1998 Legislative Session: 3rd Session, 36th 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, June 16, 1998

Afternoon

Volume 10, Number 22

[ Page 8807 ]

The House met at 2:05 p.m.

G. Abbott: It is a pleasure for me to introduce today a longtime friend and former colleague from the constituency of Shuswap and, indeed, from my hometown of Sicamous. His Worship Gordon Mackie is the first and only mayor, ever, of the district municipality of Sicamous. I'd like the House to make him welcome.

S. Hawkins: Visiting today is a young man whom I hired as a student to work as an aide when I was a head nurse at Foothills. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he is here visiting in the gallery. He just completed his education in San Jose, I believe, in chiropractic. I hope that the House will help me welcome Mr. Drew Van Walleghem.

J. Wilson: We have with us 45 grade 7 students from Bouchie Lake Elementary School. They are accompanied by their teacher, Mr. Winthrope, and ten parents. I ask the House to make them welcome.

Hon. U. Dosanjh: I am delighted to be able to introduce four people to the House who have worked on the taxi task force with respect to driver safety: Norm Hardy of Blue Bird Cabs, Manmohan Kang of the West Coast Taxi Association, Pete Hartnell of Victoria Taxi and Terry Beatson of B.C. Transit. I would like the House to make them welcome, particularly because they have worked with the Crown, the police, ICBC, WCB and B.C. Transit to put together a package of recommendations to enhance driver safety both in B.C. Transit and in taxis.

J. Cashore: On behalf of the Minister of Employment and Investment, the MLA for Port Coquitlam, and myself, I wish to introduce two people who are in the gallery. They are wonderful friends and excellent volunteers: Belle and Dick Barbour from Port Coquitlam. Would the House please make them welcome.

G. Janssen: Joining us today for the first time is my father-in-law Clifford McIvor from Nanaimo and brother-in-law Al McIvor from Port Coquitlam. I ask the House to make them welcome.

I. Chong: With us here today are two Victoria residents who have found time to visit the precincts and, in particular, to watch the proceedings of question period. Would the House please welcome Dennis Madden and Gordon Shaw.

Introduction of Bills

FORESTS STATUTES AMENDMENT ACT, 1998

Hon. D. Zirnhelt presented a message from his Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Forests Statutes Amendment Act, 1998.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Hon. Speaker, I move that Bill 34 be introduced and read a first time now.

Motion approved.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Bill 34, the Forests Statutes Amendment Act, 1998, makes a number of amendments to forest-related provisions, primarily in the Forest Act and the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act. The intent of these amendments is to follow through on government commitments made over the last year and to make minor administrative improvements.

The main provisions are: to enable pilots of new community forest agreements, to establish incentives that will help industry to create jobs under the jobs and timber accord, to facilitate woodlot licence management and to reduce the administrative burden associated with fire management under the Forest Practices Code. These improvements are part of this government's commitment to improve the forest management framework, to reduce the administrative burden and to create jobs.

I move that Bill 34 be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Motion approved.

Bill 34 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Oral Questions

RESULTS OF JOBS AND TIMBER ACCORD

G. Campbell: Hon. Speaker, a year ago this Friday the Legislature was closed down so that we could have the announcement with regard to the jobs and timber accord. At that time the Minister of Forests promised to create 22,000 new, direct forest industry jobs. However, one year later, according to StatsCan, we know that over 12,000 forest workers have lost their jobs. Can the Minister of Forests tell us why B.C. forest workers have lost over 12,000 jobs in the last year, while the forest industry in the rest of the country is booming?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: The primary reason is that the Asian market has been in free fall, and we've reached the limit of what can be exported to the United States of America.

The Speaker: First supplementary, the Leader of the Official Opposition.

G. Campbell: According to StatsCan's payroll survey, 12,680 people have lost work in our forest industry in British Columbia since the jobs and timber accord was announced last June. How can the minister say that the accord has been anything but a total failure, when one out of every . . . forest worker in this province has lost the paycheque that supports their family in the last year?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: Yes, it is regrettable that there is job loss in forest communities when the economy is in a downturn. We have taken steps to address that. We have worked with the value-added industry to ensure that wood gets to them. We have moved to change stumpage, to reduce the overall burden on the cost structure, and we've attempted to make -- and have delivered on -- changes to the Forest Practices Code which will reduce the cost and the administrative burden to industry. When the market returns, we anticipate that there will be an increase in employment in the forest industry.

The Speaker: Leader of the Official Opposition, second supplementary.

[ Page 8808 ]

G. Campbell: Last week this minister informed us all that StatsCan kept the best records and would give us the best idea of what exactly was happening in this industry. We now know that according to StatsCan, 12,680 people lost their job between the end of June 1997 and March of 1998. Now, I know the minister is keeping track of how many people he thinks have lost work in the forest industry in British Columbia. If it's not 12,680 people, can the minister tell us how many people he believes have lost their job since he announced the jobs and timber accord a year ago?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: It was clear when we announced the jobs and timber accord that we would measure it over the four-year time period -- that it would take the full four years to turn around, to get more jobs for every cubic metre. We intend to measure the success of the accord over that length of time.

[2:15]

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, hon. members. I recognize the member for Shuswap.

G. Abbott: If this is what the government can do after one year, I just dread the thought of what you can do after four.

A year ago the Forests minister promised 22,000 new forest jobs. In November we saw some backtracking. He said: "It's going to be awfully hard to meet. A target is just that -- a target. We didn't say we were going to create those jobs."

Will the Ministry of Forests today admit that the jobs and timber accord is a colossal hoax that's produced pink slips, not jobs?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: I will not admit that a visionary attempt to increase jobs per cubic metre is a hoax.

The Speaker: I recognize the member for Peace River South. Apologies to the member for Shuswap, but I did recognize the member for Peace River South; he was on his feet. But if that member is ready to acknowledge and give way for you, that's fine.

I recognize the member for Shuswap for a first supplementary.

G. Abbott: Thank you, hon. Speaker. I was nursing the illusion that the minister was going to enumerate the vision that apparently was contained in the jobs and timber accord.

Last year the government promised to create 22,000 new forest jobs. Since then, we see StatsCan telling us that more than 12,000 workers have lost their jobs in the forests in British Columbia. Will the Minister of Forests agree today that he and his government have to create 34,000 new forest jobs if they're to keep their promise?

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: This opposition likes to misquote all the time. They're quoting me as saying that I said those jobs were targets, that we'll stick to those targets. If they quoted me correctly . . . . We didn't say that we were going to create those jobs or else -- or else! -- as they were trying to get me to suggest. They should listen. They wanted to know what threats were in there. The jobs and timber accord is a cooperative effort between government and industry. We agreed to do that.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, hon. members.

Hon. D. Zirnhelt: If you go back to the quote, it said that industry and government would have to do it together. They each had a role to play. Industry said they would make the investments if we addressed the economics of the industry and the red tape. They have some responsibilities there. We said we would put more wood to the small businesses, and we're doing that. So when the market turns around, there will be more jobs there. We said there would be 5,000 jobs created under Forest Renewal, moving away from part-time contracts to full-time jobs. We're doing that; we've taken steps to do that.

We're delivering on our part of the accord. The economy will have to turn around, and industry will have to do its part.

ASSISTANCE FOR TUMBLER RIDGE

J. Weisgerber: My question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Northern Development. Yesterday Teck Corp. announced that it would slash 91 jobs at its Bullmoose mine in Tumbler Ridge. These cuts come hard on the heels of 276 permanent job losses at Quintette Coal. Tumbler Ridge Mayor Paul Kealey stated: "I think people are still reeling. They were just getting over Quintette . . . . The doom and gloom, it's hit us all at once."

What plans does the minister have to assist the community and the people of Tumbler Ridge to cope with this crisis?

Hon. D. Miller: Indeed, the member is absolutely right. The impact on the community of Tumbler Ridge and on other northern communities, essentially because of the international market, has been very, very dramatic. The problem right now is that the Ridley terminal is full to capacity. They have no more room to take additional volumes from Tumbler Ridge. That will only be resolved when a sufficient quantity of that coal is removed from the terminal via ships for export.

The problem right now is really Japan. All of us have a great deal of concern about the events that are taking place with respect to the currency devaluations. Until there is a real resolution of the problems in Japan, we are going to work with our communities to do the best we can to help them. But essentially, if the marketplace isn't there, then British Columbians and communities like Tumbler Ridge are going to suffer until we can get that market back.

The Speaker: First supplementary, the member for Peace River South.

J. Weisgerber: A supplemental for the Premier. In 1992 the now Premier introduced Bill 11, the Natural Resource Community Fund Act, committing that the fund would "provide a stable source of funding to address the problems facing communities dependent on a single-resource industry in the event of closures or downsizing in that industry."

The 1998-99 budget projections show expected revenues for that fund in excess of $9 million and expenditures of a measly $10,000. Will the Premier commit today to ensuring that this fund is used for its intended purposes and that money will be available to the people of Tumbler Ridge to deal with this emergency?

Hon. G. Clark: The fund was really set up as a contingency fund to deal with closures, as was the case in Cassiar.

[ Page 8809 ]

We're not contemplating such a closure at Tumbler Ridge. Clearly they have deep challenges there, which members have talked about, and I certainly agree with them. The natural resource community fund is there in the event of an emergency. There is some possibility of tapping into the funds for single-industry communities that are under stress. But it's really meant as a last-resort contingency fund.

Having said that, I want to assure the member that through the job protection commissioner, the Ministry of Northern Development and the Ministry of Employment and Investment, all the tools that we have at our disposal -- including the natural resource community fund, the Job Protection Act or any other tools that we have -- will be brought to bear to try to work with communities like Tumbler Ridge to ensure their continued survival and viability, not by just waiting for the market to turn around but by trying to ensure that those industries and those towns have a future in British Columbia and that they are poised to take advantage of an eventual market recovery.

We certainly want to reaffirm to you and to the people of Tumbler Ridge the government's ongoing work with that member, using all the tools to try to assist them.

GOVERNMENT REACTION TO B.C. FERRIES WORK STOPPAGES

G. Farrell-Collins: Just a little over a year ago, there was a five-hour illegal wildcat strike at B.C. Ferries, which cost B.C. Ferries $27,000 in compensation and untold hours of disruption to individuals and businesses. The minister at the time promised there would be swift accountability for those people who were responsible. The new minister responsible for B.C. Ferries, as it turns out, has delivered that swift accountability. He's cut them a cheque for $30,000. Can the minister responsible for B.C.

Ferries -- whichever one it is -- tell us why his first reaction to delivering swift discipline and accountability to those responsible for a five-hour, $27,000 strike is to reach for the taxpayers' chequebook and cut them a $30,000 cheque?

Hon. D. Miller: At the time of the dispute I had very harsh words for what had occurred.

Interjections.

The Speaker: Order, hon. members.

