June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1717 Legislative Assembly of Alberta Title: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 1:00 p.m. Date: 07/06/13 [The Speaker in the chair] head: Prayers The Speaker: Good afternoon. Let us pray. We give thanks for our abundant blessings to our province and ourselves. We ask for guidance and the will to follow it. Amen. Please be seated. head: Introduction of Guests The Speaker: The hon. Minister of Advanced Education and Technology. Mr. Horner: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s my pleasure to rise today to introduce to you and through you to all members of the Legislature four members of a delegation from our sister province, Heilongjiang. They are Mr. Zhang Chunguang, member of the Urban and Rural Construction and Environmental Protection Committee; Mr. Pan Zhong, who is the deputy director general of the Heilongjiang department of science; Mr.

Zhao Yiqiang, who is the division director of the Heilongjiang Department of Education; and Ms Liu Hongmei, who is the deputy division director, Europe and America division, Heilongjiang Foreign Affairs Office, and an alumna, I might add, of the University of Alberta. Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is the 26th anniversary of the very strong sister province relationship between Alberta and Heilongjiang. There are more than 108,000 Albertans of Chinese descent in our province, and it makes that bond very, very strong.

We have exchanges in a number of areas in postsecondary and research and technology, and we have several co-operative agree- ments. We are following up with both offices and officials from both jurisdictions to ensure that those agreements generate win-wins for both jurisdictions. This delegation is in Alberta for only a short time, but it is building and strengthening that relationship. I would ask that the delegation please rise in your gallery and receive the traditional warm welcome of our Legislature. The Speaker: The hon. Minister of Education. Mr. Liepert: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s my pleasure today to introduce 57 grade 5 students from a school in my constituency, Webber Academy. Last week the Fraser Institute released its findings on schools, and while that should not alone be a judge of a school’s performance, it is one of the things that should be consid- ered relative to quality of education. I must say that Webber Academy came out tied for first place in the Fraser Institute rankings, and I’m pleased to introduce today three teachers that are accompanying the students – Dan M ondaca, Jason Ash, Janet Adamson – and a parent, Elaine Butler.

They’ve just arrived on the bus from Calgary, and I’d ask them to all please stand and receive the recognition of the House. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Leduc-Beaumont-Devon. Mr. Rogers: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It gives me great pleasure to introduce some of the brightest and best young students in my constituency and probably all of Alberta. We’re joined today by a group of 18 students from the Cornerstone Christian Academy in Kingman, which is located in the east end of my constituency. They’re seated in the public gallery, and they’re led today by their teacher, Mr. Rob Bowick.

I would ask that they stand and receive the traditional warm welcome of the Assembly. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Calgary-Shaw. Mrs. Ady: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my privilege today to rise and introduce two very special people in my life. First would be my former legislative assistant who is back visiting, Cheryl Koss, and also my current leg. assistant, Berenika Kalista. If they would please rise and enjoy the warm welcome of the Assembly. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Lacombe-Ponoka. Mr. Prins: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s my pleasure to introduce to you and through you two groups of visitors today. First of all, from my constituency are Bill and Beryl Bale. They’re here today from Lacombe. Bill moved to Canada from England in 1959 and has spent the last 40 years in Lacombe. Joining them are two daughters: Hazel Chastell and her husband from Lincolnshire, England, and Susan Bale of Leeds, England. They are seated in the members’ gallery, and I’d ask them to rise and receive the warm welcome of this Assembly.

It’s also my pleasure today to introduce to you and through you to this Assembly two individuals from Lacombe that are also seated in the members’ gallery. Sandra Scott and Shannon Sears are here today from Lacombe. Hon. members should know that Sandra also happens to be the daughter of the hon. minister of agriculture. I would ask that they rise and receive the traditional warm welcome of this Assembly. Ms Tarchuk: Mr. Speaker, I’m pleased to rise today and introduce to you and through you two employees of Children’s Services.

Jamie Reid is a Grant MacEwan student and is currently doing her practicum in our communications office while she studies for her public relations diploma. Bobbi Klettke joins us from the Capital health region and brings her years of experience to Children’s Services communications, working with our prevention of family violence and bullying program. Bobbi will join an already success- ful program that has seen great strides in bringing family violence and bullying the attention it needs to ensure that Alberta’s children and families live in safe and caring communities.

