1974 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 30th 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)

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1974

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

143 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Crown Proceedings Act (Bill No. 6). Hon. Mr. Macdonald

Introduction and first reading — 143

Oral questions

Present status of Roberts Bank recreational reserve. Mrs. Jordan — 143

B.C. timber advertisements in foreign newspapers. Mr. McGeer — 143

Auto body shop negotiations. Mr. Curtis — 143

Loss of language skills in B.C. schools. Mr. D.A. Anderson — 144

Omissions in budget resource map. Mr. Chabot — 144

Changing tax structures for mining, logging companies. Mr. Wallace — 144

Progress of Autoplan applications. Mr. Curtis — 145

Employment of women in LCB. Mr. McClelland — 145

Money for delinquency programme. Mr. D.A. Anderson — 146

Safety stickers for government vehicles. Mr. Morrison — 146

Delivery of wood chips to pulp mills. Mr. Chabot — 146

Budget debate (continued)

Mr. Bennett — 146

Mr. McGeer — 151

Mr. Wallace — 161

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1974

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

MR. R.H. McCLELLAND (Langley): Mr. Speaker, I'm sorry I

missed them when they were coming in today, but I believe that up in

the gallery somewhere there's a delegation of students from Trinity

Western College in Fort Langley, along with their teacher, Mr. Andrews.

I bid the House make them welcome, please.

MS. K. SANFORD (Comox): Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to

introduce today classes from two schools in the Comox riding: one from

the Campbell River Senior Secondary School, with their teachers Joanne

Bunting, Christine Round and Tony Akelaitis and also a group, a small

group, from the Georges P. Vanier Senior Secondary School in Courtenay

with their sponsor, Mr. Ray Skelly, who is the brother of the MLA from

Alberni. I would like the House to join me in welcoming them.

MR. SPEAKER: I would like the House also to welcome the

musical director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra and Mrs. Gati, who

are in the Members' gallery, and I'd point out to Members that the

symphony is having its annual ball on Saturday and hope you'll attend.

Introduction of bills.

CROWN PROCEEDINGS ACT

Hon. Mr. Macdonald presents a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor:

a bill intituled Crown Proceedings Act .

Bill 6 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.

Oral questions.

PRESENT STATUS OF ROBERTS

BANK RECREATIONAL RESERVE

MRS. P.J. JORDAN (North Okanagan): I first would like to

welcome the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources to the House

for the question period. Then I would like to address a question to

him, through you, in regard to the on-again off-again recreational

reserve near Roberts Bank. Would the Minister please advise me, now

that he's put it on again, how much of the 8,000-odd acres are within

the reserve, and what is the zoning of that land today?

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS (Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources):

I am pleased to confirm the order-in-council which went through Thursday last

which corrected an error by staff in the Department of Lands, which exceeded

the intent of government. So, in fact, the area that is taken out of reserve

is essentially along the causeway to the Roberts Bank super port. I'm afraid

one would have to check the maps which are readily available in the department

to get the precise acreage. But I would say, roughly, it's 20 per cent of

the former area.

MRS. JORDAN: Has the land been turned over to Hydro?

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

B.C. TIMBER ADVERTISEMENTS

IN FOREIGN NEWSPAPERS

MR. P.L. McGEER (Vancouver-Point Grey): Mr. Speaker, a

question to the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources. Has the

Minister, or the provincial government, taken advertisements in

Japanese and other foreign newspapers advertising for foreigners to bid

for timber sales in British Columbia?

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: The answer is yes.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the Minister if it's

the policy of the provincial government to advertise British Columbia's

natural resources for sale to foreign firms.

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: I would have expected, Mr. Speaker, that

the Hon. Member would have been in favour of competition, given his

location in the House. It is in the interest of the people of British

Columbia to see that there is genuine competition for the resources of

the province that the people own.

I might say in addition, however, that the tenure period which we

are talking about in that instance is 12 years, at which time all

capital would have to be written off with respect to that bid.

MR. McGEER: I'd like to ask the Minister if this means that

British Columbians may be denied a profit on our resources while those

profits go to foreigners. (Laughter.)

AUTO BODY SHOP NEGOTIATIONS

MR. H.A. CURTIS (Saanich and the Islands): Mr. Speaker, to

the Minister of Transport and Communications, with respect to the chaos

which appears to be emerging concerning the auto body shops: could the

Minister report on the current state of negotiations with auto body

shops for repair of

[ Page 144 ]

automobiles and other vehicles?

HON. R.M. STRACHAN (Minister of Transport and Communications):

I would say that the chaos is in the Member's mind, because it's still

under negotiation. There was a meeting this morning, as a matter of

fact.

MR. CURTIS: Can you report on it? That was the question.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: It's still under negotiation.

MR. CURTIS: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. How will damaged

vehicles be repaired after March 1 if the negotiations prove

unsuccessful and no settlement or agreement is reached?

MR. SPEAKER: That would be anticipating, rather than a question of present policy.

MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary: does the Minister have any contingency plans for after March 1?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I don't answer iffy questions.

LOSS OF LANGUAGE SKILLS IN

BRITISH COLUMBIA SCHOOLS

MR. D.A. ANDERSON (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, a question to the

Minister of Education. In the light of the released report from the

Department of Education, Victoria, that the loss of language skills in

British Columbia.... I quote the report: "The average has confirmed the

worst predictions that have been made." That's with respect to language

ability. May I ask what special programmes the Minister might have

undertaken in this regard so that the B.C. school system's relative

falling behind the American system can be overcome?

HON. E.E. DAILLY (Minister of Education): I haven't had time

to read the report. Before I've read it in detail, and discussed it in

detail with the officials in the department, I'm not prepared to

comment on what steps will be taken. If there are going to be steps

taken, I will certainly inform the House.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: Mr. Speaker, a supplementary. This report

is dated June, 1973, and if the Minister is not reading reports, may I

ask who in her department should we see to discuss reports that have

come in some months before, which apparently have neither reached the

Minister's desk, nor been acted upon?

HON. MRS. DAILLY: The report has reached my desk and I've

looked through the report, but not in the detail in which I would like

to. Frankly, I am always very careful about just accepting reports.

Even though the report was done through our own department, there are

many questions I'd like to ask about it.

I want to have clear in my mind what students were tested and how

they made the comparison with the United States. These questions have

not yet been answered.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: Mr. Speaker, I'd just like to recommend paragraphs 3 or 4, which answer those questions.

MR. SPEAKER: It's not time for speaking.

OMISSIONS IN BUDGET RESOURCE MAP

MR. J.R. CHABOT (Columbia River): A question to the Minister

of Finance. On examination of the budget, on page 9, there's a map

indicating various resource areas of the province. I notice the

omission of the largest and only coal-producing area in the province,

the Fernie area. (Laughter.) There are other ore bodies shown as well.

Also, another omission is the largest amount of lead and zinc produced

in the Commonwealth in Kimberley.

The people of the southeastern part of British Columbia are annoyed

at this kind of oversight by the government. I'm wondering whether the

Minister is going to reprint that page of the budget.

HON. D. BARRETT (Premier): Mr. Speaker, considering the criticism of the former administration to "get the lead out, " we've done just exactly that.

CHANGING TAX STRUCTURES

FOR MINING, LOGGING COMPANIES

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Speaker, could I ask the

Minister of Finance, in the light of interviews which he has given

subsequent to yesterday's presentation of the budget, that he explain

clearly to the House that there is, in fact, pending legislation which

will change tax structures in this province in relation to mining

royalties and logging tax? If so, is it not unusual that the budget

should be presented devoid of these details!

HON. MR. BARRETT: Legislation has not passed this House, Mr.

Speaker. The legislation is proposed and it's been discussed for

months, and it was announced months ago that the legislation would be

brought into this House. I can just hear the opposition cries if we

predicted that it was going to pass this House. This is still a

democratic institution,

[ Page 145 ]

Mr. Member.

MR. WALLACE: Supplementary. That's rather a facile answer, in

my view, Mr. Speaker. The fact is that we're here to discuss the

revenues and expenditures of the province. Could I say to the Minister

of Finance, in fact, that part of the 40 per cent increase in resource

revenue relates to certain sums of money which are still to be raised

under a formula which we don't know about and can't discuss at this

time while we're discussing the budget?

HON. MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I think that the question is

more appropriate in detailing the estimates. But I want to point out to

the Member that it's been a matter of some public discussion since our

election to office, and certainly since last fall, that new royalty

legislation would be introduced. Now, that legislation will be

introduced this session, and I hope that every Member of the House will

participate in that debate. Once the legislation is passed, and if it's

passed in the terms of the way the government wants it passed — hopes

it gets passed — then we'll be able to estimate what revenue will come

from it.

MR. SPEAKER: I point out to Hon. Members that legislation

which is proposed should not be discussed in the House before it's laid

on the table by Members of the House, as is sought in this question.

PROGRESS OF AUTOPLAN APPLICATIONS

MR. CURTIS: To the Minister of Transport and Communications.

Is the Minister now receiving daily or every other day reports on the

number of Autoplan applications for insurance which have been

processed? If so, is there any possibility that the number to be

processed in the remaining two weeks is capable of being handled by the

administration?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: Well, as I said last week....

MR. CURTIS: I'm not talking about last week; I'm talking about this week, right now.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I have no indication that the 1,000

agencies throughout the province will not be able to handle the job

that was done by 80 agencies in the past.

MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, supplementary. Do you have any contingency plans in the event that that is not capable of being achieved?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: You are asking an iffy question again; and I will not answer iffy, iffy, iffy questions.

MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, with respect, that is not an iffy

question. I'm asking if the responsible Minister of the Crown has a

contingency plan. Surely that is an acceptable question.

MR. SPEAKER: I point out to Hon. Members that in Beauchesne

at page 148 it says: "....shall not seek information about matters that

in nature are secret, or decisions which are to be given, in the way of

advice to the Crown by its officers." At this stage, it's still a

question that is in the future, unless you are talking about a present

policy.

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: Well, I can't help what he answered last week.

MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, I accept your ruling with exception of: is there a contingency plan? Not what is it.

MR. SPEAKER: Well, then you are talking about a present matter.

MR. CURTIS: Is there a contingency plan? It seems to me to be a very straightforward and fair question, Mr. Speaker, with respect.

MR. SPEAKER: On that point, I agree with you.

EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN IN LCB

MR. McCLELLAND: I'd like to address my question to the

Attorney-General, please. I'd like to ask him, now that — thanks to our

urging on this side of the House — the Factories Act has been amended,

how many women have been hired in the retail stores of the Liquor

Control Board up to date. If there are none, when do you plan to change

those regulations so that we can have women equally employed with men

in this province?

HON. A.B. MACDONALD (Attorney-General): Mr. Speaker, the

question of the exact numbers is a question on the order paper. I might

say that we're proceeding with — and you wouldn't think this would be

necessary, but it still seems to be — duplicate facilities, lavatory

facilities, in the various stores, because that's still a requirement

of law.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MACDONALD: Yes, I don't think it is necessary. It shouldn't be necessary, but that's one of the things in the works in terms of equal

[ Page 146 ]

employment. I've met with the Director of Human

Rights on the subject, so this won't be neglected. At the same time, we

don't want existing people to lose their jobs or their job security,

but we're going to see that those positions, wherever possible, are

opened up on a completely free basis without any discrimination in the

Liquor Control Board system.

MONEY FOR DELINQUENCY PROGRAMME

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the

Attorney-General whether public moneys are still being expended on a

programme — and I quote Dr. Matheson of his department: "The

behaviour-modification programme of juveniles with potential

delinquency tendencies"...who are evidently to be chosen by computer,

according to a speech delivered last week by Dr. Matheson?

