1991 Legislative Session: 5th 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)

FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1991

Morning Sitting

[ Page

12985 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Tabling Documents –– 12985

Forest Amendment Act, 1991 (Bill 13). Hon. Mr. Richmond

Introduction and first reading –– 12985

Private Members' Statements

Future of the PNE. Mr. Reid –– 12985

Mr. Clark

International opportunities. Mrs. Boone –– 12987

Hon. Mr. Dirks

Waste in the GVRD. Mr. Reynolds –– 12989

Ms. Cull

Disclosure of campaign donations. Ms. Cull –– 12992

Hon. Mrs. Gran

Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No – 2), 1991 (Bill 15). Hon. Mr. Fraser

Introduction and first reading –– 12994

Teaching Profession Amendment Act, 1991 (Bill 14). Hon. S. Hagen

Introduction and first reading –– 12994

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Social Services and Housing estimates.

(Hon. Mr. Jacobsen)

On vote 52: minister's office –– 12994

Ms. Marzari

Mr. Serwa

Mr. G. Jannsen

Mr. Blencoe

FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 1991

The House met at 10:05 a.m.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

Prayers.

MR. REE: In the gallery today we have two people, Mr. David

Opko and Rondi Opko from North Vancouver, which someone mentioned the

other day was the best riding in the province. I would ask the House to

give them a very warm welcome to the Legislature and Victoria today.

MR. BARNES: On behalf of the member for Prince Rupert, I

would like to ask the House to join me in welcoming some elementary

school students from Agnes L. Mathers School, with their teacher Mrs.

Jan Walsh. These students are here courtesy of Fletcher Challenge:

Leanne Cilli, Serena Olson, Oceana Leus, Lauren Nielsen, Chris

Putterill and Noah Faustman. I ask the House to join me in making them

welcome.

Hon. L. Hanson tabled the annual report of B.C. Transit for the year ending March 31, 1991.

Introduction of Bills

FOREST AMENDMENT ACT, 1991

Hon. Mr. Richmond presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a

bill intituled Forest Amendment Act, 1991.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Mr. Speaker, this bill amends the Forest

Act to accomplish two separate aims. I'm pleased to note that both of

these amendments are a direct response to two recent independent

inquiries that involved close consultation with all of the affected

parties.

The first purpose of the bill is to remove woodlot licences from the

definition of "major licence" in the Forest Act. Woodlot licences are

small in area and are owned by individuals, local societies, Indian

bands or small corporations. It is therefore inappropriate to classify

woodlots as major licences, and it's only sensible that we should

recognize the limited scale of these licences in the way that we

administer them. This amendment will permit us to streamline and reduce

the paperwork for silviculture activities on woodlots, and it will

reduce unwarranted costs to both licensees and government.

The second purpose of this bill is to address logging-contractor security in

British Columbia. Independent contractors and subcontractors who harvest timber

for larger forest companies are extremely important to British Columbia's

forest sector. The stability of many families and, indeed, many communities

is dependent on contractors maintaining secure and fair contracts with the holders

of timber rights in their vicinity. This amendment will enable us to improve

the balance in these contractual relationships. It will also provide a quick

and inexpensive system for resolving contract disputes, This will ensure security

and fairness for all parties involved in timber-harvesting in British Columbia.

Bill 13, Forest Amendment Act, 1991, introduced, read a first time

and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the

next sitting of the House after today.

Orders of the Day

Private Members' Statements

FUTURE OF THE PNE

MR. REID: Mr. Speaker, I rise in my place today to talk about

a provincial institution called the Pacific National Exhibition,

currently existing after 85 years on the site of the exhibition grounds

at Cassiar and Hastings in Vancouver. The interesting thing about its

existence is that it is made up now of major components which are far

beyond the exhibition fair it intended to be in its initial stages.

My concern today in raising it in the House is that in recent days

and months the mayor of Vancouver has taken it upon himself to talk

about the future of the PNE in relation to all its components, which is

177 acres of Exhibition Park. There are 365 days of operation of what

is called the Pacific National Exhibition. There are 17 days which

concern me, and those are the days for the agricultural fair components

of the Pacific National Exhibition. It is a provincial fair and a

provincial event, and I am totally concerned about it. If it's the

intention of the mayor of Vancouver in the near future to tear down and

remove existing buildings which have been funded both provincially and

municipally and have been constructed over the last 103 years and which

are part of the current total component of the Pacific National

Exhibition, interfaced with each other, and to provide tents for a

17-day fair for the agricultural community of British Columbia, I am

opposed to that.

By standing in my place and being opposed to it, I don't want to

appear to have some of the philosophy of the socialist NDP: being

against anything; I'm for everything. I'm for making the Pacific

National Exhibition — the provincial component, in which I play a bit

part.... My community of Surrey–White Rock–Cloverdale has a major

facility, and after 85 years of class A fairs within that community, it

now has the opportunity to host the provincial agricultural component

of the PNE. I'm asking the mayor of Vancouver and all members of this

House to consider, for the first time, divorcing the 17 days of the

Pacific National Exhibition from the site at the exhibition grounds.

As you know, in 1994 the agreement between the province and the city

of Vancouver ceases to exist, and a new deal must be written for the

Pacific National Exhibition. At the same time, as announced by the

Solicitor-General in this House just a few days ago, the racetrack will

be relocated from that site to a more appropriate site in the lower

mainland, south of the

[ Page 12986 ]

Alex Fraser Bridge in Delta. What a tremendous

improvement that's going to be for the horse-racing industry! But when

it happens, another component of the PNE will be relocated into a more

receptive community.

I'm saying that there's one more I want to deal with. I want all of

the people in this House, Mayor Campbell and others in the GVRD to

consider relocating the 17-day exhibition portion from the exhibition

grounds to downtown Cloverdale. There's a reason why I say that. In

downtown Cloverdale over 150 acres are already set aside for fairs and

exhibitions. There is already a racetrack. There is already a stadium.

There is already an Agriplex. There are already horse barns. There is

already a hospitable agricultural community that wants the facility.

I know the member for Vancouver East is going to find it difficult

to argue against it, because his constituents have begged to move the

Pacific National Exhibition out of their community and turn that into a

park. I understand that the mayor of Vancouver also was speaking about

turning the exhibition site into a park. I have no argument with that.

I think that's what it should be. But my community — the agricultural

community of the province of British Columbia — is asking the province

and the board of directors of the PNE, which is made up of appointments

from both the province and the city of Vancouver, to give serious

consideration to locating that facility out where it's welcome, out

where it services the community it's made up of — agricultural people,

the components of agriculture.

It's the centre, the hub, the heart of the province of British

Columbia. It's the heart of the rodeo; the Cloverdale Rodeo is the

second-biggest rodeo in Canada. It's also the site of the Cloverdale

Fall Fair, the second-largest fair in the province. It's a community of

those who know what agriculture is all about, who live on agriculture,

and they are the heart of agriculture It's also the heart of the

tourism mecca, and the opportunity for the province of British

Columbia, because it's the hub of the Pacific Highway, No. 10, the 499,

the 401; and all the people who want to come to the famous community of

Surrey ultimately will come out to Cloverdale by SkyTrain. All those

people who think they've had this adventure of theirs that belongs to

the agricultural community....

[10:15]

I want it moved out where it belongs: downtown Cloverdale. Give the

people of the agricultural community in Cloverdale a chance, for a

change, instead of taking their animals and agricultural products down

to that smoky, polluted area downtown around Hastings and Cassiar,

where the traffic is threatening to the animals and threatening to the

public. Get them out into that fresh, clean air, where there's lots of

pride and lots of interest in the whole community called agriculture.

If they want to continue to have the ice arena and a miniature

racetrack, for whatever reason; if they want to continue to have all

that blacktop, for whatever reason, so they charge you $15 an hour to

park, and all those horrendous things that happen in the big city.... I

can tell you, Mr. Speaker, in the little city of Cloverdale, have we

ever got a hosting community that wants the agricultural component of

that thing called the Pacific National Exhibition, which is a

provincial exhibition.

I know the member for Vancouver East is going to make an appeal,

because they need the economy down there; it's disintegrating. The city

of Vancouver has got all its garbage going out to Surrey and Delta now;

it's got everything going out to Delta that we don't want. I'm pleading

with the mayor of Vancouver: send us what we do want. We want the

agricultural component of the Pacific National Exhibition. It belongs

to the farm community, and we beg for it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Time's up, hon. member.

MR. CLARK: I can't resist responding to that outrageous

attack on my community, Mr. Speaker. I might note that I think his

notes are dated a year ago, because I'm sure we heard this exact speech

a year ago. But it was a good speech a year ago, so we don't mind

responding again.

I think we can be very optimistic about the future of the PNE and

the future of the exhibition site. I disagree profoundly and completely

with the member's comments about moving the agricultural component out

and moving the entire fair out of the city of Vancouver. We have an

absurd situation now, where a 17-day fair essentially monopolizes 177

acres of prime Vancouver land for 365 days a year. It's absurd. We have

a barbed-wire fence all around it so the people in my community in east

Vancouver can't get in. It's used for only 17 days a year. It's

ridiculous.

What we could have — and I agree with the mayor of Vancouver in this

regard — is a magnificent park on that site that is used by local

residents all year round. It could be spectacular. At the same time the

Pacific National Exhibition can be a 17-day tenant on that site. Rather

than have the PNE — a provincial institution with many worthwhile

objectives — monopolize this site for the entire 365 days, it would

simply become a tenant on that site for an exciting fair. I think

people in my constituency want that. I think it would provide hundreds

of thousands of jobs in my community, where all my friends, all my

neighbours and many of the people who grew up in my constituency can

work for those 17 days. It's a vital part of our life and culture, and

it's jobs for our young people. I support it.

I support it for another reason. As someone who grew up in the city

of Vancouver, I like to see animals at the PNE. The members here should

know that people in the city, particularly some parts of it, don't get

a chance to go out to Cloverdale to look at horses, cattle and the

like, and they enjoy going down to the PNE for those 17 days and having

a sense of what it's like to live in the rural areas of British

Columbia. I talk to farmers and to young people in 4-H Clubs who like

to come into Vancouver, the big city. They like to come in and show the

best they've got, and they like the fact that city people can see it. I

think it's a part of our heritage that we should support, But there's

no reason that supporting the fair there and the agricultural component

in Vancouver means that we must have it

[ Page

12987 ]

all blacktop with barbed-wire fence around it for

350 days of the year. It's absurd. We can accommodate the goal of both

a beautiful new urban park and jobs and have a nice fair for 17 days.

I would like to use the last couple of minutes to talk about the

racetrack, because I think it is scandalous what this government is

proposing to do. They're proposing — remember this — to build a new

racetrack on agricultural reserve land in Delta, and we're going to pay

$3 million a year of taxpayers' money for ten years — a $30 million

subsidy — to a new track, when we already have a track in east

Vancouver that makes money and that people like to go to. Thousands of

people go there.

Yes, it's run down. But why is it run down? Because the lease

expires, and there is no certainty or security. We should be

concentrating our efforts on dramatically upgrading that facility on

those grounds and keeping those good jobs and that entertainment in the

city of Vancouver. It is not acceptable — and this free enterprise

government talks about it all the time — to subsidize to this extent.