I ask Jamie and Bobbi to rise and r eceive the traditional warm welcome of the House. The Speaker: The hon. Minister of Finance. Dr. Oberg: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. It’s certainly an honour on behalf of the minister responsible for the personnel administration office to introduce to you and through you to the members of the Legislature seven individuals from PAO who are here as part of the public service orientation tour.

I would ask Kari Hamilton, Christina Steenbergen, Rob Acker, Travis Skriver, Paul Oss, Jason Pomedli, and Dustin Lafleur to please rise and receive the traditional warm welcome of the Legislative Assembly. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods. Mrs. Mather: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure and honour to introduce to you and through you to the Assembly a group of caring, hard-working, and courageous social workers. They are Lori Sigurdson, Papiya Das, Grace Elliott, Roxanne Dohms,

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071718 Kathaleen Quinn, Marilyn Jeske, Deb Johansson, and Katheryn Watters. I’d ask that they rise and accept the trad itional warm welcome of the House. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre. Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I have three introductions today. I think the first group is here, and that is nine adult high school equivalency students who are currently attending CIT college in my constituency. They are accompanied today by their instructor, Joel Heidebrecht.

I would ask them to please rise if they’re in either gallery and accept the warm welcome of the Assembly. The second introduction that I have, Mr. Speaker, is part of my continuing celebration of Edmonton being named the cultural capital of Canada for 2007. I’d like to introduce to you and through you to all members of the Assembly two wonderful, absolutely fabulous arts programmers. I’ll start with Tony Luppino. Tony, if you would please rise. Tony, of course, is the executive director of the Art Gallery of Alberta.

He is largely responsible for the new building that we will be able to enjoy, and it’s on track to open in 2009. I know that he wants me to thank all the different levels of govern- ment that supported that building plus the private donors and the corporations. Very exciting exhibits are still going on at Enterprise Square, which is the old Hudson’s Bay building. It’s a super collaboration with the University of Alberta and shows what our city can do. Thank you, Tony. Joining Tony today is Catherine Crowston, who is the chief curator and deputy director. It’s her job to make sure that the programming continues.

I think we have her to thank for exhibits like China Sensation, and of course many of you would have been able to take in the free-for-all that happened with all of the profes- sional and amateur artists that came out to the closing show. They’ve also done things like the Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, and currently running is Capital Modern: Edmonton Architec- ture and Urban Design 1940-1969. Please join me in welcoming these two wonderful additions to our cultural capital. 1:10 My third introduction today is also involved in the visual arts, and that is Todd Janes. Todd, if you would rise, please.

I’ve known Todd for an awfully long time. I’m delighted to be able to introduce him in the Assembly. He has been the executive director of Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture for over 12 years now. He is an artist, a curator, and a cultural worker who has worked very hard to raise the profile of contemporary art. I should note that next year is Latitude 53’s 35th anniversary, making it one of Canada’s oldest artist-run centres and a space that’s exhibited thousands of artists in many different disciplines. Welcome, Todd, and thank you very much for coming to the Alberta Assembly. The Speaker: The hon.

Member for Edmonton-Gold Bar. Mr. MacDonald: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure to introduce to you and through you to all hon. Members of this Legislative Assembly Mr. Merle Schnee. Mr. Schnee is a lifelong resident of Edmonton-Gold Bar. He is a retired firefighter, and he is very active in politics and a keen observer of all events that are public. He is in the public gallery, and I would now ask him to rise and receive the warm traditional welcome of this Assembly. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Ellerslie. Mr. Agnihotri: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It’s my great honour to rise and introduce to you and through you to all members of the Assembly a group of 13 individuals who are the pride of my constituency. They have organized hundreds and hundreds of people, including me, to form the Munnky Krunchers, Canada’s top fundraising team. They have raised 40,000-plus dollars for people suffering from MS. They have done tremendous efforts to raise the funds. The government should double their efforts to help scientists and researchers to find the cure for this disease. The group is seated in the public gallery.

They are Donna Romanuik, Tanys Romanuik, Pat Semrok, Sammy Semrok, Ryan Kew, Alfred Nobert, Denise Nobert, Linda Craig, Olivia Craig, Emily Craig, Patrick Aube, Darlene Treder, Chantell Barone. I request them to please rise and receive the traditional warm welcome of the Assembly. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Glenora. Dr. B. Miller: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s a great privilege for me to introduce to you and through you to all members of the House the brilliant, creative, hard-working staff of the Edmonton-Glenora constituency office: Jan Millson, Peter Marriott, C.D. Saint, and Craig Miller.