Hon. D. Miller: The dispute was relatively short-lived, thanks in part to the assistance delivered by Ken Georgetti at the B.C. Federation of Labour in trying to get that issue resolved. The corporation and the Ferry and Marine Workers have now reached an agreement. In fact, in my recent discussions with both those parties, I think there was a serious attempt by both of them to try to develop a better working relationship. The statement by Mr. Ward this morning is an indication of a more positive working relationship. So I think the future looks good for B.C. Ferries and its workers.

The Speaker: First supplementary, Opposition House Leader.

G. Farrell-Collins: Well, this wasn't the first wildcat strike, and it's not the last labour disruption. In fact, on the weekend B.C. Ferry workers denied access to a number of vehicles that were involved in a labour dispute completely unrelated to B.C. Ferries. This dispute cost the people who pay for B.C. Ferries, the taxpayers, $27,000 in compensation and now $30,000 paid into an education fund. How can the minister tell us he's so confident that he has stopped any more future job activity at B.C.

Ferries when on one day they paid $30,000 to buy them off, and two days later they blockade the ferries for a number of private citizens trying to use the ferry service to do business in this province?

Hon. D. Miller: I must confess to being somewhat puzzled that the opposition would get on their high horse, in high dudgeon, around what they perceive to be a problem with respect to $27,000 of the taxpayers' money; yet when northern doctors refuse service to patients and the price tag they're asking for is $100 million, this opposition is on their feet every day demanding that the taxpayers pay the bill. A relatively minor dispute with a trade union causes them to go apoplectic over $27,000. But when citizens of British Columbia are denied medical treatment and the doctors have their hands out for $100 million, we know who the doctors' friends are. They're all sitting over there.

Orders of the day

Hon. J. MacPhail: In this chamber, I call Committee of Supply. For the information of the members, we will be debating the estimates of the Ministry for Children and Families. In Committee A, I call Committee of Supply. For the information of the members, we're debating the estimates of the Ministry of Employment and Investment.

The House in Committee of Supply B; W. Hartley in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

(continued)

On vote 24: minister's office, $448,000 (continued).

C. Clark: This morning, when we were talking about the budget, the minister confirmed that $18.8 million was new in this budget for staff salaries and benefits and that another $11.4 million was new money in the budget for this year. So that's a $30 million increase for this year's budget, which the minister talked about this morning. The most pertinent question, when we're looking at the amount of new resources -- $30 million -- that we have in the budget this year, is: is that keeping up with demand, and how do we measure if that keeps up with demand? How do we ensure that the new money that we're allocating meets the new needs that are coming into the ministry?

What I'd like to pursue for a little while with the minister is the question of how the ministry determines whether the new money that they're allocating is keeping up with demand, and what kinds of measurements they use to ensure that they're meeting their goals.

Hon. L. Boone: I just want to make it clear that . . . . I understand what you're saying, that the $60 million is not really an increase, because we in fact are only covering the special warrant. But that special warrant has been fully covered in this year's budget. That was in last year's budget, but that special warrant -- those additional dollars to cover the moneys that were in special warrant, the money that we spent -- has been transferred over here, so that we actually have dollars to cover those things. So those are additional dollars

[ Page 8810 ]

from last year, to recognize some of the additional costs that we had with the increased number of children that have come into the province, etc.

[2:30]

We have increased this year's budget over and above that. We have recognized that, so that's encompassed in there. We have $60 million over last year's estimates. We actually have . . . . If you want to say -- and I will give you this -- "Hey, we only have an additional $30 million," I think the average member of the public would say that $30 million is a fair number of extra dollars. We only have an additional $30 million -- over and above the amount extra that we've added to the budget to compensate for the special warrant last year. Fine and dandy. I will concede that, if you want to go on that basis.

We actually have the amount of money that is there for new, additional staff and programs and all of these things -- over and above what we had last year.

C. Clark: My question was: with the $30 million that we've got new in the budget . . . . You don't just have to look at a pot of money. You have to look at the number of people that are requiring services from the ministry and make a measurement. What I'm asking of the minister is how her ministry measures whether their spending keeps up with the demand for services. I don't know how the ministry breaks it down, but perhaps they break it down on a per child basis. Is there per capita spending such as we might use when we figure out education spending per pupil?

Is there some other measurement tool they use to ensure that their spending and allocations are indeed keeping up with the demand for service in the ministry?

Hon. L. Boone: We have a number of different tools that we use. One of them is that we look at the projection of the number of kids coming into care. We're very hopeful that the number of children this year will be less than last year because of some of the changes that have come about -- for example, the changes in legislation that we just proclaimed, where we do not actually have to take a child into care in order to do supervision orders. We also believe that the increase in population in British Columbia is not going up as it was before.

We had tremendous increases in population in British Columbia for many years, and that is not happening right now. We're hopeful that we will see a reduction in the number of children coming into care.

But yes, we do base our budgets on those assessments, plus recognizing that we are hopefully going to have fewer numbers of children in care than we had before. On top of that, we now have the workload assessment tool, which we developed with the B.C. Government and Service Employees Union, that enables us to determine how many staff will be required. That is how we worked it out and came to the 250 extra staff who will be required in the ministry. We have a number of different tools we utilize to try and figure out where our dollars are required, where we can save money, where we can direct some of those savings back into programs and all of those things.

C. Clark: When the ministry looks back at previous years, do they figure out how much money they're spending on each child who comes into contact with the ministry? What I'm wondering is if there's a way to do a running measurement of the funding the ministry provides to children versus the number of children who are coming into contact with the ministry. I think it's useful for all of us to have a historical perspective of how much the ministry has allocated over the year to the children who come into its care.

But I would argue that the ministry should not just look at the number of children who are in its care. After all, it's an estimates process -- a forward-looking process -- and we 're guesstimating about what's going to be happening in the years ahead.

I would argue that the ministry needs to look at other figures like population growth, economic issues and poverty. I would argue that there needs to be a whole number of factors that go into predicting how much the ministry intends to spend per child. I don't know if the ministry has not even just a method of doing that but tries to figure out and allocate money per child, outside of the children . . . . There are children who come into care; there are children who have special needs who require education; there are issues around early intervention that don't have anything to do with children coming into care.

I understand what the minister is saying when she focuses on children in care, because that's perhaps one of the easiest services for the ministry to measure and, to some extent, even to predict. There's a lot more money the ministry spends outside of children in care, and I wonder where the ministry's measurement tool is to predict those kinds of numbers.

Hon. L. Boone: We don't look at the province and say that we are going to budget X number of dollars for services for every child. It is demand-driven. The other services we get . . . . Last year in the province we averaged approximately $22,472 for those children that were in care. Sometimes those children, then, drive some of the other costs in the other services. We do not take the number of children in the province of British Columbia and say that we have, in our budget, X number of dollars per child for other services there. That is demand-driven.

C. Clark: If it's demand-driven, then the budget for children in care would certainly look different today than it does. The child, youth and family advocate says that over the past five years, the population of children in care has grown by approximately 45 percent. She asks: "Has the allocation of resources kept pace with that growth? Has the budget increased? Have more trained guardianship workers been added to carry out the work?" From what our office has seen, the answer is no. So even if the measurement tool that the ministry uses to predict future budgets is to look back and say, "What did we do last year?

What were the numbers last year? That's what we'll use to predict what we need next year," the ministry is still not doing a very good job of that. The number of children in care has grown so dramatically, and the budget for the ministry hasn't grown by 45 percent. The budget for children in care hasn't grown, I would suggest, by 45 percent. Perhaps the minister could give us the numbers, then. Last year we spent $22,247 per child in care -- that's after it had grown by 45 percent. Is that number -- that total dollar amount that we spend for children in care -- shrinking every year?

Hon. L. Boone: Last year's budget for children in care . . . . It went from $161,707 to $198,705; it has gone up substantially. The children-in-care dollars have gone up a little bit. It's not a substantial amount in terms of the amount of increase per child, but that depends on the number of special needs children we have and the various requirements of the children in care. It would be nice if it was a scientific thing and you could say X plus Y equals Z, but unfortunately it's not. We're dealing with human beings here, and there are a lot of factors that change and a lot of factors that affect the amount of money we spend and the amount of money that is required for each child.

[ Page 8811 ]

C. Clark: My question isn't about the total dollar amount that the budget has gone up; it's the ratio of the total dollar amount to the total number of children that are in the care of the government. That's what I'm asking about. It appears to me, based on the information that we've received from the child, youth and family advocate, who says the number of children in care has grown by 45 percent . . . . Obviously the budget hasn't grown by 45 percent.

Perhaps the minister could prove me wrong in her answer; it seems to me that the total number that the ministry spends for every child in care is shrinking every single year. This year must have seen a very, very substantial decrease, a cut, in the amount of money the ministry allocates for every child in care -- based on the information that the child, youth and family advocate put in her report. So those are the numbers that I'm after.

I'm looking for a historical perspective on how much we spend per child in care. Obviously it changes depending on the needs of a child, but I suggest that probably the number of children in care this year, although it's greater, probably represents the same split amongst the needs of those kids. If there are 15 percent high-needs this year, it might be around 15 percent high-needs last year. The minister in her answer might be able to demonstrate to me why each child is so much less needy that they require so much less money from the government. Perhaps I'll sit down and wait for her response.

Hon. L. Boone: You're asking for a historical thing going back five years. These binders that you see here are one year's worth of binders. We do not have historical information going back five years. But if you're interested in that, we'll do the necessary digging and get that for you at some other time. We do not believe that the estimate per child, the amount per child, has gone down substantially over the years. But we will get that information for you. We expect that this year the amount per child will go down slightly because we are hiring more social workers.

We will have more ability to deal with issues and to get children returned home, to get more into foster care rather than into expensive care such as hotels, etc. So we are very hopeful that our cost per child will actually be reduced a little bit this year because of some of the initiatives that we will be taking to try and reduce those costs.

[2:45]

We will do what is necessary to make sure that children are safe in British Columbia. If we happen to have a shortage of foster homes, then we do what's necessary to make sure that those children are put in a safe situation. We will be doing a massive recruitment program for foster parents and are very hopeful that we will see more foster parents coming on stream in the fall.

C. Clark: The minister is quite right. The child, youth and family advocate does talk about a five-year period when she talks about the number of children that have come into the care of the government. Of course, the number is 45 percent, which is a huge number. The minister has mentioned a couple of new tools that the ministry has that should reduce that number a little bit. Is she suggesting that those new tools that the social workers have are going to stop this exponential growth, or at least . . . ? Are they going to stop it? Is it going to slow the growth?

How much growth is the ministry predicting in the number of children that come into care? It seems to me that unless social workers or unless the ministry has some magical way of stopping that growth, which has been phenomenal over the last five years, early in the budget year, there is still going to be a substantial growth in the number of children that come into care. I can't understand how the limited tools -- worthwhile, nonetheless -- that the minister has mentioned will slow that to a dead stop, so that we actually have fewer children coming into the care of the ministry.