Thirty percent of the capital costs are going to be paid by the

taxpayers for a new facility out in Delta that no one will go to.

The promoter of that site is an individual developer from Ontario.

What does he want to do? He wanted to grow houses on that agricultural

land, but he wasn't allowed to do that. So now he's got the government

to agree to build a racetrack, which will probably fail. Then they will

grow houses on it, because it won't be agricultural land after that.

I don't mind standing here any day and supporting the racetrack at

the PNE. We don't need a mile track; we need an upgraded facility at

the PNE. We need to have a large and beautiful urban park and the jobs

associated with the PNE for 17 days. We can do it all in this province

without government subsidy and without building these pipe-dreams out

in Delta with millions of dollars of taxpayers' money, when we have a

facility now.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Time has expired, hon. member.

MR. REID: Well, Mr. Speaker, that came right from the horse's

mouth. I want to tell you that the member hasn't talked to the racing

community. He might have talked to some of the people who are

benefiting as a result of the gambling. But there are other people who

benefit from horse-racing. The people who haven't benefited from

horse-racing in previous years are those who raise the horses, race the

horses and maintain the horses. Those horses are trying to run around a

5/8-mile track, and they're running on the side all the time. They have

to shoot half of them at the end of the year because their legs are

shorter on the inside. The fact of the matter is that the industry

wants a full-mile track, and they can only build it in a community that

is receptive to it.

What a thing that member said: there's nobody in that community out there.

We're going to build this racetrack. The largest congestion of southbound

traffic today is into the fastest-growing communities of Delta, Richmond, Surrey,

White Rock and Langley. That's where the horses are; that's where

the people are.

The people want to spend their money in the economy and get away

from that barbed-wire area. We don't have to barb-wire anything in

Surrey and Delta. You can come in and walk around those places without

any barbed wire. Do you know why they've got barbed wire now? Because

they don't want those country people coming into their community

without permission and without paying their fair share to cross over

those lines, park your car for $15 a day and go around that barbed

wire. We don't need barbed wire in Surrey. Surrey will take all the

fences down if we can get some of those economists in east Vancouver to

spend their money and bring their employees out where we can entertain

them.

The other problem we have is that the animals.... This member never

mentioned the animals. I'm worried about the animals, because the

animals are the key thing to an exhibition. An agricultural fair is the

animals, and the animals are being abused. The people who come to look

after the animals are being abused by that member and those people in

Vancouver who force our people to come and stay in those expensive

hotels and pay their bills. If it was in Cloverdale they could park in

their little campers and look after their animals at home. They could

ask these people who rape this government and rape the public and want

us to spend all our money around downtown Vancouver where all that

pollution, smog and garbage is — and where that garbage should stay....

As a matter of fact, I have a suggestion for the mayor of Vancouver:

turn it into a garbage dump. If that member from Delta who presented

that petition yesterday.... You're going to need a site very soon, and

you've got 177 acres right in the middle of your city.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member.

The member for Prince George North is going to speak to us about international opportunities.

INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

MRS. BOONE: That's a hard act to follow. My topic is a little more serious.

Mr. Speaker, Canada is a trading nation, and as such our ability to

achieve good terms of trade with other nations is a fundamental element

in the health of our economy and the pursuit of our social goals. We

want to preserve our communities and keep them healthy and dynamic

places for British Columbians to live, work and raise their families

in. We want to get the best out of our people and our resources to

create a sustainable economy that operates on the leading edge of

technological development. We need to maintain both a universal,

high-quality health care system and a social safety net that ensures an

adequate standard of living for all. These goals and opportunities both

come sharply into focus when we start to move our economies closer to

those of our neighbours.

We must approach this debate with real concern, because Canada has the most to lose. We have our

[ Page 12988 ]

share of economic problems, and I admit it will

take a long time to overcome the legacy of Liberal, Tory and Socred

administrations. However, our lifestyle here in Canada is something we

are not willing to trade with anyone else. Protection of that lifestyle

is going to be tough.

We support closer relations with all countries. Mexico has been a

good friend to Canada, but we must question the intention of this deal.

Is the goal to lift Mexico from its abject poverty? Will it result in

Mexicans being paid the same wages and enjoying the same labour and

environmental standards as we do? We don't believe that this is the

intention. In fact, this deal is about a corporate agenda not to bring

Mexico to where we are, but to bring us closer to the conditions that

exist south of the border. That is a threat to the working people of

British Columbia.

Some people say that the manufacturing that has already shifted to

Mexico at the cost of Canadian and American jobs has been a benefit to

that country. But here's what the Wall Street Journal said about the maquiladora ,

that special trade zone on the Mexico-U.S. border: "This economic

experiment is helping turn much of this border region into a sink-hole

of abysmal living conditions and environmental degradation."

So it doesn't matter whether it's fish, timber, consumer goods or

auto parts. Under the conditions existing now, labour-intensive jobs

will go to Mexico There is no doubt about that. They will be done under

poor conditions for less than one-tenth of the wage This deal will

become a "lose, lose, lose" deal for working people and communities all

across this continent.

But that's not the way it has to be. We need a strong voice at the

table calling for better trade terms and a development pact. If we must

move our economy closer to those of our continental neighbours, then we

need a development pact to lay the ground rules. We need to help bring

Mexicans up to our level, instead of having ours forced down to theirs.

We have already paid a price for the Social Credit government's

uncritical support of the Mulroney trade deal. Communities that rely on

the fish-processing and fruit industries have suffered. Brian Mulroney

promised us secure new markets for our products. He said that companies

and jobs would remain here in Canada because of our secure access to

the U.S. market. But that hasn't been the case at all. Our

fastest-growing exports have been jobs and corporations.

[10:30]

Cedric Ritchie, the chairman of the Bank of Nova Scotia, summed it

up right when he said: "There is no doubt that Canadian firms are

adjusting to the free trade agreement. The problem is that they are

adjusting by leaving Canada." A case in point is a proponent of the

Mulroney trade deal and a great friend of this government: Jimmy

Pattison. Mr. Pattison said: "We saw free trade coming and we thought

it was good. We began to focus our efforts on the United States,

looking for ways to expand our assets there." Mr. Pattison recently

transferred several executives from his Toronto office to Atlanta and

from his Vancouver office to Seattle and Anchorage. No wonder he said:

"I keep telling our people to forget the border. It doesn't exist

anymore."

Mr. Speaker, I spoke earlier about the importance of trade to the

Canadian way of life and about the opportunities that the international

economy can hold for us if it is managed correctly. But what is the

reason for our efforts, if not to protect and strengthen our nation?

The border is there, and we will fight to keep it. That job will become

even harder in the future. It will require a government that is

innovative and much tougher and more shrewd than this government.

Do we really want to be represented by the so-called negotiators of

the Socred government, who sold out the most valuable piece of property

— the Expo lands — and turned it into a loss of hundreds of millions of

dollars for taxpayers? Should we feel confident that our financial

interests will be protected by the government that lost $25 million on

Moli Energy, overspent hundreds of millions on the Coquihalla, and gave

doctors a 100-percent-taxpayer-funded pension fund for perpetuity?

British Columbians can do without that kind of negotiating, Mr.

Speaker. The Socreds sold us out once to Brian Mulroney; the people of

B.C. won't be fooled again.

HON. MR. DIRKS: I'm very pleased to hear in the opening statement

of the member opposite that she supports free trade, because British Columbia

is most definitely a trading province. One out of three jobs in this province

depends on our trade with other countries. Unfortunately, the member opposite

— as she's prone to do — mixes a whole lot of things into one little thing

and ends up far away from where she sets out to go. She talked about salmon

and herring, and she blamed that on free trade and the free trade agreement

with the United States.

AN HON. MEMBER: Was that a red herring?

HON. MR. DIRKS: It was a red herring, Mr. Member, because basically it was decided under GATT rules, not under free trade.

As far as trade with Mexico is concerned — and, indeed, where our

free trade agreement is with the United States — she talks as though it

is a done deal. Yet if she were to investigate a little closer, if she

were to look at it, it is simply an ongoing process. It's not a

completed process; a number of chapters still have to be written.

Again, she's taking that very simplistic view of the free trade

negotiations going on right now between the United States and Mexico,

as though it was a done deal and therefore we should be taking a very

strong position against it. Again, she's completely wrong.

I guess we could take the attitude of the NDP in Ontario and bury

our head in the sand and say: "Well, it won't happen. If I don't see

it, it won't happen. Therefore I'll just ignore it, or I'll object to

it, because I don't know what it's going to be." Well, we can't do that.

I think our position has been responsible. We have gone out and

canvassed our society. We have canvassed our economic people. We have

canvassed the

[ Page

12989 ]

labour unions and businesses and services that

would be involved. We found out what their concerns are; where free

trade with Mexico might have a negative impact; where it will have a

positive impact. We're transmitting that information to Michael Wilson

by saying: "We want those concerns addressed. We will not say yea or

nay to your negotiations or to your agreement until we can find out for

sure that those concerns have been addressed in any agreement that you

reach." This isn't an ostrich head-in-the-sand type of attitude; it's a

positive attitude where we have made the concerns of British Columbia

known to Michael Wilson, and we'll make sure that he carries that voice

forward.

I don't quite understand how the member opposite can depict traffic

south of the border and Canadian companies exploring opportunities in

the United States as a negative deal. Would you say that all Canadians

can only invest in Canada? You're very ignorant about what Canadians

have done in the past. Canadians, even in the U.K., are investing in

larger and larger numbers. In the U.K. today, Canada is one of the

largest foreign employers, with over 50,000 employees in the

manufacturing industry. Should they come back to Canada and not invest

in the U.K.? You can't have it both ways.

Trade — and what we're moving to in this world — is a borderless

world. Unless we realize that and work to make sure that our interests

and concerns are looked after and our standards of living and jobs

protected, we're going in the wrong direction.

But certainly there's a lot to be gained. Our trade with Mexico

today is very minimal. Less than 1 percent of our exports go to Mexico.

They rank twenty-sixth in trade relations, as far as the province is

concerned. There are some opportunities. There are some downsides, and

there are some opportunities. We want to make sure that the downsides

are minimized and that the opportunities are capitalized on. Basically,

we will reserve any judgment on the free trade agreement with Mexico

until we see what it is. In the meantime, we will press our concerns.

MRS. BOONE: I tend to believe that the member has spent a little bit too much time south of the border. He hasn't even lost his accent yet.

We are very concerned about the jobs that are going south of the

border; about the companies that are moving their offices; and

companies that are moving their executives south of the border. This

government should also be very concerned. We are concerned that this

government has failed to take a stand on any issue.

In June 1990, Canada was negotiating a seat at that table. We asked

the then-minister — the minister who's sitting right beside the current

minister — if he could tell us the official B.C. position on this

issue. He couldn't. Surprise! They've never had a stand on anything;

not even the constitution today.

In February and January of this year –– 1991 — the government solicited

opinion from labour, business and other interest groups. We have asked this

member constantly to give us his position on the information he has received.

We have asked him over and over again, and he has refused to do so. We've

asked for his position, and he tells us: "In the fullness of time."

The Premier says she's scared stiff about this issue, Mr. Speaker.