I invite them to stand and receive the warm welcome of the House. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-McClung. Mr. Elsalhy: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. It’s my pleasure to introduce to you and through you two guests who are joining us here today: Krista Mitton and Richard MacKay, who are both working with the Mira facilitation agency. Both of them came to the House before, and they even participated in a rally which took place on the steps of the Legislature six or seven weeks ago.

They’re also here to witness me continuing to submit petitions with respect to the people who work with people with disabilities. I would like to encourage them to continue talking to us, and I would invite them to please rise and receive the traditional warm welcome of this House. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Highlands- Norwood. Mr. Mason: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m pleased to introduce to you and through you to this Assembly Samuel Baron. Samuel grew up in Vegreville, Alberta, and has been a musician in the local Edmonton music scene for the last four years.

He’s been a student for the past two years at Grant MacEwan College and will be pursuing his bachelor of arts in political science at the U of A this fall. Samuel has a great interest in progressive politics, peace, and social justice. He has also volunteered in my constituency office and is looking forward to becoming more involved in provincial politics. I would now ask that he rise and receive the traditional warm welcome of this Assembly. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Calder. Mr. Eggen: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m delighted to introduce to you and through you to the members of this Assembly three wonderful constituents of mine who reside in Shepherd’s Care in Kensington. They are Mary Coupland, Shirley Murrie, and Jo Eggen. Jo Eggen came to Canada as a British war veteran 57 years ago after volunteering for military service since 1941. Jo is a world traveller, enjoying travelling even today. She has lived in Kensington for 45 years and remains a Calder resident to this day. She also has a lifetime membership at the Calder Seniors Drop-In

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1719 Centre. Shirley Murrie lived in Kensington for over 40 years as well. She’s very active in volunteering for the Calder Seniors Drop- In Centre and for the Castle Do wns United church. Shirley is an active social committee member and devotes many hours in her volunteer duties. Mary originally comes from Ireland but is a long- time resident of Edmonton. Mary resides at Shepherd’s Care as well, where she spends time visiting with her son and family. I would now ask for all three of them to please rise and receive the warm welcome of the Assembly. The Speaker: The hon.

Member for Edmonton-Strathcona. Dr. Pannu: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It’s my distinct pleasure to introduce to you and to all colleagues in the Assembly Todd Lorentz. Todd was born and raised in a farming community in central Alberta and after high school worked for eight years in the oil and gas industry. He entered the University of Alberta in ’64, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree with honours in philoso- phy, a master of arts degree in religious studies, and received many prestigious awards and scholarships for his work in eastern philoso- phy and quantum physics.

In 2005 Todd had the opportunity to speak in Nairobi, Kenya on global poverty. His subsequent visit to several slums in the Nairobi area brought him face to face with the victims of poverty, and that experience provided the inspiration behind the development of an organization to help alleviate the suffering of children called One Child’s Village: A Global Orphans Foundation. He is its current managing director and will be travelling next week to establish the foundation’s first orphanage in Kenya. Best wishes on that project, Todd. Todd is sitting in the far corner here in the public gallery.

I would ask him to now please rise and receive the warm welcome of the Assembly. head: Members’ Statements The Speaker: The hon. Member for Whitecourt-Ste. Anne. World Elder Abuse Awareness Day Mr. VanderBurg: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Friday, June 15, is the second annual World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, and communities across Alberta, Canada, and the world are coming together to raise awareness of elder abuse. You may have noticed that members of the House are wearing purple ribbons today.

I’d like to thank the members for wearing these ribbons and taking a small but significant stand in demonstrating their support for ending Alberta elder abuse and neglect. It is estimated that up to 10 per cent of older adults experience some form of abuse, and about 90 per cent of that is financial abuse. Seniors in these situations are often reluctant to talk about abuse; however, we can do something about it. We can watch for the signs of elder abuse and neglect, including confusion, depression or anxiety, unexplained injuries, changes in hygiene, or seeming fearful around certain people.

