1985 Legislative Session: 3rd Session, 33rd

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, MARCH 26, 1985

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page 5463 ]

CONTENTS

Oral Questions

Transit fares. Mr. Williams –– 5463

Mr. Macdonald

Food Banks. Mr. MacWilliam –– 5463

Government purchasing policy. Mr. Stupich –– 5464

Ministerial Statement

Compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Hon. Mr. Smith

–– 5465

Mr. Lauk

Supply Act (No.1), 1985 (Bill 29).

Committee stage –– 5466

Hon. Mrs. McCarthy

Ms. Brown

Mr. Rose

Hon. Mr. Heinrich

Mr. Lauk

Mr. Macdonald

Mr. Howard

Third Reading –– 5472

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Attorney-General

estimates. (Hon. Mr. Smith).

On vote 11: minister's office –– 5472

Hon. Mr. Smith

Mr. Lauk

Hon. Mr. Gardom

Mr. Howard

Ms. Brown

Mr. Rose

Mr. Passarell

Mr. Cocke

Royal assent to bill –– 5487

TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1985

The House met at 2:06 p.m.

MR. VEITCH: Mr. Speaker, I don't know if she's in the gallery

yet or not, but I'd like you to welcome one of my constituents, Mrs.

Lorena Green,

MRS. WALLACE: Harking back to my Hydro days, I have two

friends visiting in the gallery today. I'd like the House to join me in

welcoming Harry and Sophie Bowman.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, in the precincts today, and

perhaps in one of the galleries, are four visitors associated with the

B.C. Health Association: Dr. Dugal MacGregor, who is chairman of the

BCHA; Dr. Thelma Cook, a trustee of St. Paul's Hospital; Mr. Bob Smith,

who is administrator of the Cancer Control Agency; and Mr. Herman

Crewson, who has recently been appointed president of the BCHA. I'd

like the House to welcome them.

MR. MOWAT: In the House today we have Mr. Bob Thompson,

president of the Marpole-Richmond Sportsmen's Association, which does a

great deal of funding of many charitable organizations in British

Columbia, through their volunteering and with their lottery fund. I'd

ask the House to make Mr. Thompson welcome, please.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, this introduction covers a few

miles. On behalf of the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea), the member

for Skeena (Mr. Howard) and the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf), would

the House please welcome, from the Yellowhead Highway 16 Tourist

Association, Ms. Lee Morris.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Could I ask all members to extend a very

cordial welcome to Mr. George Ogg, consul general of the United States

of America.

Oral Questions

TRANSIT FARES

MR. WILLIAMS: To the minister responsible for transit. The

provincial government saved over $18 million last year with the work

stoppage in the transit system. The question is: in view of those

significant savings to the provincial government, wouldn't it have been

more reasonable to keep the rates at last year's level rather than the

new level of a dollar, and help both the riders and the merchants who

were victimized by the inaction of the government last year?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair has been most tolerant

in the past of questions which have had argument and opinion. I will

advise members at this time that in the future comments of that kind

will be ruled out of order by the Chair.

The minister may wish to respond.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver

East must surely know that the transit fares in British Columbia —

whether they be in Victoria, Vancouver or Prince George — are heavily

subsidized by the government, with the most generous financial formula

in the whole of this nation. Therefore, when he said that there is a

saving because of a work stoppage, the saving that he mentions is

indeed not a saving; it is a lesser loss to the provincial government

than would have ordinarily been sustained without it.

MR. MACDONALD: A supplementary to the same minister. Does the

minister know that the transit subsidy has been decreased from $91

million in 1980 to $72 million at the present time? Does the minister

know that, and does she call that, the reduction of $19 million in

three or four years, the most generous transit subsidy in North

America, while the straphangers are going to face $1 fares?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: What's wrong with that?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Was the first member not

listening at all to the remarks previously made? We have an obligation

— all of us — to follow the rules that are set down before us. If

members wish to pose questions, they must meet those guidelines. Surely

that's not a lot to ask, inasmuch as the rules have just been submitted

to us.

MR. MACDONALD: The minister gave her opinion, and I gave mine.

MR. SPEAKER: This is question period, hon. member, not

opinion period.

FOOD BANKS

MR. MacWILLIAM: Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my

question to the Premier. When asked publicly in Nanaimo yesterday if

the Premier would donate to the local food bank, he declined, inferring

publicly that he contributes, and I quote: "In Kelowna, sure. I always

help my own community." Yet the member for Okanagan South has in fact

declined written requests for help from the Kelowna food bank. In

addition, the food bank has never receipted any donations from the

member. I would like to ask the hon. member if he would help us to

reconcile these apparent contradictory positions in order to alleviate

the perception that the member says one thing but in fact does another.

HON. MR. BENNETT: This has nothing to do with public

business, but my own personal donations to charity. I would advise the

member that all of my life I've made substantial contributions to those

in need from my own personal choice, and I will continue to do so to

help people. Neither the member for Okanagan North nor anyone else will

advise me on who is more worthy. I've made substantial contributions

within my community each and every year, as a citizen, which is not

part of the public profile nor something on which I wish to campaign —

on how generous I am personally. It's not something that one wears on

one's sleeve.

I resent that member's bringing personal charity into an area in

which we discuss public business. But I would suppose that having done

this the member will file all of the things that he has made available

to help people, not only in recent years but during his lifetime, and

I'm sure I could not only match it but exceed it 20 times over.

[ Page 5464 ]

MR. MacWILLIAM: I might add that the anonymous donations

received by the food bank amount to $4 and $5, and I wonder if that's

the member's extent.

In supplement to the original question — and I think this is the

critical issue here — during the first two months of 1985 demand for

the food bank has increased 104 percent in the Kelowna area and forced

directors to place a ceiling on requests. My question to the member is:

what has the current member for Okanagan South done to help relieve

this critical situation?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Chair has some difficulty in

determining that this is an area, other than if it's a government

responsibility.... Certainly a personal responsibility has no place in

question period.

[2:15]

MR. MacWILLIAM: Perhaps I can clarify the framework of the

question in expanding the fact that unemployment in the Okanagan is

currently at 21 percent. I'm wondering if the member for Okanagan South

would at least recognize the critical need for emergency measures to

create immediate employment in the Okanagan, measures that cannot be

generated through long-term tax changes. I would ask the member if he

has any plans for such immediate job creation proposals.

HON. MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, the member, new as he is, has

been through the throne speech debate and the budget debate, in which

we talked about effective ways to encourage long-term jobs — and that's

in the private sector, in which people want security of employment.

Because of the apparently weak representation from North Okanagan, I

will personally continue to represent that area as well as South

Okanagan, and continue to assist new investment that will create

permanent jobs. People in all parts of that area want a broadened

economy. That has been the whole thrust of the government's program and

will continue to be so.

GOVERNMENT PURCHASING POLICY

MR. STUPICH: A question to the Premier. Yesterday the Premier

was in Nanaimo reannouncing B.C. government purchasing policy. Is the

Premier aware that this policy of using government procurement to

create jobs in B.C. was announced in 1977 and again in 1982, and was

not followed in either case?

HON. MR. BENNETT: The member is incorrect.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, at the end of question period I

will ask leave to file certain government documents.

Will the Premier advise, under the B.C. procurement policy, why B.C.

Hydro cancelled its contract with Ferranti-Packard Transformers Ltd. in

Surrey in favour of an eastern Canadian supplier, throwing 30 British

Columbians out of work?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I will take that question as notice, and in

elaborating on the member's first question, tell him he was incorrect

in saying the government does not follow its own purchasing policy. The

new purchasing policy is a substantial expansion and a change of

direction in order to encourage new manufacturing within the province,

assisting local people to understand what sort of supplies government

requires and how they can get established in trying to contract for

those supplies and services. Interestingly enough, the member for

Nanaimo would know that bidding for government services is open to all

British Columbians. It is not restricted to only those who belong to

trade unions but is part of an open government policy allowing all

people to bid, something that was not the case when that member was

part of a government that restricted most British Columbians from

contracting public services.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, I think this would not be the time

for me to read a letter from the Hon. Evan Wolfe dated June 16, 1977,

or one from the Ministry of Industry and Small Business Development,

1982: "A procurement policy for major project developments." I think

I'll table them rather than read them at this point, because they read

word for word as I heard the Premier discussing the procurement policy.

Another question that the Premier may wish to take as notice: will

the Premier advise why the rebar used to reinforce concrete in the ALRT

project has been brought in from Alberta and the U.S. despite the fact

that B.C. suppliers are available?

HON. MR. BENNETT: To the first part of the question, I would

invite the member to sit in on the seminars that will be going on

around the province. They'll be in Nanaimo. Although their MLA doesn't

seem too concerned or excited about the opportunities, the people up

there are. I invite him to sit in on the seminars and find out the

expansion of the purchasing policy that is taking place.

Yes, as a government we did announce purchasing policies from time

to time in trying to encourage more business.

The work Mr. Hutchings has done in the last year as head of the

Purchasing Commission has substantially expanded the way in which we

can encourage more British Columbia businesses, particularly new

businesses. I think the member would be supportive of the government's

efforts; it's something in which there is no partisanship, which I

think you could support. I think there's a lot of opportunity for small

business and service industries in Nanaimo, as well as in Kelowna, by

having these areas identified under the expanded opportunities

announced yesterday by Mr. Hutchings.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, it's one thing to support the

policy; it's another for the government to implement the policy, and

that's the thrust of my question. I have to ask again: will the Premier

advise why the government went outside of Canada to buy seats for B.C.

Place Stadium, despite the existence of a local consortium attempting

to commence manufacture here in B.C.?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I can certainly tell the member, because

that item was discussed in this Legislature, and the member already has

the answer. A number of years ago when seats for the stadium to the

B.C. Place corporation.... You're dealing in purchasing done by Crown

corporations now, in which you would expect me to be able to get the

information but not have detailed knowledge.

But I do know that of all the seats that were bid, there were

Canadian content.... And all of that was taken into account along with

price and quality. At one time there were over 20 different models of

seating under tender and under review for either quality or for that

content, and the bid was

[ Page 5465 ]

awarded in the appropriate manner. I do know this

because it was a matter of a lot of public discussion at the time — I

think it was probably in the ministerial estimates in this House, if

not in question period. I recall it, but not the details of that

debate. But I can tell you that in that specific instance there was an

appropriate awarding of the contract, on all criteria.

MR. STUPICH: My concern is that while the government has

announced its policy, there are so many examples where it does not seem

to be working. My question to the Premier is this: can he, in spite of

the fact that the 1977 announcement and the 1982 announcements

apparently did not bear fruit, reassure the people by demonstrating

that it is really working and that it will work in the future?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I think the member is making an error in

suggesting that those purchasing policies did not bear fruit. They did,

obviously. But obviously there's always improvement that can be made,

not only in provincial government purchasing or coordinating of Crown

corporations, but in the discussions that Mr. Hutchings has had with

municipalities, leading up to the development of this policy.

I throw in an additional caution to the member that one of the areas

in which our former purchasing policy did offend against trade with

interprovincial trade — and it's been a subject of discussion between

all premiers — was the pricing preference. You will notice from

yesterday's announcement that that pricing preference has changed; as

we agreed to do as provinces, we deal as one country. Therefore we have

changed a number of elements that did offend against interprovincial

trade,

The member nods, so already he's agreeing that there is some

substantial change in the purchasing policy. That is one that all

governments are trying to deal with, what interprovincial trade.... And

also as it may offend against any international treaty. It was brought

up as a major agenda item at the last discussion of premiers as an item

that we would discuss at future conferences on an urgent basis, as an

extension of our discussions on the GATT agreements. And the member may

know, because that was publicly televised at the last first ministers'

conference, that both those areas were of prime importance.