But then when she is questioned, she says: "Oh no, I'm not really

scared stiff about the issue. I'm only scared stiff about the people

who are negotiating it." Her government was a big cheerleader with the

Brian Mulroney deal in 1988. They trusted them with the future of our

province, and they have sold us out over and over again on that deal.

You just talk to the workers in this province and the rest of Canada

who have lost their jobs and have seen their jobs move south of the

border, and then tell them if we can trust those guys. She wants us to

trust her at the negotiating table, but she can't even tell us her

position.

Mr. Speaker, the government has failed to tell British Columbians

where they stand. They have failed to tell British Columbians what they

are telling Brian Mulroney. It is absolutely essential that this

minister release to the province and to the public all submissions he

has received on any studies or reports that he has commissioned, and

all copies of correspondence between this government and the federal

government pertaining to this deal, and that an official statement be

tabled in this Legislature of the position British Columbia has taken

on the negotiation of the three-way trade deal with Mexico. How can you

negotiate, how can you express your, opinion, how can you tell the

federal government what British Columbians want, when you won't even

tell us what you want?

WASTE IN THE GVRD

MR. REYNOLDS: Former ministers are rarely seen and seldom

heard, particularly about their former ministerial responsibilities and

more particularly about those initiatives they took that failed. While

admissions of failure are not my style, I'm speaking out on a program

with which I was associated, because I believe the province's voters

should be aware of the ability and willingness of municipal leaders to

frustrate deliberately — and some with partisan malice — the

environmental policies of the province, even when these policies are

backed up by provincial funding and support.

I will give you two examples, and more if I have time. Some 18

months ago I announced a commitment by the government to financial

support for municipal programs to help reduce the amount of garbage

going into landfills. While landfills are cheap and not necessarily

environmentally harmful, it is socially irresponsible to simply dispose

of something that can be reused or recycled, and it's wasteful to

produce and use things that are not really needed. I committed the

province to a comprehensive and well-funded program of solid waste

management designed to reduce the amount of waste by 50 percent.

The first step was a blue box program, and then programs of

education to reduce, reuse and recycle. Many municipalities, to their

credit, eagerly adopted blue box programs. It is, however, a reality

that the so-called source separation programs can accommodate only

about 25 percent of the waste stream, because

[ Page 12990 ]

only about that amount of tin and aluminium cans,

glass and plastic containers and papers suitable for processing with

current technology are contained in the waste stream. In the greater

Vancouver area, for instance, up to 40 percent could be diverted from

landfill by composting, and much of the remainder could be diverted

through so-called resource recovery — that is, by using low-grade,

non-recoverable paper and other burnables as fuel.

Mr. Speaker, we don't need to become embroiled in the issue of the

desirability of burning this waste. The fact is that there is no

alternative use or technology for disposing of this waste. As a

society, we can simply put it in a dump, where it eventually will

mostly rot — providing no value to us — or we could burn it to provide

heat or electricity or for some other purpose, as an alternative to

burning coal, oil or natural gas. With proper environmental controls,

there's nothing wrong with burning refuse-derived fuel. This is not

burning "garbage"; it's burning unusable materials taken out of the

garbage.

This gets me to the problem of waste disposal by the city of

Vancouver and the Greater Vancouver Regional District. The GVRD — and

Vancouver is part of the GVRD — promised as part of its 1985 waste

management plan to build two plants to process waste. The GVRD did

build one, although it is a primitive example of resource recovery, but

the city of Vancouver has not built the one it was committed to.

The mayor and his bureaucrats will tell you that they chose a

possible site in downtown Vancouver for such a plant, and held public

hearings to discuss the project. Never mind that the site was too small

and too close to neighbourhoods, and that there was no information

program developed to explain the process When the hearings dissolved

into pandemonium, the mayor and his advisers had the perfect excuse to

back away from their commitment. Does Vancouver now look after its own

waste within its borders? No, it trucks it to Delta, where it operates

a smelly landfill that is an environmental abomination. The GVRD trucks

about a third of its waste to Cache Creek, 300 kilometres away.

Why, you might ask, do the mayor of Vancouver and the chairman of

the GVRD — a politician who speaks so sanctimoniously about the quality

of life, the environment and the sanctity of the Fraser River —

champion such a course of action? Why not take up the province's offer

of substantial financial help to develop compost plants and facilities

for resource recovery, and thereby reduce the waste going into the

Burns Bog landfill?

[10:45]

The reason is money — or rather, profits from pollution. The city of

Vancouver operates the Burns Bog landfill for about $13 a tonne, yet it

charges private businesses and other municipalities $69 a tonne to dump

their garbage. Delta doesn't squawk too much because it gets a royalty

and free dumping. And who cares if those who live close to it have a

little bit of a smell to put up with? Why $69? That's the number

settled upon by the GVRD as the common fee to cover its waste

management facilities. What it makes on dumping it spends on other

things. But what is Vancouver's excuse? It makes about $10 million or

more a year on this scheme, protests by the mayor to the contrary — to

my colleague from Richmond when he complained about it. That they sit

quietly back and ignore the activities of Vancouver is to their shame

and dishonour. The province, which can use the carrot to a point,

simply cannot make up for the loss of revenue to the city, and the whip

is not acceptable; the province is told to mind its own business.

Eighteen months after the province took action with the best of

intentions, the GVRD and Vancouver have decided to postpone action once

again while they study the situation with yet another review of their

waste management plan. A valid excuse, Mr. Speaker? Only to the

simple-minded — to excuse the pollution for profit and delaying action

for another two or three years.

Lest Vancouver and its mayor think I'm picking on him, let us turn

to the good NDP council in Richmond, which this week adopted a bylaw

forbidding the establishment of facilities to treat special or

biomedical wastes in Richmond. Does Richmond have sick people that

create medical waste? Presumably yes. Does Richmond have a hospital,

medical clinics and veterinarians that produce waste? Why yes, that

too. Does Richmond have industries which produce special waste? Yes,

indeed. Does Richmond take any responsibility? No, it does not — not

even for its ordinary solid waste, which it too exports across the

river to Delta.

My point in all this is that all of British Columbia is governed by

municipalities and regional districts. If everyone took the same

selfish, self-centred and one-dimensional view of public

responsibilities, everyone would ship their waste elsewhere — and where

would it go? The logical absurdity of events in Richmond, run by an NDP

council, should be the laughing-stock of every editorial cartoonist in

the province, but it is ignored and reported in a straight-faced way by

Richmond newspapers. Again, where are the environmental lobbyists who

always counsel responsible waste management? Where are the commentators

who should be pillorying such public irresponsibility?

I don't know, but as a provincial politician and someone who tried

to do some right when I had environmental responsibilities, I'm

disappointed that the province is so criticized, but that so little

responsibility and accountability is expected of local governments. The

environmentalists should be yelling and screaming about this atrocity

in British Columbia.

MS. CULL: I'm pleased to rise to respond to the former

Minister of Environment about the waste problems in this province. When

he started off, I thought we were going to hear something rather

refreshing in this chamber: the admission that this government has been

unable to carry out many of the things it says it's trying to do. It

should be no wonder in the area of the environment. After all, we have

had six Environment ministers in the past five years. With the

government having that kind of political turmoil and lack of leadership

at the top level, it's not surprising that the former minister has to

point to failures.

[ Page

12991 ]

But I was amazed to hear the former minister go on to start bashing

local governments once again. It seems that every time this government

fails to achieve something that it's trying to achieve, it turns around

and starts pointing the finger elsewhere. They point the finger at

local government, as if they were not also duly elected representatives

of their population with a job to do. That job is to represent the

interest of their constituents and their citizens. Their views have to

be respected.

The other thing that amazes me about this approach is that I can't

imagine how anyone would think that bashing another level of government

— particularly the local governments in this case, whose responsibility

is it to deal with garbage — is going to foster cooperation. We need

political leadership and some cooperation if we're going to deal with

the tremendous waste problems we have in the province. We're certainly

not going to do it by standing up in this chamber and badmouthing local

politicians. I agree with the member that we definitely have a waste

management problem, and that solutions are needed in the very near

future. We don't have a lot of time to wait. We know that 60 percent of

the landfills in this province are going to be full within the decade,

so there is certainly a need to get on with it.

But I would like to suggest that maybe this government needs to

think about some principles they would like to put in place, before

they start going out there and bashing local government for not doing

what they think they should be doing. First of all, instead of using

the typical pattern of this government, which is to announce the

solution and then move to the consultation or the mop-up after the

public outcry over the solution, why don't we try doing things the

other way around? The member points to Richmond as an example of local

government that doesn't have the correct thinking on this matter. The

people in Richmond were told that toxic soils from the Expo land were

going to their community. They weren't advised in advance; it was a

decision that had been made. They weren't consulted; no one provided

them with any information about the nature of these soils or the effect

it would have. It was a done deed way before it blew up into a

political problem. Half of the difficulty we have right now is this

government's approach to dealing with that issue.

I would like to talk about some of the principles I think the government should

be addressing, if we're going to look at a sensible waste management policy.

First of all, the waste streams in this province aren't all separated into

different categories: liquid, solid and hazardous. They're all together;

it all goes into garbage or into the sewers in the same fashion. Yet the government

persists in a myriad of programs and different waste management plans. No one

is actually looking at it as a whole. The other thing that I think the government

should do is to start focusing on the first two Rs of the three Rs: reduce and

reuse. Instead of focusing on recovery plants or recycling, which should really

be the next steps down the line, let's start at the beginning by reducing

the amount of garbage right where we can — at source.

What about polluter-pay and policies that require manufacturers to

have cradle-to-grave treatment for their products, so that the

responsibility to look after garbage is with the manufacturer, and it

doesn't get dumped on municipalities and citizens to deal with these

products after the fact?

But the principle that I would like to conclude with, and that I

think is the most important, is that this government has an obligation

and a responsibility to provide some leadership on the issue. The

leadership shouldn't be in telling local communities what the solution

should be; it should be in providing the framework for managing waste,

setting the objectives and giving municipalities the resources to

tailor their solutions to their community and their neighbourhoods. Let

the people out there on the ground sort out what's going to work,

whether it's in downtown Vancouver or Richmond or Smithers or anywhere

else in the province. Let the people sort out those problems. Let the

province provide the leadership, let it provide some research and

development, let it provide information in advance and let it consult

before it makes its decisions.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

MR. REYNOLDS: Mr. Speaker, it will never cease to amaze me

when the New Democrats get up to talk about consultation — members over

there who sat on city councils and know that this government presented

in this province the best assistance, whether it's garbage recycling,

hazardous waste recycling.... I remember that member knocking our

hazardous waste pickup days, yet she was there to see the overabundance

of cars arriving at the doors, picking up material. The best programs

of any province in all of Canada were presented by this government.

She talks about consultation. Let's talk about consultation.

Vancouver has had five years on a plan and has built one burner,

spitting garbage into the air. Why don't we have waste recovery? Now

they want to study it again. The mayor of Vancouver — I don't mind

criticizing the mayor of Vancouver — didn't ask us, and didn't ask you

either, about putting another 3 cents on gasoline, which, I see in a

poll in the Province , 98

percent of the people don't want, and I can't blame them. Why isn't he

talking about the things that this government has done: bringing in

progress, putting propane and natural gas into the cars? The mayor

himself, I know, drives a car that operates on propane, and I

congratulate him for that. But why doesn't he talk about doing

something in that area, instead of taxing? It's a typical liberal,

socialist idea: put more taxes on everything; don't present problems....