It seems to me there must be many other trends that have an impact on this, such as population growth, which seems to be the most . . . . Population growth, the number of young people as a percentage of population growth, the high needs of aboriginal people in British Columbia -- all those other things contribute to the numbers of children that will be coming into the care of the government. Perhaps the minister could expand a little bit on why she thinks the tools she's mentioned so far are going to bring this explosion in numbers of children in care to a dead stop.

Hon. L. Boone: The member actually pointed to one of the main tools, and that's population. There was a huge increase in population two or three years ago and in the past years. Population is not growing right now in the province. We are seeing an actual decrease in the rate of growth in the number of kids. We are very hopeful that we will see a decrease not just in the rate but actually in the number of kids coming into care. Everything that we see points to not a massive increase that we've seen in the past few years, with the huge population growth that we saw.

We will be doing a number of different things. We'll be working with the aboriginal community -- you mentioned the aboriginal group. One of my goals is to reduce the number of children coming into care from those communities. We are working closely with those areas to put in place some protocol agreements to work with them, to put in place some of the tools to help them stop their children coming into care. Clearly the number of aboriginal children in care is not acceptable. We will be working very closely with those communities to try and reduce those numbers.

We do not see a huge influx of children coming into care in this next year. If we're proven wrong, if the economy turns around and suddenly there's a huge growth of population in the province, then we will deal with that. But at this particular time we do not see the growth in population or the growth in numbers coming into care.

C. Clark: I do want to talk a little bit about aboriginal children and the services that the ministry provides to them. But I think I'm going to leave that for a little way down the road, because there are a couple of things I want to clear up that we didn't quite finish with this morning -- some basic questions about the budget. One of them is the growth in the budget of "other expenditures," which has gone up by $15 million. It appears in the budget that those are mostly under program management and child care services. I wonder if the minister could tell us what those other expenditures refer to.

Hon. L. Boone: There are two major areas that were formerly included in another STOB. Now they're included in this one here, shown as other expenditures, because other ministries are doing these services for us. Program management in this is an increase of $7.25 million; this provides for legal services provided by the Ministry of Attorney General, formerly funded under STOB 20. Then this day care funding is for the administration of the child care subsidy system by the Ministry of Human Resources, formerly funded under salaries and other STOBs.

C. Clark: I appreciate the minister clearing that up. The issue of legal services is an interesting one. In my opinion, the ministry spends a great deal of money on legal services and, I

[ Page 8812 ]

think anyone would argue, probably too much. One of the things I hear from people walking through the door of my office -- and I'm sure this is true of every single MLA in this House -- is that they wish the ministry would not make them fight so hard for their children. In many cases, the ministry apprehends children quite justly, quite rightfully, and makes the right decision.

But when you get a case like the Murphys, where they had to fight so hard for their child, where they had to fight this ministry every step of the way to be able to adopt their child . . . . The legal costs that were attached to that for the Murphys were enormous, onerous.

The costs that would be attached to that for the taxpayer, for the ministry to drag that out as long as they did -- to finally make the decision, after a year, that they promised a whole year before they would make, and even before that to have dragged it out month after month, and then in the end to finally make the right decision that the parent wanted -- seem to me to be a waste of taxpayers' dollars. The Murphys shouldn't have had to have been dragged through that process. Neither should other parents that are in their situation.

At the foster parents' convention, I heard lots of stories like that. I'm sure that in some -- in many -- of those cases, the ministry is making the right decision. But I'm sure that each of us can also point to some examples where the ministry really did the wrong thing. When Tim Murphy's case was mentioned in this Legislature, I think it consumed three or four days' worth of question period. The government finally backed down and agreed to do the right thing. It took the ministry a year to do the right thing; but finally, at least, they did it.

What I'd like to explore with the minister now is the breakdown of the legal costs this ministry has charged, so that we can get a sense of how many parents and how many families have been affected and have had to endure a long court process as a result of decisions made in the ministry.

Hon. L. Boone: You know, I certainly agree, in that I would like to see less money going into the pockets of lawyers too. But I also recognize that we need to make sure that the system is legal and that we follow the law. So for every child that is taken into care, we in fact have to go to court initially. Then a number of those have an agreement with the family with regards to care; some actually have to go to court. You're right; we do have to go to court in order to determine how we are going to be proceeding and to get actual court approval to have those children removed, either on a permanent basis from the home . . . .

As to how many of those have gone to a full-blown court case, I don't have those numbers here. We can look; we can get some of that information. But that would take a tremendous amount of work to actually determine, for each and every one of those cases, how many of them actually went into full-blown court cases. The Attorney General ministry actually billed us $7.25 million for legal services. It's a substantial amount of money, but it is necessary for us to go through the legal steps in order to make sure that those children are removed from their homes in the proper manner and that they're given the legal rights to go before a court. It is their right to do so.

C. Clark: Well, my question was really related to the rights of parents like Tim Murphy, for example, who, when faced with a government that has what appears to him to be a bottomless pit of money, certainly compared to him . . . . Here's a guy and his wife, with a mortgage, who are trying to keep their daughter, who they've raised in their home. When a citizen like Tim Murphy is faced with being dragged through the courts by the government in order to keep his child . . . . The minister is right: there's also an issue of the rights of the child.

How can parents care for their child in the face of continual -- I wouldn't want to characterize it as harassment -- ongoing effort on the part of the ministry to drag their case through the court to take their child away from them, to make sure that that child doesn't get to stay in their home, even though it would appear, I think, to any reasonable person that it's not just in the parents' best interests, but it's in the child's best interests that that baby stay in that home?

When government has, or seems to have, a bottomless pit of money -- $7.8 million budget for legal services -- it's important for us to know how much the ministry is spending on each of these cases. I suspect that the vast majority of cases, as the minister seemed to indicate, are routine legal proceedings that don't cost a great deal of money. But there are certainly some proceedings, like Time Murphy's case, that would appear to me to cost the government a great deal of money. So maybe that's the place to start. How much did the Attorney General bill this ministry for legal services on the Tim Murphy case?

Hon. L. Boone: I'd like to preface this by saying that I really hope that we do not get into case specifics. This is really not an appropriate arena for us to be discussing individual children or families and their situations. I do not intend to do so as a minister. I will say that the Murphy case did not go to court; it was before the children's commissioner. And the Murphy's were foster parents, not the legal parents. In fact, the province of British Columbia was the legal guardian of the child. But I do not intend to get into an argument with you over specific cases, anymore than I would do as an MLA.

[3:00]

You're right. Even before I came into this ministry situation I had various people coming into my office saying that they . . . . They might have been parents who were concerned about their child being removed. They might have been parents who were coming because they didn't like an order that had come down from the judge with regard to a divorce or something like that. From my position, I do not consider myself to be in a situation to judge or to take sides in those cases.

We have professionals in the field that do that, and I do not believe that I can as adequately assess the situation as can the professionals in the field. Nor would I, as an MLA, have the adequate information, or both sides of the information, to make a judgment on those things. So I have never, even as an opposition member, taken any case such as these and said that I ought to take it up. There are professionals out there that can do that.

I make sure that system is there, that it's working for them and that they know which avenues are available. I make sure that they know that the children's commissioner is there, that they know where they can go in those areas and that they know what the child, youth and family advocate's situation is.

But I hope that the member takes this in good faith and recognizes that it is inappropriate for us to discuss individual cases in this Legislature.

[H. Giesbrecht in the chair.]

C. Clark: The fact is that we discuss individual cases in this Legislature every day. It happens all the time. And the reason it happens all the time is that the public is increasingly

[ Page 8813 ]

finding that the only way to get satisfaction from this government is to raise a question on the floor of the Legislature, or to ask that it be raised. That's one of the things that the political level exists for. When the bureaucracy has made a decision . . . . Civil servants are not elected for a reason. They're there to provide continuity, to provide ongoing corporate memory, to provide an unbiased view of the system, but they are not elected.

The bottom line is that the public needs to know that there is a level of government they can go to that is totally accountable to them and that can make decisions about individual cases, if that's the case -- or that can make decisions about fixing the system if it's broken.

That's why the political level is there. That's why we run for office. That's why people participate in elections. It's so that they can hold politicians accountable for the decisions that they make -- and they expect politicians to make decisions. Sometimes that means dealing with individual cases. It doesn't mean saying: "I'll only deal with things on a systemic level. I'll only deal with things if it's system-wide and it's a big issue that affects hundreds of thousands of people." Sometimes it's just for one person.

That's what each of us does in our constituency work in our offices when we try to inquire on someone's behalf about why they didn't get their cheque on time or whatever it is. Those are individual cases, and sometimes we do need to raise those in the Legislature. Sometimes they tell us what's wrong with the system.

In this case, the reason I'm drawing attention to Tim Murphy's situation is partly because he's given me permission to do that and partly because the last time it was raised in this Legislature, the previous minister did exactly what this minister says that she will not do, which is make a decision about an individual case, bring some political pressure to bear, make a commonsense decision in the face of a wider policy and change the outcome. That's exactly what happened with Tim Murphy's case last time. An individual case was raised, a politician made a decision and changed the outcome.

It's exactly what happened. Maybe that would change the system -- who knows? But it certainly points out some things that are wrong in the system.

The reason I'm inquiring about the legal services bill for this ministry is because I think that it points out something that's wrong with the system. The reason I'm inquiring about Tim Murphy's case specifically is because it's an example of something that's wrong with the system. I think it's entirely appropriate to raise it in this Legislature, because that's what we're here to do.

When the minister says she refuses to tell us what her ministry paid for legal fees on that particular case . . . . Whether it went to court or not, I assume that there were some legal costs attached to it that were charged back to the Ministry of Attorney General. The minister can tell me if I'm wrong. I know how much Tim Murphy spent. Tim Murphy's family certainly knows how much he overextended himself to try to pay his costs in the face of big government. I don't think it's inappropriate for the minister to tell us how much she spent trying to make sure that that child left the Murphy home and went back to Saskatchewan.

Hon. L. Boone: I think what we've got here is a real problem, because the member doesn't understand that it's not adequate, nor is it right, for us to make political decisions regarding children. Those are entirely inappropriate. The member . . . . You may not know it, but there have been members of your own caucus who have come to us, to my office, on particular cases in their ridings, and we have in fact taken the necessary steps to assist them, to give them the information that is required.

But it is entirely inappropriate for a minister to make a political decision with regard to what takes place in a family life. You are pointing to what I would say is a very dangerous precedent if in fact you want us to step in and say This is right and that is wrong.

The decisions with regards to children . . . . This decision was not made by the courts or by the minister; it was made by the children's commissioner, who did a review on that particular case and determined what was in the best interests of the child. We have the children's commissioner, a child and youth advocate, a service quality advocate and the ombudsman. We have a number of different areas with people who can review these things. But I don't think that there are many people out there who would be very happy to know that a politician was interfering and making decisions on children's lives based on political interference.