MR. STUPICH: I ask leave to table documents that I referred

to during question period.

Leave granted.

MR. ROSE: I was looking at rule 47A on oral questions, which

says that questions and answers should be brief and precise. I thought

that the questions in the last series were quite brief and precise,

but...

Interjections.

MR. ROSE: Are you ready? Are you finished?

...I also observed that the replies by the Premier were really a

series of disconnected soliloquies. I wonder if the Speaker had similar

thoughts.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, the Speaker has several thoughts

on question period; not all of them should be shared with the members.

But I think that if we collectively try to adhere to the rules and the

spirit of question period, each and every one of us, we will all

benefit, as will the people accordingly.

Now, hon. members, the member for Cowichan-Malahat having asked for

leave to make an introduction, may leave be granted?

Leave granted.

MRS. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, I've just been advised that

another friend is in the gallery behind me: Father Murray Thompson,

along with 20 grade 11 students from St. Andrew's High School and their

teacher John Harrison. I would like the House to welcome them.

COMPENSATION FOR WRONGFUL IMPRISONMENT

HON. MR. SMITH: I wish to announce today the appointment of a

commissioner of inquiry under the Inquiry Act with respect to the case

of Kenneth Norman Warwick, known as Norman Fox.

Mr. Fox was granted a pardon by the Governor-General-in-Council of

Canada in October 1984 in respect of the conviction under the Criminal

Code recorded against him on June 21, 1976. Since that pardon and his

release in October 1984, attempts have been made to arrive at an

appropriate amount and form of compensation. The Canadian government

has been considering the matter and has set up a federal-provincial

task force to work out guidelines for future similar cases should they

arise. But the Minister of Justice and I have agreed that Mr. Fox's

plight should not await the completion of the task force report.

Attempts to resolve the compensation issue have been made in recent

months with Mr. Fox and his lawyers. On March 14, Mr. Fox's lawyer,

Terrence L. Robertson, presented Mr. Fox's formal case before the

Deputy Attorney-General and presented Mr. Fox's view of a settlement

that was appropriate, in his opinion, which was a claim for $1.35

million. I have communicated all of that to the Minister of Justice for

Canada, believing that a payment of that sum of money would be

inappropriate and not in the interest of the people of the province. I

have a responsibility to consider that interest. I've taken the only

course that would seem appropriate in the circumstances, rather than

continue negotiations or cause Mr. Fox further delays: that is, to

appoint an independent commissioner of inquiry, with the following

terms of reference. He will inquire into and report on the matter of

compensation to be given to Kenneth Norman Warwick, otherwise known as

Norman Fox, with respect to the period of imprisonment served by him

consequent on the convictions made against him in Vancouver, June 21,

1976, for which he was granted a free pardon; and, in particular,

report with recommendations on the method by which compensation should

be calculated, the value of the compensation, and the form or forms the

compensation should take.

The commissioner will be the Hon. Mr. Justice M.M. McFarlane,

formerly of the British Columbia Court of Appeal, where he served for

18 years. He was called to the bar in this province in 1931, retired

from the Court of Appeal in April 1983, and is now an associate counsel

with the Vancouver law firm of Ladner Downs. There are no time

restrictions on his work. He has been asked to carry out his assignment

with all reasonable dispatch. Mr. Fox will be given full opportunity to

detail the claim that he makes.

[ Page 5466 ]

The Minister of Justice for Canada is aware of this announcement,

and immediately upon receipt of Mr. Justice McFarlane's report, a copy

will go to him. I'm satisfied that we will be able to resolve the

matter jointly and make a joint response for compensation. But we feel

it's time now for an independent inquiry to give us assistance. We

cannot negotiate an amount.

[2:30]

MR. LAUK: It's very frustrating for the opposition to have

such an announcement, because I can find no fault whatsoever with it.

Every once in a while the administration of justice fails. It's always

been my feeling over the years that there are more than just Norman

Foxes in jail who are innocent and convicted, but one can never really

say that with confidence. The adversary system and the trial system is

the best known in the world. It does make mistakes. But when it does

make mistakes, we must, to support the credibility of the system,

provide a full measure of compensation for those improperly imprisoned.

I compliment the Attorney-General, to the extent that the best way

to establish compensation is not through an exchange of correspondence,

which can go on forever, or passing the buck, but by determining that

compensation in a judicial way, independent of government attitudes,

which really have responsibility for the administration of justice that

put the man away in the first place.

I compliment the government for its choice of Mr. Justice McFarlane,

a distinguished jurist in the province.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. GARDOM: Committee on Bill 29, Mr. Speaker.

SUPPLY ACT (No. 1), 1985

(continued)

The House in committee on Bill 29; Mr. Strachan in the chair.

On the schedule.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, in the discussion in committee

this morning, the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) raised

questions with respect to votes 64 and 66, and I think he also touched

briefly on vote 17. I am speaking now of special warrants Nos. 2 and 16

under vote 64. As he surmised, the $221.6 million is largely for the

acceleration of major highway projects — the Coquihalla, Annacis

crossing and significant work on the Squamish as well.

Warrant No. 5 under vote 66 for $4.8 million was for the reflective

number-plate program through the motor vehicle department, and warrant

No. 17, $900,000, B.C. Railway Ltd. grant for Newman Creek railway

bridge.

I trust that answers the member's comments or questions. If not, I

can certainly deal with him in the course of other discussion.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I'm really pleased that the Minister

of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) is here, as well as the

parliamentary secretary, so in the event that the Minister of Finance

is unable to answer my question, maybe one or other of them would like

to give us some information about the $154 million warrant, No. 8,

which was paid out to that ministry.

At the time that it occurred, we were told that the ministry had

overrun its budget by $166 million; however, the decision was made only

to give $154 million. The other $12 million was to be found from some

other area in the ministry. I wonder if the Minister of Finance, the

Minister of Human Resources or the parliamentary secretary could tell

me a couple of things. Could they explain that $166 million overrun?

Also, was the other $12 million found, and, if so, in what other areas

in the ministry was that $12 million found?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Yes, I would be very pleased to give a

brief response regarding the amount of money.

First of all, the member will know, particularly, that the amount of

income assistance put forward each and every year is driven by the

amount of requests. It is also a statutory obligation as well as a

moral obligation of this government to provide for people in times of

need. More people have come to us. There are a larger number of people,

which has given us a larger expenditure than in the previous year. It

exceeded our budget by the amount that the member has stated.

But also within our budget there are two programs which did not

exceed their budgets, in fact, because of the lesser demand on those

two programs. One is the seniors' program, where their amount of money

has gone up. They have increased their revenue; therefore we have saved

on the provincial commitment. That amount of our budget was decreased,

and that amount has come off the overall budget of the Ministry of

Human Resources, adding a credit.

Also, I'm pleased to tell you that the budget needed for a part of

our family and children's services — not a reduction of service, but a

reduction of demand — has resulted in a decrease which, again, gave us

a credit which was taken from that amount of money. I think that will

explain the difference in the two amounts.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, would the minister tell me what

specific areas of the services to family and children were

underutilized, and exactly how much was saved by that underutilization?

What specific programs?

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, if the member would like to

ask further questions of the Minister of Finance on this vote, I will

get that information. I think I have it with me here, but it will take

a minute.

MR. ROSE: I was interested in this $8 million total in the

Ministry of Education, vote 17, and I wanted to ask about that. Perhaps

the minister could enlighten me on the necessity for that.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Chairman, both of the amounts are the

result of statutory obligation. The first item for $6.5 million was the

result of an underestimation in the 1984-85 budget of the homeowner

grant; in other words, there were more people claiming the amount. I

suppose that when you put $6.5 million against a total amount of

approximately $260 million, the percentage really is not that

significant. But the fact is that there was an underestimation of the

amount required, and that's the $6.5 million.

The $2.5 million is also a statutory obligation, and it's the

requirement of the employer to make a contribution to the

[ Page 5467 ]

teachers' pension fund. That contribution is made

by the province of

British Columbia.

MR. LAUK: Why wasn't that information predictable?

HON. MR. HEINRICH: I note it must be somewhat difficult to

predict, because when I see the fluctuation in the amount paid over the

years to the pension fund.... In one year it's $108 million, in

another it may be $98 million and in another $103 million. Why that

fluctuates the way it does.... I suppose there are a number of factors.

The fact is, it is a statutory obligation: government must pay.

MR. ROSE: If I might be permitted another question.... I hate

to get the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) out of his chair for

nothing — but perhaps he needs the exercise. I wonder, if the

predictability of these matters is so difficult, whether the minister

is thinking of sending the budget review advisory team or BRAT into his

ministry to investigate various things. If they find that things are

wrong, does he plan to fine himself as he did Delta? That's not the

question; that's merely the introduction. I wonder if the minister

could explain why, since the fiscal framework was implemented — to

bring order out of chaos in the school districts in terms of their

budgeting arrangements — that fiscal framework, if applied accurately,

couldn't predict these overruns of something like $8 million.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the opening

salvo from the member for Coquitlam-Moody, I would like to make

reference to the fact that I did use the chairman of the budget review

management advisory team in my own ministry. I want you to know that he

did a most commendable job, and it was very helpful to us in the

ministry. We made a number of changes, Mr. Chairman.

Now with respect to the $1.534 billion, which is incorporated within

the fiscal framework, it seemed....

Interjection.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: I love that member's comments — Franklin D. Filibuster.

Well, I can tell you that there's very little federal money in the

framework.

MR. ROSE: It's half of grade 12s.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: No, it is not.

MR. ROSE: Sure it is.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, I think we're losing a bit of it

here. To the warrant, please.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: The amount of money that we're talking

about is $1.534 billion, and I think we're very close. Obviously there

are going to be some discrepancies in percentages, but they will be

very small.

MR. ROSE: Mr. Chairman, the minister has yet to agree that

half the grade 12 costs are paid for through EPF. But his own colleague,

the Minister of Universities (Hon. Mr. McGeer), claimed they are. So,

you know, you can't trust either one of them, I guess.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order! First of all, that remark must be

withdrawn.

MR. ROSE: I withdraw.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

Secondly, hon. members, we have allowed some latitude. We are

dealing with special warrants as contained in

schedule 1 of Bill 29,

and if we could relate our remarks specifically to the warrants before

us, the committee would be well served. Please proceed.

MR. ROSE: I would like to ask the minister whether the

necessary increase in pension contributions of $2.5 million was because

many teachers were encouraged to take early retirement in order to

protect the jobs of a number of younger teachers who were not at the

retirement point.

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure, but I would

suggest that that is highly unlikely, and with respect to.... Am I

permitted, in view of the opening.... . ?

[2:45]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I would like to respond to

the question asked earlier about the two areas which impacted on the

final budget for the Ministry of Human Resources, resulting in the

income assistance amount that we are discussing in this vote. First of

all, the number of recipients in the services to seniors estimate has

declined by 36 percent over the last five years. In December 1984 there

were 46, 878 people receiving the provincial supplement. While the

province has continued to increase the provincial guaranteed level,

when the federal government indexed OAS and GIS the number of

recipients declined. This is due to improvements in other income

available to the senior citizen, such as private pensions, Canada

Pension Plan and other personal income. When that increases, their

income increases and they fall off the supplement which comes from the

government.