Interjections.

MR. REYNOLDS: You never knew Campbell was one of you, did you?

Mr. Speaker, these members talk about the interests of our

constituents. This government has brought in programs on the

environment, especially on waste, to

[ Page 12992 ]

help clean tip. They are the most forward programs

in all of Canada. Yet we've had a problem with municipalities. That

member talks about municipalities, living in this municipality that

pumps its sewage right into the ocean. Shame on anyone who has been an

elected official in the Victoria area for allowing that to happen! This

government offered assistance — but they're still studying it. The old

socialist trick: let's study it again, until the sewage issue goes

away, and there's another election, so we can hammer this provincial

government. It's not the provincial government that is putting the

sewage into the ocean; it's the citizens of Victoria and their elected

municipal officials, and they should be ashamed of it. We should bring

in legislation to force them to do it, and they should be doing it

quickly.

Mr. Speaker, they talk about consultation. We've consulted this

thing to death. All around the province, in most areas — all the

members, including members on your side who live in the interior, Mr.

Speaker — pay a big dollar for their sewage, to make sure it doesn't

pollute streams and rivers and lakes.

Interjection.

MR. REYNOLDS: They did not all get 75 percent funding — that is not true. You can stand up.

But they took it. They were forward. The members on this side of the

House got their governments to accept the funding from this government

and do the program. Your socialists wouldn't take the money.

Mr. Speaker, the socialists never know a good thing. That's why

they've got communities that pump sewage in; that's why they've got

Burns Bog and other areas like that. It's because of the socialist

attitude. They don't look forward....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

DISCLOSURE OF CAMPAIGN DONATIONS

MS. CULL: I want to speak this morning about the need for legislation to require the disclosure of political donations.

One of the fundamental requirements of a democracy is a fair

electoral system. That means a system that is open to public scrutiny,

one where the public can see for themselves that it's free from

partisan bias and the influence of influential groups in our society.

Over the years, enlightened administrations have in fact brought

into place a framework of laws to guarantee this kind of electoral

fairness. It ranges over things like how electoral boundaries are set,

the compiling and maintaining of voter lists and how people get onto

the list, the spending limits that may be applied to candidates or

political parties, and the disclosure of campaign contributions. While

all these things are interrelated in what I would call good government

law, I want to focus today on the disclosure of political contributions.

Every state in the United States has laws requiring campaign

donations to be disclosed to the public, and almost every province in

Canada does. The federal government has had a regulation since 1974.

British Columbia is one of the last holdouts to provide what most

jurisdictions consider to be fundamental to fair, open government.

In a

summary of Canadian finance legislation prepared in 1987 — I

don't have anything more current than that — several paragraphs

describe what each province's financial legislation is with respect to

political donations in campaigns and elections. Every province has

several paragraphs in this document except British Columbia, which has

five lines. It says: "What exists right? There is no financial

legislation other than income tax deduction benefits regarding

political contributions. What's proposed for the future? None." That's

all that's in this document when it comes to British Columbia.

Why is British Columbia so reluctant to take the steps that other

jurisdictions have taken to open up politics to the public so that they

can see for themselves whether bias exists? It's certainly not because

there's no need for it here in B.C. In the last five years we've

witnessed one of the most scandal-ridden governments in Canada: 12

cabinet resignations, seven of them related to conflict of interest.

Perhaps if we'd had laws requiring the disclosure of campaign funds and

other such good government laws, this government would have had less

trouble with real and apparent conflicts of interest and fewer

resignations.

Whether or not these laws would have saved this government from

itself, it's now abundantly clear that British Columbia needs political

disclosure legislation. The track record of this government has greatly

increased public distrust of all politicians. Every member of this

House would admit, if we were to be honest, that there's been a

tremendous increase in distrust of politicians of all stripes in recent

years. Increasingly, the public doesn't trust politicians to act in the

best interests of everyone. They are expecting politicians to act in

the interests of their special friends and insiders, because that's the

pattern they've seen, particularly here in this province.

[11:00]

Throughout the world the granting of political favours for cash

donations is one of the most common forms of political corruption.

That's why the financing of elections ought to be open to public

scrutiny. The public is entitled to know who's paying the shot.

Governments have tremendous power over our lives: they have the right

to tax, determine what laws will govern us, let contracts, spend

billions of taxpayers' dollars and appoint people to powerful and

influential positions. Surely the voters have a right to know who is

paying to help elect the party that governs and the people who form

that government. Surely the people have a right to say something and to

know who is backing the people who wield this tremendous power.

The Premier has said that she has concerns about disclosing campaign

contributions because of their often confidential nature. Why are they

confidential? No one is forced to make political donations; they are

voluntary. It's also financially beneficial to make a donation, as they

are tax deductible, so it reduces your

[ Page

12993 ]

taxable income. There's a cost to the taxpayer: we

all pay for political donations. Surely the taxpayers have a right to

know who is benefiting from these tax breaks.

In 1988 the first member for Victoria introduced a private member's

bill that would bring about fair election practices. It included a

requirement for the disclosure of political donations over $100. The

federal limit brought in place in 1974 is $100. All jurisdictions

require something: some of them have no limits and some have limits

ranging from $100 to $500. I don't think the amount is the issue.

That's something that we do need to debate, but we need to debate the

need for these laws right now. We need to bring in disclosure laws and

other laws that will guarantee fair, open government for British

Columbians. It's long overdue. We need ground rules to ensure that we

have fair election practices. Good intentions are not going to be

enough to achieve this on their own. The operation of government and

political parties has to be open to public scrutiny

It's time that British Columbia joined the rest of the modern world

and brought in laws to make open to the public political donations for

election and leadership campaigns. That is the only way the public can

judge exactly whose interests are being served.

HON. MRS. GRAN: Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to respond to the statement of the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head.

To start, I want to say that, from a personal point of view, I agree

with the disclosure of campaign donations. I agree with the disclosure

of a lot of things, and it always amuses me to listen to the

self-righteous, pious stuff that comes across the floor, because I want

to tell you that no one is more guilty of what you're suggesting than

the NDP.

As an example, I want to use one of the biggest unions in British

Columbia — the BCTF. The BCTF has nothing to do with teachers. It has

to do with power. It has to do with political power, and let me just

demonstrate as an example what I mean. The president of the BCTF is a

former NDP candidate — defeated. The past president is an NDP candidate

in the upcoming election. Many of the teachers, or families of

teachers, are on school boards. Teachers are negotiating their own

salaries at every level. They are negotiating their salaries at the

provincial government level, the union level, and the local level. It's

as wrong as can be. The other aspect is the power that this union holds

in a political party that could — God help us! — one day be the

government in this province. The power is absolutely incredible, and I

speak not just from an

article in this morning's paper, but from my own

experience as a mother.

Now the

article this morning is Jim Hume's. I'm sure you have all

read it. It talks about a questionnaire that was given in a school to

11-year-old students. Imagine using 11-year-old kids as political

pawns. This

article talks about the questions asked on that....

The member for Surrey-Guildford-Whalley laughs. She is a resident in Surrey,

where the mayor is an NDP member — Mr. Bose. He says that he has telephoned

Surrey developers and asked for campaign contributions, and he doesn't see

anything wrong with it. The member for Surrey-Guildford-Whalley laughs. This

morning's

article brought home to me some of the problems that I experienced

when I was an alderman in Langley and my children were harassed in some of the

classrooms because of their mother's politics.

I would suggest to the NDP members opposite that they clean up their

own act before they stand up and suggest that we're doing anything

wrong. I can tell you that the example that I cited of the BCTF is one

that every taxpayer in this province should be concerned about. Every

taxpayer should be concerned about that powerful union — the heads of

it, not those people who are forced to belong to it. The taxpayers

should be concerned about what will happen if the NDP ever become

government in this province. I think Ontario is a good example of

how.... The NDP government in Ontario is the same as any NDP government

in British Columbia would be. They are paying their debts, and their

debts are breaking the back of the taxpayers in Ontario.

The NDP fears crossing those special interest groups; they fear

crossing big unions like the BCTF and all of the other special interest

groups they've catered to over the years. We've watched what has gone

on in the NDP. If you want to talk about openness, you tell us how the

taxpayers in British Columbia could feel comfortable about facing a

government that would be run by the BCTF.

MS. CULL: Well, it's obvious that I hit a nerve over there.

If anybody had been listening carefully to what I was saying.... I

wasn't suggesting campaign disclosure for just the Social Credit side

of the House; I was suggesting it for all of us. We would all benefit

from it.

Madam Member, you are the government. You are the ones that can

bring this kind of legislation into being. You are the ones that say

that you have nothing to hide. Go ahead — let's have campaign

disclosure legislation. Let's have good government in this province.

In yesterday's Times-Colonist an

article caught my attention.

It was buried at the back of the D section, somewhere at the bottom of

the page. As I was thinking about talking on this subject today, the

headline caught my eye; that's what drew it to my attention. I just

want to let you know the headline and make a comment on it. It says:

"Don't Fret About Source, Campaign Cash in Bank...." It's a story about

a speech given to a Social Credit constituency meeting by the second

member for Kamloops. It starts off this way: "Money shouldn't be a

problem for the first Social Credit candidate for Kamloops–North

Thompson. Where and who it comes from shouldn't be a problem either."

It goes on to name the member and talk about the meeting.

I don't have any problem with what he's trying to say. I suppose

what he's trying to tell us is that fund-raising is well in hand.

That's not the issue. But I do have problem with the statement that we

shouldn't be worrying about where and who it comes from. We should be

worrying, because we simply will not know

[ Page 12994 ]

where it comes from; we will not know who is funding any of these campaigns.

I think it's in the interest of the public, the candidate, the

people who back the candidate and — if that candidate is wildly

fortunate and actually gets elected — the people who will be doing

business with that candidate. It's in all of our interest to have

financial matters such as this out in the open.

It takes millions of dollars to finance modern elections, and

leadership races also cost millions of dollars. One newspaper columnist

has estimated that last time around the Social Credit leadership

convention cost in the area of $3 million, followed by $4 million spent

on the election. I think the public has a right to know who is paying

those bills. Perhaps once the financial backers are known, the

potential for conflict and the appearance of conflict will be reduced.

The new Premier has said repeatedly that she has nothing to hide. If

that's the case, I think we should get on with this. If there's nothing

to hide, why hide political contributions during either provincial

elections or leadership campaigns? It's long overdue in this province.

Let's have good, open government.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The first member for Richmond seeks leave to make an introduction. Shall leave be granted?

Leave granted.

MR. VANDER ZALM: On behalf of the second member for Richmond

and myself, I would like to introduce to this House and welcome to

Victoria 70 fine grade 7 students from Grauer Elementary in Richmond

and their teachers. I would ask the House to extend them a big welcome.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, yesterday the hon. second

member for Victoria sought to invoke the provisions of standing order

35 and provided the Chair with a written statement of the matter,

namely proposals for the provision of a vehicle ferry service between

Victoria and Seattle.

