of where it is in the province, without

all this government involvement that you believe must be a part of all

that happens in our province. There are no more socialist governments

in this country. The last one was defeated in Manitoba. They did have a

socialist government in Manitoba — and you know what happened there. They threw them out.

Interjections.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

I'm asked by the member for Esquimalt-Port Renfrew (Mr. Sihota) what

happened in Boundary-Similkameen. You know what happened. You know what

happened in Okanagan North. Do you remember the brief presence of a

certain member called MacWilliam? No, you don't. You've forgotten the

name. He's gone. So please, pay attention.

Success will

come from people having equity and a vested interest in goal-setting

and achievement. And this government will continue to operate in a

supportive and facilitative way.

Economic growth, real

economic growth, can only come from the private sector. The

responsibility of government must be to create the kind of environment

and climate in which the private sector can flourish. Socialism doesn't

attract new investment. Socialism doesn't attract people to come and

establish new businesses. As a matter of fact, as the first member for

Vancouver East (Mr. Williams) can probably tell you — and hopefully might —

when last we had a socialist government in this province, businesses

left. They left, one after another. They closed up. They disappeared

from the province. They even left Vancouver East. Mr. Chairman, it's

for this reason that our government will continue to decentralize and

restore, increase decision-making to the local level.

want economic growth, jobs and security to be the birthright of every

British Columbian, in every comer and in every region of this great

province. Fairness, equity and equality of opportunity must prevail for

all our people, no matter where they live.

Mr. Chairman, I

emphasize once more for the member for Prince George North (Mrs. Boone)

that you must convince your party that there's more to British Columbia

than downtown Vancouver or downtown Victoria. I've not heard too

many — and particularly, I believe, there are three — from

rural ridings speak out on behalf of the rest of British Columbia,

which is big. And there are lots of people there, and they deserve to

have a voice, even when they elect an NDP member.

Mr.

Chairman, we are making it happen. We are making this decentralization

happen. We are providing the people in those outlying regions an

opportunity to have a voice, through strong leadership and effective

planning.

British Columbians want a government system that

frees up initiative and enterprise and cuts red tape. British

Columbians want and deserve a government that's prepared to make tough

but correct decisions. British Columbians want a government that shows

strong leadership and has the will and the

[ Page

5091 ]

drive to stand up for its principles. That's the

difference, Mr. Chairman, between decisions and fence-sitting. The

people of British Columbia have that kind of government: decisive

government.

Mr. Chairman, I say again, we've seen great

progress in this province in only 18 months. I can well recall that

there was concern about the economy; I suppose it was so nationally,

but definitely we saw people concerned about the economy. People were

concerned about the opportunities for their children and their

children's children. We have managed, through decisive, strong

government, to bring about an economy in this province which is now the

envy of the whole of Canada.

I met with a group of top

business leaders in downtown Vancouver only two weeks ago, and the

unanimous decision was that the economy of this province has never been

better than it is today. It's growth not only in the forestry sector,

where we're seeing new pulp mills and paper mills and an expansion of

sawmills, but in the mining sector, the tourism sector, the

agricultural sector and the manufacturing sector, where we're leading

the country in manufacturing growth on a relative basis. And it's not

only people in the Pacific Rim who are looking to our province as a

model place in which to invest; it's not only people in the U.S. or

Europe who are now viewing British Columbia as a safe place where they

can invest and see a growth in their opportunities and in their

manufacturing plants. People from other parts of Canada are looking at

British Columbia as the place where growth is taking place.

[4:45]

Interjection.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM : I think I heard the member for Prince George North say they're laughing at us.

MRS. BOONE : They're laughing at you.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM :

Frankly, I don't mind if they laugh, when we're making such great

progress and having a better impact on Ottawa than what we've seen

previously, when we're seeing all this growth, when we're seeing

opportunities for our children and our children's children. Hon. member

from Prince George, there are families and children in Prince George,

and you should be concerned about their future. You should be happy

about what's happening in this province. You shouldn't be knocking all

the good things that are happening: you shouldn't be so socialistically

negative all the time. This is a place of opportunity. This is a free

enterprise province where things are happening, and we should all be

happy. We should be happy for the opportunities it offers us and for

the opportunities it offers the people in Prince George North.

Instead

of continually professing doom and gloom to the people in Prince George

North, saying, "Things are bad; you can't do it, you can't get it

together; there's no hope for your children or your children's

children," maybe you should go back after you've learned a lesson from

the free enterprisers in this House and say: "British Columbia is a

great place. It's a place of opportunity. It's a place where people

should invest. It's a place where we want to raise our families. It's a

place where we want people to do well, to earn money — and to earn

good money." Don't be negative doom-and-gloom socialists all the time.

Our

province has, fortunately, a good record of having free enterprise

government. Our province has strong free enterprise government today.

Our province is much a pioneering province. Our province needs

diversification. Our province needs new industries in all parts of this

great British Columbia, and the opportunities are there under free

enterprise. We will see these opportunities developed. Our people know

that we really can't afford to gamble with socialism again. They know

it as they knew it in 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1969. What

happened in 1972? Heaven forbid, they realized what happened, and in

1975 it was the return of free enterprise to this province. It was free

enterprise in 1979, 1983, it was free enterprise in 1986, and we again

have good free enterprise government. This province is going to

prosper; this province is going to grow; this province is going to move

in all directions all over. Will we see the growth?

won't be simply in one area. We'll provide those opportunities in all

of the regions of the province. If the member for Prince George North

doesn't have that concern about the region that she is responsible for,

then our government and our other members and the nearest member will

take the lead. We will provide these opportunities for all of our

people, wherever in this great province of British Columbia, which has

good government and strong leadership.