So over the past five years there has been a decline of 36 percent,

and that is true again. The provincial guaranteed level for singles has

increased 72 percent, and for married couples 50 percent, over the past

five years. So that is the reason on that particular vote.

The other vote which impacts on this is the expenditure, as I

mentioned earlier, on family and children's services. There is an

estimated reduction in that vote. It's due to a declining child-in-care

caseload, resulting from reductions in the percentage of children in

the population taken into care. It has been steadily declining, I'm

glad to tell you, since 1969, and in the past five years that number of

children taken into care has gone down by 18 percent, from the 8,737

of five years ago to 7,386 as of January 1985.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, to the minister: thanks very much for

that information. The only thing I needed was the figures. There was a

$12 million shortfall, and I wondered if you could give me, in dollars,

how much of that $12 million came from seniors — who, incidentally,

haven't had their supplement increased since 1976, so I'm wondering if

it's adequate. But we'll discuss that under the estimates; I don't want

to discuss that now. If I could just know in terms of dollars where the

$12 million split. That's all.

[ Page 5468 ]

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Chairman, I don't have that

information at hand, but I can give that during the estimates.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, prior to the luncheon

adjournment the member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Reynolds)

inquired with respect to the special warrant for the office of the

ombudsman. The committee will recall that earlier we had considerable

discussion about an increase in expenditure in the office of the

auditor-general. Mr. Chairman, the request letter to me as chairman of

Treasury Board dated November 28, 1984, from the ombudsman indicated

that the budget estimate would be insufficient for two reasons in

particular. I think there's nothing else, as I review the material and

as I recall it. A shortfall in staffing salaries and additionally to

hire six more contract investigators for the last quarter of this

fiscal year — that would be the first quarter of the calendar year

1985 —

to clear a backlog of cases: it seems that that is the extent of

the reason behind the additional expenditure.

MR. MACDONALD: I'd like to ask the Minister of Finance about

warrant No. 3 for $435,000. Does the Minister of Finance not have

power, by order-in-council, to cancel a warrant that has been issued

when the money is not going to be spent? Why should it have to show up

here and add to the horrendous amount — almost half a billion dollars —

of overspending beyond the estimates that we're supposed to approve

here this afternoon?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Well, Mr. Chairman, it may be that the

member was not able to participate in the debate this morning when I

dealt with this at great length with the member for Atlin (Mr.

Passarell).

MR. MACDONALD: Why didn't you cancel it?

HON. MR. CURTIS: I'm required by statute, and that was the

point that was made this morning.... The Minister of Finance is

required by statute to report on the appropriation. That is what you

have before you.

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, my point is a simple one: you

could also report that the warrant had been cancelled because the money

was not needed, and it wouldn't then be included in this total. It

would be shown to be voted so much, cancelled, not needed, and wouldn't

be in this total. Then we'd have proper accounting in this province.

We're voting on a fictional amount now — to approve it.

HON. MR. CURTIS: On the contrary, we're not voting on a

fictional amount. I don't think the member would really want to pursue

that to any great extent. On two occasions this morning the member for

Atlin presented a motion which would have achieved that which the

member for Vancouver East has suggested just now. I am reporting on an

appropriation. The fact is that it was a conditional loan with very

stringent requirements attached to it. Those conditions were not met;

therefore the loan will not be paid out. It's extremely unlikely that

it will be paid in the period between today and Sunday, March 31. The

fact is that to do other than to report the appropriation, Mr.

Chairman, would in fact be fictional accounting.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Shall

schedule 1 pass?

MR. HOWARD: I thought the member for Atlin had proposed a

motion to alter the amounts, and that the Chair had not ruled on that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You're absolutely right. There was one

amendment that the Chair ruled to be out of order, and there is a

subsequent amendment that the Chair is also ruling out of order because

of the statute that requires the

schedule to be printed this way.

MR. LAUK: In order to arrive at your conclusion, Mr.

Chairman, did you consider the proposition that the minister has not

yet revealed to the committee under what authority this money was

appropriated — the $435,000? The minister has yet to reply to the

committee's inquiry as to what authority. He's referred to the

Financial Administration Act. That provides for how, where a loan can

be made, it is to be made and under what provisions. But under what

authority are we loaning money to private mining companies?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, the member is correct to the

extent that I did not answer the question while on my feet — I think

that I did indicate it across the floor. I would refer the member to

two sections of the Financial Administration Act,

section 37 and

section 18.

MR. LAUK: I thank the hon. minister, but those sections refer

to other sections and those sections refer to yet other sections. The

point is: what is the ultimate authority for loaning this money from

consolidated revenue under any conditions to a private mining company?

That is not within the Financial Administration Act. That just sets out

who requests the money and under what authority is it established. In

that case, I've got a little business; can I approach the Ministry of

Finance and apply for a loan?

HON. MR. CURTIS: No.

MR. LAUK: Why not?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, in his case, most definitely

not. I say that facetiously. The identification of this.... Quite

clearly it was not a grant to the mining company as such...

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: ...or a loan — thank you for the

correction — but rather it was a loan with respect to maintaining the

access to the mine, a road access. The authority is quite clearly

stated in

section 21 of the Financial Administration Act — which was,

after all,

an act authorized by this Legislature. It wasn't a grant or

a loan to the mining company per se.

MR. LAUK: Who's going to repay it?

HON. MR. CURTIS: I think I dealt with that this morning. In

the event that it had been loaned — which is somewhat academic — then

it would have been repaid by the continued operation of the mine.

[ Page 5469 ]

MR. LAUK: In other words, by the mining company?

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, I did not say that. Don't put words in

my mouth, Mr. Member.

AN HON. MEMBER: We're trying to help you.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who's going to repay it then?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Your kind of help I don't need.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, this committee still does not know

under what basis these moneys can be loaned in similar circumstances.

And if it is to be loaned.... The

schedule clearly says — and so does

warrant 3 — the loan is to Scottie Mines. Now I assume under the normal

course of commercial events that if you loan money to a corporation —

named — that that's the corporate person that's going to repay the

loan, Surely the minister can inform the committee as to how the loan

would be repaid in this situation and in similar situations.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, it may be that the Public

Accounts committee would like to review this in greater detail at its

leisure. That is not to suggest I'm not going to answer the questions

to the best of my ability now.

On October 3, 1984, the executive council agreed with the proposal

of the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources that funds to

a maximum amount of $435,000 be provided in the form of a

non-interest-bearing loan to cover this winter's cost for snow clearing

on the mine access road from Stewart to Summit Lake. Upon examination

it was determined that there was no appropriation to fund the loan and

therefore the special warrant was executed. The reply that I provided

to the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources indicated that

in accordance with

section 37 of the Financial Administration Act it

was recommended that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council approve the

proposed loan agreement and debenture with Scottie Gold Mines on the

conditions that the government is the first-placed secured creditor in

the event of a business failure, that a first charge is secured against

specified assets of the company having a net book value of $435,000,

that a further fixed charge is secured against the company's mineral

claims, and that a further floating charge is placed against the

remainder of the company's assets. Then the proposal to the Ministry of

Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources was that in the event that any or

all of the above could not be met, the loan would not be forthcoming.

MR. LAUK: I'm getting curiouser and curiouser, Mr. Chairman.

Section 37 says clearly: "A power under an enactment" — that's not the

Financial Administration Act — "to make loans, advances or direct

equity investments from the consolidated revenue fund shall...."

That's the power under which the minister purports to ask. My first

question: what is the power — under which enactment — that allows the

government to proceed under the Financial Administration Act in the

first place? Secondly, why Scottie Mines? Were there applications from

other mines? Why was this brought to the attention of cabinet with

respect to one mine only? The minister has read substantially from a

document which I know, his having honourable regard for the conventions

of this House, he will table.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, when we are not in committee I

will certainly consider tabling the material at the earliest possible

moment. If not today, tomorrow.

Financial Administration Act,

section 21 first....

Interjection.

HON. MR. CURTIS: No,

section 21 first, and

section 37.

MR. LAUK: We're going in circles.

HON. MR. CURTIS: No, we're not going in circles, Mr. Member. I

can't assist the member further with his

interpretation of legislation

which was approved in this chamber.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, at the risk of sounding immodest, I

don't need any assistance in interpreting a statute; I would suggest,

with great respect, that the minister does.

Section 21 says that if an

emergency arises within the authority and power of the government, and

it's not in the budget, they can pass a special warrant. That's all it

says.

Section 37 says:

"A power under an enactment to make loans, advances or direct equity

investments from the consolidated revenue fund shall, notwithstanding

any other enactment, not be exercised by the government except by order

of or in accordance with directives of the Lieutenant Governor in

Council on the recommendation of the Minister of Finance."

Section 37 clearly says that the power must be under an enactment.

What's that enactment, and why was that not mentioned?

HON. MR. CURTIS: It may be an oversight in terms of answering

all the questions. The FAA is an enactment.

MR. LAUK: What is the FAA?

HON. MR. CURTIS: The member knows, I think. He just told me

that he has no difficulty with reading statutes, therefore FAA. It's

not the Federal Aviation Agency.

MR. LAUK: Where in the FAA is your power to make a loan?

[3:00]

HON. MR. CURTIS: I wonder if the member would like to turn to

section 18 of the act, which says: "No money shall be paid out of the

consolidated revenue fund without the authority of an appropriation."

That's sub (1). Sub (2): "Money required to be expended, invested or

dealt with under

section 11(2), 13, 16, 21, 22, 23, 24(c), 32, 33,

36, 53 or 58 may be paid out of the consolidated revenue fund without

any appropriation other than this subsection."

Section 21 is one of

those cited, and it is 21 to which I earlier referred the member —

i.e., a special warrant.

MR. LAUK: You could do anything.

HON. MR. CURTIS: If we're going to debate the possible

failings of the Financial Administration Act, I think perhaps that

could occur at another time.

[ Page 5470 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: The point made by the Minister of Finance is

absolutely correct. I don't want to be difficult on this, but we are

dealing with

Schedule 1, which makes reference to reporting, as is

indicated in the printing of the schedule, Financial Administration

Act,

section 21(5). That is the reason we have the

schedule in the

bill now before us. As I said, without trying to be difficult I think

we should deal specifically with the reporting of those special

warrants before us, and not discuss previous legislation and the need

or errors that may be contained in it.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, let me canvass briefly how far we've

gotten. There's a loan to Scottie of some $400,000. Nowhere in the

Financial Administration Act is there authority to grant a loan to

Scottie or to any other mine. It's not a question of

interpretation

differing for me and the Minister of Finance. Clear legal

interpretation of the Financial Administration Act does not empower the

cabinet to grant a loan to any private person. There is no such

authority.

Section 18 says that no money shall be paid out of

consolidated revenue without authority of an appropriation, except

under sections 11, 13 and so on.

Section 37 says that loans must be

empowered by an enactment of some kind.

It's clear that no minister can make a loan except the Minister of

Finance — and when we were in government, I believe my ministry, which

was Economic Development, those were set out in statutes or regulations

clearly setting out what we could do. Any other financial activity by

the Crown was through its corporations, which were set out clearly by

legislation. To interpret the legislation any other way and to concede

the point trying to be made by the Minister of Finance means that the

Minister of Finance can loan money to his mother, his sister, his uncle

and his aunt simply by moving under the Financial Administration Act.