Children's lives should be based . . . . They have privacy, and they have the same rights to privacy as you and me and everybody else. Decisions that are made for those children should be based on what is best for that child and based on the information that is coming from the professionals -- not from you and me, who are not the professionals in the field, who do not have adequate information to recognize these things, nor the skills to assess and determine what is in the best interests of the child. There are individuals out there who have those skills. There are individuals out there with professional information who can do those things.

I intend to make sure that people are treated fairly. I intend to make sure that they know the avenues that are open to them. But I do not intend to make political decisions with regards to children's lives.

C. Clark: I'm not talking about . . . . The minister's quite right. It's an issue of fairness; it's not about political interference. It's an issue of fairness. The political level has a responsibility to ensure that the system is treating people fairly and equitably. That's what the political level is there for: to make sure that the system is working well at all. That's why people get elected -- to change things. If you want to take the minister's argument to its logical conclusion, you might as well not elect anybody.

You might as well just let the system run on its own, because politicians shouldn't make any decisions about things. They shouldn't interfere in the bureaucracy and in the system and try and change it at all. Then why have them? Why have politicians if they're just there to take orders from the civil service? That's not a knock on the civil service. But we need balance in the system, where you have a non-partisan civil service and an accountable, elected level that balances that off.

At the end of the day, there's only one accountable end. The person accountable for the decisions that the ministry makes -- in this ministry and in every ministry -- is the minister, the politician at the top. So when something goes wrong in the ministry or when a systemic problem is exposed, the minister has a duty to try and fix it. That's not political interference; it's not the equivalent of calling a judge or calling the Agricultural Land Commission. That's not what that's about. It's about making a decision to change the system.

That's what politicians are there for, so when something's not working, you make a decision. When the government appointed the Gove commission, it was in response to a problem that the government recognized -- or that the public demanded that the government recognize. Would the minister call that political interference -- the appointment of the Gove commission to go and search around in the ministry and find out what's going wrong? I don't think so. That's what we're

[ Page 8814 ]

talking about here. We're talking about systemic issues that arise and demonstrate that there's been some unfairness in the ministry that the minister has a duty to fix.

The Murphy case is a good example of that. If we explore what happened in the Murphy case, then maybe we can get to the bottom of what's happening in the ministry and whether the ministry is treating people fairly. Spending $7.8 million on legal services is a lot. Maybe the place to start is to find out how the Attorney General breaks down its bills to the ministry. Or how does the ministry break down this budget for legal services? Or, on the other hand, is it just a bottomless pit for the ministry -- that they can charge up as much as they like?

They get a final amount -- a big number -- at the end of it, and it's completely unitemized. Goodness knows, if my credit card bill came back like that, I'd sure be unhappy about it.

Hon. C. McGregor: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Hon. C. McGregor: It's my great pleasure to introduce some students from my riding who are here in the precincts today. We met outside in the sunshine a few minutes ago. They're from Qwiq'welst Elementary School in Savona; it's the Skeetchestn band elementary school. How did I do with this -- okay? The students are Sonny Gregoire, Charles Gottfredson, George Ignace, Trish Adams, Laura Humphries, Natalie Wolfe, Atoine Archie and Marshall Gonzales. They are accompanied by their teachers: Bernie Renneberg, Reg Draney and Jack Miller. Would the House please make them welcome.

Hon. L. Boone: I would question whether there is a systemic problem with regard to the ministry. You point to one case as a problem, and that was a case that was clearly done last year.

I just want to go through some figures here with you. The legal counsel, as I said, is required in all cases where a child is brought into care by the court process. As we saw last year, we had the special warrant because we had a larger number of children coming into care than were required . . . . Part of that special warrant was in fact for legal costs. Initially, everybody has to go to court. This includes voluntary or special needs agreements. Seventy law firms provide coverage for 90 Provincial Court locations. Most lawyers are paid a monthly retainer based on the previous monthly average of court and preparation.

In exceptional circumstances -- usually when a conflict of interest occurs or for small northern communities where there are not enough cases -- a firm will be hired on an ad hoc basis, case by case. They are paid $80 per hour for Provincial Court work. We approach this in a number of different ways, but I would question that there was a systemic problem with regard to how the ministry is proceeding.

You are right: we have to go to court in order to get a child removed from their family. Because of some of the changes that we've made to the act, we are very hopeful that we won't have to go to court as often; we can get supervision orders without actually removing a child. But every time we do have to go to court, whether or not it be just in the initial application, that costs money. I have not seen anything systemic that says that our employees are not acting in the best interests of the children or that they are taking a position that is unreasonable.

[3:15]

B. McKinnon: I would like to proceed from where my colleague just finished off. When we in the opposition are going through estimates with the minister and we ask questions on spending, it's my understanding that we should be able to get those answers. When we ask where the money has been spent on legal services, we should be able to get those answers on how the legal services bill is broken down.

When you take the Murphy case, that's just an example of one case where we felt that the ministry was wrong, and we were asking for an account on that particular case. You could take another case where the ministry . . . .

I think that this helps to show the ministry that it's important to take a look at how their legal bills are paid. Take a look at how badly the government workers treated those children up in Arden Park. They were abused badly, and the judge came down in that case and put a lot of the blame on the workers. The children weren't listened to. The case went to court. The children were adults when they went to court. They were each awarded a certain large sum of money. Then the ministry decided that it was going to appeal this case.

I put a question to the minister: why would the ministry, on such a dreadful case, waste the taxpayers' money by appealing? To me, that is looking at the legal services billed and saying: "What are you doing?" When does the ministry say that enough is enough when taking people to court? When does the ministry decide that maybe it is wrong sometimes? I'll leave that for the minister to answer.

Hon. L. Boone: You're going back many years. I know what you're talking about, but I can't help but think that if we had just turned over the . . . . The amount awarded was very high. If you think that government should . . . . I can see it. If we just automatically paid everything that came along, then you'd be standing there saying that we're not responsible and that the taxpayers are footing the bills. We have a responsibility to the taxpayers. When we think something is excessive, then I think we have a responsibility to appeal those decisions. That was the situation. This is before the courts, so it's not something that we should be discussing in this House right now.

B. McKinnon: I agree with the minister that you have a right to appeal; every case should have that right to appeal. But my question is: when does the minister finally say that enough is enough -- "Actually, we shouldn't be stomping on these people any longer"? Look at these children; they were badly abused. Okay, I won't talk about that case, but I could go on to different cases. The Murphy case is another one. And there are other cases where families are driven to court, and their lawyer bills are fantastically high, until they actually have nothing left. I think the question we're trying to get through to the minister is: when are you accountable? When do you say that enough is enough?

Hon. L. Boone: We are accountable. We're accountable to the courts, and we're accountable for making sure that children are safe. If we did not take the situations . . . . If we didn't go to court, I can see that the opposition would be standing there saying: "You didn't protect this child. You didn't take the necessary steps. You should have done that."

As I say, we have professional people who are in the field who do use their expertise to determine when a child should be removed from a family and what is in the best interest of that child. We also have a number of different avenues that this government has put in place to allow people to have

[ Page 8815 ]

another opinion: the child, youth and family advocate; the children's commissioner; Jane Holland's shop -- I can't think of the name of her shop at moment. There are a number of different ways and means that we as a government have actually put in place for people so that they have avenues to go and get a decision reviewed and to actually question the ministry's decision.

In the high hopes that you guys ever form government -- Lord help us -- I don't even think that you would ever stand there and make those decisions as to which one you should appeal and which one you shouldn't appeal. You have to make those decisions based on individual cases. I think that to ask when we as a government are going to stop doing these things is not really a very responsible question.

C. Clark: I take my colleague's point. When she asked when enough is enough . . . . Maybe the way to put it that might illustrate it for most people is using the way ICBC operates. Someone has an accident, and ICBC decides that they want to go to court. In some cases, they will drag that individual through the courts as long as they can. Each of us will probably have a personal experience with that -- maybe not ourselves, but certainly a family member or friend -- where all it takes is one person in that organization, and you've got a big legal bill on your hands.

ICBC has got a bottomless pit of money to drag it through the courts. In the Ministry for Children and Families it's a much, much more serious issue, because we're not talking about cars but about children and families.

The question I think my colleague was getting at when she said, "When is enough enough?" is: how does the ministry make the decisions about which cases they're going to drag through the courts and which ones they're not? In the Tim Murphy case, it went on for a long time. It cost Tim Murphy an enormous amount of money, and it appears that the ministry had a bottomless pocket to dip into to pay for their legal fees. That was a case of a policy that was being applied.

I wouldn't put that down to a bull-headed bureaucrat out there who decided that they wanted to go and get Tim Murphy; I'd put it down to a policy that was being applied against all common sense. When does the political level decide -- and this is the issue here -- when enough is enough, when the policy really doesn't make any sense, and it's not worthwhile to punish these individuals and drag them through the courts?

I want to give you another example. One of them is Alison Kampman, who I'm sure the ministry will be familiar with. She informs me that she spent $60,000 trying to get her foster home reopened after some false accusations had been made. In the end the ministry admitted that they were wrong, but not until it cost her $60,000. That's peanuts in the big scale of government, but $60,000 is a lot more than most people make a year -- maybe more than she makes; I don't know. That might be a whole year's worth of income for her.

There is a case where we have one individual trying to face down government -- David and Goliath; Goliath finally admits that he's wrong, but not before the little guy has to pay all those costs.

That's why I want to find out from the minister how the ministry breaks down its budget for legal services, so we can get a sense of how much the ministry spends on these individual cases. It's certainly important to them, but it's important in the system as well, because if the ministry and the government have a bottomless pit of money and are prepared to spend it and drag it out as long as they want . . . . That's a real issue for children and families out there that are struggling to get along. Perhaps the minister could comment on Alison Kampman. And maybe we can get back to Tim Murphy and find out how much money has been spent on that case.

Hon. L. Boone: I want to dispute something that you just said with regard to it being a foolish policy. I don't think it was a foolish policy, and I still don't think it's a foolish policy. That policy is that aboriginal children should be adopted by aboriginal families. I don't think that's a foolish policy. I think that's one that aboriginal families have been looking for for years. We've watched as governments have systematically taken away aboriginal children, removed them from their families and their communities, and had them adopted out to white families far away from their communities.

They can't even find their communities; they can't even find their families again. That is something that we as a society have done over the years to the aboriginal community. To say that that was a foolish policy . . . . I really dispute that. That was not a foolish policy.

Did it work in this particular case? Was it right in this particular case? Again, I don't think it was up to you or me to determine this. The children's commissioner determined that, and I accept that this was right. But I will never, ever say that this is a foolish policy. I think it is the right policy that we should be following, and I think that we have got to make sure that we try and recognize that we need to deal with some of the issues around aboriginal kids and keeping those people in their communities. I will continue to do that, and I make no apologies for doing that, hon. member.