I have examined the material submitted by the hon. member and

listened carefully to his statement. It is clear that the matter

complained of is similar to a number of matters that have been ruled on

by previous Speakers of this House, who gave their opinions to the

effect that the matter did not qualify under the provisions of standing

order 35 in view of the fact that it involved an ongoing matter. In

addition, I would note that a parliamentary opportunity for debate is

at hand through the vehicle of the estimates.

While the matter raised is undoubtedly one of great interest to the

residents of Victoria and lower Vancouver Island, the member seeking to

invoke standing order 35 must bring himself within the ambit of the

rules relating thereto. Accordingly, I'm not prepared to set aside the

ordinary routine of parliamentary business.

Introduction of Bills

MISCELLANEOUS STATUTES

AMENDMENT ACT (No. 2), 1991

Hon. Mr. Fraser presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a bill

intituled Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act (No. 2), 1991.

HON. MR. FRASER: Mr. Speaker, the bill contains amendments to

ten statutes: the Assessment Act; the Assessment and Property Tax

Reform Act (No. 2), 1990; the Ferry Corporation Act; the Independent

School Act; the Ministry of Transportation and Highways Act; the Motor

Fuel Tax Act; the Municipalities Enabling and Validating Act (No. 2),

1990; the Private Post-Secondary Education Act; the School Act; and the

Workers Compensation Act.

Bill 15 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on

orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House

after today.

[11:15]

TEACHING PROFESSION

AMENDMENT ACT, 1991

Hon. Mr. Richmond presented a message from His Honour the Administrator: a

bill intituled Teaching Profession Amendment Act, 1991.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: Mr. Speaker, this bill amends the Teaching

Profession Act to provide the College of Teachers of B.C. with

jurisdiction over the certification, conduct and competence of both

members and former members of the college.

In addition, this bill will provide for the establishment of a

certification review tribunal able to review a discipline decision of

the college if the minister considers that the conduct of a teacher

that resulted in the decision may render that teacher unsuitable to

continue to hold a teaching certificate.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, this bill will amend the Teaching Profession

Act to require the College of Teachers to make bylaws adopting a code

of ethics governing the professional conduct of members of the college.

Bill 14 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on

orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House

after today.

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. De Jong in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF

SOCIAL SERVICES AND HOUSING

On vote 52: minister's office, $337,553 (continued).

MS. MARZARI: One of the most interesting, vibrant, dynamic

and energetic agencies in my community is the Berwick Preschool located

on the University of British Columbia campus. It has grown over the

[ Page

12995 ]

years as a small and active part of the education

that goes on on our campus, but it's not the traditional university

education that we're thinking of here. It is a school for special-needs

children that integrates their learning and growing with a group of

typical children. In other words, children with very special needs —

physically handicapped and very challenged children — are integrated in

a friendly, professional and loving atmosphere with ordinary kids from

the community. It's a preschool which has developed a large following

among the parents and professionals and is admired and respected by the

university itself and by the education faculty. It's a school which

provides a real service to real people.

The letters I have before me today number about 30. They're from

parents who have or have had their children in the Berwick Preschool.

They speak in glowing terms of the way their children grow in the

preschool, both the handicapped — the special needs — and the ordinary,

typical children, as they call them.

This morning, in a statement around the Pacific National Exhibition,

I heard that your government is going to spend $30 million, over ten

years, to cover a racetrack at the end of the Alex Fraser Bridge in

Delta. I heard that literally $30 million of taxpayers' money was going

to go into underwriting and subsidizing a commercial racetrack, which

undoubtedly will create some jobs for some of your friends and perhaps

expand the interests of race-horse owners and thoroughbred breeders in

this province.

It's strange to sit in the House over a period of time, because

we've gone through statement period and now we're into welfare

estimates, and here I stand. You have announced the $30 million for a

race course. It never came to the House. There was no piece of

legislation to authorize that expenditure. It was announced on June 1.

It got almost no play in the newspapers; it's as if it was a fait accompli before

you started on that enterprise. I find myself standing here less than

one hour later to tell you, Mr. Minister, that the Berwick Preschool is

being slashed this year by $60,000 in an attempt by your government to

save money. That $60,000, when applied to the Berwick Preschool,

translates into five spaces lost for special needs children and one

space lost for a community child.

Those five spaces are integral and important to the school. That

school should be growing. It should be providing a model for the

treatment and development in education of special-needs children

throughout this whole province. There should be a Berwick Preschool on

every campus, so that it can be used by educators. There should be a

Berwick Preschool in every community with special-needs children —

studied, monitored and evaluated, but most importantly, loving the kids

And it would be saving the taxpayers down the road far more than the

$30 million that you'll be spending on the racetrack.

Prevention, early intervention, assistance to those kids when they're young,

and assistance and support for the parents of those kids — what better investment

can your ministry make? In terms of the per capita dollars to be spent on a

child in a year, $60,000 for five placements plus a typical child placement

is virtually nothing in the grander scheme of things, when you think about what

could happen to those kids if their parents and they aren't supported. Where

would those kids be down the road? In institutions? A hundred years ago they'd

quite probably be in an institution by now.

I have to ask the minister how he can think that his government is

assisting handicapped, special-needs children by looking at a unit such

as the Berwick Preschool — a service that lives on morale, love and

compassion for the kids — and slashing it by five students. What kind

of message is this sending them? What kind of treatment does this mean

for the kids? Is the minister prepared to change his mind on the

$60,000 slashback to Berwick Preschool?

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to respond to

that question, and may I say welcome to the students in the gallery

this morning. I think it's very nice to have young people come and

watch the proceedings of this House. I hope they will see a

demonstration of good parliamentary procedure.

The member opposite asks how I can say that we are really concerned

about the need for special day care spaces. The records are quite

clear. In '89-90 there were 2,056 spaces available, in '90-91 there

were 2,195 spaces available and in '91-92 there are 2,300 spaces

available. The budget for this part of our responsibility is $15.24

million, plus there will be additional funds provided. An announcement

will be made on that very soon.

I want to agree with the member completely when she talks about the

merits of Berwick Preschool. I think the way you described it is

exactly the way it is. It's a very good facility. I want to tell you

clearly that there will be no cut in spaces at that school this year.

We will certainly see that that facility is funded. That is not

changing my mind; it was never my intention that a school which

provides the quality of service that Berwick does would be cut. There

will be no cut there.

MS. MARZARI: Is the minister telling me that there was a

threat that Berwick would lose six places, hence my letters in my hand

here, dated June 3? Have parents been informed that there will not be a

cut this coming budget year, that their kids' places are safe and that

the school is going to be able to roll along the way it has been? Is

the minister assuring me of that right now, and have the parents been

notified of that fact?

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: What has happened, as should happen with

all programs that we have.... There are always reviews taking place as

to what is the best way of delivering the services required. Are there

places in Vancouver? Should there be adjustments in allocations from

one location to another in Vancouver? It's not a question of reducing

the number of spaces; the number will in fact increase. But there was

consideration of where these spaces were most required. As soon as that

process starts, it is quite naturally interpreted by those who are

depending upon a facility that

[ Page 12996 ]

that will or may represent a cut for that particular facility.

It's an evaluation process, and it is coming to completion at this

point in time. We know enough about the evaluation process for me to

stand here today and tell you that Berwick Preschool will not be cut.

MS. MARZARI: I'm sure the parents, the professionals and the

university will be very pleased to hear that. As the representative of

the riding, I am very pleased to hear that. I'm pleased that we managed

to sort this out across the floor of the House and that the answer was

clear and well put by the minister. We'll proceed on that basis.

I would like to think, however, that institutions and small schools

like the Berwick need not go from year to year worrying about cuts.

When you've got a good program going and you believe in it, when you

can see that the kids are growing and developing and when you know that

you're saving money, you shouldn't put parents, professionals and kids

through the horrors of fearing a cut next year. It's not fair, and it's

not a productive or efficient way of doing business.

I know that our grants program operates this way. I've been in the

business for 25 years, and I know that people live from year to year on

grants. There are members on both sides of the House who have spent a

good part of their time advocating for or writing grant applications,

or trying to lobby and advocate for different groups. But when you've

got a good program going, when it's serving the goals and interests and

when tampering with it will do more damage than not, I would suggest

that you don't threaten it. You get out there to promote and help

develop it in other regions, towns and universities. Would you like to

respond to that?

[11:30]

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: Yes, Mr. Chairman, I would like to respond

to that, because that is a two-edged sword, I suppose. I can understand

and do appreciate the apprehension that the parties involved may feel

when there is a review taking place. The other side of that, of course,

is that there's a responsibility on the part of the ministry to make

sure that it allocates those funds where they are needed, first of all,

and that the funds are well handled — that there is good value to the

citizens of the province and the people who need servicing for the

funds that are spent.

While I appreciate and acknowledge the apprehension that the review

process may cause, I think it's necessary, because for those people who

provide good quality service, the review only serves to strengthen

their position within the system. If there are people someplace in the

system who are not providing service tip to the standard it should be

and fulfilling the public need, the review process will sort those out

too. It's a necessary mechanism in order for us to provide the quality

of service that we hope we will always provide to the citizens of the

province who require this support.

MS. MARZARI: I love answers like that. I like value for

money; I like proper review. I like taking good solid goals and

breaking them down and looking at efficient workings of efficient

programs. This is one of the reasons I came into politics. This is one

of the reasons that we're here: to make things work better for people.

Now I have a trick question for the minister. Given that we're both

interested in value for money and providing for the citizens of British

Columbia the best that we can give them with the tax dollars that we've

got at our disposal, I want to ask the minister why he thinks people go

on welfare assistance. What, in his mind, are the reasons that bring

people into that welfare office, or make people make that first phone

call? Could the minister give me a few of his thoughts on why people

gravitate toward the welfare system?

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: I guess the reality of the situation is

that many of the questions are trick questions. Some of them are

trickier than others, and I guess this is one of the trickier ones.

I don't know that that's really a legitimate question, because I

think the answer is quite obvious. People apply for social assistance

because they have a need. I could talk about what causes them to have a

need, or what I think may cause some people to have a need, but that's

as varied as the population is. There are different circumstances for

different people. But they reach a point where they have a need. They

are not able, in most cases for a short period of time, to meet the

needs for themselves or their families for food and shelter. They come

to society and say that under their present circumstances they would

like to apply for support, because we have a system in this country

where we look after one another. When people experience these

difficulties, they have someplace to turn. It's a system that I think

we can all be very proud of, and people use it because they have need

of help.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The member for Kootenay asks leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MS. EDWARDS: On behalf of my colleague the member for New

Westminster, I would like to welcome a group of about 30 grade 7

students from Lord Kelvin Elementary School in New Westminster, with

their teacher Mr. Wright. Would the members here help me to make them

feel welcome in the Legislature.

MS. MARZARI: Then the minister would be prepared to say that

people make that phone call and walk into the welfare office because

they're between seasonal jobs, because they aren't able to collect

unemployment insurance or perhaps because their unemployment insurance

cheque has not yet arrived? Perhaps because they're trying to raise

young children by themselves because of a breakdown or a family

split-up or an unforeseen circumstance which may leave a parent with

young children to take care of? Because they're sick? Because they're

disabled? Because they're old? Because they're mentally unprepared to

face life and

[ Page

12997 ]

may be mentally ill? The minister is prepared to

accept all those as potential reasons for why people come onto the

welfare system?