HON. MR. MACDONALD: I haven't seen the speech or the report, but there'll be no computerization of individuals as long as I'm Attorney-General.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: May I follow that question then with a

question to the Minister asking whether or not we will continue studies

in behavioural modification of people who have committed no crime, but

people whom apparently computers or experts, perhaps social workers,

feel may have potential delinquent tendencies?

HON. MR. MACDONALD: I've never even heard of such a study, but if there is one I'll look it up; but we have no such plans.

SAFETY STICKERS FOR

GOVERNMENT VEHICLES

MR. N.R. MORRISON (Victoria): I'd like to address my question

to the Minister of Transport, and ask him if he can answer today the

question which I asked him a few days ago concerning a new policy on

safety stickers for government vehicles. I have not yet had an answer

on that one.

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I haven't got the answer yet.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, that was the day the House closed and I

wrote the number down, but it was locked in my desk. I hope the Member

will make a very careful study of every vehicle in Victoria and let me

know of any vehicle he finds, government or otherwise, that doesn't

have the proper sticker. Since you accepted that as a public

responsibility, I would suggest that you do that; help us out.

DELIVERY OF WOOD CHIPS

TO PULP MILLS

MR. CHABOT: To the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water

Resources, again on behalf of that forgotten part of the province, the

east Kootenays. In view of the government's takeover of Kootenay Forest

Products — no doubt to avoid Nelson becoming a ghost town — I'm

wondering, now that they've taken it over, whether they will allow some

chips to be directed to the Crestbrook Pulp Mill at Skookumchuck, or

will all the chips be directed to Col-Cel, or Can-Cel or B.C.-Cel, at

Castlegar, because we need jobs in the east Kootenays.

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: I believe, Mr. Speaker, that there's a

current contract between Kootenay Forest Products and Canadian

Cellulose at Castlegar, but I would note that I just now left a meeting

with Crestbrook Forest Industries, working out questions of the

expansion potential in the east Kootenay region itself. So we're

seriously involved in discussions with Crestbrook with respect to the

plant at Skookumchuck.

Orders of the day

ON THE BUDGET

MR. W.R. BENNETT (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I'd

like to rise to take my place in the debate, give my congratulations to

the Premier and Minister of Finance on an excellent presentation, as he

always gives in this House, in presenting his budget. It must

discourage him to see editorials like this in The Province ,

where it says: "Budget is Work of Pure Fiction." I know how deeply he

feels because I've known people in similar circumstances earlier, with

similar budgets — similar types.

It was referred to as a "Robin Hood" budget, and certainly we

expected more. It was much ballyhooed as a Robin Hood budget, and we

expected to get some pronouncement that the Minister of Lands, Forests

and Water Resources (Hon. R.A. Williams) had expropriated a major

milling complex in Sherwood Forest, and that the Premier, when he aimed

his bow, made industry quiver. (Laughter.)

Nonetheless, we have difficulty in relating this budget to having

received the bulk of its revenues from resources, because in going

through the estimates of receipts we find that most of the taxes still

come from people — property taxes, fuel taxes, personal income taxes,

succession taxes, sales taxes, contributions from other governments

which come from taxes, contributions from government enterprises — we

know people pay those — and in reality only 20 per cent of this budget

is coming from the resource industries directly in the way of

privileges, licences, natural resources and royalties. So I don't think

that this can necessarily be called a Robin Hood budget, or a resource

budget, or a

[ Page 147 ]

share-the-wealth budget. What it is is a very big budget reflecting the economy of British Columbia.

MR. J.R. CHABOT (Columbia River): Some Robin. Some hood!

MR. BENNETT: Now, in analyzing this budget, Mr. Speaker, we must relate it to the rest of the world.

And realizing that British Columbia is not an economic island unto

itself, we must understand that our economy is based primarily on the

export of forest products and mineral production. Our principal

markets, Mr. Speaker, are the United States, Japan, and Great Britain

with the European Common Market. Of our export products in wood, 60 per

cent goes to the United States. Japan receives 17 per cent, and the

European Common Market, 16 per cent.

What are the realities of basing our budget on those three main

marketing areas in this coming fiscal year? Because the budget should

recognize that outside British Columbia the capacity of these markets

to buy our goods is severely hampered this year by an economy in

turmoil — economies in turmoil due to economic warfare from the Arabian

oil embargo and the economic disarray in Great Britain, the political instability of the United States and the

loss of Japanese purchasing power due to a high inflation rate, higher

even than British Columbia's, at 23 per cent.

Now, we are not being alarmist or doom-and-gloom spreaders, as I

heard referred to in the budget yesterday, but rather realistic and

prudent to face the facts of the market we sell to and on which we base

our economy because that's what responsible budgeting is all about. And

the bulk of our exports being represented by wood products, Mr.

Speaker, ignoring Japan and the European Common Market, it must be less

than realistic to expect the United States market with less than 1.5

million housing starts, the lowest in 10 years, to provide the resource

revenues stated in this budget.

It is apparent also that although the legislation has not been

presented — and it was brought up earlier that we are discussing

revenues for which there is no formula or no bill presented to this

Legislature — it is suggested that the government may be imposing

higher taxes. This is the only way those revenue expectations which the

Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett) budgets for can possibly be met.

In this coming year when the working men of this province seek

higher wages in the forest industry in order to keep pace with

inflation, as indeed they should and indeed they must, Mr. Speaker,

will not the government become a competitor with them for those

available dollars with the lower price of wood products? Lumber alone

has already drastically dropped from last year's average prices. With

many small operators already facing difficulties, can they afford, and

can the economy afford this confrontation between the government and

the wage earners in the forest industry for these few declining

dollars? All British Columbians will be watching, as not only are the

wages of the workers of the province at stake, but so must also be the

social service programmes which this government has an obligation to

provide.

In analyzing the budget further, Mr. Speaker, we must review the

1973-1974 budget, both in estimates and in revenue. In light of the 25

per cent increase in actual revenue for the first three-quarters of

last fiscal year, which the Premier pointed out in this budget report,

it made last year's budget an irrelevant document. It should have been

immediately clear to this Minister of Finance as the money rolls in —

and I know that the money report is daily on the revenues of the

province — that he badly underestimated the revenues of this province.

And his responsibility in realizing that the biggest underestimate of

revenue that this province has ever seen, and we've seen many

underestimates, Mr. Speaker...

AN HON. MEMBER: Big ones.

MR. BENNETT: ...was to allocate these funds in a mini-budget in the fall sitting of the Legislature.

Interjection.

MR. BENNETT: That's right. These funds should have been

allocated in the fall session of the Legislature in a mini-budget

because at that time this government was aware of a crisis in housing.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. BENNETT: This government was aware; it created a new

Ministry of Housing. The Premier was sitting on those surplus funds.

Why could not the housing crisis have been dealt with at the fall

session? Why couldn't these funds have been brought down in a

responsible manner in a mini-budget?

Further, Mr. Speaker, with this fantastic surplus build-up from

these underestimated funds, why could not the pensioners of this

province have had their Mincome cheques supplemented at that time from

the erosion of inflation, rather than sitting on these funds to present

a grand and a glorious surplus here at the spring session?

Why should they not have allocated in a mini-budget at the fall

session, with these tremendous surpluses, funds to intermediate care,

as recommended by an all-party legislative committee in the spring

session of the Legislature? Even now in this budget after the

tremendous surpluses already in hand, we see only $1 million allocated

for intermediate care in this province. How could a

[ Page 148 ]

Minister of Finance, who claims to be concerned about people, sit on

mounting surpluses day after day through the fall session, recognizing

the housing crisis, recognizing the erosion of purchasing power of

people on limited means? It's incredible, and it's disgraceful, Mr.

Speaker.

Could not these new record surpluses, these windfall tax profits

from a booming world economy, be used also to give notice to the school

trustees at that time that some initiative could have been taken to

reduce class size? And even now in this budget, Mr. Speaker, reduction

of class size is but a pious hope, an aside to the budget.

I might point out, Mr. Speaker, that last year's budget with these

record revenues was achieved with resource taxation of long standing,

with the exception of a brief period of stumpage increase in the

Interior of B.C., which was removed when the market fell, and an

economic base of the private and public sector created before this

government came to office. No amount of rhetoric or presentation in

this Legislature can hide that fact, Mr. Minister of Finance.

For example, the forest industry estimates of $90 million, made in

the spring budget of last year, will turn out to be closer to $230

million or $240 million at the completion of this fiscal year. It had

already reached $176 million by December 31, as reported in the budget.

The idle surplus money which the Minister of Finance sat on all during

the fall session and all during the holiday season, right up to this

spring session, Mr. Speaker, is where that money came from. And the

rest of the taxation rates, as the Minister of Finance has said,

continues to be among the lowest in all of Canada.

Now, the budget at hand, Mr. Speaker, continues an alarming trend

away from service to people, which became apparent in this government's

first budget. The policy thrust of government, Mr. Minister of Finance,

can only be measured by the percentage allocations of budgets. These

set out the priorities of budgets. Not figure amounts, but the

percentage of the budget-of-the-day allocated to those measures. And

what does the record show?

Compare the 1972-73 budget of the former government with both the

1973-74 budget and 1974-75 budgets of this Minister of Finance, and in

the category that this government and this Minister chooses to make out

to be the measure of their policy priorities, with social improvements

and expenditures which are the combination of health, education and

human resources. And let's combine them. In 1972-73 these expenditures

totalled 73.7 per cent of the provincial budget. And the government

that asks for this comparison, what was its first budget combining

these services to people? Why, only 66 per cent, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. BENNETT: Even in making a major comeback with all the

surpluses they sat on last year, without providing services to people,

it is only 68.5 per cent in this proposed budget, the 1974-75 budget,

Mr. Speaker. There's the comparison in terms set down by this Minister

of Finance as to how he wants to be judged in the public eye.

This government also fails in another area of their own choosing,

the area of education. In 1972, this party that is the government today

made education a priority in their election campaign on the expenditure

and the amount of expenditure from this Legislature of public funds

towards that purpose. Let's compare their record, as they ask us to do.

In 1972-73, the expenditure in education was 30.37 per cent of the

budget. But what happened in 1973-74 when this party dedicated to

education came to power? Why, the percentage dropped to 28.31 per cent,

Mr. Speaker. But now in 1974-75, with record surpluses, the percentage

of the total budget as presented by the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr.

Barrett) is 25.48 per cent — a clear indication of the thrust and a

clear indication of where this party wishes to show its thrust in

government. No wonder the trustees are concerned, Mr. Speaker; no

wonder the teachers who supported this party are bewildered.

Interjection.

MR. BENNETT: And no wonder the public just doesn't believe you any more. That's right — let's count all the housing units.

Now the lift in education this year, Mr. Speaker, is barely 13 per

cent. Taken with an inflation factor and a population increase, that

will barely maintain even last year's level of spending in education.

Now this government has had the benefits of recommendations of an

all-party committee of this Legislature with respect to health care

needs. It also has had the benefit of an expensive task force, headed

by Dr. Foulkes. Yet with these record surpluses, the serious staff

deficiency at Pearson Hospital still continues, with zero growth in

employment. The recommendations for intermediate care received but a

token $1 million in this budget, Mr. Speaker. And the community mental

health centres have been given no funds for expansion. The payments to

hospitals leave no room for any new programmes or innovations, but are

simply a reflection again of population growth inflation factors. Is

this a budget for people, improved programmes for people, resource

money being used for people?