C. Clark: The minister can try getting it right. I was talking about Tim Murphy. I was talking about a case that went contrary to the ministry's policy. The ministry in that case decided: "Damn the torpedoes. Damn what'll make common sense in Tim Murphy's case. Let's just go ahead and apply the policy across the board." What's foolish is when you have a government and a bureaucracy that is so inflexible that they can't accommodate situations like that.

They feel they're forced to apply a policy across the board -- which might make sense in most cases -- so that a guy like Tim Murphy gets shortchanged, so that his child gets shortchanged. That's what doesn't make any sense. That's what is foolish. It's foolish when you have a system that is so inflexible that it can't respond to people's needs. When you have a political level that's so concerned about appearances that it's unable to respond, that's foolish too.

I'll tell you that Tim Murphy and people like him have a right to know how much the government spent on his case before they discovered that they were wrong. We are talking about David and Goliath here. When the government has $7.2 million to spend on legal costs to fight parents, those parents have a right to know how much was spent on them, how much was targeted at them. That's what Tim Murphy has a right to know. I know how much he spent. He knows how much he spent. His family, who probably paid the price -- and they were hurting for cash, because they were strapped -- have a right to know how much this government spent on his case.

Alison Kampman has a right to know how much the government spent on her case. Those numbers should be publicly available. It is not good enough for the minister to just say, "Well, they can go get it through freedom of information," because -- you know what? -- this government is just as likely to charge them five grand to try and get it through freedom of information. It'll probably cost them what it would cost them in legal costs in the first place. It's not good enough

[ Page 8816 ]

to say that, and it is wrong for the government to deny them that information.

Can the minister at least tell us how the Ministry of Attorney General itemizes its bill, so that we can move on to the next stage of questioning about this. I'll tell you, I'm getting a little tired of the minister saying: "Well, I don't have any answers for you. I just have these big lump sums, and I don't feel like breaking them down." Can the minister at least tell us how the Ministry of Attorney General breaks it down? Do they break it down by service? If they do break it down by service, can the minister tell us how much they were billed for, for each service from the Attorney General's office?

[3:30]

Hon. L. Boone: On the Murphys, that was handled in-house. There was no chargeback from the AG on that. I would really caution the member, because she says that it should be public information. I do not believe that every family out there who actually went to court would like to see a public record somewhere indicating how much money was spent on dealing with their case. You talk about individual families spending money. We're spending money, hon. member, to protect children. That is the bottom line that ministries . . . .

Do you think that staff take children out of their families just for the fun of it? Do you think that they are removing these children just because they like to do that? They're removing those children, they are going to court and they are being upheld in the court system because they have severe concerns about the risks these children . . . . They believe that those children are at risk. That is what our people are going to court for. It is not a bottomless pit out there to fight every family and every mother and father out there.

It is a pool of money that the ministry uses, that is available to enable the ministry to go to court and get the necessary orders to protect children. That is the bottom line that every single worker out there utilizes, and I really object to your indicating that we are at war with families. We are not at war with families; we are out there trying to protect the children in British Columbia.

C. Clark: Those are the minister's words, not mine, when she talks about the ministry being at war with families. I don't think the ministry is at war with families. I wouldn't use the words the minister has used. Those are her words, I guess. If she wants to go down that road, I suppose she can, but I'm not prepared to follow her.

When I talk about the information being available to the public, I mean available to those families. I mean, if you're going to have a fight, make it a fair fight. Let those individuals know what they're dealing with. Certainly Tim Murphy wants to know; Alison Kampman wants to know. Their only option in the face of the minister saying, "Well, I don't feel like giving you the information today," is to go through freedom of information. Then maybe they'll get it; maybe they won't. Maybe they'll have to put their house up for a second mortgage; maybe they won't.

We know how expensive access to information is under this government. We know how freedom of information has been stopped in its tracks by this government, how it takes three weeks just to sever an item that's requested in some cases under freedom of information -- just to sever it, just to take away the information that you paid for in the first place. It's three weeks of people-hours. It's ridiculous. That information should be available to those people who want it. They should know how much is being charged by the Attorney General's office to fight them in legal cases.

That's what this is about; it's about accountability. It's not about inferring motives; it's not about suggesting, as the minister says, that the ministry wants to go to war with families. It's not about suggesting that bureaucrats are out there waiting to steal children away -- of course not. People that go into social work do it because most of them want to change the world. They decide that it's a worthy profession where they can care for children, and they can make their communities better. That's why people go into it.

Now, unfortunately, in British Columbia, they have to work in one of the worst environments in the country for social workers. They have to work with some of the worst morale problems of any department in the country. Unfortunately, they have to work with some of the highest caseloads of any department in the country. That doesn't make their jobs any easier. It doesn't make it any easier for them to live up to their ambitions to change the world.

What we're talking about here are the legal fees that the ministry charges. My question is this: how does the Ministry of Attorney General itemize its bill when it charges back to the ministry for legal services it has provided?

Hon. L. Boone: As I was saying, those people who are brought in on an ad hoc basis have a billing that shows the ad hoc charge that's there. The rest are done on a monthly retainer, as I stated earlier. The breakdown here is: 2,388 new cases were set for court; 17,582 matters were set for hearing; 16,278 matters proceeded; 7,480 orders were made. The total time spent on Children and Families services matters was 6,621 hours; the total amount of time spent on Children and Families services matters in 1996 was 5,149 hours; an average of 0.89 court hours was required for each order made . . . .

I mean, this is a lot of court time that was spent. As I said, a lot of it is done in preliminary hearings in the first stage. Sometimes it's done in the second stage. There are family case councils that have to happen. It is a very complicated process. I wish the courts were less complicated. I wish the lawyers charged less, but they don't, and we're faced with the situation we have, hon. member.

C. Clark: I feel like we're getting somewhere here. The minister talked about ad hoc cases and a retainer. Could the minister just give us a quick breakdown of the costs for the lawyers that they have on retainer versus . . . ? What percentage of the $7.2 million are we talking about here that is for the ad hoc cases versus the lawyers on retainer? I'm assuming that that is the way that the ministry organizes the information, based on what the minister has just told me.

Hon. L. Boone: We estimate about 90 percent, the vast majority, of them are done by retainer; the others are done on an ad hoc basis. As I stated earlier -- and I read this into the record, but I'll do it again:

"Most lawyers are paid on a monthly retainer based on the previous year's monthly average of court and preparation time, times $80 per hour, plus disbursement -- usually 10 to 15 percent of retainer for travel, transcripts, etc., for provincial work. In exceptional cases, usually when a conflict of interest occurs or for some smaller northern [community] locations where there are not enough cases, a firm will be hired on an ad hoc case-by-case basis and paid the same amount, $80 per hour, for provincial court work."

The information that we have here . . . . I've just been passed this, and I'll read this into the record:

"The Ministry for Children and Families paid the legal costs to the Murphy's of $12,016 and to the relatives in Saskatchewan, legal fees of $8,243. The Ministry for Children and Families legal fees were the hours of in-house counsel provided by legal services."

C. Clark: I appreciate the minister's answer. The minister mentioned the cost of the in-house service. How many hours

[ Page 8817 ]

of in-house service has the minister calculated were provided on that case?

Hon. L. Boone: We will get that information, and we'll get it to you.

C. Clark: I want to move into some questions about staffing and the budget that's been provided for social workers for this year. It would be helpful to get from the minister a breakdown by category of the kinds of social workers that have been budgeted for in the additional $30 million that's been added to the budget. I guess $18 million is for salaries and benefits. Could we get a breakdown of what kinds of workers that will provide for? When I say "kinds of workers," I mean guardianship workers versus case assistants versus child protection workers versus . . . . And there is another category which doesn't come to mind at the moment, but that's the breakdown I'm looking for.

Hon. L. Boone: We will be hiring 250, as you know, and 211 of those will be going into . . . . Some of them, 103, will be going into child protection, 62 into guardianship and 25 into youth probation. Of the child protection people, some will be child protection workers, but there may be some that will be case aid workers. It will be decided at the regional level what the best use of their workforce is in that area.

C. Clark: Surely some of that decision will be made for them, based on the budget that they receive for the new staff. Unless I'm mistaken, case aid workers are paid at a different wage scale than child protection workers. I think I'm right about that. So surely, wouldn't that decision be made in advance for the region? If they get a budget of $100,000 hypothetically, and a social worker costs $50,000 and a case aid worker costs $25,000, I suppose their only choice would be to hire two social workers or one social worker and two case aid workers. I don't see a lot of flexibility in that system. I wonder if the minister could just elaborate on it for us.

[3:45]

Hon. L. Boone: The workload assessment committee, which consists of the union working with the region and the ministry, is currently looking at the allocation of those resources to determine where they should be spent. So they will be determining that on a region-by-region basis, using the workload assessment tool that has been developed with the union to determine where the workload is the highest, where the workers should go. They will be determining amongst themselves whether the workload should be distributed best through the new child protection workers or through the new case aid workers who go into those areas.

C. Clark: Can the minister tell us how much those 211 workers will cost once they are on-budget for a full year?

Hon. L. Boone: It will be about $12 million.

C. Clark: When does the ministry anticipate that these new workers will be coming on line? Has the ministry set any goals? For example, are a third of them to be hired by September, a third to be on by December and then the rest of them to be on by the end of the year?

Hon. L. Boone: We are in a hiring process right now, so we are reviewing the various applications that we've had. And we've had a number of them, which is contrary to what everybody thought would happen. Everybody around here thought we wouldn't get any, but we do have a number of applications. We are currently reviewing those. We will be putting them on stream, and then we must go through a 20-week training period for the child protection workers to make sure that they have the necessary training to go into the field. We will have a number of people actually in the field, in place, by the fall.

C. Clark: Thank you for that answer: there's going to be a number of them in place for the fall. But I'm sure the ministry must have a more detailed answer available than that, given that they have to work out their budgets based on the number of months people will be employed at the ministry. If the ministry has figured out that there will be 130 full years of employment in the budget this year for new workers, then the ministry must have estimated when those people are likely to come on line. I wonder if the minister could perhaps give us a little more detail on that.

Hon. L. Boone: As the member knows, we are trying to backfill some positions in addition to the hiring of the new social workers. We stated that that was the first step that we did. We were hiring 100 new social workers, and I announced that in the early part of March, I think. Since February we've hired 102 new social workers and are putting them through the training process. We are very hopeful that we will have a large number that will be hired in the fall. We expect that we'll have the majority of the 250 in place by the new year.

It does take a while to go through the hiring process, go through all the applications, make sure that individuals have the necessary skills and then, as I said, to get them the training. We have hired 102 individuals since February.

C. Clark: It is my understanding that the ministry has 100 vacancies to fill, and that information was as of a month ago. I wonder if the minister could first confirm whether that's correct, and then confirm whether those in the group of 250 new positions will be expected to first fill the 100 vacancies that currently exist within the ministry.