We know that's impossible. So I say again that the loan to Scottie has

to be approved of by some statute. Is it the road clearance act? Is it

the mining enhancement act? Maybe no such statutes exist. What I'm

trying to say is that there has to be a legislative enactment allowing

for the expenditure of public funds. The Financial Administration Act

only sets out the authority for procedures whereby the ministry, using

consolidated revenue, can carry out the wishes of the Legislature in

another enactment. That's the law.

So before we pass on, that's the law. Any other law can be struck

down. This Legislature votes on supply, and supply means where it's

going to go in its estimates. If you use the warrant provisions, it has

to be pursuant to sections 18, 21 and 37, a power of an enactment — not

the Financial Administration Act, which is a procedure, but an

enactment allowing us to spend public funds loaned to a private person.

Any other

interpretation means that the government can loan money to

whoever it wishes on any terms it wishes, as long as they proceed

through the Financial Administration Act. That's an impossibility. It's

an illegality. Unless the minister can support under what enactment

this money was loaned to a private mining company, it's illegal, and he

must reply.

Is the minister aware that part of the road the money was to be used

for is in the United States of America?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, if the member believes that

the Minister of Finance has acted illegally, then there is a course of

action for him to follow. It is not for me to defend or to answer his

interpretation that I have acted illegally, because I have not. But if

he continues to believe that, then let the member put a motion on the

order paper, and it shall be called in due course.

The member somehow has difficulty understanding that the Financial

Administration Act is not a "process, " it is an enactment. Again I

indicate that the sections to which I have referred the member are

correct for the purpose: the authorization that would have occurred but

did not. Again, we are debating something which might have occurred but

did not. And yes, in line with the last question that the member put to

me on the basis of advice from the member for Atlin (Mr. Passarell), I

was aware that the road did cross the international boundary.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, I do not doubt the sincerity of the

minister. However, I am not in any way persuaded that the minister is

correct in his

interpretation of the Financial Administration Act. I

consider it a very serious misinterpretation.

When I started asking questions, I assumed that the minister could

produce the enactment. I did not in any way assume that there was no

enactment or legislative authority for the loan, other than the

Financial Administration Act. I am very sincerely shocked. If the

minister cannot provide the authority for the loan, would he agree and

undertake to refer this matter — the question of the appropriation — to

the auditor-general to immediately report to the House? In all

sincerity, I believe that the question, if not authorized by another

statute, is illegal. Would he have the auditor-general independently

review the matter and provide an opinion?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to give the

member an opportunity to reflect on this overnight. We could then

discuss it. I do not reject his suggestion, but he is having some

difficulty with respect to the authority which has been used in this

particular instance. That is my view. I certainly would be prepared to

canvass this with him tomorrow forthwith.

Schedule 1 approved.

On the

preamble.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Chairman, there's a reference in the second

"whereas" of the

preamble to the special warrant references in the

schedule. As I understand it — perhaps you could give me some guidance

here, Mr. Chairman — the

preamble, whether approved or not, is not law.

We're not enacting anything by the passage of the

preamble. The

enactment is contained in sections 1 and 2 of the bill. "Her Majesty,

by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of

British Columbia, enacts as follows...." That's what we have

enacted. But we've got a

preamble in here having a cross-reference to

the special warrants in

schedule 1. I gather that there's no subsequent

requirement for the Legislature or the committee to make any decision

with respect to those warrants in an enacting sense. They are in fact

money that has been appropriated and either spent or not spent, given

this Scottie situation a moment ago. If, for argument's sake, there was

a disparity between what the

preamble says and what the

schedule says,

what would be the situation? Suppose there was a disparity, some

references that were not factually correct. Where would we be with

respect to the schedule?

[ Page 5471 ]

HON. MR. CURTIS: I think the member for Skeena is seeking a

legal opinion from me. I have requested interim supply under the Supply

Act, Bill 29, and having taken that decision and made that request, I

have relied on legislative counsel to put it in the appropriate form in

line with the statutes of British Columbia. He may want to expand upon

it, but I cannot give him a legal reference as to what might happen in

the event that it is found to be lacking.

MR. HOWARD: Can the minister assure the committee, then, that

the

schedule which is referred to in the

preamble accurately reflects

that the

schedule is factually correct with the warrants? In other

words, does the

schedule say what the warrants say? Is that

part

correct? The minister should know that; it's not an opinion.

HON. MR. CURTIS: I believe that to be the case, Mr. Chairman.

MR. HOWARD: If it were not factually correct, where would we

be? That's what I'm trying to get to. Let me point out to the minister

what we've already done here. In

schedule 1, under the item referring

to Scottie that was talked about earlier, it says: "Loan to Scottie

Mines Ltd." Scottie Mines Ltd. does not exist. There is no such

corporation called Scottie Mines Ltd. What I'm trying to get to is, how

can we have the incorporation in a statute of a reference to a loan to

a company which does not exist?

HON. MR. CURTIS: As dealt with at length this morning, this

is an appropriation. To say that it does not exist.... As the member

for Atlin (Mr. Passarell) indicated this morning, the mine did exist;

it closed. So it is skirting a little bit around some of the detail to

say that it does not exist. That is correct, but it did exist. An

appropriation was made for a particular activity associated with the

work in that mine site. The appropriation has not been made; the money

has not been spent.

With respect to the main point of the member for Skeena, as I

understood his thesis, in the event that the

preamble was found to be

incorrect, at fault, lacking, then I assume that an amendment would

have to be presented to the House and to the committee.

MR. HOWARD: The minister should listen carefully to what I

said. I made no reference to the mine, whether it's in operation or

not, or in existence or anything else. I said, and I'll quote what I

said: "Scottie Mines Ltd. does not exist. There is no such corporation

by that name." So how can there be in the

schedule a reference to a

loan to a corporation which does not exist?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Does the member have some other name that he

would like us to have...?

[3:15]

MR. HOWARD: I'm glad the minister is seeking my advice about

this matter. If he had sought it earlier he wouldn't have got into the

difficulty that he's in right now. The name that I would suggest be in

the

schedule is the correct name of the company, if that's who you made

the loan to. What's wrong with having the correct name of the company

in there.?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Which one would the member suggest, Mr.

Chairman?

MR. HOWARD: I'm glad again the minister is so obtuse that

he's not able to identify this.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order!

MR. HOWARD: I would have in there the correct name of the

company, the name of the company that appears in the order-in-council,

the name of the company that appears in the Survey of Mines and Energy

Resources as the proper name of that company. If the minister wants me

to refresh his memory, the order-in-council that was passed pointed out

that a special warrant "be prepared for the signature of the

Lieutenant-Governor authorizing the payment from the consolidated

revenue fund of the sum of $435,000 to cover the funding of a loan to

Scottie Gold Mines Ltd." Mr. Minister, you just got the wrong company

in there; that's all.

Preamble approved.

Title approved.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise

and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Bill 29, Supply Act (No. 1), 1985, reported complete without

amendment.

MR. LAUK: Under standing orders a question of privilege

should be raised at the earliest opportunity, and I do so now. In the

committee stage of the Supply Act which is presently before the House,

in answering to questions the minister has steadfastly refused, or

wrongly interpreted his authority....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. The Chair cannot

hear a matter that was brought up in committee.

MR. LAUK: No, this is a question of privilege; it's not a

matter of....

MR. SPEAKER: Nonetheless, hon. member, if the matter arose in

committee, it must be dealt with in committee. As the member is well

aware, the Chair can have no knowledge of what goes on in committee;

therefore the point raised.... I'm sure the fact that we have risen at

this stage will not preclude the member from raising it again when the

committee sits. Clearly, the matter that the member is attempting to

raise now must be raised and debated in the committee forum as

opposed.... In fact, hon. member, it did take place in committee, and

it must therefore be dealt with in that forum, not in the House.

MR. LAUK: May I state the question? The question of privilege

that I'm putting to Mr. Speaker and to the House is this: it is the

responsibility of the Legislature to scrutinize and to pass

expenditures of public funds. That's a 600-year-old

[ Page 5472 ]

privilege of members of this House. There is no authority indicated

by the minister, and none that we can find, to authorize the loan

appropriation. The minister has not indicated under what authority that

loan appropriation could be made. We are now moving from committee

stage to third reading of a bill, and I'm suggesting that the loan — on

the basis of the facts available to me — is illegal. It is a breach of

the privilege of me, as an hon. member, not to know or have information

about the authority of loans made with the use of public funds.

I am unable to vote aye or nay to this bill without such

information, and that's the breach of privilege I'm bringing to Your

Honour's attention. There is absolutely no need for the Speaker to know

what went on in committee, except to the extent that — on the face of

it — the loan was illegal. It's well known in the rules that members

have their privileges breached if they are not provided with

information that is required of the Crown to vote aye or nay on any

question before the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Notwithstanding the points raised by the member,

the Chair must reiterate that a matter that clearly took place in

committee, which the member found to offend his particular view of how

the rules should be, must be addressed in committee. The Chair is bound

by that over the same 600 years that the member referred to. The

matter, hon. member, must therefore be addressed in committee.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Speaker, I seek the floor on the basis that I

ask leave to move that this bill be referred to the auditor-general

before third reading, for an opinion to be expressed. I ask leave of

the House to have this matter referred to the auditor-general for an

opinion on the legality of the Scottie Mines loan before we pass on

third reading.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. member, the Chair is unable

to hear the motion from the member at this particular time. There is a

place for motions; this is not the place. Therefore the very motion by

the member, in itself, cannot be heard.

MR. LAUK: I asked for leave of the House. It's not a question

of order.

MR. SPEAKER: Notwithstanding, hon. member, no person has the

right at any time during the proceedings to stand up and simply ask for

leave to make any motion. There is a specific place on the order paper

for such activity. With all due respect, hon. member, this is not that

place.

MR. LAUK: We're talking about a $435,000 appropriation. The

minister has informed us it will not be expended. What I'm worried

about is this: how many other loans are there that have been made

without authority of the Legislature?

MR. SPEAKER: Clearly, hon. member, we are now entering into

an area of debate. The Chair has made it clear, I believe, that the

matter referred to by the member must be raised in committee; it cannot

be raised at this particular point.

Bill 29, Supply Act (No. 1), 1985, read a third time and passed.

HON. MR. CURTIS: On a point of order, I heard quite clearly,

as perhaps other members did, a few moments ago, that the member for

Skeena (Mr. Howard) indicated from his seat: "Lending money to his

friends." I find that offensive in the extreme, and I ask him to

withdraw.

MR. SPEAKER: The Chair did not hear the remarks, hon. member.

Had the Chair heard, it would have made the same request, I am sure. In

the interests of parliamentary....

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I made the remark, in case you want

to hear it. And that remark was, yes: "Lending money to his friends."

Is that inappropriate?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, clearly it indicates an improper

action. I would ask the member to withdraw.

MR. HOWARD: Sure. Scottie Gold Mines think they're his

friends. Sorry to hear that they're not.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I would ask the member to

withdraw the remark.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I'll withdraw it. If the minister is

so....

MR. SPEAKER: Thank you. The remark has been withdrawn.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: May I have leave to make an introduction?

Leave granted.