Now, Mr. Speaker, I've looked in vain through the detailed estimates

incorporated in this budget and accompanying this budget, and nowhere —

not in the Highways department, not in the Forestry department, not in

the Transport and Communications department — can I find anywhere

[ Page 149 ]

where the government has provided money to insure its own vehicles with ICBC. Nowhere, Mr. Speaker.

But I do note in vote 102 that we still seem to be self-insured, as

we always were, because there's $125,000 expenditure for vehicle damage

claims. As we know, this was the basis for the famous discovery of

$23.85 car insurance from the Minister of Public Works (Hon. Mr.

Hartley) and on which a party based an election programme and committed

this province to millions and millions of dollars expenditure in

setting up ICBC. Nowhere in the detailed estimates of this budget, Mr.

Speaker, is there any evidence that this government, who compels

everyone else through this monopoly to insure their vehicles through

ICBC, will do the same with the vehicles of the Province of British

Columbia — because they know full well that they can't get cheaper

automobile insurance from their own creation.

I wonder, Mr. Speaker, if this is an example to inspire confidence

in the public. Or are they waiting for further rate adjustments from

the Premier before they buy insurance for the government vehicles,

because they don't want to be penalized like so many British Columbians

who took the heed of this government, bought their insurance early and

watched the rates reduced for everyone else? Are they waiting for the

scientific and actuarial rate adjustments that the Minister of Finance

brings down momentarily and daily? Some example for the people of

British Columbia; some example of how you base a whole expenditure of

public money, and then don't follow through with your own government

vehicles.

I take issue with the Minister of Finance, Mr. Speaker, that there

will be no increase in tax rates for citizens. I'd like to talk about

hidden tax increases. There is the increase in the price of natural

gas; to the citizens of British Columbia a price increase and a tax

increase still cost the same. These price increases are a result of the

B.C. Petroleum Corporation's genuine effort to receive more money from

our resources and our gas export, and I commend the government for it.

But I see no reason why, when we talk about equalizing resource rates

or energy rates to Canadians in the east, we can't do it in British

Columbia. When we use this mechanism to get a higher price for export,

we shouldn't pass these rate increases along to our citizens, or we

should devise a scheme so that we can give them a rebate.

I have a suggestion for the Minister of Finance and the

Attorney-General. It protects both the Hydro and the consumer, and yet

it maintains the government revenues: why doesn't the Minister of

Finance remove the 5 per cent sales tax from the gas and Hydro bills of

this province? Give the people a dividend from the windfall profit from

the gas.

I offer this suggestion in all sincerity, because I believe that

although Hydro is just announcing its increases, with this surplus

money and with the extra cost to Hydro, if it passes it all along to

consumers, as Inland Gas is doing, we can pass a rebate to the consumer

through the removal of the 5 per cent sales tax.

The per capita grant increase to municipalities, Mr. Speaker, being

less than the inflationary rise, can barely cover an increase in

property taxes. It means, because it's less than the inflationary rise

in cost, that the municipalities will have to raise taxes to cover the

difference, and there will be a hidden tax there.

There'll be a raise in property taxes, too, Mr. Speaker, because of

the assessment policies of this government. Despite the Premier's

statement, the chief assessor of this province has stated that many

people in British Columbia will face extreme assessment increases.

Another major hidden tax increase is the acceleration of liquor

prices through the government taking mark-up upon mark-up of price

increase and price increase. These increases are daily. Don't try and

tell the consumer that that's not a tax increase to people. Don't try

to tell any small prospector he hasn't had an increase in taxation

either, Mr. Speaker.

MR. D.M. PHILLIPS (South Peace River): Drunken power! Drunken power!

MR. BENNETT: Now, Mr. Speaker, there's some very worthwhile

programmes included in this budget which I should comment on at this

time. The increase from $5 million to $10 million for senior citizens'

housing is very worthwhile and is a programme encompassing local

initiative, and that's a very good reason why it works so well. The

increase of $80 in the senior citizens' renter grants will be most

welcome for our pioneers.

The removal of the 5 per cent sales tax from books and secondhand

clothing is to be commended, Mr. Speaker. While we're dealing with the

5 per cent sales tax, Mr. Speaker, I might also suggest that we could

further reduce the price of housing in this province by taking, as I

said before, the 5 per cent sales tax off building materials for home

purposes and home construction in this province.

The reduction of the municipal share of welfare costs from 50 to 10

per cent is a favourable step in removing the burden from local

governments. The relief of administration of justice from municipal

governments is also commendable. The assumption of increasing their

share from 45 to 50 per cent of the flood control costs in the lower

mainland is also commendable.

While the Premier took credit yesterday, I must also echo the same

praise he gave himself for this government in spending the public money

on these benefits. They're all worthwhile.

MR. PHILLIPS: The federal programme has been

[ Page 150 ]

in there for ages. He thought it was brand new!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Are you speaking now or later? (Laughter.)

MR. BENNETT: I've already discussed the impact of this budget

on education generally, Mr. Speaker, and I would now like to turn

specifically to the question of class sizes in British Columbia. It's

not difficult now to understand why the Premier was so petulant last

week when he was faced with the motion of disapproval from our party on

the actions of the government in respect to education.

In this budget we have a most alarming development. The Minister of

Finance in effect asked his Minister of Education to approach the

question of class size on an ad hoc basis. He suggested, and he's

quoted in the Vancouver Province this morning as saying, "This will be

on a case-by-case basis and a board-by-board basis."

Mr. Speaker, this destroys the entire idea of equalization in

educational policy in British Columbia. It destroys the idea that the

Department of Education is responsible for establishing clear-cut,

well-defined policies between the Department of Education and local

school boards, and the very idea of a board-by-board approach is very

shocking.

AN HON. MEMBER: Political payola.

MR. BENNETT: And it could lead to political manoeuvering of

the worst possible kind. As it is done with the ICBC muddle, we will

have a system of relationship between the Department of Education and

local school boards which will rest on press conferences and special

deals made between the department and one board and not another.

What philosophical purpose in education can such a policy serve, Mr.

Speaker? Why, if the reduction of class size is so important and is a

fundamental issue, are we to have an admission from the government that

there is no offer of policy direction to come from that department?

Instead, presumably, we are to have a bits-and-pieces approach. We are

to have an invitation from the Minister to approach the department on a

cap-in-hand basis. Of all the things said about the education policy

direction of this government, nothing could be more severely criticized

than this case-by-case, board-by-board approach to solving of class

size.

It is an exceedingly dangerous concept, Mr. Minister. It is

introducing purely ad hocism into politics, into department and local

school board relationships, and this ad hoc approach to the reduction

of classroom size is totally unacceptable to our party and, I believe,

to all citizens of this province, and, I believe, to most Members of

this Legislature.

I am sure it will be unacceptable to the dedicated school trustees

who must face this issue on a day-by-day basis at the local level.

As you have done in recent months, Mr. Premier, I believe you're

asking for trouble. You are putting your Minister in a completely

intolerable position by asking him to make decisions on a momentary and

singular basis without clear-cut policies.

MR. CHABOT: Squeaky wheels.

MR. PHILLIPS: Political payola.

MR. BENNETT: Perhaps the most serious responsibility which

falls upon the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett), Mr. Speaker, is

to ensure that his budget thrusts provide a base for the guarantee that

the continuing programmes offered to the people can be sustained by

future governments and by future legislators. This responsibility must

bear very heavily upon this Minister of Finance in terms of British

Columbia's relationship to the rest of the world.

This responsibility bears particularly heavily on governments in an

inflationary spiral. Governments themselves are mainly the root cause

of inflation, and this government has helped to develop an inflationary

spiral and an inflationary psychology in this province with remarkable

determination and deliberation, Mr. Speaker.

The stage has been set early when under the dome of this Legislature

itself excessive salaries for Ministers were passed. And, Mr. Speaker,

this has set a psychological standard for inflation in this province.

Now, without getting any recognition to the inflation factor, the

cost of programmes in British Columbia in the future, Mr. Speaker —

assuming only a 10 per cent increase a year — presents an overwhelming

net responsibility on the shoulders of this government today in

developing an economy to continue these programmes tomorrow. Education,

compounded at a 10 per cent rate, in five years will go from just

maintaining the low levels of today — from $567 million to $828

million. Hospital care will go from $360 million to $521 million.

Social services, with a compounded rise, will go from $284 million to

$421 million. And so it goes, Mr. Speaker.

The responsibility of government is to provide incentives to

industries and initiatives to their people, to provide the industrial

complexes, and to provide the tax base to ensure that governments

following them take over with surpluses and take over with tax base

generating taxes that will pay not only for the existing programmes of

social benefits, but will allow those governments to make their

contribution towards social improvements for their people. This is a

basic responsibility of governments.

Mr. Speaker, it's impossible to truly assess this

[ Page 151 ]

budget because of the absence of the tax bills which we mentioned

earlier, which will account for a major part of the revenue that deals

with resources, and which have been prominently mentioned throughout

this budget, both in the prepared text and in the general remarks of

the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett) during its presentation. And

I regret that a tradition of courtesy to MLAs by having bills tabled

with the budget as part of the financial package has been discontinued,

and that these limits have been placed on this debate. Not only should

we be able to discuss in detail the spending of this government, but

how the taxes are raised and in detail the programmes by which they are

raised.

Mr. Speaker, I spoke at length about housing — the crisis and

solutions — during the throne debate. And to date the Minister of

Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson), who is not in the House at the moment, has

not produced, and the people of British Columbia after all these months

despair. I largely anticipate, with the money set aside with this

budget, that specific proposals, no matter how late, will finally come to

this House, and that some activity, which could have been initiated any

time in the last eight months — particularly in the fall — will finally

be initiated to solve the shelter problems of this province.

Mr. Speaker, I've tried to examine this budget in terms of whether

or not it meets the test of financial understanding and financial

responsible management. We've come to the conclusion that the evidence

of failure in this regard runs through this budget from page 1 to page

I have noted that there are some welcome programmes in this budget

which we will support, but the document itself is totally irrelevant in

terms of the national and world economies and as to the actual amount

of moneys to be collected and expended.

The budget clearly spells out a downtrend on the percentage basis in

the service level to people, particularly in education. And the budget

for universities makes a mockery of the concern expressed by the

Premier during his budget address for the 12 per cent-odd persons in

British Columbia who move on to university education. There is no room

in this budget for university innovations, and there is no room in this

budget to maintain the level of capital expenditures at the

universities.

The budget emphasizes a desire to get more taxation from the

resource sector, but nowhere has this House any opportunity to know

those tax policies which will result in the revenues contained in this

budget address. Therefore the continuing uncertainty, Mr. Speaker, in

both the forestry and the mineral sector of our economy is

irresponsibly being permitted to continue.

These tax uncertainties in this province are the root cause for the

almost total disappearance of new capital initiatives in either the

forest industry or the mineral industry.

British Columbia cannot have a Minister of Finance going around

talking about a Robin Hood budget and stealing from industry, and

expect responsible people — citizens and other Canadians alike — to

invest their money in industrial initiatives and manufacturing

initiatives in this-province.

This is not a budget which anchors British Columbia to a responsible

financial foundation. It is not a budget with which private investment

can be encouraged. This is a budget on which we express mounting

concern for the guarantee that the people living in such a rich

province as British Columbia can manage their affairs so that the

programmes in the social service field can be both innovated and

expanded.

It should now be obvious, Mr. Speaker, that while we support, as

I've said, many aspects of this budget, we cannot support it as a

responsible budgetary package.

MR. P.L. McGEER (Vancouver-Point Grey): Mr. Speaker....

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes, Mr. Leader.