MR. HARCOURT :

I listened as carefully as I could to the words of the Premier, and I

was pleased to see that he was able to mention the word

"accountability" without choking, that he welcomed accountability and

that he was pleased that our democracy allows him the opportunity to

defend the record of the government. It is indeed an onerous task to

try and defend the indefensible, to try and defend what has happened to

the people of this province over the last 18 months or so.

We're

not here to discuss the state of the economy; we're here to deal with

the state of this government and the leadership of this government. I

was pleased to see the word "excellence" used. "In search of

excellence." Believe me, the people of this province are trying to

search for a little flicker of excellence from this government. They

would even look for just a flicker of mediocrity from this government.

What they've got is a bunch of incompetents.

What

we heard

from the Premier was that he was proud of doing something about the

Social Credit deficit of $6 billion that they built up over the last

six years. He was going to finally admit that Social Credit has

severely harmed this province's economy, credit rating — it's gone

down under Social Credit — and that they are finally going to do

something about the deficit.

talked about the government being immovable. Believe me, they've moved

the government out of existence in this province. That's why it's so

easy to move around: the government services we used to have don't

exist anymore. That is something that we'll be dealing with, because

the people of this province are being harmed by the savagery that the

Premier has exhibited towards the government services the people of

this province need very badly.

He said: "The essence of

democracy is getting people involved." The Premier asked the people in

Boundary-Similkameen and Grand Forks and through Rock Creek and

Greenwood and Midway to get involved in a plebiscite about uranium

mining, as a matter of fact. He said: "Express your opinion in a

plebiscite about uranium mining." They did: 85 percent of them said

"no" to uranium mining. Do you know

[ Page 5092 ]

what

the Premier said? "That's not a big enough majority. We have to ignore

the majority because the majority have to be saved from themselves."

What an appalling statement from the democratic leader of this

province — supposedly. "We have to save the majority of the

residents in that area from themselves, because they don't know what

they're doing when they vote against uranium mining." That's after he

encouraged them to vote.

The Premier then went on to say:

"We're doing better in the year ahead." He mentioned things like

housing starts being up. I want you to know that yes, housing starts

are up. I just moved into a brand-new house that I built. The first

member for Vancouver East (Mr. Williams) is building a fine house in

Vancouver East. We're not doing it because we think you're a wonderful

government; we're doing it because we're going to outlast this

government. The people of British Columbia have got confidence in this

province, not in you.

heard the word: "Plan." It finally

crossed the Premier's lips. That four-letter word finally escaped. We

have a plan coming from that ex-member of the fourth estate who is

hiding away in the Premier's office preparing a ten-year plan —

Eli to the rescue; Eli and his ten-year plan. Are we in trouble! I tell

you, I can hardly wait to see the plan — "the plan," the Premier

said.

The

Premier then said we should not have personal dogma and prejudice in

this province. Well, I would never accuse the Premier of imposing his

personal dogma and prejudices on the women of this province on the

issue of abortion. He would never impose his decentralization scheme on

the mayors and councils and regional districts of this province.

then said that government should not be dictated from the top. That's

like Billy Martin giving a course in etiquette. For the Premier to say

that government should not be dictated from the top is like Brian

Mulroney giving a lecture on cabinet conflict of interest. I really

find that a fascinating statement.

He then said, after

going for a week at Cortes Island, that government should play a

facilitative and supportive role. Well, I guess that's what the Premier

did when he said that women who have a child should have their welfare

payments cut after 15 weeks. If that's his idea of facilitating and

supporting, then God help the people of British Columbia.

The

Premier then said that our economy is the envy of the rest of Canada.

Tell that to the over 20 percent of the people unemployed in Kamloops.

Tell that to the young people in Nelson who can't find work. Tell that

to the foresters.

Interjection.

MR. HARCOURT :

I'd like to know what businessmen you were talking to. I'd like to know

what business people the Premier was talking to. I've been around to

talk to the people who run the forest industry.

HON. MR. REID : You talked to the wrong ones.

MR. HARCOURT :

I've been talking to the negative nabobs who run the forest companies.

I've been talking to the negative working people — who are the

majority of the people in this province —

says the Minister of Tourism (Hon. Mr. Reid). Do you know what they

say? They say to the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Parker): "Don't come

back into the industry after what you've done to our industry."

First

of all, you sold us out with the Americans on the softwood lumber

tariff; you cut the ground out from under the Canadian bargaining

position. You then bring in a screwball act that creates uncertainty

and a terrible climate in which to make investment decisions.

Friends

of free enterprise? I'd hate to see its enemies. If this government

thinks they're the friends of free enterprise when they increase the

tax on small business and lower it for big business, I'd like to see

the enemies of free enterprise helping them. Tell that to the

fish-processing industry that you're trying to put out of business. You

didn't go to bat for them under GATT. You didn't grandfather them in

the trade deal. You didn't do anything. Then you've got a Minister of

Environment (Hon. Mr. Strachan) over there, who catches rainbow trout

and not salmon in his riding, who says we should get rid of the

commercial salmon-fishing industry on the coast. Tell that to the

15,000 people on the coast who derive their livelihood from the fishing

industry.

The economy is the envy of the rest of Canada.

Tell that to the forest industry and the fishing industry, two of the

areas the Premier mentioned.

Interjection.

MR. HARCOURT :

Well, I was going to do that. I was going to talk about agriculture

next because the Premier brought it up. Our agriculture is the envy of

the rest of the province. I think we should say that to the grape

grower who is going to have to go out of business because of the

Premier's position on the trade deal. The vintners, the grape growers

and the tree-fruit growers, all people you're putting out of business,

really respond to that message well.

[5:00]

As a matter of fact, Mr. Premier, the fiv