Hon. L. Boone: We initially announced that we were going to aggressively try to fill the 100 positions that were vacant, and we acknowledged that there were 100-and-some-odd vacancies in March. We said we were going to start an aggressive process to fill those. We have hired 100 new individuals to come into those. We are still recruiting. We are hiring people and have applications coming in, but we aren't saying: "You are filling these positions that are vacant or you are coming in to fill new positions." The people we are hiring on are hiring on as ministry employees.

We've got 100 new people who have come in, and they are probably filling some of the vacancies that were there. The 250 are new positions, and we are filling them as fast as we can. We expect to have a number of them in place by the fall, and the majority of them in place by January.

C. Clark: Again, we're getting into this distinction between positions and people. From my perspective, I'm talking about the positions that are there. What I am trying to determine is whether these 250 new people will equal 250 new positions. The natural conclusion from that is that the ministry is going to be hiring 352 new people. Can the minister confirm if that's correct?

Hon. L. Boone: Yes -- 350 new people, but only 250 new positions. A hundred of them are in back positions, as I said,

[ Page 8818 ]

that were vacancies that we are aggressively trying to fill; but there are 250 new people, new positions, new jobs, out there.

C. Clark: I wanted to clarify that because I have to admit that there has been some confusion about what would happen with those vacant positions and whether they would be filled by this new hiring process or not, with the 250 new people who are coming on line.

Last year, the ministry spent in its . . . . It appears, based on the estimates and then the revised estimates, that the ministry vastly . . . . Well, not vastly, I guess, in the larger scheme of government. I think it was about $7.7 million less, based on the revised estimates, than had been originally estimated. Can the minister confirm that for me and tell me why there was a disparity between the estimates and the revised estimates that would result in the $7.7 million difference?

[W. Hartley in the chair.]

Hon. L. Boone: Can you explain . . . ? The $7.7 million difference in what? In salaries and benefits?

C. Clark: Yes.

Hon. L. Boone: That was dollars that were moved. It was in STOB 95, and we moved it from salaries to STOB 95, and that had to do with day care. It's just a movement from one area to the other area.

C. Clark: On the vacancies that exist in the ministry, the 102 positions, can the minister give us a quick breakdown of what positions those are? Among the vacancies, how many of them are in child protection? How many are guardianship positions? How many of them are case aid workers? How many of them are the fourth category that I can never remember?

Hon. L. Boone: They've all been hired as child protection workers to do child protection social work.

C. Clark: The 102 vacancies that have existed in the ministry -- and I don't have any sense of how long some of those vacancies have existed . . . . Some of them, I suspect, might have been vacant for a year; some of them might have been vacant for a month. I have no way of knowing that. But there must be savings attached to those vacancies, because, of course, you're not paying workers that had originally been budgeted for at the beginning of the fiscal year. Perhaps the minister could tell us how much the ministry saved by not paying out those 102 FTEs for the period they were vacant.

Hon. L. Boone: We didn't actually save anything, because we used other people on overtime. We paid dollars for overtime to get the work done, plus we brought in auxiliary clerical people to assist those social workers with their paperwork so they could be free to do the other stuff.

C. Clark: Well, what's the price tag on that, then, for the . . . ? If it's an equivalent, the ministry must have a number for it. So what's the number attached to either the savings that would have been there or to the additional costs of not filling those vacancies?

Hon. L. Boone: Each and every vacancy has not been there for the same length of time, so we'd have to go back and . . . . If you really want the ministry to go back and do that kind of work, we'll do it; we'll get it for you at a later time. Some vacancies may have been there for a month; some may have been there for a longer length of time. Actually determining how much was spent on overtime . . . . We can get that for you, but I think it's money and staff time that would be spent doing other things rather than getting that information.

C. Clark: All right. Then, perhaps the minister can give me a price tag on all the overtime that the ministry spends in child protection offices every year. That must be a number that's readily available.

[4:00]

Hon. L. Boone: In the regions, we spent $2.9 million on overtime.

C. Clark: If the ministry is spending an amount of money on not filling vacancies that's equivalent to what it would on actually filling the vacancies, it's a mystery to me why the ministry waits to do its hiring. I mean, if some of those vacancies had been there for a year and some of them for a month, and the ministry didn't start doing its hiring or didn't find a budget for it until February, it's a mystery to me why the ministry waited to start its strategy, because it sounds to me . . . .

When the minister talks about filling these vacancies, she talks about the fact that they started their recruitment and hiring strategy in February. Of course, that's at the end of the budget year. If there were many millions of dollars spent not filling the vacancies, why didn't the ministry start actually filling the vacancies a lot earlier than they appear to have done?

Hon. L. Boone: I hope you're not thinking that the ministry wasn't trying to fill those vacancies, because they were. The regions were doing individual . . . . The regions were trying to recruit -- and sometimes they are successful, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes they fill vacancies . . . . It's like everything else. It's not easy, sometimes, to fill any particular professional field when you get into some of the regions. They were trying to fill those. We, as a ministry, stepped in, as I said, in March and started an aggressive recruitment program to try and fill the existing vacancies.

We were concerned that they weren't getting filled fast enough. The recruitment was being done at the regional level by the regions. They weren't sitting around not trying to fill those positions; they were just unable to fill them.

C. Clark: That's a pretty big number -- 102. That's a lot of vacancies. That's almost half of what the minister's announcement was for all the new workers, which was surrounded by a great deal of fanfare. That is a big number. For it to take the number to get to 102 before the ministry twigs to the fact that there is trouble out there and that they're having trouble recruiting people is an amazing statement in and of itself. Surely the ministry has some method of ensuring that vacancies are filled before we get to 102.

Surely the ministry has some way of going out and recruiting people before we get to these huge numbers, where the existing social workers end up picking up the slack and paying for it in terms of their health, their work environment and their morale. Perhaps the minister could comment on that for us.

Hon. L. Boone: In fact, yeah, we did have a strategy. We had 65 vacancies in March and April, but we anticipated that there would probably be another 37 from April to September.

[ Page 8819 ]

That's why we announced that we were filling 100 vacancies. We were going out and trying to get 100 individuals to fill those positions, because we anticipated that there would be additional vacancies occurring.

As I said, we as a ministry were not happy with what was taking place in the regions. We recognized that the regional ability to fill those positions . . . . In fact, they were sometimes spinning their wheels. They were sending teams out and going to the same places, not recognizing that there had already been people there.

We, as a ministry, decided we were going to do an aggressive recruitment program at the central level, at the provincial level, so that we could reach out into all of those areas. We have done so. We've had success at getting a number of applications through. As I said, we now have to vet those applications to make sure that the individuals are the best for those jobs, make sure that their qualifications are good, make sure that they go through the skills . . . and that they have the necessary personal skills to do these jobs. We will be hiring them. It's not something that has been ignored.

It's something that was done at the regional level and something that we have now decided we need to take a much more aggressive stand on.

C. Clark: When the ministry predicts vacancies and staff leaving . . . . I appreciate that different circumstances will have different costs attached to them. But I suspect that for the budgeting process, the ministry must know how much it costs them, on average, when an employee leaves -- their severance, their vacation pay and all those other costs that are attached every time an employee leaves. Can the minister give us a number on either how much that cost overall last year or the average that the ministry uses for its budgeting purposes?

Hon. L. Boone: We don't really have costs associated with people leaving. There are ongoing costs of employment. If somebody leaves, we may have to pay out a vacation, if they haven't taken it, but often they have already taken their vacation. There are not ongoing costs that we have budgeted for. We haven't severed somebody or laid off a social worker for many, many years -- Les can't remember when the last time we laid off a social worker was -- so we don't have severance pay that goes with that. The costs associated with people leaving are generally just costs that are already included in their salary and benefits packages.

V. Anderson: I've been listening to the discussion over this time with a great deal of interest. What I'd like to do is explain a case that is of concern, without giving names. I'm not asking the minister to deal with this particular case, but it's very symbolic of a lot of different cases that we've had to deal with over the last number of years.

It's a case in which the ministry had concerns about the children of a family. There were three children in this case. They were able to apprehend the children and take the children through the process of the courts, and the children were taken away from the parents. Ever since then, the parents have not been able to have any access to or information about these children, so the children have been deprived of the relationship to their parents and their knowledge of that. Regardless of what the incidents were, under the international covenant, children have a right to know who their parents are.

That was before, when we got involved in this particular situation. Then another child came into the family, and shortly after that child was born, the same process started. For four years now, that has been in and out of the court -- with the court and the family trying to deal with this. Part of the time, because the husband was unemployed, they were able to have legal aid assistance. Then the husband got a job in order to look after the family and provide the kind of facilities that would enable at least the latter child to come and live at home.

But when you get a job, then you no longer qualify for legal aid. So the fourth child was apprehended by the ministry and placed in care, and again the relationship . . . .

The whole three years of that struggle, before the final apprehension took place, was just a horror story -- of trying to have visitation, of trying to have meetings between ministry representatives and the family. For instance, on occasion the mother went to visit during the visiting hours which were allowed. The custodial person responsible would bring the child late and would not bring any food for the child, so the child would get restless, and the mother would not be able to visit because they'd take the child right home again.

At one point in the process we arranged for an advocate -- a minister in the community -- to go with the mother so that she could have some support. And they refused to allow the advocate to be part of the visit. That was unsettling to the mother and to the visit. We protested that, and eventually that was allowed to happen. But time after time there are these kinds of things.

So they took that child away from the family again, put a watch on them, and advised everybody that if they were in the family way again, they would have to report them. When they got in the family way again, being aware of this kind of surveillance of their life -- every moment of their history -- they kept out of the way. So they were able to have the child, bring it into the world. Then the father took the child, at about two or two and a half months old, for a walk in the park.

Someone recognized the father, saw him with the child, and, as we understand it, the child was then apprehended from the park and taken by the ministry again. All the while the father has been trying to go to court on his own, and he's trying to hold down a job. Just today, when I discussed the situation with him . . . . The hearing is on Thursday. He was advised that he could go in today and get the presentation papers in order that he could work on it at night, because he has a daytime job and he's not able to get legal assistance.

So he went in today to get the presentation papers and, as a layperson, to try to struggle through this in the evening, and he was told he can't get them until Wednesday afternoon. The court case is on Friday, so there's absolutely no time for him to present a case.

This is the kind of thing that's happened for four years, again and again and again. This isn't the only case where we've had the same kind of process, but this particular family . . . . We've never been able to say what is the right or wrong of the decisions that have been made, but I'm perfectly convinced that the process has been rotten. The process has been unfair to the parents and to the children. The knowledge and the expertise that should be available to the children by an independent advocate or somebody speaking on their behalf, which our law provides, has not been available to them.

The opportunity to meet with them . . . . We have met with the doctor that cared for the family, and the report that we get from the doctor and the reports that we hear through the ministry are not the same thing -- or the reports that come out in the documents.