AN HON. MEMBER: Gibson for leader!

MR. McGEER: May I start, Mr. Speaker, by congratulating the

new Member of this House (Mr. Gibson), who will officially be taking

his seat in a few days. I want to say what a particular pleasure it is

for me, personally, because when I first came to the House it was my

great privilege to sit next to that new Member's father. He was

recognized as the "bull of the woods," the man who pursued corruption

in government relentlessly. He told a story one day in the House, I

recall, about growing up on the west coast of Vancouver Island; he said

how rough it was in that west coast town. He said, Mr. Speaker: "It was

so rough in that town that I was considered a gentleman."

HON. D. BARRETT (Premier): That's pretty rough.

MR. McGEER: But he was, really, a gentleman in every sense of

the word. One of the great things that has come of that is that he sent

another real gentleman to this House, and we look forward to the new

Member for great things.

That's not to downgrade in any way the other excellent candidates in

that campaign. We had another fine Liberal candidate (Mr. Andrews)

running for Social Credit, and he did very well too. I hope, Mr.

Speaker, that there will continue to be better news from the hospital

where he is today. I'm sure the wear and tear of the campaign had a

telling effect

[ Page 152 ]

on his health.

Mr. Speaker, we had an interesting presentation from the Premier on

budget day and a very interesting reply to the budget by the new Leader

of the Opposition. We haven't had many opportunities to compare his

performance with past performances in the House. With the Premier, of

course, we have, and, Mr. Speaker, I thought the Premier was having a

bit of an off-day. I thought so.

MR. BENNETT: I thought it was one of his better days. (Laughter.)

MR. McGEER: Oh, he'll have his good days and his bad days. I

thought maybe that it was because we didn't have the television

cameras. I notice the Premier is always better on television days. I

suppose in some ways the opposition should apologize for catching the

government unprepared with its legislation, unprepared with its budget,

so that we had to recess the House for a few days while it gathered its

programme together.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Well, you were unprepared to speak.

MR. McGEER: Well, Mr. Speaker, there wasn't anything to talk

about in that throne speech. It was without question the emptiest

throne speech that's ever been presented in this House and, I think,

we're likely to have.

Personally, Mr. Speaker, I see no point at all to the throne debate.

If they can wrap it up in the House of Parliament in a matter of eight

days, we can dispense with that throne debate in a matter of two days;

and if we have another throne speech like that, I'd say we could

dispense with it in two hours. Seriously, I suggest to the Premier, Mr.

Speaker, that we just dispense with those kinds of throne debates.

Unless he wants to put something in his throne speech, let's get rid of

it altogether.

Interjections.

MR. PHILLIPS: The House is back in session.

MR. McGEER: I always like the way the budgets are put

together. There are these beautiful pictures. I notice a picture of the

Legislative Assembly taken during the throne debate. (Laughter.) It

really reflected, I think, the content of the speech.

AN HON. MEMBER: The one with the monkey climbing the wall; that's the cabinet.

MR. McGEER: There was a wonderful picture of the cabinet on

page 12 — if you look at the budget debate — in bold relief. It was in

one of their think sessions, Mr. Speaker.

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: Yes, I noticed that. I see here, right in the

centre underneath the Premier, the Minister of Industrial Development

(Hon. Mr. Lauk). (Laughter.) You'll notice how he's tongue-tied. And

there's a very nice matching piece up on top there with the Minister of

Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi) and the Minister of Travel Industry

(Hon. Mr. Hall) getting together again.

I don't know what to make of this picture on page 16. It looks like

the Minister of Consumer Affairs (Hon. Ms. Young), on the day it was

announced she would get a full portfolio doing a jig in the

Attorney-General's costume.

The thing that really caught my eye, though, wasn't a picture at

all. It was a small item entered on page 27 of the budget under

liabilities. Line 17 says: "Members of the Legislative Assembly." And

we're listed as a liability at over $1 million. I think that perhaps

the budget has been a little conservative in that particular entry.

Mr. Speaker, we had on Monday the second Bennett/Barrett budget.

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: Why do I say that, and why does the Member say, "Here we go again."?

AN HON. MEMBER: It's the same speech we had last year.

MR. McGEER: Well, Mr. Speaker, it was exactly the same kind of budget.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, it wasn't.

MR. McGEER: Only worse, though.

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: The Member says I haven't got my figures right.

Mr. Speaker, a year ago I said I would be $100 million closer than the

Premier in estimates of revenue. That has certainly borne true. And I

say today without any hesitation that in this budget I am $250 million

closer than the Premier to what the actual revenues of the province

will be. I'll buy the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition a dinner

if that prediction doesn't come true.

HON. MR. BARRETT: I'm on a diet.

MR. McGEER: But you put the public of British Columbia on a diet, taking their tax money and

[ Page 153 ]

fooling them with your budget. That was the characteristic of the

budget of the former Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Bennett). It was

referred to in a very gentle way by the present Leader of the

Opposition (Mr. Bennett) because he recognized — and after all he had

some inside information, I would think, about the style and the

thinking of those former budgets.

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: Well, because I think I should explain that to the Premier.

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, the leader of the Liberal Party (Mr.

D.A. Anderson) quite wisely took seriously the Premier of British

Columbia's advice. Do you remember — and I know you do, Mr. Speaker —

the promise that the Premier made that he would not be the Minister of

Finance in British Columbia?

HON. MR. BARRETT: I didn't say....

MR. McGEER: And how the people wish that he had kept that promise.

HON. MR. BARRETT: I didn't say he had to stop being Liberal leader, that's for sure.

MR. McGEER: You know, the Premier told us, when he appeared a

year ago in the House, that he was going to be honest with the people

about this budget. I'm not going to call the Premier a liar because

that's unparliamentary, and one Hon. Member doesn't call another Hon.

Member a liar. But I do say this: the Premier makes Baron Munchausen

seem like a statistician. (Laughter.)

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: I agree with the Leader of the Opposition that

the Premier should have brought down a mini-budget in the fall. He

refused to answer any questions of the Members of this House when it

was perfectly obvious that he was deceiving the people of British

Columbia about the true state of revenues. He wouldn't even answer

questions of the Members as to how much money the province was getting.

But I'll say how much the province is getting, Mr. Speaker. It's

taking in tax money at the rate of $6 million a day, $42 million a

week, $200 million a month, and $2.4 billion a year. Let no one be

deceived as to where that money is coming from. Let the myth go that

the large corporations and resource royalties are carrying the burden

of taxation. It's coming from the lunch buckets of British Columbia;

that's where these revenues are coming from. Over $500 million in

personal income tax; over $500 million in liquor taxes. There are taxes

on cigarettes, and there are fines from the courts.

All of these taxes — I'm including here nothing that corporations

pay — amount to over $1.4 billion a year, two-thirds of our tax

revenues. For the average working man in British Columbia who is

well-employed in a mill or as a tradesman, the taxes for him and his

family to the provincial government alone exceed $2,000 a year.

That working man spends one day a week, four days a month, over 10

weeks a year, working for the provincial government — not the federal

government, not the city government; just for the provincial

government. So I say, Mr. Speaker, that the average citizen of British

Columbia has got a great deal of personal interest in the revenues of

this province, the taxes he pays, and how they should be spent.

I criticized the former Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Bennett) in

years when he deceived the people of $60 million and $70 million. The year, Mr. Speaker, that that climbed to over $200 million

— the 21st budget — was the year that that Minister of Finance and his

government were defeated.

But, Mr. Speaker, that was all small potatoes for that former

Minister of Finance, because do you realize what this Premier and this

Minister of Finance has done in his first full year of office? The

first budget that he brought before the Legislative Assembly is out by

$380 million. Never before in the history of this province, or any

province in Canada, have we had this kind of misleading information

presented in a budget to a Legislative Assembly.

Mr. Speaker, the question is this: with $380 million more coming

into the provincial treasury than we were told about in this House and

that we voted on a year ago — that $380 million — where did the money

go? Where in heaven's name has it all gone? Wasn't in the budget. It

wasn't accounted for in the document we got on Monday.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm going to tell you where some of it went. It's

going to take some time, but eventually we'll ferret it all out.

Can-Cel, Ocean Falls, Plateau Mills, Fruit Growers' Mutual Insurance,

Sukunka Coal, Vancouver Island Coach Lines, Pacific Poultry, B.C.

Telephone, South Peace DeHy Products, Westcoast Transmission, Dunhill

Developments, Kootenay Forest Products: a dozen companies; a rat's-nest

corporate conglomerate.

Not one word in the budget about all of those purchases.

You ask about where the $380 million went. I ask you: how much of the public's money went to all of those ventures?

We're going to come eventually to the degree in

[ Page 154 ]

which the public has been deceived by the present budget that the

Premier has brought down — the amount of money that is in that budget

which will never come before the Legislative Assembly for vote and

which may go on a dozen more corporations in the coming year.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it isn't anything really new to do this, not in

British Columbia, because for years and years the revenues of this

province were deliberately underestimated so that these surpluses could

be used by the Minister of Finance.

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: The Member says, "the Revenue Surplus Act," but

you know, Mr. Speaker, when he was supporting the Social Credit

government and the former Minister of Finance, exactly the same thing

was going on. He didn't complain about it then. He was all for spending

the public's money on bank stock.

MR. CHABOT: Against the Bank of B.C.

MR. McGEER: Against government ownership of it, sure. Against

government investment in it, yes. I don't think that's the way the

lunch bucket money in this province should be spent. I've said this

again and again and again because this is why we're unable to have

appropriate services in this province. We take the surpluses and we use

it in these ways not intended by those who pay the taxes. Certainly not

to bring in bills supporting provincial banks, as one senator did.

MR. PHILLIPS: Are you against western Canada having some say in their own financial matters?

MR. McGEER: I'm against the Province of British Columbia owning stock in a bank. I don't think that's what provincial governments are for.

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: At least we knew, Mr. Speaker, with the former

Minister of Finance that there was some kind of a limit on what he

intended to do with the funds that he sucked away from the tax money.

He put it into the B.C. Hydro; he put it into the B.C. Railway, and

that was the end of it. Unfortunately, there was never enough left for

schools and hospitals. We all know about the desperate shortage that

accumulated over the years because of those policies. But now there's

no limit of any kind with the established Crown corporations because

we're into alfalfa cubing plants, we're into poultry....

MR. PHILLIPS: $557 worth. (Laughter.)

MR. McGEER: Not chicken feed. I'm not talking about chicken feed.

We're into Westcoast Transmission. Not one cubic foot of gas will be

pumped because of that investment that otherwise wouldn't have been

pumped. We're into coal development; we're into planer mills; we're

into newsprint plants. What else will we be into? And how much tax

money will we have to put up for that?

AN HON. MEMBER: Wait till we get the waffle factory.

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: I know how wonderful it all is — how we made $1

million on this investment. Well, you've lost $118,000 on B.C. Tel; you

didn't tell us about that. Shares have gone down, and I suppose the

only way to make them go up will be to get into the market and buy some

more.

MR. PHILLIPS: How about CBC? (Laughter.)

MR. McGEER: The problem, Mr. Speaker, is simply this: not

only are the tax funds being sucked away to a degree that we can't in

any way estimate, to go into all these ventures in capitalism on the

part of a socialist government, but we lack any mechanism of

accountability. Year after year, I've stood in this House and warned

that there was no way of following the taxpayer's dollar into the Crown

corporations that were then established.

Mr. Speaker, with the most superficial of investigations, a year ago

we uncovered a scandal in the B.C. Railway involving mismanagement of

millions of dollars of the public's funds. While this was going on,

year after year in the House we got optimistic reports of the state of

finances of the B.C. Railway — how it was making money, how wonderful

it was. But always, the people who were elected to help give some

accountability of the public funds were kept at arm's length from those

Crown corporations.