HON. MR. WATERLAND: Mr. Speaker, in the gallery today is a

group of grade 11 French-immersion students from the city of Merritt,

accompanied to the Legislature by their teacher, Mr. Godin. They have

just completed a tour of the precincts, conducted in French. I'd ask

the House to please welcome them.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF ATTORNEY-GENERAL

On vote 11: minister's office, $223, 385.

HON. MR. SMITH: I'm pleased to introduce these estimates for

the fiscal year. I'm just going to offer some brief assessment on the

budget and touch on a few of the programs and issues that we're going

to face during the fiscal year.

It will probably benefit members to be aware of some of the

initiatives that we're going to continue in the next 12 months to meet

the changing and demanding needs of justice services and programs for

which we have responsibility. These programs that we are responsible

for in my ministry and in Health and in Education — social service

programs — consume, as is well known, 75 percent of the total

expenditures of the province. The funding of justice-related services

are an important element in the social program. It's proposed this year

in the estimates that we spend $367.4 million, or approximately 4

percent of the total amount of

[ Page 5473 ]

spending by this government. It also represents an increase of

approximately 6.7 percent over the $344 million that was budgeted for

in the last fiscal year.

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

As the Finance minister noted, in introducing his budget, the policy

base from the budget was established, through provincial initiatives,

to reduce government spending and to reallocate budgets to the

highest-priority programs. As I indicated in this committee last year,

our ministry took

part in that process, and these estimates represent a

continuation of initiatives intended to streamline our operations and

also allow us to deliver our major programs.

We continued over the past year to meet our fundamental

responsibilities to development of policy and management programs, and

to review our entire operation, so that we think we're now leaner and

more efficient than we were before.

One of the finance issues underlying our budget which I intend to

speak on here — and I've spoken on it in the past — is the Young

Offenders Act, one of those federal initiatives which impact so much on

provincial budgeting. The additional funding requirements that this

federal statute have produced are very significant, and they have been

incorporated in our estimates. The Young Offenders Act will impact on

spending by the British Columbia Buildings Corporation as the

development of new facilities is required. British Columbia has....

MS. BROWN: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the

minister would speak up and speak more slowly. He's mumbling, and it's

very difficult.... What he's saying is very interesting, but I

can't hear a word of it. He's just rolling along in his usual boring

way. Speak up — and slower.

[3:30]

HON. MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman, I take it as the highest of

compliments to be accused of being boring in estimates. I was certainly

always told that that was the objective of estimates, and indeed I have

honed it to a fine art. As for mumbling, it's the International Year

for Mumblers. You have absolutely no compassion for us.

In the past decade we have supported the need for changes in the

juvenile delinquency legislation. We think that the old Juvenile

Delinquents Act was a paternalistic act, and for some years in this

province, despite that act, we've been moving towards more of an

accountability system and providing alternative ways of dealing with

young people, instead of incarceration. We recognized, therefore, that

there should be some new national legislation. That legislation was

finally born in April of last year and was proclaimed, all except for

the compulsory age provision, which comes into force in a week's time.

We in British Columbia steadily achieved a number of reforms at the

provincial level. We extended probation service. We implemented

specialized residential and attendance programs. We involved community

and volunteer resources in all our programs, including our youth

containment programs. So as a result of these reforms, we're in a

position to meet many of the requirements of the Young Offenders Act.

While we have strongly supported the principle of reform in the

juvenile law, we feel that the Young Offenders Act is going to place

unreasonable burdens on this province. It is going to force major

capital investment in new facilities for 17-year-olds, who will now be

dealt with under the juvenile justice system, many of them having

already been in the adult system. There is also going to be a

significant increase in demand for provision of legal services for

young persons, who are now guaranteed representation by legal counsel

at public expense in virtually all circumstances. There will also be,

under the Young Offenders Act, additional bureaucratic process,

particularly in record-keeping and destruction of documents, which is

going to prove very costly, with little benefit to juveniles in

conflict with the law or to the administration of the justice system.

I'll give you one example of how the record-destruction provision is

apparently going to work. There was a case in Ontario last week of a

young offender who was tried in youth court for murdering his sister

and another young person. He was a 13-year-old lad. He was adjudged not

guilty by reason of insanity. Under the record-destruction provisions

of the Young Offenders Act, the judge was of the opinion that the

record of this proceeding would have to be expunged and all records

destroyed. That, of course, would be an absurd result, because it would

mean that this young man, going to a containment facility of some

kind.... When his case came up for review or for treatment, the

officials would not have the benefit of the transcript or the record.

So it appears that some modification will have to be made to the

Young Offenders Act. I have argued with two solicitors-general in two

governments over the past year that some features of the Young

Offenders Act should be modified. I led a group of attorneys-general in

January who met with the Solicitor-General and persuaded him that there

was merit to at least deferring the age provision, because, as you

know, different ages have prevailed in different provinces. For

instance, Manitoba and Quebec both had 18 as their age. Ontario and

several other provinces had 16. We had 17. So for Ontario it's a major

expense to duplicate facilities at the youth level that they already

had at the adult level. For us it's a major expense. We estimate that

it will be an additional $20 million in this year's budget. We also

estimate that we're looking at an increase of between $40 million and

$50 million in this province of provincial money only, during the next

three years, to comply with the age provision. If you double that

amount of money by adding in the federal contribution, you're looking

at at least $80 million spent on reproducing containment facilities in

British Columbia. Think of what $80 million could do in programs of a

preventive and educational nature for young people who are in

difficulty with the law.

I thought that I had been successful in persuading the federal

government to modify or delay the age provisions, but they announced

two weeks ago that they were going ahead. The age provision is going to

go ahead on April I unless there is some divine intervention. We have

an obligation, therefore, to do our best to ensure that the Young

Offenders Act is implemented smoothly and effectively in British

Columbia. It will not be as smooth and effective as it would have been

if we'd had several more years to do so, but we will do our best.

The major operating impact of the Young Offenders Act, then, is

based on age. We'll have to accommodate over 100 additional young

offenders in new and renovated facilities in the coming year. To meet

the young offenders provisions we established Holly Cottage, a new

open-custody facility in Burnaby. We also renovated Magnolia Cottage at

Willingdon

[ Page 5474 ]

to provide additional secure beds as well as psychiatric assessment

space. That facility will be operational within the next month.

Seventeen-year-olds as well will be placed in facilities in Victoria,

in Centre Creek Camp in Chilliwack, in Lakeview Camp in Campbell River

and in Boulder Bay Camp.

The ministry has been developing, through the course of the fiscal

year, plans for the construction of new replacement facilities in the

northern interior regions. Construction costs of all new facilities

required for the Young Offenders Act will come close to $20 million

this year, as I said before.

Corrections programs, at approximately $115 million in the coming

fiscal year, represent the largest part of the spending in this

ministry. The major budget elements relate to the operation of adult

correction centres and attendant probation services. One of the major

problems we face during the coming year is the need to contend with

high levels of intake in the adult system. We have a phenomenon in

British Columbia that's occurring across Canada and in other parts of

North America: that is, there's an increased demand being placed on

correctional facilities to house numbers of inmates well in excess of

design capacity. While it's the objective of government to ensure that

the appropriate type and number of facilities are available, there must

be a more fundamental question asked with respect to the purpose of

incarcerating individuals and the need for more effective alternative

programming.

The government has indicated its commitment to the upgrading of

correctional facilities. We've made major strides in that regard: the

Vancouver pre-trial centre last year, and this year the completion of

the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre project. I've viewed

that project and so has my opposite number, the member for Vancouver

Centre (Mr. Lauk), and I think that it is a first-class facility. It's

not a facility that is particularly frilly, I didn't think, but it's

particularly efficient, secure, safe and not draconian. Planning is

underway for upgrading and replacing facilities located throughout the

province.

In addition I might add, Mr. Chairman, that we have not departed

from our original policy of gradually phasing out Oakalla. The first

step in that plan was the opening of the Vancouver pre-trial centre, to

handle the remand prisoners in the lower mainland. We will, through

planning in the next year, go further down the road of that commitment.

We only delayed doing so as part of the capital freeze during the

restraint program on capital construction. But we remain committed to

the policy of phasing out Oakalla.

We have to assess, I guess, whether we're representing society's

best interests through merely developing correctional facilities —

holding facilities — or whether alternate forms of sanction are not as

appropriate as well. We have a significant investment in preventive

programs, and I think that we will spend more effort in that area of

the corrections branch.

It's essential that we develop strategies to deal with the pressure

points in the justice system. As an example, alcohol-related driving

offences continue to drive disproportionately larger numbers of

admissions to provincial institutions and also load our courts with

these types of cases. In Corrections in fiscal 1983-84 we had almost

17,000 admissions to our facilities, with alcohol-related driving

offences accounting for 4,511 of those almost 17,000. That is 26.5

percent of people coming into our jails for alcohol-related offences.

Development of a legislative and program framework to more effectively

combat drinking and driving can have major benefits for the justice

system and society generally, because our objective, of course, is not

to load the jails but to get them off the road. I intend to present

some new initiatives in the current session with regard to drinking and

driving.

I will also continue to support the ministry's continuing program

for traffic safety. It is comprised of senior officials from the

Ministries of Attorney-General, Transportation and Highways, Health and

from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the RCMP and the

police departments of Victoria and Vancouver. This committee, now in

its second year of operation, has ensured improved coordination of

police traffic law enforcement and is identifying, and coordinating

implementation of, traffic safety program initiatives.

Critical to continuing the initiatives in this regard are the

ongoing funding of essential activities that community agencies

perform. The work of the ministry is significantly advanced by the

initiatives of groups like those which run the sexual assault centres,

the Native Courtworkers and Counselling Association of B.C., the

Elizabeth Fry Society, the John Howard Society and the other community

agencies that provide generously of time and volunteer help in support

of initiatives in the justice system. I had the honour to address one

of those last week, the B.C. Borstal Association. I met with them to

recognize the very fine work that they do and have done for some years

in this province for young people.

Over the past year I've had the opportunity of meeting a number of

other community groups, as well as police and justice officials. I

think that we're very well served by both our professionals and

volunteers.

My colleague the Finance minister announced in the budget the family

support program jointly operated by myself and the Ministry of Human

Resources. This program continues as a pilot project in the next fiscal

year and should provide very real support to single parents not in

receipt of regular and adequate support payments.

Additionally, the Task Force on Legal Aid reported as a dominant

theme the need to improve the delivery of family law services. I

certainly accept this recommendation as a major priority for the

provincial funding of legal services in the coming year. I've directed

that additional effort be made through other ministry programs,

including family law services and legal services to government and in

the probation and family service corrections to assisting in the

provision of family and children's services throughout the Ministry of

Attorney-General programs.

I am impressed over the past year with the sensitivity in the

justice system that has arisen in the last few years for the needs of

victims of crime. A very much lost constituency in the justice system

has been the victim. Those of us who have practised criminal law in the

courts will probably testify to that. Victims spend their days

endlessly waiting outside courtrooms, waiting for word as to what's

going on, waiting to be called, excluded as they are as witnesses,

often excluded from information, and they feel very frustrated and

alienated from the system that we've been operating. I'm going to try

to make more effort in all branches of my ministry to deal in a

responsive way with victims of crime and to integrate them into the

justice system.