[4:15]

I want to say to the minister . . . . I know she can't deal with the particular case. What I'm trying to get at is: what

[ Page 8820 ]

option does a person have, after four years of going through a process where the process has already made up its mind, and every time you go to the court with a new situation, the answer you get is, "Well, there may be apparent possible difficulty in the future," and there's no way to review that or go back to it? This is not only in one case; there are many cases. I use this particular case because our inability to get at it is very frustrating.

Hon. L. Boone: I'm glad the member recognizes the difficult situation in terms of trying to deal with cases on an individual basis. I appreciate your not mentioning names and all those sorts of things; I don't think that's appropriate to do.

Not knowing the background of that particular case, what I'd like to do is offer to you that if you got the approval of the family, we'd be happy to arrange for you to meet with the director of child protection to review the case and to see how we can work out some solutions around that. It's often difficult for staff and for all of our people to deal with situations, because they can't reveal information that is confidential. So it's often hard for us to deal with you on an individual basis and to give you the necessary information that's required to help that family.

But if you can get that approval, then we'd be happy to work with you on an individual basis to see if we can try and search through this thing -- okay?

V. Anderson: I appreciate that. We have the approval; we've had it for a long time, and we've tried different processes to deal with it. The same would have been true prior to this last child coming into the picture -- the family despaired of getting any positive response, from their point of view. They've asked that we make it available to somebody who will review the process, because they don't want this same thing happening to other people. Even if their situation can't be resolved, they don't want this happening to other people.

So we have their permission, and we will come and make that arrangement. We'll bring it up to date. Whether or not this particular family get their children back -- which, of course, they would like to do -- at the very least, they want to make sure that the process that they've had to go through . . . . It has been real hell -- and I say that honestly -- and they've done the best they can to be part of the process, but from their point of view there has not been support for either the children or the family in the relationship, whether they're together or apart.

At one point the father said to me: "Can you at least somehow get a message across to the children that we love them, and that we did not discard them from our household of our own will? If the children can get even this, we will feel better." That's a cry of despair, a cry of hope; it's a cry of concern for the children. The process has not enabled those children to know that the love of the parents -- even if the love of the family is inadequate -- is there for the children.

And the children have the right to know that -- to have the opportunity to know that even if their parents were not able to care for them, which I'm not sure is the case here . . . . But even if they were not, the children have a right to know that the parents love and cared for their children.

So I will take up the minister's offer, and we will arrange that as quickly as possible.

B. McKinnon: Could the minister tell me: if a child protection worker has a number of families under her care and a woman is pregnant and about to have a baby, and she's on drugs and alcohol -- and this family's under the ministry's care -- does the child protection worker make the ministry aware that a child with FAS is going to be born or give you any inkling that a baby in trouble is going to be under your care? Do you have any system which counts or looks at what's happening with babies being born with FAS?

Hon. L. Boone: If there is a situation where a family is involved and a protection worker knows that a child may be born with FAS, then we would try to make the necessary connections to the community so that they know that this child is being born. They may actually have to do a risk assessment to see if that child is at risk, as well, depending on the severity of what that child is going into. But we'd work with the community.

This is one of the things that the Gove inquiry recommended: integrated case management. As I was saying, it's a struggle to get there; we're working towards it. In some areas, integrated case management is working quite well. In others, it's still a struggle trying to get people to talk to each other and to recognize that we need to work on it as a unit, to try and make sure that services are available to those children. But the short answer is yes; they should be doing those things.

B. McKinnon: Do you, as a ministry, keep a record of it? For example, if I asked you if you knew how many babies with fetal alcohol syndrome were going to be born by the end of October at the Victoria hospital, would you know that and be prepared to look after those babies in your ministry? You'd have to find foster care for them. Would you have any idea along those lines?

Hon. L. Boone: We would only be aware of those that were brought to our attention. If the hospital or a physician brought it to our attention that a child was going to be born with fetal alcohol syndrome, that there was a particular problem with that mother, then yes, we would be aware of it, and we'd have those numbers. But we do not know of all children who are born with fetal alcohol syndrome. There may be moms out there who are still drinking, and their physicians may not even know about it. They may not show up in terms of being involved with alcohol. So we are not aware of every child who is born a fetal alcohol syndrome child.

B. McKinnon: I understand that. That's impossible for you to know. I'm more concerned about the families who are in the care of the ministry that you already know about -- for example, pregnant mothers who are drug-addicted, that are alcoholics, and that. You know that, say, this woman in particular is going to have a baby in August, June, July or whenever. Do you prepare ahead of time to deal with that baby when it is born? You actually know that your ministry's going to be taking care of these children, because they're going to be born in a few months, and you know what the mother's condition is.

Hon. L. Boone: Yes, we do.

B. McKinnon: Just for an example, could you give me an idea of what is happening, say, in the Victoria hospital up to the end of the summer? Do you have any idea of the number of babies on record that could be born with FAS?

Hon. L. Boone: We could get that information. We'd have to go to the regional operating officer and ask that person to review cases to give us the numbers of individuals out there

[ Page 8821 ]

that would have children to be born in Victoria, for example, or whatever it is. The regional operating officers would have to look at their individual cases.

C. Clark: When the minister says that the ministry is made aware of children who are likely to be born drug-affected or alcohol-affected, is she referring just to children that are in the care of or known to the ministry? Or is there a protocol whereby the ministry would automatically be notified by the hospital when they become aware of a situation where a child who is likely to be born drug-affected or alcohol-affected is on its way?

Hon. L. Boone: If the family physician was concerned, then the family physician would report it to the ministry.

C. Clark: My question, though, is: is there a protocol that the ministry has with the Ministry of Health, I assume, which physicians would refer to? Or is this just on an ad hoc basis? If you happen to have a doctor who remembers to call the ministry, the ministry might find out that the child was about to be born. I mean, there are two distinctly different scenarios here. Unless the mother of the child is a client of the ministry, it doesn't seem to me to be automatic that the physician would let the ministry know that the child is about to be born -- unless there's a protocol in place that governs that.

Hon. L. Boone: We currently have a protocol with all physicians to inform us of children in need of protection. We are working on a joint committee with representation from the Ministry for Children and Families, the Ministry of Health, BCWH -- British Columbia's Women's Hospital -- and the medical profession to develop a discharge planning protocol for infants with FAS or NAS. That protocol, which will be developed by this committee, is seen as a first step in identifying the range of supports needed by these children from birth to adulthood. That will be in place by the fall.

C. Clark: I take it from the minister's comments that what's envisioned as a result of that protocol is that physicians would automatically notify the ministry when a situation comes to their attention that might require a child to be taken into care or to have contact with the ministry after it's born. Is that correct?

[4:30]

Hon. L. Boone: We currently have that protocol in place right now with the BCMA, with the physicians. The protocol that we're working on is a discharge protocol for all children, regardless of whether they are in need of protection or not.

C. Clark: I want to get back a little bit to the issues around social workers and the support that's provided for them on the front lines. I wonder if the minister could tell us how many social workers are working today. The number I'm looking for is the number of people that are actually working. I suspect that would be the total number of FTEs -- just so the minister can be clear about this -- minus the number of people that are on sick leave or on vacation. Those burn FTEs as well, but . . . . So you've got the position that's there and it's filled, but there's nobody actually doing the job. I wonder if the minister would give us an idea of what those kinds of numbers are.

Hon. L. Boone: The cheeky response that my cheeky deputy gave me was: "All of them are working, we hope, today." We will get that information to you, because we have to dig a little bit to find some of that. So if you'd like to ask another question, I'd be happy to get it.

C. Clark: Okay. The next question is: how much time was consumed for sick leave by social workers in the ministry last year?

Hon. L. Boone: As of May 11, 1998, the number of protection social workers -- and that includes regular and auxiliary -- was 1,258 regular and 95 auxiliary, for a total of 1,353 people in all of the regions. On our reports of those for the '97-98 fiscal year, an average utilization of sick leave for eligible ministry employees was, for all employees, 10.7 days. For all social programs officers it was 10.5 days; for all child protection workers, 10.9 days; and for all government employees, 10.7 days.

It says that there is a perception that child protection workers are absent from their duties more than other social workers or ministry employees. But I guess the average rate of STIIP use across all government ministries over the '97 year was 10.73 days per employee, so I don't think it looks like child protection workers were absent much more than other employees.

C. Clark: Could the minister also share with us her regional breakdown of those sick days?

Hon. L. Boone: That is information that we'll have to get to you. We don't have that breakdown here.

C. Clark: The reason I'm interested in the regional breakdown -- and I suspect that the minister is anticipating my questions -- is because I'm interested in how many sick days were taken in the region that includes Quesnel. The situation up there was an enormously difficult one for the community, for the workers and for the ministry. The workers took a lot of sick leave, because they couldn't manage the volume of work that was being thrown in their direction, particularly given that they didn't have enough staff support being thrown in their direction as well.

That's the number I'm looking for in particular when we talk about sick leave. I'm interested in finding out if and how much the Quesnel experience differs from the other regions, because I think that is an excellent way for us to predict where problems might occur in the future.

The audit of the Quesnel office -- the two audits -- were precipitated by a whole number of complaints, in part from employees. I want to talk with the minister a little bit about how the auditing process works and about what, in particular, happened in Quesnel when the auditing process was triggered up there.

Maybe a good place to start is to find out when the ministry twigged to the fact that there was a problem in Quesnel for the first time, and what their initial response was to try and deal with it when it first came to their attention.

Hon. L. Boone: We started to identify problems in that area in June and July, when the children's commissioner's first report on some deaths in that area came down. It was decided then that we would do an audit in the fall of that year to discover whether there were systemic problems in that area.

I want to point out to the member that . . . . She talks about workload. I've made it very clear that workload is a problem not just in Quesnel but for all of the ministry staff who were facing tremendous problems with regard to the restructuring in the ministry, the changes in the mandate of

[ Page 8822 ]

the ministries and all of the various things that took place. The children's commissioner's report that just came out last week clearly shows that although there were workload issues in Quesnel, the workload was similar in Williams Lake; but Williams Lake never underwent the same problems and practices that occurred in Quesnel. She makes it quite clear that the problems that happened in Quesnel were not necessarily the result of the workload.

C. Clark: One of the important points that the children's commissioner makes and every informed commentator makes is that when we look at workload, it's not solely the number of cases that we need to look at. It's the kinds of cases that they deal with as well. It is my understanding that in Quesnel, the kinds of cases that social workers were dealing with were different from those in Williams Lake. To suggest that it's not a workload issue is to suggest that the social workers just weren't doing their jobs. Either it's a workload issue or it's not a workload issue.

Either they were being asked to do too much with too few resources, or they just didn't know how to do their jobs. It's a simple question. I side with those who suggest that it was a resource issue -- that they didn't have the resources they needed to do their jobs properly. That's my view of what happened in Quesnel.