The minister did not say in his answer to me: "Because people are

malingering; because people are lazy, because people are in a rut and

they don't know what to do with themselves, so they come on welfare."

The minister did not state those reasons, and as the minister remains

sitting, I would suggest that he does not agree that people are lazy,

that they are malingering, that they need to be shaken up.

Since we're in agreement that there are some very real and valid

reasons why people go onto social assistance, the minister would

probably agree that.... The statistics I've got show me that the real

reason why welfare statistics increase is the unemployment rate. That

seems to be the major driving force behind the number of people that

come onto welfare. Unemployment goes up, people are in need.

Unemployment goes down, people are not in so much need. Is the minister

prepared to suggest that there's a direct relationship between the

unemployment rate and the number of people on welfare?

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: I'm prepared to acknowledge that the

unemployment rate has a significant impact on our caseload. Having said

that, the unemployment rate is not the only thing that causes people to

come onto the social service system.

The other items that the member opposite mentioned are items that

cause some people to come on. There are other items too, I'm sure. The

list is fairly lengthy, because society is very complex and people have

varying circumstances and many different needs. I don't know what we're

trying to demonstrate here, but I think that all of the items that the

member mentioned will pertain to some cases, and certainly the

unemployment rate has a big bearing on the caseload.

To pick out one, you mentioned the unemployment insurance. The

change in the regulations for unemployment insurance cost this province

many millions of dollars last year. I think it accounted for about $45

million, because people were not able to get unemployment insurance the

way they had before. We will feel the implications of that in the

future, because they are allowed less time to be on the system, and

people have needs that have to be met.

MS. MARZARI: I'm enjoying listening to the golden tones of the minister — very reasonable and responsible responses.

Yet when I look at the history of workfare programs in this province, I see

a deplorable history of ministers one after the other — sequentially — announcing

a special program to force people off welfare, to punish the poor, to force

them into some kind of work, always with the suggestion — that punitive edge

— that they're malingering, that they need to be given shovels, that they're

not going to be allowed to collect welfare if they live in the boonies somewhere.

There's always that edge. Your government has managed to punish the poor

now for as long as your government has been in power.

I look through the list. Marilyn Callahan, in a recent

article in the Times-Colonist ,

outlined these workfare programs. The LIFE program is your most recent

program. You have announced it yourself and you have yourself, Mr.

Minister, said: "Employable welfare recipients should get jobs and get

off welfare."

Mr. Minister, you're a mild man, but these words have been used with

much stronger intonations, carrying much more graphic images about the

poor being lazy, by many of your colleagues with whom you agree

politically and perhaps personally. The shovels have been pulled out in

the past by more than one of your colleagues.

Mr. Gaglardi said in 1969: "We need individuals in political

leadership today more than ever, men with the guts to get up and say:

'We're going to get the deadbeats off the welfare rolls'." This was

'69, and he said he would remove 20,000 to 30,000 people from welfare.

There were no results — nothing ever came out. There was no publication

of how many people actually left the rolls. This set a tone for your

government for the following 20 years. Another program would be

announced almost annually by another minister or by the same minister.

In '76, Bill Vander Zalm, the first member for Richmond, announced

PREP, and we remember that so well. Shovel, not a handout — that was

the message then. Then there was the plan put forward by the member

from Little Mountain — her IOP program. That brought together PREP and

another welfare-work program. The JobTrac program brought in in 1986 —

we all remember it — pieced together some federal money with some

provincial dollars and said that it was providing employment — all

short-term, no real long-lasting training. In fact JobTrac has

disappeared down a flue somewhere. I can't find any statistics on what

JobTrac actually accomplished. Then Employment Plus came along.

We've had a number of programs. Each one has taken on its own

particular shape, with different ways of using federal dollars to

create short-term jobs. But always there's been this punitive edge.

Always there's been this assumption by your government that people on

welfare were malingering, that they were coming to B.C. just to goof

off, that they really shouldn't be on welfare at all, and they should

be out working.

I suppose the most punitive of all was the recommendation or the

policy two years ago that single mothers on welfare had to be out the

door, with their kids in day care, and into a job, because they were

going to lose their unemployable status when their child reached the

age of six months.

Mr. Minister, I don't know how you can reconcile the attitude of

your government and the verbal statements by members of your government

— most recently by our Solicitor-General, about the laziness of the

poor — with your own statements a few moments ago that people are there

because they're in need. We know there is a direct relationship between

people on welfare and unemployment. From the little evaluation of these

programs that's actually being done, we know that virtually none of

them have budged or pushed people off welfare, because people come onto

welfare

[ Page 12998 ]

because of need. They leave welfare when they are

no longer in need — when they get a job, because people want to work.

They get jobs, and they move back into the job market.

I think the minister has to be aware that there is a direct

connection between a punitive attitude towards the poor and the lack of

real services and effort on the part of government to create real jobs

and real communities for real people. Would the minister be prepared to

comment, then, on some of the real, visionary programs that Social

Services and Housing might be prepared to engage in over the next few

years? One of the ways we actually can create jobs, and one of the ways

— aside from hitting people over the head with shovels, which doesn't

work and only serves to completely create anger, destabilization and

confusion....

Perhaps you might want to speak to the real issues affecting us

here: the provision of child care, for example. Would the minister be

prepared to address the amount of money that is going to go into child

care from his ministry this year, what he intends to do with the

subsidy rates, and whether he intends to create any new spaces?, This,

more than hitting people over the head with punitive language and

forcing them off welfare, might go a long way to actually doing

something about creating community wealth. Would the minister speak to

his child care policies?

[11:45]

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: I had hoped that my estimates would be a

case of questions from the opposition regarding what the ministry does

or does not do, and my responses to those specific questions. Obviously

the dialogue is not that. Clear political statements are being made,

which have little to do with me or with the ministry's budget for this

fiscal year.

The member talked about statements made by members of this party in

the past. As I said last evening, I cannot be responsible for other

people's choice of words. By saying that, I do not in any way accept

the words attributed to them as having been said. In fact, I know that

in the case of one member of this cabinet who was criticized for having

made statements, I have seen the statement that was made and his exact

words, and they are far from the nature of the comment that is

attributed to him. So I would be cautious about accepting that.

What I can say is that I believe that every person in British

Columbia who is employable — a working person — would appreciate the

opportunity to work, should be working and should try to meet their own

needs as much as they possibly can. I understand, and I understand

because I've been in the circumstance. You wouldn't accept that,

perhaps, but I have been in the circumstance where I know how people

feel when they get to the bottom of the economic scale. It may be

temporary, but for a time they're there. It's very difficult to make

the transition from that and get into the workforce again. Those people

who are fortunate enough not to be there can look at society and see

all kinds of opportunities and potentials, but when you're down at the

bottom level — for whatever the reason may be — it's hard to see those

opportunities, and it's even more difficult to start taking advantage

of them. So I recognize that there's a need for government to provide

some support mechanism for that, and that's what the LIFE program is

all about. It's not to be punitive, but it's to help people to get from

the social service dependency to becoming financially independent.

I don't think that's punitive at all. I think that's a support

system that the public needs, and I know that many people on social

assistance will welcome the opportunity of the help.

I also want to make it clear that those who are able to benefit from

that service have a responsibility to cooperate with us and take

advantage of it, because whatever people are able to contribute towards

their own support, they should contribute. If they don't contribute to

it, then we have to contribute to it; and if we contribute to it, it

increases the caseload; and when our caseload increases, we get to the

situation where we simply are pressed for the funds to do it. Where

will we get the money to do it?

There are many people in the province who don't have that luxury of

being able to better their own circumstances, for various reasons, and

those people are dependent upon us for support. The way we can provide

best for their support and guarantee that their cares will be met in

the future is to lessen the demand on the system and find ways for the

employable to become employed so that they are not depending upon the

system, leaving more funds — not to be a saving to government

necessarily, but so that there will be funds available for those who do

not have that option. That's what the program is all about: to

guarantee service for those people — the handicapped, the elderly, the

children of the province — who are dependent upon us with few options

to do otherwise. Their support will be guaranteed.

I make no apology to anyone for asking every person in British

Columbia who is employable to take advantage of the opportunity to

cooperate with us and to whatever degree possible become

self-supporting.

MR. SERWA: It's a real pleasure for me to rise in the chamber and speak on the minister's estimates.

This particular subject is very important, and I have no reason to

doubt the genuineness of the approach of the first member for

Vancouver–Point Grey. I have sincere reservations in doubting, however,

the approach of the New Democratic Party to the situation with welfare.

I often perceive it as their method of buying votes at the expense of a

number of the citizens of this great country of Canada and the province

of British Columbia.

Mr. Chairman, this country was built by people who came to this land....

Interjection.

MR. SERWA: Just listen up, my friend. Expand your horizons and listen for a moment.

This country was built by individuals who came to this country with

absolutely no guarantees whatsoever. Immigrants came out of Europe and

from lands all

[ Page

12999 ]

over the world to this great country of Canada.

They came to remote portions of the country; they came to our northern

prairies. They worked hard; they cleared the land and they farmed. They

lived underground in harsh, severe winters, with no medical help, no

educational opportunities, none of the magnificence that the government

here and today.... We take it for granted in this wealthy province of

British Columbia.

Canada is still populated by people like that. Why does it work? Why

did those people have — although they had no financial resources — the

richness in character, in spirit, in willingness and in knowledge and

the work ethic to make good things happen so that we all live in this

wondrous and remarkable province with good health services, good

educational opportunities for our young people and, most important of

all, jobs for people in British Columbia?

When we talk about welfare, we have to recognize that individuals

have to justify their existence, and that is not simply by money alone.

We have to have the feeling of fulfilment, self-esteem and personal

pride, which makes this world just a little better for our being here.

No amount of money can compensate for that sense of accomplishment,

which we all need. That's the very foundation and essence of our being.

What we have in debate in the minister's estimates is the very essence

of the difference of perspective between the socialists and the people

on our side.

We believe in the individual in society and striving to create an

environment where that individual, through their own initiative and the

opportunities that society collectively provides, is able to maximize

every bit of their ability to develop to the fullest possible extent.

That's what the country is built on and where the pride and self-esteem

comes from.

The members opposite want to keep people dependent on a system and

to give them enough to survive, but not to provide the richness,

resources and background to feel that sense of accomplishment. We give

them money and nothing else. It's like wealthy parents thinking that

love is giving the child all sorts of money, but not of themselves.

We have to work with these people and to help them, because we have

parents parenting children who haven't been properly parented

themselves. We have to break that and give them opportunities. Yes, we

have to help them. In many cases we have to teach them how to garden,

how to make clothes — perhaps to mend clothes — and to do all of the

things that are very important to be able to survive on the income they

are receiving — not to make them dependent on some artificial source of

income so that they can survive along with all of their neighbours and

friends who are working hard.

Mr. Speaker, the absurdity and the extension of that philosophy which doesn't help people to help themselves....

Interjection.

MR. SERWA: You, Mr. Member, should be well aware that if you really

want to help a man, instead of giving him a fish you will teach him how to fish.

There is a subtle difference in the philosophies of our two parties. It's

really important, because what you're proposing is unfair to those people

who are caught in the welfare system, which is a relatively small static percentage

of the population. It's grossly unfair to the taxpayers of this province

and of the great nation of Canada.