We have participated in federal-provincial task forces on victims of

crime and undertook, as well, the appointment in the police services

branch of a victim services coordinator with the objective of

developing and coordinating improved services to victims in British

Columbia. I have also structured

[ Page 5475 ]

an internal victim services steering committee of all the major

components of the system to review and develop new victims'

initiatives, so that will be one of our objectives in the coming year.

In other program areas we have taken the initial step in the

development and implementation of a new policy to deal with

contemporary problems in the justice system. We have our spousal

assault program, which I think has been commended across the country.

We have a new policy which recognizes the criminal nature of wife

assault, with a view to affording the highest level of protection to

persons in need of assistance. The police have been most cooperative in

this new approach, which is quite innovative because formerly they were

treated as domestic matters.

We've undertaken a total review, as well, of child sexual abuse, and

in concert with the Ministry of Human Resources we should have

improvements and new developments in that area.

[3:45]

1 have also tried to place some emphasis on law reform and to

modernizing some of our statutes and paying attention to the work and

recommendations of the British Columbia Law Reform Commission. We will

be bringing in, on a regular basis, legislation that will incorporate

their recommendations. I think the House will welcome these legislative

initiatives as really being bipartisan and based on recommendations

that have stood the test of public scrutiny from the Law Reform

Commission.

We'll have some new legislative reforms as well in the field of

family law, which I think the House will be very pleased with. There

will be legislation introduced on a form of video regulation to try to

stop the flow of some of the very vile material that is available in

video outlets.

We will be introducing, quite shortly, our proposals for Charter of

Rights amendments so that we can meet the obvious deficiencies that are

there in a number of our statutes and will be apparent when the

equality sections of the Charter of Rights come into force in

mid-April. So I expect that we'll have a bill before the House to

examine which will meet the most glaring requirements of the charter. I

cannot pretend, though, that we will address all the concerns that may

be raised under the charter. I don't think that the mind of man is

capable of doing that in any event. There will be some issues that will

require specific debate and address under the charter, but we're going

to deal with a number of the more obvious discriminations that are

apparent by reason of the equality section.

In concluding, Mr. Chairman, I will be pleased to respond during

estimates to a range of members' concerns, and I hope members also will

feel free, as they have in the past, to bring matters directly to me

during the year.

MR. LAUK: In listening to the Attorney-General it becomes

clear that the government is once more focusing upon those matters that

are easy to handle under the administration of justice, and not those

matters that are difficult to handle.

At a time when we're cutting back or holding the line on legal aid,

when legal aid lawyers are allowed a tariff fee that's half of the

Ontario legal aid tariff, at a time when other matters involving legal

counsel and the direct administration of justice are being cut back,

such as court services, sheriff's services and extra police, this

minister, through the government, is expending money on jails. We are

getting more and more jails. We are getting jails for young people;

we're getting jails for adults. And the minister is not directing his

mind to how he could save money when it comes to the corrections branch

budget of $115 million a year.

I do not want to suggest that the Attorney-General has a myopic view

of his responsibilities, and with great respect I want to put out to

the committee for discussion a modest proposal. In the corrections

branch we have prison institutions. Since the war, and increasingly in

the past 15 to 20 years, the discipline and structure of those

institutions in many cases has collapsed, and it's still in great

danger and great risk of further collapse. We've had trouble at the

penitentiaries across Canada, but we've also had trouble in our

provincial penal institutions. We've had hostage-takings and riots, at

great expense to the public purse. In fact, the whole Canadian criminal

judicial system is proving to be very costly. I think one of the

focuses is on the prison institutions.

Canada imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the

free world, approximately one in 1,000. In 1980 about 25,000 people, or

more than two-thirds of all Canadians convicted of indictable offences,

were sentenced to prison. Almost 50 percent of people in our provincial

prisons are there for non-payment of fines, and 80 percent of those

inmates in our federal prisons are there for crimes against property:

that is, they are thieves and have non-violent records.

I'm saying there are too many Canadians in prison. Our prisons are

overcrowded, and the prisons have had a collapse in discipline. What I

want to know is.... I'll wait until the minister's through

consulting so we can get on with these estimates.

I wonder if the Attorney-General will consider this proposal. It's a

proposal based on only the findings that I have been able to get by my

interviews with guards and inmates, also relying on part of my

experience as criminal defence counsel in years past. Why has the

discipline in our penal institutions collapsed? I'm suggesting that one

possibility — and I'm convinced personally that it's a probability — is

that in society's desire to rehabilitate the criminal mind,

particularly since the Second World War.... We have inserted into

our penal institutions armies of padres, psychiatrists and social

workers, and dozens of rehabilitative programs like KEY and STEP, and a

whole variety of EST-like programs. I don't mean to be too facetious

about this, but I want to contrast what occurs there. I'm not here to

argue the position of prison rights activists; I want to argue from the

position of the real prisoner, and what's in his best interest.

To me, as a society, we are psychologically deficient if we think

that we can love the criminal mind into rehabilitation without first

demanding that each person in our society pays the price. What should

be the price? In a democratic society, the price should be even-handed

and fair. Everybody who is found guilty of a particular offence should

face pretty well the same penalty, barring differences in record.

What does this do psychologically to a prisoner? The lines are clear

to a convict. He knows that if he's convicted and his appeals are

exhausted, he will face the penalty. Let's not discuss for the moment

whether that penalty is for the protection of the public, for his

rehabilitation or whatever. It's the penalty; it's the responsibility

for his actions.

What happens to his responsibility as a convict when he reaches the

prison system, and he finds that there are avenues to get around the

regulations that have, before that time,

[ Page 5476 ]

established the relationship between prisoners and the relationship

between the prison population and the administration, represented by

the guards? What has occurred? What has occurred is that through

psychiatry programs, rehabilitation and a variety of other programs in

the prison setting, there are various classes of prisoner. That creates

animosity and ill-feeling between prisoners in the prison population.

It creates total confusion in the prison administration's enforcement

of the rules. That in turn has created anger and hostility.

I have had long-term convicts inform me — these are 30-year people

who swear they're not going back now; they're too old — that there's

more violence in our prison system in Canada today than there was 30

years ago. We've got better rooms, we've got better facilities, we've

got better programs and whatever, but there's more violence. There's

more violence between prisoners; there's more violence between guards

and prisoners. I say that one of the probabilities of that breakdown in

discipline is the uneven administration of regulations within the

institution.

Is the Attorney-General protesting what I've just said, or shall we

move that the committee rise? Should the committee rise, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would the member for Vancouver Centre continue.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, I'll wait for a moment for the

Attorney-General to return. But the point that should be raised is that

we're spending millions and millions of dollars on institutions and

millions and millions of dollars on rehabilitation, and it's not

working. Any guard, any prisoner in an honest moment, and anybody

involved in the administration of justice will tell you: there is no

rehabilitation in our prison system. It's just not working.

I'm not suggesting that all of a sudden we're going to reform the

prison system in Canada because of my speech today. But I am suggesting

that the Attorney-General look carefully at appointing an inquiry which

will save, I'm convinced, the province millions of dollars. If not, it

will save the province the hundreds of thousands of dollars that we

have to expend from time to time to clear up riot-torn prisons,

violence to guards and violence to the other staff in the prisons,

caused, I think, primarily by this breakdown in discipline.

We're also letting down 70 percent of the prison population that

accepts responsibility for their actions, will serve their time and,

without a carrot or a stick on parole or supervision, will leave the

institution and enter a rehabilitation mode.

If you join the two, the two will fail. The two have failed. Let me

give you an example. A prisoner, let's say pretty hard-bitten — we

might even say, without benefit of psychiatric advice, that he looks

psychopathic to us — has committed a series of crimes. He's sentenced

to prison, and he finds that in prison he can opt for one or more of

these programs. By opting for these programs, one of two things —

usually both — happens. One is that if he can convince them, with

whatever skill, stealth — and occasionally sincerity, let's say for the

moment — he can that he should get out earlier, he can tie up an army

of psychiatrists, social workers and benevolent-thinking people, and

twist them to the point where he can obtain his early leaving of the

prison institution.

That's great for him. Where does the harm come? The harm comes,

first, in our deceiving ourselves that there is any rehabilitation in

the prison setting, because there isn't. Secondly, the harm comes

because he's using the system within the prison structure to obtain

special status as a prisoner. The animosity that that creates between

prisoners and through the guards has become immense. The other

prisoners do not know where they stand. They see the injustices of this

confusion, and that is the underlying psychology, I put it to the

committee, for a lot of the animosity between guards and prisoners and

between the prisoners themselves.

[4:00]

If there's a breakdown in the enforcement of regulations, or an

uneven enforcement of regulations in prisons, it allows guards and the

prison administration too much discretion in the enforcement of

regulations. It must be predictable, clear, certain and swift, and it

will avoid the increasing brutality and violence in our prisons. It

will certainly diminish it, if not avoid it altogether. If the prison

guard is trained to know that woe betide him if he ever applies the

regulations unevenly, and if the administration backs the prison guards

and the prison population knows clearly where it stands, discipline can

be reinstituted.

I do not argue against better conditions for our prison population;

I call for them. I do not argue for more people in prisons; I argue for

fewer people in prisons. There are too many non-violent convicts in

prison. They don't belong there. We can spend $3,000 a year to house

them in the community, but we spend $50,000 a year to keep them in

penal institutions. That's where the money can come from for legal aid,

for rape relief centres, and to fund the other programs in the

administration of justice. If the rehabilitation mode is required, it

will be required after the prison institution setting has dealt with

the convict.

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to ask that the member for Skeena (Mr.

Howard) elaborate on some of the points that I have raised in terms of

provincial penal institutions, and as they apply to federal ones as

well. Then I would ask whether the Attorney-General has any comments on

that.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I would like to make an observation

concerning what I consider to be a very distressing situation that

recently occurred in our country, and that is the judgment of the

Federal Court of Appeal pronounced on March 14, just a couple of weeks

ago. From the perspective of the general public of Canada, Mr.

Chairman, it is indeed a very unfortunate judgment. I'm not questioning

that the court had its duty to do, and indeed it did its duty — and

perhaps correctly so. But I'm very concerned about the consequences.

There appears to be almost complete freedom, save and except the

Criminal Code, to import filth into our country with impunity, at least

for the present. I'd say that is very bad. The court in the case of

Luscher v. Deputy Minister of National Revenue considered the following

facts at issue. This dealt with narratives — and I'm referring now to

the judgment — in grossly vulgar language. There were extremely

explicit photographs. The court summed up the findings of the trial

judge with these words: "These actions are in no way unnatural or

unlawful and, indeed, they are a common part of the lives of Canadian

men and women."

This is not the point that I am going to make during the course of

my remarks — that it was something within the common part of the lives

of Canadian men and women. The court dealt with tariff item 99201-1 —

and I'm reading from the judgment — and this tariff item in the customs

regulations reads: "Books, printed paper, drawings, paintings,

[ Page 5477 ]

prints, photographs, or representations of any kind of a treasonable

or seditious, or of an immoral or indecent character." "Section 2(

b) of the charter enshrines and protects as 'fundamental' freedoms:

'freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom

of the press and other media of communication."' The court said this:

"No freedom, however, can be absolute, and those guaranteed by the

charter are no exception. They are, by

section 1, subject to, such

reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in

a free and democratic society."' That text, said the court in its turn,

"makes it clear enough that the task of demonstrating the justification

for a limitation of a protected freedom falls upon government," which

I think is indeed a correct articulation of the law.