Even today the government resists the idea of an auditor-general. Of

course they do! Who wants an auditor-general snooping around in all

these Crown corporations — to say nothing of the government

departments? Eighty-some-odd thousand dollars for the Minister of

Industrial Development's (Hon. Mr. Lauk) office! Who wants an

auditor-general looking into that sort of thing?

AN HON. MEMBER: The public do.

MR. McGEER: Hundred-dollar-a-day consultant fees to friends

of the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson). Who wants that kind of

thing investigated?

[ Page 155 ]

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, I'm sure that the matter the Premier referred to will be mentioned by the federal auditor-general. I hope so.

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: What would moonlighting professors charge? What did you go to that dinner for?

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: I'm sure that I know that if one cabinet Minister entrepreneur were in that position, he'd be running a business on the side.

Mr. Speaker, there are endless ways in which these Crown

corporations can move to work against the public interest, because

there is this lack of accountability. I warn that this is growing; it's

mushrooming. We have no mechanism to keep control because the normal

market forces that work discipline on private corporations are entirely

absent.

This is why, when the first socialist premier of Canada, Tommy

Douglas, went into power in Saskatchewan and bought the shoe factory

and the box factory, and all the factories that the leader of the

Conservative Party (Mr. Wallace) referred to one day, these ended in

such an economic disaster for that province. I'll give just one

example, if I may, Mr. Speaker, of the kind of thing that can go on and

will go on.

The Insurance Corporation of British Columbia is insuring the

schools of this province — providing all kinds of coverage that hadn't

been provided to schools before, coverage that I doubt is necessary at

all. But it is a way of funnelling tax funds because the Government of

British Columbia will pay, through tax money, premiums to the Insurance

Corporation of British Columbia for schools, which will help to make a

profit for the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia.

There's no way that we can follow this kind of thing, We have to

find methods, Mr. Speaker, of accountability, not only for the

corporations that are now being managed by the Crown, but for the way

in which tax moneys are being sucked off in this Legislature, year

after year after year, by financial practices that should be utterly

condemned. We want to know just how much money has been poured down the

drain in these unnecessary purchases.

I want to say just one other word about our ventures into

capitalism. When shares are traded in the open market, whether it's

B.C. Telephone, whether it's Westcoast Transmission, or whether it's

some private timber sale, the value of those shares or of that

ownership is not based on fixed assets. It's based on the right to

earn. If the provincial government grants the right to cut timber, and

the rights to that timber produce for somebody an opportunity to earn,

then the value is related to that right to earn.

There's a book by Adam Smith that I wish the Premier would read, called Super Money .

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: Well, you'd do well to read that too. When you

take tax money out of lunch buckets and trade that tax money for rights

to earn, that the government itself has conferred with its resource

policies, then you're trading real, hard-earned money for mythical

super money. It's nonsense policy. It's wasteful. It's never-ending. It

produces no more jobs at all.

Mr. Speaker, I condemn completely this practice. It is unnecessary

and appallingly wasteful. I hope the cabinet will all read this book

and realize exactly what they're doing with the public's money. There's

no rational pattern at all to your purchases — none. You're not trying

to establish some new industry for a great move into the future. You're

just buying helter-skelter. The net result has no impact at all on the

economy beyond discouraging future investors in the province.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the revenue estimates of this

coming year — not last year, where we tucked away $400 million, but

this coming year — where I claim the Premier is going to tuck away $310 million.

I base my revenue estimates of $2,480 million on these assumptions.

Well, we're going to have about a three per cent increase in population

and probably five per cent inflation. Then if we have a two per cent

increase in productivity — that's really a pretty small goal — we would

have in this province a 10 per cent increase in revenue, which would be

$210 million greater than what the Premier predicted. Because, you see,

the revenues that he gave us in his budget were merely this year's

revenues; they had nothing to do with next year at all. We're going to

take an extra $100 million in natural gas and mineral royalties in this

coming year, so the estimates are short by about $310 million.

I may be wrong in those predictions, but I stick by what I say: that

I will be closer by $250 million than the Premier to what our real

income will be in this coming year. The Premier said there was going to

be no tax increase. You all heard that, didn't you? You read it in his

budget? No increase in personal tax. How about the 10 per cent increase

that you're planning for natural gas users in the province?

We said a year ago that you were going to stick the consumers of

British Columbia with increased natural gas costs. That's a tax, whether

you like it or not. All this business about resources for the people!

What you're doing is, you are taking the people's own

[ Page 156 ]

resource, and you're planning to gouge them for it. There's no relation to the cost of discovery or the cost of distribution.

You're making the people of British Columbia pay the Louisiana

Purchase price. I say that's wrong, because natural gas in this

province should go to the people for what it costs to discover and

distribute it. I would think that that would be a good socialist policy.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I want to be fair. I want to be completely fair.

The Premier knows that I'm a fair man and that I give credit where

credit is due.

HON. MR. BARRETT: When are you going to give your leader a chance to speak?

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, this is just a warm-up and what a

mistake it was for the Premier to suggest that no one would have

anything to say about this particular budget. In that orgy of

congratulation....

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: No, I'm going to say some nice things because I want to be fair.

But I predict this: that some of these backbenchers are going to

rise up in this debate and speak their minds. Yes sir, sooner or later,

it's going to happen. One or two of them have almost done it, and

before this parliament ends some of these people are going to try and

retain their seats by speaking out against the excesses of the Minister

of Finance. I'm sure you're going to hear a lot from them, and you'd do

well to listen to them. Not about daylight saving time, but about more

substantive issues.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Will the real leader please stand up?

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, he was thinking of Nanaimo. He was

thinking of that meeting in Nanaimo. But there were some good things

about this budget. You can't rake in an extra $450 million without

doing some good. We welcome the increase to renters of $30. That's

appeared in every Liberal budget. We liked the part about reducing

education taxes on the land. That's been Liberal policy since 1960. We

welcome the tax reductions, even if it was only secondhand clothing.

HON. MR. BARRETT: That would never affect your group. (Laughter.)

MR. McGEER: Well, I certainly think that the newest customers to Tailor & Cutter here in Victoria sit on the cabinet benches. Certainly they are the

best customers of the furniture dealers in British Columbia.

We liked the idea of adding $10 million to build homes for elderly

citizens. That was one of the top policies of my predecessor as leader

of the Liberal Party, Senator Ray Perrault. We liked the increase to

the farmers. There was an extra $10 million last year in the Liberal

budget for farmers. Catching up. We liked the part about flood control,

and I thought there was a little memory of the past there. I remember

the sea of backbenchers in the Social Credit days, how they sat with

frowns sternly listening to the former Minister of Finance when he

talked about budgets for higher education, and there were the same

frowns on the NDP backbenchers. But my, we applauded dikes — that was

something for optimism and pleasure.

We liked the increases to Mincome because it's very clear that the

elderly citizens of British Columbia are in the toughest position in

times of inflation and in times of shortages of accommodation. Make no

mistake about it; there's a shortage of rental accommodation as well as

homes. When there are shortages, competition gets stiffer, rents go up,

and it's toughest on people with limited income. We liked the increase

in cash surplus.

Mr. Speaker, I think it's worth reminding the Premier, and other

Members, that while our cash surplus in former times of $90-some-odd

million represented a reserve of only 21 days' revenue, the current

increase to $140-some-odd million really represents a reserve of only

24 days. So, though the numbers are large, the income and outgo is

equally large. The reserves are really fairly slight.

Now, Mr. Speaker, it's my great pleasure to bring down the sixth

Liberal budget. As in the past, it will differ radically from the

Bennett-Barrett budgets which have had a depressing similarity over the

years. Of those Liberal budgets that we've brought down, only one has

not been a surplus, and that was because of ghastly mismanagement of

the economy that year. Each one of them has not only been fully

balanced but has been providing for a surplus. These budgets used to be

greeted with laughter because no one could see how it was possible to

use the tax money as proposed in these budgets to develop fully the

potential of British Columbia by outspending the Minister of Finance.

This year's Liberal budget is $2.372 billion, up $200 million from

that announced by the present Premier. It provides, Mr. Speaker, for a

surplus of $110 million, and there will be some suggestions as to how

to use that money. The whole idea behind these Liberal budgets, Mr.

Speaker, is to end the situation of profligacy and waste. We've had

enormous amounts of money available to government. We've squandered a

great deal of that money while leaving the people of the province, a

substantial proportion of them, unemployed — today, Mr. Speaker, over

[ Page 157 ]

70,000. These unemployed people collect social assistance, or

Mincome, or some other form of support, and represent the really great

waste in British Columbia. The budgets that should be brought on to the

floor of this Legislature should provide for jobs for these people, and

lay the groundwork for a new and better future in this province.

These are the spending increases, Mr. Speaker, over and above those

announced by the Minister of Finance. First of all, $24 million more

for cities and municipalities. An increase in the per capita grant, not

of $2 but of $8. What this would do, Mr. Speaker, is only to give the

cities and municipalities the same 25 per cent increase in revenues

that the Premier and the provincial government are getting. It's merely

sharing, in a fair and equal way with the cities and municipalities,

the bounty that is coming in to the provincial government.

What should be done with this money, the extra money that goes to

cities and municipalities? Two major things, Mr. Speaker. The first is

to provide funds for servicing land. I'll tell you why there's a

housing shortage, Mr. Speaker. The municipalities own the land; there's

lots of it. How do the cities and municipalities pay to service the

land? Where does the water come from? Where does the sewer come from?

Where does the lighting come from?

The answer, Mr. Speaker is this: that if the cities and

municipalities don't have the money to do it, then they have to put it

onto everybody's taxes, which no city government is going to do, or

they have to sock it to the people who purchase the land. I know the

idea is to make the developer pay for it. The developer doesn't pay for

it. He makes the purchaser of the lot pay for it. The developer doesn't

pay. That sends the cost of serviced land out of sight. No wonder

property costs so much in British Columbia. The cities and

municipalities have never had the funds to service the land. If the

money were given to cities and municipalities for this purpose, instead

of spending it on the Dunhill Corporation and harebrain schemes to

lease the land, then housing would go ahead in British Columbia.

Instead, we're spending far more money and getting far less return.

[Mr. Dent in the chair.]

The second way this money should be spent is to try and improve the

cities and municipalities of our province, to make them better places

to live. If the provincial government only gives an 8 per cent increase

to the cities and municipalities, all of that will be eaten up by

increases in salary. The cities and municipalities will be forced to

stand still. If they stand still, they run down. There isn't even the

money to maintain them. And it's true that some cities and

municipalities are less livable places today than they used to be, but

only because for the past 22 years the provincial government has failed

to give them the nourishment they required.

I think there should be a commission appointed in British Columbia —

and I'd even suggest former Mayor Bill Rathie to chair it — to go into

this matter of tax sharing between the provinces and the cities and

municipalities. Sooner or later in British Columbia and in Canada there

has to be a rearrangement of the funding. We can't allow the senior

government forever to hog the revenues, because some 80 per cent of our

people live in cities, and what you are doing is condemning them to a

future that the taxes they pay the government in no way justify.

Although this doesn't come into the spending part of the budget, I

would recommend too, Mr. Speaker, that the cities and municipalities be

permitted once more to borrow from government funds.

Notice that table, Mr. Speaker, on page 11 of the budget. Over $330

millions of funds are available from the Canada Pension Plan and other

provincial trust funds. Mr. Speaker, not one nickel is provided for

cities and municipalities.