That's the extension of your philosophy. The absurdity is carried on

presently in the great province of Ontario. What do we do in the

province of Ontario? Well, I will tell you. A married couple with two

children and with assets get the equivalent of $45,000 a year before

taxes to maintain a standard of living.

How can the economy stand it when we're ensuring that those who have

pride and who are willing to take jobs cannot afford to take jobs

because of that excessive layer of welfare? That's what those members

opposite are driving for; that's what they believe they will get votes

for.

Well, there is no magic tap. All the services that government

provides are directly dependent on the benefits of a strong economy.

They have to understand that. They have to understand what makes an

economy happen. And they really don't. I've heard members on the

opposite side say: "We've had a meeting with social workers and health

care workers and other professionals in those fields, and we've created

an image of a perfect society, " But what they've left out are the

people who are responsible for making the economy hum, for making

things happen and for recognizing that unless we have a strong and

healthy economy, we can't do the good things we all want to do — and

that's on both sides of the House, Mr. Chairman.

So we need that healthy economy, but we won't have it with the

attitude they have in Ontario, where you have to have that equivalent

of $45,000 before taxes in order to provide the care for a married

couple with two children. We get the basic payments; we get special

payments for medical and dental; we get clothing allowances; we get tax

accommodations and benefits, plus the principal payments. If the

members opposite genuinely want to help people help themselves, they

will arm them through educational opportunities, through assistance,

through giving of themselves. It is a fallacy. It's a terminal

sickness, and it exhibits the finite limitations of their sensitivity

for people on welfare, as well as the gross unfairness to the other

taxpayers of this province. Working together, we can start to minimize

the situation of the poor by creating employment opportunities and a

strong economy. That's where you folks haven't got anything together in

any way, shape or form. You're professional politicians, you're

unionists, and you represent special interest groups.

Mr. Minister, I commend you on the fine-quality work and the

compassionate, caring services provided by your ministry for the people

of British Columbia. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to take this opportunity to

say this, because the difference is really emphasized here between the

New Democrats and the Social Credit side of the House.

[ Page 13000 ]

MR. LONG: Mr. Chairman, I ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MR. LONG: In the galleries today we have 13 Brownies from the

Eighth Powell River pack and one Girl Guide, as well as their leader,

Louise Redlon, and three assistants. They are: Nicki Iwasiuk, Sherrie

Ashworth, Jolene Pirart. Kerrie Orchiston, Alisha Goes, Diana Burton.

Dana Nelson and her sister Jana, Kim and Gail Olver, Jeanne Redlon,

Patricia Abbott and Lorraine Nelson. As well, we have three close

friends of mine from Powell River: Mrs. Marylyne Hopkins, Cindy Hopkins

and Bill Hopkins. I'd like to have this House join me in making them

all very welcome.

[12:00]

MS. MARZARI: Mr. Minister, it was a trick question, and I

gather the whole process became tricky. You were almost convincing me

that you sincerely believed that the welfare rates and welfare

statistics were directly correlated with the unemployment statistics,

and that we could perhaps move on to discuss the larger issues of child

care and community economic development and creating true jobs in

communities without punishing the poor. Their own colleague stood up to

undo all your convincing arguments, and I feel very sorry for you at

this moment because the real Social Credit stood up and spoke.

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

I'm glad he spoke because I was getting a little worried there as he

spoke. He was talking about 11 pulling yourself up by your bootstraps

and living like your predecessors and getting out there and making a

life for yourself and recreating the pioneer imagery of our

forefathers." It was when he reached the part about "helping a man"

that I realized what the problem was: he was helping men.

I'd like to take both of you, the minister and the member of

Okanagan, to meet a few women who have pulled themselves up by their

bootstraps until there aren't any more bootstraps, who raised their

children without partners, who live as working poor earning less than

$10,000 a year in our community, who may be on welfare or may not be on

welfare but who may fluctuate between the two for their income

security, who are completely marginal to the workforce, who have been

completely forgotten by this government.

When you think about them, you say, "Get off the welfare rolls the

second your child turns six months old and get out there and get a job,

" while on the other hand you say: "The sanctity of motherhood and how

important it is that the mother remain in the home." Don't talk to

them. Don't talk to those women, because they're sitting — they're not

sitting; they're working — eight hours a day as waitresses and then

they're coming home to their kids. They're trying to find day care, if

they're lucky, and then working another eight hours in their home.

Resourcefulness? You couldn't find more resourceful women — bringing

home $1,000 a month, if they're lucky, going into debt perhaps $10 a

month. Perhaps for that month the fruit isn't fresh on the table every

week, perhaps there's no fruit at all in the house. Don't talk to me.

Don't talk to those women about resourcefulness and pulling themselves

up by their bootstraps. Don't talk to them about how you have to help

them with your $30 million a year for workfare programs..

Just take that $30 million a year and spread it around among them

and watch what they do in their communities for themselves and their

kids. They're looking for money. They don't want your charity; they

don't want your Lady Bountiful; they don't want your workfare programs

or your threats once a year in the summertime when the news gets slow;

they don't want to be told to pick up shovels. They would like a little

money. They'd like to be able to make ends meet so that they can raise

their kids. They'd like to be able to make 100-cent dollars instead of

60-cent dollars, and they'd like to be able to think that they'd be

able to get into a good job, not just a marginal job and not just

training for a marginal job but training for something that is waiting

for them in the market.

They're willing to create that as well. They're willing to create

those small businesses. In fact, those women are creating those small

businesses, and they are succeeding. It's not women in small businesses

who fail in our economy; it's men in small business that fail. These

women know about resourcefulness, and yet these women number 35,000 on

the welfare rolls and probably another 50,000 in working-poor

situations.

Here's a backbone for you for this province and for the

redevelopment of a strong economy: the resourcefulness of those women,

if it was harnessed and turned to good, instead of being constantly

punished, would probably pull this province out of its doldrums

overnight. But no, we punish.

The minister doesn't want to punish; he's claimed he doesn't want

to. But his party and the last speaker definitely show that we're still

living in the nineteenth century with notions of the poor: they must be

helped and kicked and goaded and insulted with notions that women are

marginal and invisible and don't count at all — we must help a man.

This is where this government is stuck. We spend billions of dollars,

it seems to me, keeping the poor, kicking them when they are down and

providing lacklustre six-month training programs that lead them to

dead-end jobs.

We haven't made the connections between what we do to them and what

we need to do to create a vibrant economy and community. We start with

day care and with community economic development. We start with where

people are at. We start with small business. We develop those notions

and work from there. But we've so successfully chopped and channelled

all our problems: the poor are over here to be neglected and punished;

the rich are over there to be given $30 million for a racetrack. It's

not the way to do public business. If we want to share profits and

invest in human capital, we should be starting with those people who

are the most vulnerable. They are the ones, very

[ Page

13001 ]

often, who are willing to try the hardest to create

wealth — and in fact who do create wealth. Those women with kids, the

working poor, do nothing but create wealth. Simply by being with their

kids and working in the community, they are factories of wealth

creation — and we punish them, rather than encourage them.

Mr. Minister, we are going to come back on another day to the

questions of how we actually create the larger vision. The larger

vision, in my mind, is a connecting framework, starting with creating

jobs in child care, addressing and promoting women's work in the health

care industries, in home support and home services — in industries that

can actually address the needs in our communities and help generate

some wealth, as money circulates and people are rewarded for jobs done.

Let's bring a new women's economy into this debate. We've been

rehashing the nineteenth century for the last 20 years around here, and

that isn't the way it is going to be from now on.

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: I've heard the member opposite talk about

us punishing the poor in this province. If I'm responsible in any way

for having punished the poor, let me say that I am deeply apologetic

for that, because that would be the last thing that I would ever hope

to be involved in. All of us in a civilized society have a

responsibility to help the poor and to be concerned with the needs of

the poor. Regardless of our financial status or how good our lives may

be, we should not ever forget the needs of the poor. We should consider

those needs very sincerely. I think that we do that. We have done a

very good job of trying to meet the needs of the poor, particularly

with the emphasis placed upon single parents. The majority of those, as

we all know, are women trying to improve their circumstances. Let me

tell you that I recognize that it is not easy. Nevertheless, we are

meeting with considerable success.

I read these numbers yesterday, but I want to repeat them. In 1991

the women who are participating in the programs that we offer support

to include: individual counselling, 1,800; training and education,

14,000 women who participated; 500 in work experience programs; 3,900

in wage subsidy programs; 3,000 in job search support programs. There

are many success stories. I don't want to take the time here to do it,

but we could bring in the listing of the success stories. That would

take too long, but just let me read one short letter from one person.

It was in the press, so it's been out there in the public domain; it's

not a private or confidential letter. It comes from my community, and I

think it typifies what many have said who have been on the programs.

It's headed: "Better Life." It starts off by saying:

"I am fed up with reading about welfare system

abusers. How about saying something about those who really do put an

effort into making a better life for themselves and their families?

"I was on social assistance for a few years and, trust me,

it was not easy Upon the realization that I was a single mother of two, I proceeded

to dive into bettering myself through education. I spent two and a half years

in college with social assistance at my side. I obtained my grade 12 certificate,

my office assistant certificate and my legal secretary's certificate. I

am still making payments on my student loan.

"After a long period of job-hunting, I am now employed

as a secretary for a notary. I am very happy with my job and grateful

that welfare was there for myself and my children.

"There are those of us who really do want better, and

if given the opportunity can be as successful as anyone else. I would

like to thank the taxpayers. It was their dollars that helped me get

where I am today."

That was from a lady in Mission. That typifies the experience of

many women in this province, I'm happy to say. With that kind of

evidence, I don't think we can stand here and fairly say that we are

not helping but are in fact punishing the poor. I don't think it's

consistent with the evidence.

MR. G. JANSSEN: One success story, and perhaps ten or 15

success stories, but I think we're talking about thousands of stories

of non-success. The minister should be putting the letter he just read

into perspective — into a percentage — so that we know how many people

enter the programs. He talks about 18,000, 14,000 or 500 people

entering programs. Yet we see thousands of people stuck continually in

welfare or low-paying jobs without any opportunity to get out.

Yes, there are programs — the LIFE program, the JobTrac program,

whatever they may be called on the particular day when the new minister

thinks up a new idea or rehashes an old program. However, when those

programs put people into low-paying jobs where they don't make enough

money to properly feed and clothe their families, they end up going

down to the food bank, which has ever-increasing lineups, so they can

pick up their food. Perhaps they even take part of a day off from that

menial job they have been able to retain, to go down and stand in the

food line-up so their children can have some fresh fruit on the table,

some good food, other than macaroni-and-cheese or lasagne night after

night. At the end of the week, when a teenage daughter would perhaps

like to go the school dance, she doesn't want to because she doesn't

have the clothes like the other children have and can't partake in an

active social life.

People carry that kind of feeling forward into their adult lives. To

stick people in that kind of atmosphere year after year, to have them

grow up.... The member from Kelowna stood there and said: "People came

here, started this country, worked hard and pulled themselves up by

their bootstraps. My parents came here, but they just didn't bring that

philosophy with them; they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps."

We came here in 1952 with $35 in our pockets, and my father started

over again in this country. My family started over: they built a

business, they hired people, and they made it a success.