The court continues:

"A reasonable limit prescribed by law is that it

should be expressed in terms sufficiently clear to permit a

determination of where and what the limit is. A limit which is vague,

ambiguous, uncertain, or subject to discretionary determination is, by

that fact alone, an unreasonable limit. Uncertainty and vagueness are

constitutional vices when they are used to restrain constitutionally

protected rights and freedoms."

Then we find this statement, Mr. Chairman:

"The first observation" — dealing with the legislation

the court was considering — "to be made in this regard is that the

words 'immoral' and 'indecent' are nowhere defined in the legislation.

This at once serves to distinguish the provisions of tariff item

99201-1 from the obscenity provisions of the Criminal Code, which

contains in subsection 159(8) words which might be thought to give to

those provisions sufficient certainty and particularity."

Then the court found, towards the end of the judgment: "I conclude

that, insofar as it prohibits the importation of matters of immoral or

indecent character, tariff item 99201-1 is not a reasonable limitation

upon the freedoms guaranteed by

section 2(

b) of the charter and is of

no force or effect." Well, with all respect to the learned judges, I

tend to disagree with their conclusion. Some may well say, as did Mr.

Bumble in Oliver Twist, that the law is an ass. Others may say that the

judgment is wrong, and it should be appealed. Others may say that the

judgment is indeed correct and that the act should be amended.

Mr. Chairman, I spoke to a senior customs official on the weekend

and, regretfully, I gather it is not business as usual. They are

following the decision, with the result that material heretofore

prohibited, and which I would say pretty well every layman in the

country would consider highly immoral, is coming into the country. I

would rather not give a specific, because it's filthy; it is

objectionable; it is obscene, and, in my view, it's manifestly

disgraceful. It's rather rottenly described as "kiddie porn." It's

pictures of adults and literally babies in disgusting poses and

performing disgusting acts. This material is usually produced by

organized crime.

I would like to ask my colleague the Attorney-General whether he has

urged his counterparts in Ottawa to immediately appeal the case, or to

ask for a stay so that the current and well-accepted practice of

customs authorities may continue, or that they immediately introduce

remedial legislation in the House of Commons.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Chairman, the subject matter raised by the

Minister of Intergovernmental Relations is an extremely important one

and is of concern to members on this side of the House. It will be

dealt with, not by me initially, not to detract from the value and the

importance of it. I think it's a subject matter that lends itself to a

continued debate, so that all views can be expressed with respect to it

and come to some consensus, rather than have it sort of mixed up with a

variety of other subjects that come under the Attorney-General's

ministry. As the member for Vancouver Centre indicated earlier, we want

initially to deal with corrections as a segment of the ministry and put

forward some points in what we hope is a cohesive way. We hope to get

some response from the Attorney-General with respect to those matters.

I want to follow along the line of the subject under his domain

referred to as corrections. During the time that I was in the federal

House, I spent a considerable amount of time along with some of my

other colleagues in paying attention to the matter of corrections in

the federal scene. I gained a fair amount of experience in visiting

various institutions and talking with people in them, both custodial

and administrative, inmates, and the like. Probably one thing in

prisons we may want to try and think about in a rather uncomplicated

way is that there are basically two groups in the prison system: one of

the groups has the keys and the other doesn't. It falls into those two

basic groups. The people who don't have the keys have an obligation to

themselves, they say, to get out as quickly and as early as possible by

whatever means possible. The group that has the keys says no, you've

got to stay here for the stated period of time until some other

authority says you can go. But who has the keys, who the custodial

groups are and what their responsibility and authority are, oftentimes

becomes very confused, because into the scene has come — over quite a

period of time now — a group that we loosely refer to as the social

scientists: psychologists, psychiatrists, penologists, social workers

and so on. They have been fitted into this prison system presumably to

assist in identifying the emotional characteristics of the prisoner,

and to use that information in some way to see that the inmate becomes

a rehabilitated human being and learns his or her lesson, as the saying

goes.

The theory was that if this psychological identification took place

it would add to rehabilitation and cut down on recidivism and so on. I

think the theory has failed. I don't think it has worked as anticipated

by those who promoted and advanced it as the panacea for the situations

that exist in prisons, both federally and provincially. I'm quick to

say that some years ago I was one of those who felt that psychological

help from trained personnel was necessary; I still do, but in a

different setting.

The custodial officer in this system, whose function is to keep

custody of the inmates — keep them locked up and so on — is associated

with the social scientists in terms of relating to the inmate. We've

basically got three groups now: the custodial group, the social

scientist group, and the inmates. Because of this interplay between

those three groups, and internally sometimes within them, the lines of

discipline, authority and clarity of purpose are blurred and confused,

not only in the minds of the inmate, who may be unsure what is expected

of him in terms of a rule system, but also in the minds of the

custodial officers, many times in the minds of the administration, who

are also in a custodial officer capacity, and in the minds of the

social scientists and the psychologists as well. All of this confusion

arises because of the

[ Page 5478 ]

importation into what otherwise should be a rigid and structured

system with clear rules as to what should occur within it. There's a

breakdown of discipline as a result of the confusion. There's a

breakdown of what the historical authority-inmate relationship should

be. There should be one, and everybody should know what it is.

The purpose, it would seem to me, not only in prisons but in our

whole society — it should be the same way with parents bringing up

children — is to instil individual recognition of that person

accepting responsibility for his or her own actions. That primary

objective has been lost sight of in our prison system in the last three

or four decades. It has been pushed to one side, and that contributes

to the confusion and the difficulties.

[4:15]

One of the problems arising out of this three-group interplay — and

the internal interplay between them, for argument's sake — is that some

inmates are looked upon as favourites in the system. Some inmate,

because of the psychologist or the psychiatrist or whoever the social

scientist might be in the system, is identified as a person worthy of

having psychiatric or psychological treatment. Maybe it will arise out

of a decision or a statement in court, or maybe there will be a plea in

court that the person did this because they were unsure of what they

were doing at the moment, or were emotionally disturbed, or whatever

reason; it's very hard to say. Maybe an inmate will be chosen by the

social scientists to fit into the psychiatrist's sort of activities, or

maybe the inmate will opt to try to do it himself. That creates

inmate-versus-inmate jealousies, hostilities and fights, attacks one

upon the other, riots and destruction of public property. If those

kinds of animosities boil up and are given support, it's one of the

contributing factors to riots.

The playing of favourites can also operate in terms of the custodial

staff picking and playing favourites, if the lines are blurred. A case

in point is the terrible and infamous riot in St. Vincent de Paul

federal penitentiary a number of years ago. After, when there was an

internal inquiry into the causes of that riot, one of the reasons for

the riot taking place was the discovery that one of the chief keepers

on a particular shift was playing favourites with inmates for

homosexual purposes. That was discovered to be the rationale. That

created the animosities and the hard feelings, and a raging riot took

place in St. Vincent de Paul, all as a result of a lack of or a

slackening off of the disciplinary structure.

Guards feel somewhat threatened in all of this. They're not sure of

what their role or function is, in a disciplinary sense. There's

animosity sometimes between guards and social scientists that come up.

In one instance the padre in a particular prison spent more time giving

advice and counsel to the guards who felt threatened by this system

than he did to inmates — and he was hired for the purpose of giving

advice and counsel to inmates. He spent his time with the custodial

officers.

It creates animosities between guards and inmates, resulting in one

visiting attacks upon the other, depending on who has the opportunity

first to do it. Inmates against guards, yes. Guards against inmates,

yes. That contributes to riots and the demoralization.

There are two groups, I think, in this kind of system, Mr. Chairman,

who really like it. One is the group of social scientists, and the

other group is the inmates who happen to fit into the social

scientists' interplay. Those who play the game; those who participate

in the game. In many cases it's looked upon just simply as that — a

game. There are inmates who will deliberately and consciously go out of

their way to try to establish an association with the psychiatrist or

the psychologist, and who will admit to almost anything put to them in

the hopes that by satisfying the inquiry of the psychiatrist or

psychologist they'll find a way out of jail. They're playing the game.

"This person wants me to admit that I hate my mother; I'll admit that

I'll hate my mother." Or whatever it might be. But it's a game

participated in by the inmate to find his way out of the system earlier

than might otherwise be the case. So those are the two that like it.

When a criminal act takes place, I think the first thing apart from

apprehension and charges and a court decision to do something with the

person who commits that act — that we must look at is how we can get

that person to accept the responsibility for his or her own actions. It

might not be possible. But how can we do it? Because if we can do it,

and if that person will accept that responsibility and say, "Yes, I am

the master of my own indignities and my own fate," and if that person

will say, "Yes, I have never met anybody in the world that's caused me

more difficulty than I have," and recognize that as a fact of life,

then that person is on the way to rehabilitation. That's the solution,

and the key to it — if the person can do that. That's got to be our

primary responsibility, after the person has gone through the courts

and regardless of what the judge says about it.

If there's an emotional or psychiatric problem that that person has,

yes, treat that. But treat that as a separate ailment. Don't mix the

two of them up. Don't mix the social scientist, with his treatment

aspects or his profession, up in the prison system, to try to lead,

either inadvertently or directly or by carelessness, the inmate to deny

the acceptance of responsibility for that inmate's own activity. Don't

let him avoid that. We need, in a prison system, very clear and precise

rules. We need discipline. We need an adherence to the rules. We need a

system within the prison of some kind of punishment if those rules are

violated. I don't mean punishment of a brutalizing nature, but clear,

precise and expected, and put out even-handedly.

I think that our prison system has failed because of our misguided

intentions. For years governments abandoned their responsibilities, and

this government is no different than the one in Ottawa in the regard of

operating a proper prison system. It has abandoned it to a group of

loosely identified social scientists, as I call them — psychiatrists,

psychologists, sociologists, penologists, whatever.

The two fundamental components of a prison operation which should

never be lost sight of, and which must be reinstituted — and I think we

can reinstitute them by getting the social scientists out of the jails

— are clearly a defined set of rules of behaviour called discipline,

and punishment for violators of that discipline. We also need an

identification of some process, and that will be the process of doing

it, the process of accepting responsibility for your own behaviour.

Mr. Chairman, I think if we abandon and get rid of social scientists

in the prison system and put them someplace else, we will then be

getting to the point of what is true and acceptable rehabilitation. If

we can get true and acceptable rehabilitation, it will mean fewer

inmates in our prisons and fewer recidivists and a lower cost to the

taxpayer for keeping our correction system in operation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, before recognizing the next

speaker, whomever that might be, I'd like to have all

[ Page 5479 ]

members of the committee refer to page 18 of our Standing Orders ,

schedule 5. For time limits on Committee of Supply, it says:

"Committee of Supply, All Proceedings (

i) Leaders of

recognized parties or designated member thereof: one opening statement

not exceeding 30 minutes, thereafter 15 minutes, and (ii) Any other

member, including a leader when another member has been designated

under (i): 15 minutes."

Further, practice recommendation No. 9 advises

us: "A member who wishes to speak as designated member should advise

the Chair as early as possible after the commencement of his or her

speech."

Following the opening remarks in the estimates of the

Attorney-General, the Attorney-General did speak over the 15 minutes,

as would be afforded to him under our new standing orders. However,

through the inadvertence of the Chair, the second member for Vancouver

Centre (Mr. Lauk) was given a green light at 13 minutes and therefore

probably given the impression that his time was up. That was not the

case.