I see no reason why the municipal civil servants who pay into a

captive provincial fund should not see their savings go to help their

own cities and municipalities. Why should the municipal civil servants

be forced to see their money go to the B.C. Hydro and the B.C. Railway?

I think that only the provincial civil servants have to invest in the

B.C. Telephone.

But, Mr. Speaker, even the provision of a provincial guarantee for

borrowing would help the cities and municipalities. I ask which is more

important, the future of our cities and municipalities or the ease with

which the B.C. Hydro may borrow money? There are guaranteed earnings

there; there is no difficulty for them to borrow on the open market —

none at all. The same goes for the B.C. Railway.

I want to move on for a minute to the field of health. I want to pay

a tribute to the leader of the Conservative Party because I think he

summed it up better than anybody, in the non-confidence motion we had

in the throne debate, when he said that the provincial government has

placed pipelines before people. Twenty-three million dollars of

provincial funds were taken to buy a position in Westcoast Transmission.

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: New money that you would never have obtained.

MR. McGEER: New money that we never would have obtained.

Interjection.

[ Page 158 ]

MR. McGEER: Tell me how that's going to help someone who's

ill and needs a bed in British Columbia. Look, Mr. Speaker, on page 11

of the budget. Look at the amount of money that's gone to hospitals

this past year out of provincial government trust funds: $17 million.

What went to the B.C. Hydro? — $200 million. Seventeen million to

hospitals; what went to the B.C. Railway? — $80 million...out of

those same funds. A government for people — baloney!

People don't use the lights. The lights are going out for too many

people in British Columbia because of lack of hospital facilities, and

the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources (Hon. R.A. Williams)

had better learn it.

It's all very well, Mr. Speaker, for the government to encourage

generous wage settlements in the hospitals; heaven knows they need it.

But remember that those increases in the hospital budget are not going

for more beds or to help the people out who haven't got beds today.

They're going for wage settlements. So they should.

But the measure of what the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke) is

doing is found on page 11 of this budget, because that picayune $17

million is all that's going for new hospital facilities in this

province. We have every bit as much a crisis in chronic care today as

the day the NDP took office.

Yes, the NDP has put pipelines before people. I absolutely agree

with the leader of the Conservative Party (Mr. Wallace) that the

Foulkes Report was unnecessary and outrageously expensive. There's

nothing in that report that is revealing anything about shortages in

health care that everybody didn't know about — that hadn't been talked

about in this House long before the leader of the Conservative Party

came here. It's the same continuing crisis that has plagued the elderly

and the ill for over 20 years.

So in our Liberal budget, Mr. Speaker, there is an increase of $30

million. It's to provide for chronic care facilities — to build beds —

not to have senseless reports. In heaven's name, Mr. Speaker, tell the

Premier to get on with the job.

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: He's gone. He didn't want to hear about chronic hospitals.

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: He just got up off his surplus. (Laughter.)

Our next increase, Mr. Speaker, is in the area of education. We've

provided $20 million, part of it for those school boards that are up

against it. The percentage of the budget for education, of course, as

everyone knows, has gone down. And once more those school boards with

the greatest growth will be paying the greatest penalty. But where the

budget is a particular disaster is in the area of universities.

Eighty-three per cent of the present budget for the University of

British Columbia goes on salaries for faculty and staff.

The population of our universities is increasing. The Premier

himself said he wanted to see it go up even more. How in heaven's name

can that take place when the budget given to the universities will

require them to retrench?

AN HON. MEMBER: A zero increase.

MR. McGEER: No, it's less than a zero increase, because

already the money is committed to present faculty and staff

adjustments. And you yourselves have been encouraging the universities

to have their technical staff unionized because they're underpaid. It

all has to come out of that budget. It's nothing short, Mr. Speaker, of

academic blackmail to invite the universities to come, cap in hand, and

make some kind of a deal with the Minister of Finance.

Come with programmes that the Minister of Finance personally likes.

He's not going to interfere, mind you, with the autonomy of the

universities. Nothing like that. Just come and give him the programmes

that he likes, and he'll pay up.

"Come with innovative programmes," he invited the

universities to do. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, about one

innovative programme that had a stillbirth in this province because of

lack of funds. This had to do with the training of health

professionals. The health science team concept.

Certainly the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke) has said he wanted

training of paramedics and so on. This concept was developed as an

innovative programme in British Columbia. It's been adopted and

implemented at the University of Western Ontario in London.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker, the University of Western Ontario

took the UBC plans holus-bolus — their architectural plans — and built

a health sciences centre exactly according to the British Columbia

design.

The health sciences team concept has been adopted and implemented at

McMaster University in Western Ontario, at Dalhousie University in

Halifax, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, and at Memorial

University in Newfoundland. This was an innovative programme, strangled

at birth by the provincial government. British Columbia is the one

place we don't have that kind of programme.

That doesn't hurt the university, Mr. Speaker. It will still be

there. It doesn't hurt anybody who's well and healthy in the province.

It only hurts two kinds of people — those who need the services, the

sick and the elderly. It hurts them, and it hurts the young

[ Page 159 ]

people of British Columbia who are looking forward to careers in this field.

This is the effect of the Minister of Education's (Hon. Mrs. Dailly)

budget and the Premier's (Hon. Mr. Barrett) budget — to hurt people in

need and to damage careers of young people. You're actively doing that

with the policies that you put forward — actively doing it. What the

former government did was nothing compared to what you're doing today.

You're anti-university, you're anti-careers for young people, and

you're failing to serve the sick and the elderly of this province.

Mr. Speaker, I'd like to move on to an area where we complimented

the government because we thought it was a progressive move to reduce

property taxes for education. But, Mr. Speaker, if the government would

stop buying up corporations willy-nilly and declare a tax dividend to

the people of a really substantial amount, it would be possible now to

eliminate completely educational taxes on residential property. So our

budget provides $50 million to reduce the most unfair and unnecessary

tax in British Columbia. That's the tax for school purposes on

residential land.

There are two more significant items in our budget. I'm sorry the

Members for North Peace River (Mr. Smith) and South Peace River (Mr.

Phillips) aren't here for this particular Liberal provision.

Mr. Speaker, not included in the revenues — and the Premier gave a

completely unsatisfactory answer today to this question: why was not a

realistic figure for natural gas resources included in the budget?

There was an underestimate of probably $100 million in income from

natural gas and other fuel and mining royalties.

That money, Mr. Speaker, comes from Northern British Columbia. The

natural gas is in the Peace River. If that money is taken by the

provincial government and used for welfare services or for other

programmes in the population centres of the lower mainland, it would

represent nothing other than a colossal rip-off of the north. The money

that comes from those revenues should be returned in its entirety to

the development of Northern British Columbia.

So our budget calls for $61 million, which comes from natural gas

and other royalties from the north, to be returned for future resource

developments — and for the provision of desperately-needed services in

northern British Columbia.

It's all very well for us who live in the relative comfort of

Victoria, or Vancouver, to collect the money and dispense it as we see

fit. But somebody has to go up there where the living is rough and make

that money. The least we could do is to pour back into the north, in

further resource development and in services in the cities and

municipalities of that area, the money that is made directly off the

natural resources they harvest to us.

The federal government, Mr. Speaker, when it got into its

confrontation with the Province of Alberta as to who would get the oil

revenues of the export tax, at least had the wisdom to say a very

substantial portion of that should be returned to the Province of

Alberta for the purpose of building for the future.

If you put forward this natural gas tax and bleed that money out of

the north it indeed will be a colossal rip-off — perhaps the greatest

in our history. Make no mistake, Mr. Speaker, though the mining

industry this past year brought in record revenues because of world

record prices for copper and other materials that we produce in British

Columbia, mining exploration has virtually disappeared in this province

as a result of the punitive attitude of the NDP towards future

development.

Again, and again, and again, we have heard that Minister of Finance

today, rail against the former administration for the resource giveaway

policies.

Mr. Speaker, that was the strength of the former government. It was

the strength of the former Premier (Hon. Mr. Bennett). Strong policies

were laid down over a period of a generation and because that

groundwork was laid, record revenues have come to the NDP government.

You're the beneficiary of those policies; acknowledge it.

But above all else, don't let your punitive actions so strangle

growth that, in the future, governments with better policies than your

own will be unable to implement them.

Two last items, Mr. Speaker.

First of all, we've got to begin looking to a different kind of

industrial future in British Columbia than we've had in the past. We

are more dependent today than ever before on our natural resource

industries. It's a feast-or-famine proposition, and this year we're

having a feast. But sometime in the future when world prices slump

we'll have a famine here in British Columbia, and we won't have other

industries to offset this almost total dependency on forestry, mining,

gas and oil.

That's why we have to look now to the development of infant

industries of a sophisticated type; scientific industries that, if they

catch hold, can bring to our province and our people benefits far

beyond the natural resource industries.

After all, where do we sell our natural resources? We sell copper

concentrate to the Japanese so that they can build television sets and

transistor radios which we buy back at enormous profits to them. The

labour content goes with human ingenuity. That's where the real jobs

lie and where the profits lie.

The Hon. Members know I've spoken again and again in the House about

how a single discovery like that made by the Haloid Corporation, now

called Xerox, can produce one company with sales greater than our total

mineral industry; how IBM with its computers can generate far greater

sales than the total

[ Page 160 ]

of our whole forest industry. This is where the real growth lies.

That's why we again provide a supplement to industrial development, in

the hope that at some time the government of this province will have

the common sense to change its emphasis. Not that there will be any

fast payoffs; it will take years and years for these things to be

achieved.

Well, Mr. Speaker, those spending increases total $200 million and

represent the major changes between the Liberal budget and that of the

NDP.

We'd like as well, just on a minor note, to look around carefully at

the excesses of government: all the executive assistants that have

proliferated in everybody's office, the expenditure on travel and

furniture and the other perquisites. We're certain that if the

provincial government were to look around carefully, they'd be able to

save at least $1 million a year. We'd like to see the first year of

that saving go as a $1 million contribution to saving the Orpheum

Theatre in Vancouver.

Now, Mr. Speaker, that would still leave us with a surplus of $110

million. But we don't recommend that the Minister of Finance use this

$110 million, or the $300 million that he has provided for, for the

purposes of future ventures into the private sector. Instead, we

recommend that the government use these funds to redeem the parity

bonds. There are still $189 million, I think it is, outstanding. It's

call money on the provincial government, and it represents a gigantic

crap game where the parity bonds have been shuffled between trust

houses and the captive special front of the provincial government for

years and years. It should end now that the funds are available, and we

should embark upon sound, long-term financial policies.

Mr. Speaker, the resources are here in British Columbia as never

before; these are years of unequalled opportunity. No programme in this

province that has been delayed for lack of funds need be delayed one

day longer. We have $400 million to spare in the year that we are

10/12th through now; $300 million a year unannounced in the Premier's

budget of yesterday.

What we lack is imagination in this province. Though I was harshly

critical of the former Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Bennett) regarding

his policies for human development in the throne debate, I say this: he

was a creative Minister of Finance, and he had ideas. But when we carry

on, as the present Minister of Finance is doing, with budgets almost

identically styled when there are changing times and needs, is to blow

the greatest opportunity that British Columbia has ever had.

Our Liberal budgets, Mr. Speaker, have continually provided for a full meeting

of the responsibility of governments to the people of the province. We have

never felt it necessary, and do not feel it necessary now, to take from the

lunch buckets of British Columbia and spend on Crown corporations or on socialist

experiments.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think the New Democratic Party government will

long endure in this province. What we require is a new Liberal

government in this province. (Laughter.)