My understanding from social workers, when I've met with them in Quesnel and when I've spoken to them on many, many occasions since then, is that they informed the ministry repeatedly that there were problems brewing in that office and that something needed to be done. They informed the ministry about these problems long before the children's commissioner did, and they warned officials that there were going to be problems if they didn't act quickly. And what happened? Real problems arose in Quesnel.

My question isn't about when the children's commissioner was informed about it or when she informed the ministry about it. My question is about when the social workers first notified the ministry that there was a problem in that office.

Hon. L. Boone: I want to make this quite clear again. The children's commissioner found in her investigation that "the Quesnel audits were an important means by which [the Ministry for Children and Families] monitored and addressed significant child protection practice problems in that office." It was the child protection practices that were the problem. She wrote:

"The audits correctly disclosed many serious cases of children left at risk through inadequate child protection practices and poor management in that office. The audit did not address legitimate workload issues raised by the staff. However, the level and the extent of problems in practice, judgment and supervision of the Quesnel office cannot be attributed solely to workload. Similar problems were not found in the audit of the Williams Lake office, with comparable workload challenges."

As I stated earlier, we as a ministry recognized and identified some problem areas after the initial children's commissioner's report on the death of a child in the spring of '97. We then decided that we would do an audit in the fall of that year, to audit not just the management but the systemic problems that we saw happening in the Quesnel area. There were significant issues around practice. Those practices resulted from philosophical differences of the supervisor in that area and her directions to the staff in that area. The staff in the Quesnel office were merely following the directions of their supervisor.

The supervisor had not acted and was not acting in the manner the ministry had moved to as a result of Gove. There were significant differences of opinion and philosophy between that supervisor and the ministry. I make this quite clear: the staff in that area were following the supervisor's direction.

C. Clark: It sounds to me like the minister is admitting that there was a workload problem in Quesnel and that there were other problems. There were practice issues. I think that to some extent it's probably fair to say that practice issues will be more likely to arise when you've got a workload problem.

Judge Gove pointed out in his report that social workers are more likely to try and find corners to cut and ways to go about doing their jobs that might not fit into the rule and regulation that's written out -- but at least it's a little quicker, and they might be able to get a little more service in for children while they're doing their jobs. Certainly practice issues can sometimes be unrelated to workload. But when there are workload problems, practice issues are much more likely to arise. I don't think that's going to be a point of great debate here.

In addition to that, though, the minister has admitted -- I think I've heard her admit it -- that there were workload problems in Quesnel and that it wasn't just practice issues. When the children's commissioner says that not all of the problems can be attributed just to workload, what she's saying is that a lot of them can be attributed to workload. My question for the minister is: when did the ministry first become aware of the workload issues in that office? Social workers say that they let the ministry know as long ago as December 1996. That's when they first started complaining to the ministry.

So I'll ask the question again about when the ministry first became aware that there was a workload problem in the Quesnel office.

[4:45]

Hon. L. Boone: The workload issue was first brought to the attention of the regional operating officer in April by the supervisor.

Before I do this, I want to go back, because I think you're misunderstanding me when I say that there were severe practice issues. The practice issues go back not necessarily to workload but to a difference in philosophy between that supervisor and the ministry. The children's commissioner recognizes that, and she makes that very clear. In fact, the supervisor in that office made it clear that she did not agree with the direction the ministry was going in.

So her directions to her staff were different than what other staff were giving -- for example, what the supervisor in the Williams Lake office was giving to their staff. We did not have the practice difficulties or the concerns in the Williams Lake office that we had in the Quesnel office. This was not strictly a workload issue. This is a difference in philosophy between the existing supervisor and the direction the ministry was going in. I want to make that very clear.

As I said, the supervisor made some concerns known to the regional operating officer in April. They made some changes within their structure there. I think there were some leaves that were granted to try and deal with the workload issues and the pressures. They were trying to manage it internally within that region. It was decided in the spring of that year that we would have the audit in the fall, and that's when the audit took place. That's when the practices that were taking place in that area came to the attention of a higher level of the ministry.

C. Clark: When did the ministry first become aware that there was a significant difference of philosophical opinion between the supervisor and the ministry? If the ministry

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became aware of the workload issue as early as April, and the supervisor also made clear that she didn't agree with the ministry's philosophy, when did she let officials know that she didn't agree with the direction the ministry was taking?

Hon. L. Boone: That came out in the audit.

C. Clark: So we're still back in April when the ministry first heard from the supervisor that there was a problem in the office, at least with respect to workload. Can I assume that all of the workload grievances from the Quesnel office came after April? Or were a significant number of those grievances lodged about workload with the ministry before the supervisor put in her official notice with the ministry that there was a problem with workload?

Hon. L. Boone: I'll have to check that and get that information for you.

C. Clark: When the supervisor let the ministry know that there was a problem, did she advise verbally? Did she advise them in writing? Was it a formal process? Was it a grievance?

Hon. L. Boone: I understand it was done by e-mail and by telephone conversations with the regional operating officer, but the regional operating officer was getting mixed signals from the supervisor. On one hand, she was saying she needed help; on the other hand, she was saying that she wanted to let people go on leave. At that time, as a manager, the regional operating officer was taking these messages as mixed messages and was not quite sure how she should be perceiving them.

C. Clark: I have to admit that I find it difficult to understand how the minister, on the one hand, can say that she supports her staff and thinks her staff are doing a great job and that the ministry is doing a terrific job, and on the other hand, is quite willing to lay the blame on the supervisor, who is also a member of the staff in Quesnel. She's not exempt, you know . . . . She's a member of the minister's staff, and it doesn't sound very supportive to me when the minister says that the supervisor didn't know what she was doing, that the supervisor had a difference of opinion and didn't follow policy, and that it was the supervisor who made all the mistakes.

It seems to me that the honourable thing to do would be for the minister to admit that there's a problem on her side, as well, in the failure to provide resources to the office in Quesnel. It's not just the supervisor's fault because she didn't know what she was doing. It's not just the supervisor's fault because the ministry didn't respond to her requests for help. Some of the blame surely lies at the political level for the minister's failure to provide resources to her ministry or to ensure that that office was adequately staffed and adequately resourced.

It's ironic to hear the minister get up every day and say: "I don't blame staff for anything. Gee, you know, the staff are doing a great job, and I would never say they're doing anything wrong. I really support my staff." On the other hand, when it comes to Quesnel -- when it comes to a big problem -- the first thing that happens is that the staff get blamed. The line of first defence is to say that staff made a mistake: "Oh no. The problem doesn't lie at the political level."

It's all very well and fine to say that you support your staff -- except when there's a crisis, and then it's all the staff's fault. That seems to me to be what the minister is telling us about Quesnel: that the blame lies at the feet of the supervisor in Quesnel and that she's the one at fault.

How can it be that there wasn't a workload issue in Quesnel, that there wasn't a resource problem in Quesnel, if it took 20 new workers, or somewhere in that neighbourhood, to come into that community to try and close the gap that had been created there -- 20 new workers, when they were down to four or six before the crisis hit? They had to fill that gap with 20 new workers to do the work that previously far fewer had been doing. That says to me that there must be a workload issue in Quesnel. It must be more than just the workers' fault. There must have been a resource problem in that office.

The community of Quesnel paid the price for the minister's failure to meet the challenge there and for the ministry's failure to listen to the workers in that office when they first warned that there was a problem, as far back as April.

The audit didn't happen until the fall, until after the children's commissioner had demanded it. But when the staff were asking for it -- when it was only the staff that were letting the ministry know that there was a problem -- that wasn't good enough for the ministry. It seems that in this case they waited for one of these independent bodies to come forward and ask. Why isn't it good enough for staff to let the ministry know when there is a problem -- for the ministry to act on the knowledge that the staff are offering them? Surely they know more than anyone else what happens on the front lines.

Surely they're the ones in the best position to advise the ministry about how to fix the problems.

That's where they should be asking and looking for help. But in this case, rather than saying that there was a workload and resource problem or even just saying, "I'm sorry; I fixed it," or "I'm trying to fix it," the minister says: "It's all the workers' fault. There is a crisis in Quesnel and I'm going to stand up for my staff, except when there is a problem. When there's a problem, that's where I'm going to lay the blame -- at the feet of the staff who are already under-resourced."

Then she wonders why there is a problem with morale in this ministry. Because there is a serious problem with morale.

There's an 83 percent turnover rate, according to the BCGEU, amongst the new workers that the ministry hired on its last big recruitment drive -- within two years. That's an astonishing number. The BCGEU says that it's 25 percent on average for new workers in the ministry. That's another astonishing number. I bet you that the fry

section at McDonald's doesn't have numbers like that for turnover. The Ministry for Children and Families is a ministry that attracts employees who go into it because they want to change the world; they want to make a difference and be in the people business -- they want to make a career choice for the rest of their lives. When 83 percent of them leave within the first two years of working in the ministry, that tells us there is something very, very seriously wrong.

I would argue that the biggest problem that employees are facing in this ministry is a lack of resources. Then, when they can't do their job because they don't have the resources, the political leaders in the government, the ministers and the senior ministry people say: "It's all the workers' fault." Well, that's not good enough. The ministry needs to take some responsibility for the problems that happen in this ministry and for the lack of resources at the front lines. The ministry has to take some responsibility for that.

The social work supervisor in Quesnel first let the ministry know that there was a problem as early as April. If that was the first time the ministry knew about that problem -- and we don't know yet about how many grievances there were in that office; I hope we'll get that information by this evening -- how many other times between April and the end

[ Page 8824 ]

of August was the ministry informed again that there were workload problems in that office?

Hon. L. Boone: I want to correct some things here. The member likes to quote numbers all the time, whether they are right or wrong, but we'll give them to you anyway. The ministry has conducted a review of the turnover of the 325 regular social workers hired in the '96-97 fiscal year and has concluded the following. Of the 325 hired, the total number of terminations during the '96-97 fiscal year was 23, which represents a 7 percent turnover rate. Of the 325 hired, the total number of terminations during the '97-98 fiscal year was 47, which represents a 14 percent turnover rate. The overall turnover rate for social workers during the '97-98 fiscal year was 7.2 percent.

I have never said that workload was not an issue. Without question, it is an issue in the entire ministry. I have acknowledged that. When we said that we were hiring more social workers, I said that workload was an issue.

Clearly the issue in Quesnel is different. There is a workload issue in Williams Lake. The population is 23,000 in Quesnel and 27,000 in Williams Lake. There are 50 intake calls per month in Quesnel and 54 in Williams Lake -- child protection workers in Quesnel, 6.5; child protection workers in Williams Lake, six. The issue does not have to do strictly with workload; it has to do with practice issues. As I stated quite clearly, it is not an issue of the individual workers in that area; they were merely following the directions of the supervisor.

The children's commissioner clearly states:

"The Quesnel audits disclosed disturbing and deep-seated shortcomings in the child protection practices and management of the