We can also report suspected elder abuse to authorities and encourage seniors to get help when they need it. There is help available. The government of Alberta is working with partners in the community to assist seniors and raise awareness of elder abuse. From 24-hour help lines and shelters to awareness posters and information we are working togeth er to help vulnerable seniors. Government is always working to address abuse or safety concerns for adults in publicly funded care facilities.

The Protection for Persons in Care Act legally requires anyone who suspects abuse to report it to the toll-free reporting lines or to local police authorities. Individually each of us has a role to play. We can watch for signs of elder abuse or neglect of the seniors we know, whether they are our neighbours, our friends, customers, or members of our family, and we can report abuse when we suspect it. This World Elder Abuse Awareness Day we can continue to spread the message that elder abuse will not be tolerated by Alber- tans. Together we can make a difference in the lives of seniors. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Speaker: The hon. Member for Olds-Didsbury-Three Hills. 1:20 Surface Rights Compensation Mr. Marz: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise today to urge the government to take action on an issue of urgent importance to many rural Albertans, that being the issue of surface rights compensation. The current system has not been reviewed for over 20 years, and landowners are still being compensated on an outdated formula using farm commodity prices to pay them for land they’re effec- tively being forced to relinquish for up to 50 years for an industrial purpose. That’s correct. You heard it right.

Landowners are forced to settle for a price based on farm commodity prices for land being used for industrial purposes. Even on the open market farmland is traded at market value rates, which have more than doubled in price over the last eight years. That has nothing to do with productivity, but that’s the market. However, this has no bearing on surface rights compensation rates. Since this issue was last reviewed, farmland has also doubled production as summer fallow practices have ceased in most areas of the province. The use of more fertilizers, chemicals, and improved varieties have allowed this to happen.

Yet when an energy company comes to negotiate a deal, none of these variables are considered by the Surface Rights Board or the EUB. Mr. Speaker, we do need development of our natural resources, but we also need to treat rural Albertans fairly. Those who have their land criss-crossed with pipelines and electricity transmission lines are receiving little to nothing in a nnual compensation for the inconvenience of these forced developments on their property. These developments greatly restrict their future use, the market value, and the enjoyment of their land.

Fair compensation would result in costing the end-use customer of the product pennies per month, yet there seems to be a reluctance to deal with this issue. I’m not surprised, Mr. Speaker, that the perception of the EUB and the Surface Rights Board by farmers is that of being totally biased in favour of the energy companies, and that perception will continue until a total review of this issue is done. So let’s get on with it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Strathcona. Sandra German Mr. Lougheed: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Today I would like to recognize an individual who goes sight unseen but is pivotal in helping others see what they cannot hear. Sandra German is a broadcast captioner and real-time translation provider based in Cold Lake, transcribing events and television programming in order that the deaf and hard of hearing can visually read what they cannot hear. Real-time captioning is not uncommon. For some time closed- captioning has been available on television.

Captioning is becoming more widely used at many large-scale events and conferences, both for the hard of hearing and for better comprehension by the general public.

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071720 Sandra has been a pioneer in the field of real-time captioning. She has spent the last 18 years as a real-time translation provider and started doing broadcast captioning six years ago. Real-time captioning requires great concentration and skill, and with her years of experience Sandra types 300 words per minute. In the course of her day she captions numerous television programs and provides real-time translation for universities such as UCLA, University of Florida, and McGill.

Sandra is able to do captioning from her home in Cold Lake due in part to the availability of the SuperNet, which allows her to make the connection to events around the globe. Sandra’s work is yet another Alberta success story. She is one of the very few people in this country who can teach others the trade. Her work in this field is moving the use of captioning into new areas such as for students learning English as a Second Language. Most importantly, her work is making this province a more accessible place. For that we are very grateful, and Sandra s hould be com- mended. Thank you. The Speaker: The hon.

Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods. Social Workers Mrs. Mather: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Social work was one of three traditional occupations for women, after nursing and teaching. It was women, including Alberta’s Famous Five, who created the first social infrastructure that helped to turn a frontier society into a community, a house into a home. Thirty-eight years ago the Social Credit government of Harry Strom renamed our public welfare department the department of social development.

This was part of a proactive approach to social issues that included setting up preventative social services, or PSS, committees and offices in each region and municipality. At that time few public servants in the department were social workers by orientation. Most had previously worked as police officers, ministers, teachers, and nurses. The emphasis inherited from public welfare days was not on serving people as much as dealing with problems, pushing paper, and enforcing policy. A friend of mine who served a few months in the department in 1970 was told: “You’re doing too much social work.