Interjections.

MR. McGEER: Only then, Mr. Speaker, will we begin to make full use of the resources of our province.

HON. MR. BARRETT: He wants his old job back.

MR. McGEER: The hoots will give way to cries of admiration,

Mr. Speaker, when finally the people realize that their tax money will

be used for that correct balance....

AN HON. MEMBER: What was he going to charge Standard Oil in Ottawa?

Interjection.

MR. McGEER: I was just about to wind up, but the Premier diverted me. (Laughter.)

Mr. Speaker, I would like the Premier to tell us where he proposes

to find the capital for oil and gas and mining exploration in this

Province of British Columbia. He has not made this clear.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Not by doubling the profits.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

MR. McGEER: The money that he gets he is spending on buying

existing corporations, establishing insurance companies that can't seem

to get their premiums straight, buying up alfalfa cubing plants,

poultry industries and so on. But what has made today's prosperity

possible has been the exploration for minerals that brought our mines,

exploration for natural gas that made the pipelines possible that he

wants to invest in today.

If we're to have a better future it can only be done in two ways: to

have that risk capital available for resource development, which is

today drying up as a result of the Premier's statements, and to have

industrial policies that will encourage the scientific and

technological industries that will provide tomorrow's growth.

Because these things are totally lacking, it is our intention, Mr.

Speaker, to vote that you do not leave the chair but you stay there

until the Minister of Finance brings down a half-decent budget.

[ Page 161 ]

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): There has been some comment in

the House today about the particular speakers for the particular

parties, and I suppose many people are asking how on earth a doctor

should be a financial critic. They always say the doctor makes lots of

money but he's the poorest character at trying to manage it. So I won't

try to speak from the point of view of some financial expert; I would

like to talk in a way which I think will represent the man in the

street in British Columbia.

I was rather interested, however, in the comments of the Leader of

the Opposition, who quoted part of the editorial from the Province

today, saying that the budget was pure fiction. But he didn't go on to

quote the part that said, "On the spending side, much of the budget is

pure Social Credit in its worst sense. It almost sounds as though Mr.

Barrett has been stealing old Social Credit scripts."

I notice the Leader of the Opposition didn't bother to read that part of the editorial.

Interjection.

MR. WALLACE: Yes, I notice that the Leader of the Opposition

was asking for all the programmes which the Social Credit government

carefully sidestepped when they were in office.

At any rate, that doesn't get this government off the hook, in the

sense that they are indeed copying the former Minister of Finance (Hon.

Mr. Bennett). I feel personally sorry about this because, with the

greatest of respect, I expected more from the present Minister of

Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett). I have respect for the present Minister

which, unfortunately, I couldn't dig up for the former Minister of

Finance. The present Minister of Finance has stood on this side of the

House in opposition and, in the years I've been here, pleaded for many

of the services to people which, very sadly, he has neglected to meet

in a budget which has an enormous surplus. As a simple observer of the

budget, as I read it, we have added $46 million to accumulated surplus,

we have used $74 million from the surplus to reduce bond debt, and we

still have at least $140 million for special programmes, which I'll

speak about later and which are worthwhile in themselves.

Looking at the budget, one would have to ask one of two questions:

this province is either providing sums of tax money in excess of need,

in which case we're being overtaxed, or the sums being produced are not

being wisely spent. It has to be one or the other.

It's my feeling that a budget is very much the sensitive reflection

of a government's sense of priority, and I think the man in the street

will feel that this government's sense of priorities leaves a great

deal to be desired.

It has already been mentioned that this is described as a resource

dividend budget, and yet there is still two-thirds of the revenue

provided by the taxpayers directly or indirectly. The basic premise in

taxation, which I'm sure the Premier and the Minister of Finance has

often mentioned in this House, should be to have the person contribute

based on his ability to pay.

Surely on that basis the sales tax has to be the most unfair form of

all taxes presently paid by the citizens of British Columbia. For the

low-income earner, 5 per cent of the cost of the goods is a much more

serious financial penalty than it is for the middle-income person. It

seems that the budget, in my view, has forgotten that surely the first

kind of relief that should be made available when there is a surplus

and when the economy is buoyant is to the low-income earner and to the

people on fixed incomes.

The sales tax brings in around $275 million. I'm not suggesting

necessarily that it all be removed in one step, but certainly in terms

of the large surplus which the Minister of Finance has acknowledged,

surely the very least that might have been expected would be some

specific reduction on this very inequitable form of tax.

The Minister of Finance, Mr. Speaker, has laid great emphasis in his

speech that there will be no increase in taxes. Although mention has

been made of some hidden increases, such as the increase in the cost of

natural gas, nevertheless, I fear the way the Minister of Finance has

stated that taxes will remain the same encourages the inflationary

psychology to which the people of Canada seem to have succumbed. It

seems to me that most people in this country simply go on expecting all

costs, wages, salaries, income tax — everything — will continue to

rise. I would submit that with this kind of surplus the Minister of

Finance would have exhibited unmitigated gall had he suggested any need

for a tax increase.

One could well ask the question: could we not have brought in some

form of tax decrease which would have had a definite deflationary

effect on the economy in this province? It seems very simple that if

the sales tax were reduced in whole or in part and the consumer has

more money in his pocket, there would be some easing of the pressure

which he or she presently feels to consistently seek higher wage

settlements and higher take-home pay.

If this amount of tax revenue has to be raised, then I think it

should be spent a little differently, and I'd like to mention one or

two areas later. If the scope of social services which we have

presently reached is not to be expanded — and I certainly think it

should — and if the government by its speech is standing still,

[ Page 162 ]

shall we say, on education and health, then I certainly think the

Minister of Finance should have reduced taxation in some respect. I

think the best respect would be to reduce the sales tax.

Probably all of us as politicians are guilty of this, but the

Premier has the statement on page 17 that "...$950 million will have

been added to the provincial economy in two years." The phrase "will

have added" seems to overlook the very simple fact that the money came

from the taxpayer in the first place. It is question again of the

stewardship of money which the taxpayer provides to government and not

some miraculous power or gift that the government has to create the

money.

In general, this is a budget which disappoints because of the stated

objectives of the Minister of Finance in previous years and since he

took office that he believes in a government for people and that the

whole function of government is to look after the pressing needs of

people, both socially and economically.

He makes reference, Mr. Speaker, to the indexation process which the

federal government has developed in relation to old age pensions. I

agree that consultation between governments should occur when a

unilateral decision reduces the revenue of the provincial government.

But I would like to ask the Minister — and I'm sure he'll answer — as

to whether it would not be equally appropriate for the provincial

government to index the Mincome programme based at regular intervals on

the Statistics Canada figures for the cost of living in the different

cities in Canada.

I'm certainly interested to see the sales tax come off secondhand

clothing. It's a very interesting coincidence. When I made a speech in

this House one year ago today I quoted a letter from a lady who

incidentally, Mr. Premier, through you Mr. Speaker, phoned me up on

budget night and said she was very pleased at your action and it was

obvious that you are a Premier who listens.

I don't want my appraisal of this budget to be completely negative

and critical of the government. I think that in this instance it's a

start towards relieving taxation on the poor, the low-income earners,

the unemployed and the sick.

I'd also like to comment on the energy conference, and the fact that

I suspect that the people of British Columbia — and again I say this as

an observer — are going to be rudely shaken when they find the price of

gasoline and fuel oil rising at the end of the price freeze. I

appreciated the invitation to attend that conference; as a greater

measure for education for opposition Members, it served its purpose

both in good ways and bad ways. My worst fears about the federal

Liberal government were confirmed, but my interest and awareness were

certainly increased by listening to the discussion on the energy crisis.

I just want to mention one little point in passing,

Mr. Speaker. I had a very delightful trip to Ottawa in the company

of the Premier, who was travelling economy class. But on the way back I

was travelling with the Hon. Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Macdonald), and

he was travelling first class. Now, I wouldn't want the province to

think that we have a first class A.G. and a second class Premier.

(Laughter.) I think there's some breakdown in communication somewhere.

HON. A.B. MACDONALD (Attorney-General): I wanted to be able to speak to my Deputy. (Laughter.)

MR. WALLACE: The Liberal leader was talking about trimming

the fat off the government's spending, and maybe some of the Deputies

should start travelling like we do — economy class.

I am disappointed that there hasn't been more public dialogue since

the energy conference to explain the very complex nature of what was

discussed, and for the citizens of British Columbia to realize that a

very substantial increase in price is just around the corner, and that

that very severe increase has already hit the people to an amazing

degree in the Maritimes and eastern Canada.

The Premier himself has since stated that the price would rise by at

least 6 cents a gallon on gasoline. This certainly is another

inflationary factor which will be felt very strongly in due course.

Again, to get back to the whole question of how one spends the

revenue — if there is a surplus — I would ask the Minister of Finance

(Hon. Mr. Barrett) if he is considering cushioning the effect of that

anticipated increase of costs by reducing the 15-cent tax on gasoline.

The revenue from gasoline tax will bring in $105 million, and it seems

to me that if the government would like to cushion the effect of the

cost of the increase and at the same time perhaps limit the

inflationary effect of that increase, it might well consider reducing

in part the existing 15-cent tax on a gallon of gas. The cost of

gasoline has to be a very sensitive factor in the cost of living, and I

would hope that Minister would give that some consideration.

There is a half-a-cent per gallon of tax on fuel oil. A gain, I

think the government should give consideration to removing that tax.

There are many aspects of the budget, Mr. Speaker, which deserve

mention and credit to put this party's appraisal of the whole budget in

context.

The emphasis placed on housing is most welcome. Details will, of

course, be provided by the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson). We

look forward to a debate on housing and would hope that there is some

innovation involved in the programmes which the government will bring

before the House.

I was concerned about the phrase in the budget

[ Page 163 ]

which talks about emphasizing building on Crown

lands, as no mention

was made of the University Endowment Lands. I would just state, Mr.

Speaker, that one of the big problems of our society today is

urbanization — crowded living, social problems associated with mere

confinement by citizens, and crowded residential space. It would seem

to me that with the population increasing steadily by whatever it is —

1 per cent or 1.5 per cent per year — that area of the University

Endowment Lands really is a priceless asset for the future. To me it

would appear quite wrong to cut that timber, and to level that ground,

and put down blacktop and homes. This, I feel, Mr. Speaker, is

something

which, from my inspection and from my enquiries, has not been

adequately researched by the government. I notice the Minister of

Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson) is not in his place, Mr. Speaker, but....

AN HON. MEMBER: He's right behind you.

MR. WALLACE: Oh, hi! Well, they say you have to have eyes in the back of your head when you're in politics, so I guess that's right.

Mr. Speaker, this is not an issue that should be lightly overlooked

or treated in any biased way. I think we need some very objective

people, and maybe even an all-party committee, to look at this

particular piece of British Columbia, which in its long-term scope would

equal or far surpass what we now have in the form of Stanley Park.

There is a potential for it to be developed in a variety of ways. I'm

not suggesting for a minute that it has to be the same format as

Stanley Park, but the people who preserved that land to develop Stanley

Park had a great deal of foresight. I just believe from looking at the

area personally that the same kind of foresight is now called for in

this day and age when people really seem to have less and less

opportunity to get out into the countryside or to get away from

high-rises and blacktop.

I would plead with the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett) and

the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson) that the widest possible

public discussion be carried on and dialogue take place before some

irrevocable decision is made and the Province of British Columbia loses

a natural asset.