They also brought with them another very important aspect of

European social democracy: the sharing aspect, where people are

properly looked after — not on minimum wage, not on debilitating

welfare payments, but actually with enough money so that they can live

a decent life, raise their children and put them into programs. We're

talking 65 to 75 percent of the

[ Page 13002 ]

average annual wage in Europe. When Europe comes

together in 1992, it will not be like the free trade agreement we

signed with the United States and are going to sign with Mexico; a

social package will go with that. Every country will treat its workers,

its people and its women fairly, with equal wages for men and women,

not 60-cent dollars. That's the kind of program we're looking for.

Why should people go on your LIFE program or your JobTrac program if

in fact they're stuck in $7-an-hour jobs and $6-an-hour jobs that they

know they're never going to get out of? When housing in Vancouver and

the lower mainland is an average of $212,000, why would people take you

up on their programs?

The question to the minister is: what is the cost of putting the

minimum wage up? We've always heard that if you put the minimum wage

up, business will leave the province. Let's take the example of

McDonald's: that's in the minimum-wage area. The minimum wage went up

50 cents; the price of hamburgers went down. Has the ministry looked at

the cost of bringing the minimum wage up so that it at least matches

the poverty line; so that there's encouragement for people to take

part

in the programs your ministry offers; so that there is incentive to go

to work — and not so that they can be worse off than they were on

social assistance? Has the ministry looked at what the cost of the

minimum wage would be and what the savings on the other end would be

from encouraging people to get off social assistance?

[12:15]

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair might comment that it understands that the purview of the minimum wage is the Ministry of Labour's.

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: Mr. Chairman, I was going to make the

comment that the minimum wage is not within my mandate as Minister of

Social Services and Housing. I suppose we could all have opinions on

it. I've heard arguments both ways, and I listen with interest. I

understand that the member who was asking the question or making

comments — making a statement, I should say — is in the retail

business. He projected, I guess, a new kind of economics that I haven't

heard of: the costs would go up and the product would come down. I

don't know if that applies in his business. If his costs go up, I don't

know that he will sell his product cheaper, but perhaps. Perhaps he has

a different system than anyone I'm familiar with. But generally

speaking, when costs go up, the cost of the product goes up

accordingly. That's been happening for some time.

I know that it is very difficult for people at the lower end of the

income scale to make things work financially. I have a lot of concern,

for instance, about the problems that low-wage-earners face with

accommodation, because rental accommodations are high. I've been

addressing that particular problem. I'm very concerned about those

people who struggle very hard to be independent. It's not easy for them

to do that, given some of the costs that are inherent in providing

accommodations, particularly for families. So we have concerns about

that too.

The alternative that member speaks about I guess must be for us to

offer everyone high-paying government-financed jobs. I don't know where

else they're going to come from. If the jobs that are in society today

are not adequate, I don't know who will provide them. But if we should

replace those with a government program that would provide government

jobs in society, the result will be that the people who are poor today

will in a very short time be poor again. They will be joined by the

rest of society, because we will all be in the same position. That

being the case, there will be no programs to help anyone. Far better

that we are here trying to maintain a healthy economy so that we can

help those people who are in need, and that is precisely what you're

doing.

I'm quite familiar with the good will and the caring environment

that exists in the European countries that you're talking about. My

ancestral background is Norwegian, and I think the Norwegians have one

of the most caring societies in the world. But I recognize there are

limitations on it, and so do many people who live there. We try to be

caring and provide support and help to those who really need it.

The option of getting a way to develop government sponsored

employment that will in fact bring everybody out of poverty is a dream,

and will — lead to everyone being reduced to poverty and no help being

available for anyone.

MR. G. JANSSEN: The minister has a 1930s, if not a 1900,

approach to economics. If, in fact, he is Norwegian as he says he is

and understands the system over there, perhaps he should go over to

take a closer look at the economics of the European system.

I do pay my employees far above the minimum wage in my business, and

there is a benefit package that goes with that. When I was president of

the chamber of commerce in Port Alberni, I initiated a collective

agreement — the first one in British Columbia among chamber members —

that nearly doubled the wages of the employees, and they stayed there.

There had been tremendous turnover because of the low wages we were

paying. A benefit package went with that, and do you know what

happened, Mr. Minister? One of those employees actually bought a car,

and that money rolled back into the economy. Because that car was

bought and is being maintained, other employment was created, and a

flowthrough started to happen.

Because you raise the minimum wage, it doesn't necessarily mean that

the price goes up — but you create new consumers. If you've been to

Norway, you'd recognize that the system works very well. If you've done

any traveling around the world, you'd know that flowthrough economics

works, because people living on the social assistance that this

government is paying, the minimum wage that this government is

encouraging, don't actually contribute from the economy, but it costs

the economy money to subsidize them.

I'm just amazed that the minister stands there.... I shouldn't be, because we know that the government

[ Page

13003 ]

has been in a lot of disarray for some two years.

But he hasn't consulted with the other ministries as to what the cost

of raising the minimum wage actually is. To simply stand there as a

minister of this government and say, "That's somebody else's

jurisdiction; we don't talk about that; we don't know how it will

impact the social services ministry," flabbergasts me. It shows that

this government doesn't understand economics, doesn't have control of

the situation and that they don't speak to each other — perhaps because

they're now involved in a leadership race and one group is supporting

one person and another group is supporting the other person, and

there's no coherency happening. That's why this province is going

backwards in the economy rather than forwards.

Thousands of people are laid off in this province. When their Ul

runs out, which is quicker than ever because of the changes that were

made federally, they're going to end up on social assistance. As those

numbers grow, and we're going to see that happen late this summer and

early fall, then we have to include other jobs — good-paying jobs where

that flowthrough effect will happen and we will actually get people out

there spending dollars, consuming products, creating wealth and paying

taxes.

Will the minister at least give some assurance to this House that he

is going to speak to some other members of the executive council as to

what the effects will be of encouraging people to get off the social

assistance roll, and what that cost will be to either social assistance

or to the economy by raising the minimum wage to an amount that will

see people start their own lives rather than be stuck on the social

assistance rolls?

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: I have to confess that I am getting a

little bit confused. I thought we were doing the estimates for the

Ministry of Social Services and Housing.

MR. G. JANSSEN: It's easy to confuse you.

HON. MR. JACOBSEN: Perhaps that's correct, and I apologize for that, but I do the best I can here. I'm not perfect, but I do the best I can.

The member opposite talked at some length about his record as an

employer. I don't know that that's part of these estimates, but I would

tell the member that I also have spent some years as an employer. I may

have employed a few more people than he might have employed opposite. I

can tell you that I'm pretty pleased with my record too. In fact, I'm

not going to discuss it in detail here, as you did on yours, but I

would welcome you to investigate and check into the records — I think

you could find them — and find out what I did as an employer and how I

did it. I'd welcome you doing that.

He talks about my reluctance to discuss the minimum wage, and that there is

some kind of negligence on my

part in that I have not discussed it with other

members in cabinet. He has no way of knowing what is discussed in cabinet. He

has no way of knowing what conversations have taken place between myself and

other ministers regarding the minimum wage or any other issue.

What he doesn't understand — and I appreciate he's quite new to the

House — are the procedures of this House. The procedure and the

principle of this House to discuss the minimum wage — and I'm not

saying that's not something you may want to discuss and may have good

reason for discussing — is that you would discuss it with the minister

who has responsibility for it. Otherwise every minister that stands

here can discuss everything that goes on in government — and maybe it's

your purpose — but we could be here until the end of this year

discussing. It's for you, Mr. Member, to fall within the parameters

that have been established by parliamentary procedure and discuss this

issue with the one that has the responsibility for administering it.

MR. BLENCOE: I've quite enjoyed listening to the debate these

last few days, except for the issue of closure yesterday, which was

unfortunate, of course, for the people of British Columbia. I've been

interested in some of the philosophical debate that's been expressed

and the thoughts that have been given by both sides of the House.

Although this minister may not have this issue specifically detailed to

his ministry, his ministry is important in terms of how we reflect on

society, how we approach government, how we treat individuals and

protect individual liberty.

I've heard this minister and others of his government talk about how

they stand for individualism, free enterprise and all those things.

They suggest that they protect those very things and that they're the

best at doing that. They infer too that they wish everybody to be

self-employed or to take care of themselves. They infer that the system

we have today allows everybody to attain great heights economically,

socially or otherwise.

[12:30]

The world is somewhat changed. We have a different world, and we

have to reflect on that. Governments all over the western world realize

we're dealing with a different world, different economies, different

scales and different ways of approaching problems.

Mr. Chairman, because I think we've been entering into a useful,

perhaps somewhat philosophical, debate, I'd just like to put on the

record some thoughts about this kind of government, reflecting toward

the right wing of the political spectrum in this country, put in

perspective about which political organizations have really defended

individual liberty and self-employment so that people are able to

attain their own position in society or be their own boss. Because

that's often what this government is trying to give the impression of:

that they are fighting for those issues, that they are the best at it.

One of the great myths of Canadian politics is that this thing that

this government talked about — individual liberty, freedom, free

enterprise, whatever you want to call it — is best fostered by those on

the right side of the political spectrum. The flip side of that, given

out by those who say they defend it best, those on the right, is that

supposedly those in the center or

[ Page 13004 ]

slightly left of the political spectrum want to —

and this is the language we continue to hear over and over again,

reflecting on other jurisdictions — foster the power of the state at

the expense of the individual Canadian. In a nutshell, that's probably

the kind of debate we've come down to in this province and this country

— and much of it is myth; much of it is rhetoric. Much of it is how

much you can spend on advertising to convince the public that it's true.

Well, analysis of political history in this country shows that, in

fact, it has been those in the centre or slightly left of the political

spectrum who have persistently championed civil rights and

individualism — which supposedly this government wishes to protect, and

they think they have a mandate or have cornered the market on it.

For instance, I can recall quite vividly during the Trudeau years

with the War Measures Act — just a side issue perhaps. It was the New

Democrats who saw through that suspension of individual rights and

voted against that very infringement. But the myth persists, carefully

nurtured by the Conservatives and the Liberals in federal politics, and

by Social Credit in British Columbia.

One of the deepest desires of people is to exercise control over

their own lives. It's this natural desire to be, if you will, your own

boss — and I keep hearing reference to it in this chamber — that is

played on by those on the political right. Economically, it is the cry

of free enterprise, which is appropriated by the Conservatives — in

this province, Social Credit — to appeal to people's desires to run

their own affairs. I heard this again in these estimates. There's an

inkling and cry from this government that that's what they're really

all about. But, Mr. Chairman, a look at economic reality shows that

those on the political right cannot and have not delivered on such

promises. They haven't done it.

The notion of free or private enterprise can refer to two different

things. On the one hand, it can refer to workers who are self-employed,

whether they work alone, as in the case of artists or things like that,

or in a group, as in the case of family farms or many small businesses

that I've heard talked about on both sides of the House. But free

enterprise can also refer to big business — this government knows all

about that — in which a relatively small number of managers give orders

to people, and a much larger number of employees take orders and have

very little say in the running of that enterprise.

MR. PETERSON: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman. I hate to

interrupt the member when he's in a full rant, but I really can