You’re not here to be an advocate for the client but an administrator for the government to tell the client what policy will permit.” Today our official approach is a client-centred one. We hire real social workers, but we don’t give them the resources or backing to do the job they trained for. In a society that puts business at the top of the food chain, social work is seen by many as something of an embarrassment. The social workers we hire bounce between putting out brush fires and conceptual models developed by a layer of middle management. Every day we see stickers urging us to support our troops.

Our social workers also deserve that kind of support. If the world had committed and properly trained social workers in areas of need, we would have less need to be sending troops to deal with failed societies. To quote a sticker in a daycare centre: we’ll know our values will have changed when every child gets the budgeted funds she needs and the military has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomb. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-McClung. Low-carbon Fuel Mr. Elsalhy: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I want to draw my hon. colleagues’ attention to the fact that, yes, Alberta may not run out of oil soon, having the second-largest oil reserve in the world, but also highlight the possibility that we may actually run out of markets in which to sell this commodity. The world will move on and leave Alberta behind. The greatest market for Alberta oil is the United States.

However, it is clear how the language and tone changed from two or three years ago when Canada was highlighted as being next door to the U.S., as being stable and friendly, producing reliable and affordable oil to now being called one of the worst polluters on the planet, to being pointed at as a culprit in worsening America’s addiction to fossil fuel. In his 2006 state of the union address President Bush announced that “America is addicted to oil,” and he promised to change that. In an

article published yesterday in the Financial Post, there was a quote from Mike Hudema, an Albertan who is now the director of the San Francisco-based Freedom from Oil Coalition. Mr. Hudema says that oil from the tar sands, unlike even conventional oil, is a lot dirtier. People all over the world, Mr. Speaker, are starting to realize the threat to the planet and that action needs to be taken to preserve the environment. Governments and individuals of all political stripes are coming together in the fight against climate change.

Take California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who went from an environmental menace with his three gas-guzzling, exhaust-spewing Hummers to an environmental messiah using his celebrity status and political might to reduce reliance on dirty fuels and cut oil imports from places like Alberta. He was in Canada last week signing agreements committing Ontario and British Columbia to adhere to California’s new low carbon fuel standard, which will cut the use of petroleum products from sources known to cause high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, sources like Alberta.

Quebec, and Manitoba, perhaps other provinces as well, and at least 12 U.S. states are expected to join the California standard, thus shrinking the market for the fast-growing Alberta oil industry. Is Alberta going to join? Will we be the last province? Is ours the only government that is in denial or that is resistant to change? There is even an agency in the U.S., Mr. Speaker, called the Natural Resources Defense Council, which labels its 2006 annual report Moving America Beyond Oil. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Cardston-Taber-Warner. Teachers’ Unfunded Pension Liability Mr. Hinman: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

A mortgage, a personal debt, unfunded liability: is there a differen ce? I don’t think so. A debt is a debt; a liability is a liability. Fancy bookkeeping doesn’t change the reality of the situatio n. Ask shareholders of Enron, WorldCom, Nortel, or Bre-X. A story may help here. You owe $25,000 on personal credit and $4,000 to a friend. Let’s just say he’s a t eacher. You also have a leaky roof on your home from a hailstorm and no insurance to cover the cost of repair. The first thing you do is you go to the bank and discuss repayments. They agree to a 25-year plan that works for everyone.

However, they will not allow you to fix your roof. You say to yourself: it doesn’t rain that often. You agree with the bank that they’ll okay all expenditures and will get all of your profits. Luckily, your business takes off, and you have the ability to pay off the big debt early. You celebrate 100 years in business, and you have a mortgage-burning party to which you invite your teacher friend. Then you go on a spending spree and hire new management and spend a lot of time golfing. In the meantime, it has been raining. You haven’t increased or accelerated your payments to your friend.

You are content with the deal. He was generous when he made it. He was helping make sure

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1721 your business didn’t go under. Your friend is getting worried, though. He sees your lifestyle as flamboyant and riotous. You tell him how great things are, but he is concerned about your spending and whether his payments will keep coming. He begins to feel a pinch in his lifestyle and asks if you could please pay off your debt. You say that you’re doing okay and ignore him. You’ll pay according to the 50-year agreement you made with him. Mr. Speaker, this government does not have a sustainable budget.