Clearly our standing orders state that the official opposition will

be allowed one 30-minute speech during these estimates, and that can be

accepted at any time, although I would suspect in further estimates it

will be the opening statement, as is stated in our estimates.

HON. MR. SMITH: I want to respond briefly to the two topics

that have taken up most of the last half hour. First of all, to respond

to the excellent points made by the member for Vancouver Centre and the

member for Skeena. I think that they are probably not an unfair

characterization of the problems in the federal penitentiary system

even today, where you have your more-than-two-year servers, and where

you have a constant clash between the people in those institutions who

have custodial duties and those who have treatment duties. Who could

quarrel with your theme that the armies of people involved in the

treatment end do not seem to have produced the desired result?

But you know, our system, as you're aware, is a

two-year-less-a-day-maximum system and the average sentence for our

prisoners is 93 days. So that's what they're sentenced to, and what

they serve on the average is around 50 to 55 days. So we don't have a

layer of social scientists. They're just not in our system. Ours is a

penalty-serving practically oriented system.

First of all, you serve your penalty. You're eligible for provincial

parole; you get that. The only opportunities that we provide are,

firstly, work, because we don't want people being idle; and, secondly,

educational opportunities, if they can benefit from those. But we don't

have a rehabilitative, bureaucratic, social-service layer in our

system. Ours is very much pay your dues, serve your sentences, do some

work and then move out. But I don't quarrel with your basic themes —

very conservative themes, I might say — many of which I share.

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: I agree. I'm not in any way putting them

down. I think that they're....

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: Well, there's a conservatism in social

democratic themes too. I'm speaking philosophically, not from a party

standpoint. No, I think they're good comments.

If I could just say one thing about the case that my colleague

mentioned, the case of Luscher v. Deputy Minister of National Revenue.

That is the kind of case that we're going to get under the charter

dealing with legislation that the court deems obscure and vague. The

reason that case was decided as it was is because the test was for a

customs officer to deal with something on the basis of it being obscene

and immoral,

whereas the Criminal Code spells out some sort of

framework of prohibited activity. The courts are going to move right

in, under the charter, as they did with our roadside suspension

legislation, which wasn't as bad as the customs tariff, and they're

going to strike it down.

MR. LAUK: Do you think the customs tariff was a bad decision

of law?

[4:30]

[Mr. Ree in the chair.]

HON. MR. SMITH: No, I don't think it was a bad decision in

law. I think it's a bad piece of drafting. The customs tariff needs

decision at all but to get on with drafting that amendment. That's what

I said last week. But the result of the decision is just open sesame,

open floodgates, and the charter is going to be giving the impression

to Canadians that it's causing a great flourish of organized crime and

activity that Canadians don't like. So the response of legislators, I

think, has to be that when we have a piece of legislation that's

obviously bad, let's correct it and change it quickly, and speed up our

system.

I have never seen anything more cumbersome and bureaucratic than the

legislative process in Ottawa. It takes about 17 months — going the old

course — to get these changes. They're drafted and redrafted, sent to

committees and recycled back to committees, and then ultimately they're

debated by a committee that calls witnesses from all over the western

world. Finally they get into the House, and all they're doing is

changing some comma in the

schedule to the Food and Drugs Act.

MR. LAUK: Oh, come on!

HON. MR. SMITH: No, I tell you that's right. You were there.

Don't you remember that...?

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: No. You remember that fundamental change in

the law they made so that they could get the salt of a drug instead of

the drug itself in a pipe, and get a conviction? It took them about

four years to work that through their cumbersome system. They couldn't

amend anything in a week to save their life. But that's what they're

going to have to do. They're going to have to have new processes. So I

say to them: "Go to it, boys. Amend it."

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I want to offer a different

perspective on the question of corrections, because I agree with my two

colleagues that in fact there are too many people in jails in Canada,

but I think I disagree with the reasons for

[ Page 5480 ]

it. I believe that if there are too many people in jails it's

because we have too many laws that offer incarceration as the way of

dealing with the offence. That's really where we should start — by

looking at the laws that incarcerate people rather than offering

alternatives as a means of dealing with a particular offence.

I believe that the prisons have three functions. They are to protect

society from the guilty person and to punish the person who has broken

the law. But I believe that the third function they have is a

rehabilitative one and that if any of those three functions don't work,

they should be improved, not discarded. If the prisons are not

protecting society from guilty people, you don't just say: "Let's not

have prisons." If in fact they're not carrying out the job of

punishing, you don't say: "Let's not have prisons and let's not have

punishment." What sense does it make, then, if rehabilitation is not as

successful as we want it to be, to say: "Let us not have

rehabilitation"? I think that is not the correct way of looking at it.

When you look at the prison population, Mr. Chairman, you find some

very interesting things about them. For the most part they are poor —

it's always poor people who end up in prisons; in Canada, for the most

part, they are native Indian — or a very large percentage of them are

native Indian; and a study done by one of our judges in British

Columbia also tells us that for the most part they are undereducated

and, in many instances, have learning and reading disabilities.

I don't think locking these people up and saying, "You are there to

be punished," and not doing anything to help them deal with the reason

they are there is going to benefit society in any way. I think that

punishment has to go hand in hand with every effort that can be made to

ensure that when those people leave jail they either have a skill or at

least have an understanding of why they were there, and will be on

their way to trying to do things differently.

I've never been into the male jails, but I certainly have visited

the women's prisons. I notice something very interesting about

Lakeside. I made it my business to check again today the population

there, to be sure that the breakdown hadn't changed. Again, it turns

out that most of the women in that prison — or 25 percent of the women

in that prison — are native women. Fifty percent of the women in that

prison have never been to high school; as a matter of fact, more than

10 percent of the women in that prison are supposed to be functionally

illiterate, with a grade 5 education or less.

That's the statistic that I got today, Mr. Chairman, about the

people in Lakeside Correctional. I don't know whether the men are

different. I don't know whether most of the men in the male prisons are

PhDs or not. But I certainly do know that in the women's prisons, and

in particular in Lakeside, which I have visited on more than one

occasion, most of those women are poor. As I have said, an inordinate

percentage of them are native, and as this latest figure shows, 10

percent of them are functionally illiterate. I am not convinced that

society is well served by locking those women up and not doing

everything in its power to help rehabilitate them — help them to get an

education, to develop some skills, to learn a trade if that is possible

— so that when they leave the prison they can at least make an attempt

to put their lives together.

Mr. Chairman, I am also not convinced that.... I guess I have a

conflict of interest. I cannot speak about the job that social service

workers do in institutions, because I am myself a social scientist, as

you know. I am a social worker, and I do believe very strongly that one

way of helping people take responsibility for their actions is to

ensure that they understand why they did whatever it was that caused

them to end up in jail in the first place. That certainly is one of the

responsibilities of whatever social service worker one comes in contact

with in the institution.

I think it's a little bit too easy to say that the reason why things

don't work out in jail is that there are too many social workers and

too many psychiatrists in the system. We need to take a more in-depth

analysis, a more serious look at the reasons why people end up in jail

anyway — in particular, to question why so many of the people who are

in jail are poor. That's the question. Let's look at our laws and find

out why there are so many laws that result in incarceration rather than

in an alternative way of dealing with whatever the crime is. Look at

why there are so many native people in jails. Look at why there are so

many functionally illiterate people and uneducated people in jail.

Those are the kinds of things that I would like the Attorney-General to

look at, rather than grabbing a simple answer and saying that what we

need to do with our jails is get rid of our social workers and our

psychiatrists.

As I said, Mr. Chairman, I'm trying not to respond in a

conflict-of-interest fashion to this, but I am very much concerned that

because the function of rehabilitation in the system isn't working, the

Attorney-General is agreeing that the way to deal with it is to move

rehabilitation out of the system. That is not the way to deal with it.

When Mrs. Justice Proudfoot looked at the system as it affected women,

in particular Lakeside, she recommended the establishment of a library

in that facility, that there should be a budget for the establishment

of schoolrooms and education, that there should be teachers in that

institution, and that every effort should be made to ensure that women

who enter that institution without an education and without any skills

should not leave that institution without education and without skills.

That's the kind of thing that certainly has to be done.

I want to repeat: I don't know what goes on in the men's jails. I've

never been inside a man's jail. I'm speaking specifically from the

point of view of the women's institution because that's what I have

been inside.

I notice that the Attorney-General recently visited the municipality

of Surrey, where there was some question about the behaviour of young

people on the streets — the gangs — and agreed that the solution was to

employ more police officers. That's not the solution to kids on the

streets. We have to go back, Mr. Chairman, and look at what those kids

are doing and why they are on the streets. They're on the streets

because the school system, to begin with, couldn't handle them; because

there are no other resources; because Human Resources cut out the

street worker program that used to work with those kids. Those are the

reasons those kids are on the street. To say that the money should be

spent on hiring 56 police officers to deal with those kids — that is

not the solution.

I am concerned that we are dealing more and more with people who

break the law by saying, let's build more prisons, let's lock more

people up, let's be more punitive rather than trying to find out the

reason why people are coming into conflict with the law, and trying to

modify both the law and people so that there will be a better

relationship between the two.

[ Page 5481 ]

HON. MR. SMITH: Lakeside, Mr. Chairman, does offer education

programs through Douglas College. My information is that we have from

time to time had difficulty in getting inmates at Lakeside to avail

themselves of those programs. I can assure her that they're encouraged

to do so and that we wish them to do so. I don't think that anyone was

suggesting that we shouldn't have rehabilitation. I'm saying that in

our short-stay system it is not one of our primary objects while

they're in custody. But useful educational and work experience, yes.

As for her comments on Surrey, I quite agree with her that the

answer is not to add 50 new police officers to the force. They're going

to be adding eight more. That's what we've requested from the

Solicitor-General. The council have voted for eight. But one of the

main problems there is that you have no central core, a number of local

cores, very fast-growing, a lot of young families, a lot of

single-family situations as well, according to what I heard on Saturday

from the people who presented briefs to me, There are a lot of kids

around who don't have anything to do.

Youth work and volunteer community work is always the best and most

productive way of reaching those young people. In Gordon Head, part of

my constituency, my office organized a series of dances. We've had

about five or six of them now. The motif of those dances is that

they're clean dances. You can't come if you're on drugs or taking

booze; you're thrown out. They're run and monitored by the kids and

supported by the police, who come to them in plain clothes, and the

parents are behind them. Last time we had 500 at the dance. We just

can't look after them all. It's now become a peer thing in Gordon Head

not to do drugs and booze and to go to these things. They're organizing

other events now.

That sort of approach in Surrey or any other community, I believe,

is more helpful than adding platoons of policemen. But Surrey is trying

to sort out its problems, and I think it is making some progress.

MR. LAUK: We're not disturbing that crowd over there in the

corner, are we, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Member, with the number of them with their

chairs turned to the back of us, it looks like a preponderance of

back-benchers there.

MR. LAUK: Are they having a crap game or just a discussion?

Mr. Chairman, I want to make it clear for the record that the

proposition of discipline in penal institutions does not preclude the

concept of rehabilitation, but rather that rehabilitation should be

separated from a penal institution because of its deleterious effect on

discipline, causing hardship for the inmates and the custodian alike.

[4:45]

We agree wholeheartedly with the fact that poor people, native

Indians and illiterates — quite often all three in the one person — are

the types incarcerated. I would argue that that problem is not resolved