We would like to express this party's approval and support of the

concept of the renters' grant. The special-purpose programmes,

particularly the community recreation facilities fund, is another area

of progressive thinking which, I think, has a multiple effect, not only

in providing facilities, but in encouraging our younger people to

participate in recreation at a time when we all know how serious the

drug and alcohol problem is among our younger people.

Regarding the $35 million project for ferries, I would hope that somewhere

in the debate the Minister of Transportation (Hon. Mr. Strachan) would tell

us what progress, if any, he has made regarding federal subsidies, both for

the construction of these ferries and the operating costs. It's my information

that in the Maritimes the federal government itself finances ferry service.

It would seem to me, Mr. Speaker, again relating back to the energy conference,

that if there's got to be Confederation — and I hope there is, and always

will be — and if there's got to be a great sense of national fair play across

the country on the price of oil, let's have the same fair play when it comes

to ferries and the question of transportation. I just feel that if the attitude

of the federal government to part of the Trans Canada Highway on the east is

one formula, then it should be the same on the west. I would hope the Minister

of Transportation would have some information, whether it's good or bad,

for the House regarding subsidies for ferries.

Interjection.

MR. WALLACE: The answer is no, is it?

There's one amazing omission from the throne speech and the budget

speech: there's not one word that I can find anywhere on the Indian

peoples in the province. Not a word. I've sat in this House through

many debates and heard a great deal of lip service paid to the

recognition of the problems which exist for our Indian peoples,

particularly in health care and housing.

At this particular time the Indian peoples are rightly registering a

great deal of protest regarding land settlements which are under debate

and discussions between the federal government and the Indian bands in

which this provincial government has become involved. Certain land

changes took place many years ago — 1919, I think, was the year. Land

was illegally taken from certain Indian bands, and they are now trying

to have this right corrected.

One of the clippings I have — in fact, all the newspaper reports —

suggest that everybody's dancing around this problem. The two

governments — the federal and provincial governments — are just giving

an outward impression at least of pretending to come to some

arrangement and fair settlement with the Indians. But if you read the

Indian delegates' comments in the press, it seems to me that the

government is very reluctant to negotiate in good faith.

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS: They accepted our proposals.

MR. WALLACE: The Minister of Lands and Forests interjects

that they have accepted the proposal. That was not public knowledge

until now; I'm very pleased to hear it. Maybe some place in the

[ Page 164 ]

debate we will find what the financial involvement is since, indeed, we're discussing the financial affairs of the province.

With greater reference to the social needs of the Indian people, I

would hope that the work which was begun by the Minister Without

Portfolio (Mr. Calder) will be continued. Again, I really feel that

either in the throne speech or the budget speech the government should

surely have given us some indication of what is being done, and

certainly within this budget what financial resources are being made

available to the Indian people, and to what degree realistic efforts

have been made in the health field to improve the shocking statistics

which an affluent province such as British Columbia should be very

sadly ashamed of.

I mentioned in this House before that the various statistics

relating to neo-natal mortality and health statistics generally of the

Indian people are far below the average for the same age groups for the

non-Indian residents of this province.

I feel, as I've said already today, that there's a great deal of lip

service paid to the need in this House, but I'm very disappointed that

there isn't some mention of a positive programme or at least an outline

of the kind of financing and personnel which this government plans to

provide to improve the position of Indian people in the province. I

think they unquestionably deserve to receive a fair share of the

affluence which is so obvious in the pages of this budget speech.

The Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi) is now responsible

for Indian Affairs, and I would say on that aspect that it would seem to

me too much to expect of one Minister that he should have the large

Department of Human Resources to deal with and should also be trying to

catch up with the long-neglected problems of the Indian people.

I would like to talk for a moment about a subject which certainly

has been covered today, and I will regretfully have to cover it again

because I can just only conclude that the message is not getting

through. I am talking about hospital care in British Columbia. If there

was one specific, clear-cut election promise which this government made

in 1972, it was to meet the shocking, disgraceful gap in the provision

of adequate hospital and health care services, with particular

reference to the elderly, sick citizens of our province.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, I don't know all the many speeches I must

have made on this subject in the past few years, and I just didn't feel

that I would ever be making the same speech over and over and over

again to this government. When I started speaking on the budget today,

I said that the challenge to government is to demonstrate to the people

their sense of priorities, their degree of concern for individual

citizens in great need — a need which they themselves with their own

resources just cannot possibly meet. There is no mention in the budget

of any specific amount of money being set aside for intermediate care

or home care.

I've already commented that we favour these special projects under

the $140 million for physical fitness, cultural fund, housing and so

on. But I really feel, Mr. Speaker, that if we can only do that at the

expense of neglecting sick people — people who need nursing care and

the proper facility and all that goes with their physical condition —

then I say our priorities are completely wrong. I'm all for physical

fitness, and I'd like to help develop a sense of culture and beauty in

this province, but not at the expense of a very substantial number of

elderly people who are ill, who are receiving poor care, some of whom

aren't even contacted to be told that they are suffering from

malnutrition, and their relatives have to take food in to them. They

are in a setting where they're paying the whole shot themselves, and if

they live long enough, they go broke and go on welfare.

If this is the kind of fate that awaits elderly people in this

province, they must look at this budget and say, "My God, what kind of

sense of justice is this?"

Just in case I haven't got the message through, I'll quote you a

case that I was contacted about as recently as last night. A man has a

stroke in 1969. Severely disabled, he is looked after in a private

nursing home. Later in his illness, he deteriorates to the point where

there is some salvation financially and he qualifies for extended care.

So then he can be looked after at $1 a day.

But then, Mr. Speaker, the whole purpose in medical care is to make

people better. So this poor man, by his efforts and the efforts of

skilled medical people improves. Then, my goodness, he no longer

qualifies for extended care. Just the other day, he was told that he

would have to be out of the extended-care facility by February 15.

Not only does this happen, Mr. Speaker, but no contact is made

regarding this decision with the family. The doctor in charge of

looking after the patient is given the job of informing the patient

that he has been reclassified and will have to find some other facility.

Now, I have to conclude that the Minister of Finance does not know

the degree or the detail to which this happens. I just have the

conviction that if he knew realistically what is happening in this

province in this area of neglect, we would have action tonight. And

I'll take the Premier to any number of places right tonight, if he

wants, and he'll see that this is a programme which needs immediate

attention. I know that we've had a study, I know there's going to be a

lot of discussion, I recognize that the Foulkes Report should be open

to public debate, I'm sure it will yield much in the way of positive

programmes, but the need is now. It has been there for a long time.

[ Page 165 ]

Again, let me just talk a little bit about money for a moment. I've

always said in the time that I've been in this House that no opposition

Member should stand up and speak quickly or even sincerely about

certain programmes without attaching a price tag. I think that's

something that all Members should try and remember.

I've done some more research into what this intermediate-care

programme would cost to operate. Again, I'm taking some statistics from

the Alberta nursing home programme which began, Mr. Speaker, in 1964.

This level of care has been provided in Alberta for 10 years. It is not

cost-shared.

I recognize completely and agree with the Minister of Finance that

the federal government should not make artificial distinctions

regarding the level of sickness of an individual in Canada. You're

either sick and you need help, or you're not sick. To pick out some

segments of sick people and give them reasonable financial assistance

and care, and dump another group as though they are cast-offs, who can

sink or swim under their own resources, I think, is also a shocking

dereliction of social conscience on the part of the Liberal government.

But anyway, that's a fact, and we've been told very plainly and the

Premier knows very well that the federal government's dug their heels

in, and if this province provides intermediate care, it's on its own as

far as financing is concerned.

The cost of the nursing home programme in Alberta in 1973 was $15

million. In very general assumptions, if we have about twice the

population, I would assume that it would cost this province $30 million

a year. The financing in Alberta at the present time is that the

patient pays $3 a day and the government pays $7.75 a day.

Now we have revenues of $2.177 billion projected in the budget, Mr.

Speaker, and in the same way that I think the Indian people are not

getting their fair share of the affluence of this province, we would

certainly say that right alongside in equal need are these elderly

citizens who do not qualify for extended care. I can understand the

Minister of Finance's sense of puzzlement because when you talk about

qualifying for extended care, it's almost as though you are trying to

pass some kind of test. I suppose in a way that's what you are doing.

Just for the complete enlightenment of anybody who is in doubt, we

have a system in this province where you have to be disabled to a

certain degree before you receive the $1-a-day coverage. You can be

very substantially disabled and need a very substantial degree of

assistance of one kind or another — with hygiene, feeding, nursing care

— but there is a point at which you are considered to be more or less

totally incapacitated, and then your care is provided and the cost is

$1 a day. But short of that artificial, unrealistic, inhumane

definition, many, many people are being, I think, very unfairly treated

by this government.

You know, Mr. Speaker, just to recall another little bit of history

— and I have great respect for the present Minister of Health (Hon. Mr.

Cocke) for, I think, in balance, he is doing a very good job — but, you

know, I sat in this House when he was over here and he, year after

year, brought in a private Member's bill, and that bill was a very

simple one — about six or seven lines long. All it was asking was that

we implement a programme of intermediate care for people who require

that kind of care.

Again, I'm not overlooking costs. I really am not. For what has

happened to the Minister of Health's proposal that extended-care

patients pay $5.50 a day? I've made some inquiries, Mr. Speaker, of the

statistics involved, and if the patients presently receiving that

degree of benefit — presently paying $1 a day — paid $5.50, they would

raise $6 million, which surely would be of some assistance to the

people presently getting no help.

I think that we can philosophize and we can have our ideologies, and

perhaps we can argue that the government should pay the whole shot, or

half the shot, or whatever. I realize that's certainly debatable. But

having established one kind of formula for acute care and extended

care, and to leave this other group of deserving people right in the

middle with no help at all, I just think is very unfair. I'm sure the

Premier is going to pursue this matter further.

Interjection.

MR. WALLACE: I'm just suggesting, Mr. Minister of Finance,

that I know that money doesn't grow on trees. The person who is

receiving Mincome of $213.85 a month and is actually in an

extended-care facility is receiving more or less all their needs —

their food, their shelter, their heat — and this costs them $30 a

month. This leaves them with $180, if my arithmetic is right.

I'm just saying that there seems to be.... If we could afford to do

that for everybody at all levels of care, I agree that that would be

just great. But I doubt if the financing can permit that degree of

largesse by the state. I'm just saying that there should be, surely,

some measure of justice and relationship in what the patient does pay

as between these different levels of care. I don't think there should

be two levels of care where a person may actually be accumulating

assets and another level of care in a nursing home where they are going

broke.

I'm just saying that I think the government should look at this.

There's a phrase which the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi)

so often uses; he talks about "moving the money around." I take that

expression to mean that it's used in a way which is

[ Page 166 ]

just and fair to the various groups concerned. And that's all I'm

asking: that this matter be looked at again. Surely we could provide

some financial assistance to these people.

I certainly like one part of the Foulkes Report which discusses the

importance of establishing and maintaining standards in such facilities

as nursing homes and personal-care facilities. It isn't just enough to

provide X amount of dollars for the daily care. I think that's

extremely important, but that is certainly not enough, and I look

forward to the creating of various facilities, the providing of

hospital coverage and the setting and maintaining of standards to

ensure that these people receive adequate care.

I've tried to talk in human terms without ignoring the financial

involvement. But, Mr. Speaker, rather like the energy crisis and the

price of gas not being enough in this province, the wage increases

which have been negotiated in the hospital field will have a very

significant impact in all other places of employment. I'm not in any

way arguing against the right of the hospital worker or any other

worker to negotiate the best wage he or she can. That's not what I'm

arguing about. I just want to record fact and figure.

The wage increase for the non-nursing staff is something in the

order of $20 million, and