Spending continues to rise with a fast lifestyle of fine dining and exclusive resorts. We are not receiving good value for our tax dollars. With our surplus top priority should be to pay off the government’s portion of the teachers’ unf unded pension liability. We must also address the estimated $60 billion unf unded liab ility that we have to the Canada pension plan. It is way past time to pay off the $4 billion debt to the teachers and opt out of CPP and create our own Alberta pension plan. head: 1:30 Oral Question Period The Speaker: First Official Opposition main question. The hon.

Leader of the Official Opposition. Calgary Concerns Dr. Taft: Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. The residents of Calgary, including those in Calgary-Elbow, are frustrated that their voices are not being heard in this government. Like other Albertans they’re still waiting for a comprehensive solution to the affordable housing crisis, one that works. Funding for renters is inadequate, and the legislation is full of loopholes. Of course, we’re all still waiting for the Treasury Board president’s famous website that’s supposed to scare gouging landlords. My question is to the Premier.

What is the Premier prepared to tell the residents of Calgary, including renters in Calgary-Elbow, who know that this government’s affordable housing plan is not working? When can we expect the rest of his plan? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, the plan is working. Of $285 million for affordable housing for the province, $63 million is going directly to Calgary in the first year. The other day the mayor, taking a suggestion from what we had talked about, is now moving with city council, looking at how they can provide land for affordable housing.

That is one issue that we’ve got to get our heads around: getting enough land for affordable housing. So the plan is moving. The Speaker: The hon. leader. Dr. Taft: Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Expanding the LRT system is another priority for Calgarians. It’s critical to managing growth and, of course, to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but to build it, you need a commitment for sustainable, long-term funding. Calgarians know that the Premier promised one thing during his leadership race and has delivered something quite different.

To the Premier: when will Calgary have the funding assurances in place that will enable the expansion of the LRT system to move ahead? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, I had promised $1.4 billion for municipalities, and we delivered on that promise. The full $1.4 billion will be in the 2010-11 budget. We said that it would be there for 10 years. We may review it, you know, in the middle of those 10 years, depending on the growth in the economy. It’s difficult to predict the kind of growth that may occur and the revenues that flow. But the $1.4 billion is there. I promised it, and it’s there. Dr. Taft: Well, Mr.

Speaker, this government is developing a bad habit of lowering expectations rather than meeting them. The latest example is the backtracking on the promise of new postsecondary spaces. Calgary desperately needs more postsecondary spaces, and Mount Royal College is prepared to deliver, but this government has not given Mount Royal the support required to meet the needs of Calgarians.

Again to the Premier: if Mount Royal College’s applications for new bachelor’s degree programs in arts, sciences, justice studies, and business are approved, will the Premier commit to funding them and to funding them at the level they need? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, the minister is reviewing where spaces will be added. In fact, yesterday’s comments from the University of Lethbridge and the University of Calgary were that they’re agreeing with the minister in terms of the direction taken and adding spaces where they’re required, so it’s further dialogue, planning with the postsecondary deliverers.

Now, with respect to Mount Royal there is a plan in place, and the minister may want to speak further to it. Mr. Horner: Mr. Speaker, as I’ve said many times in this House, we are in very close consultation with all of our postsecondaries on their role, their responsibility, and their mandate within the frame- work of Campus Alberta. For th e first time that, I think, has been discussed, there is a pathway for Mount Royal to achieve their objectives. The Speaker: Second Official Opposition main question. The hon. Member for Edmonton-Decore. Capital Region Municipal Planning Mr. Bonko: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Alberta Liberals’ Bill 211, Planning for the Future of Communities Act, accomplished the very same thing as the Premier’s capital region growth management plan announced yesterday, yet in Bill 211 debates the minister of the Treasury Board stated that mandatory regional planning is “code for forced amalgamation.” The Member for Rocky Mountain House stated that it’s imperative that “we support each municipality in its own endeavours.” To the Premier. A minister and a former minister spoke harshly against regional planning. Does the Premier support their statements, or are they both just wrong? Mr.

Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, I don’t know what, you know, the member is bringing forward. All I know is that it’s very clear that we’re moving quickly by getting all of the 24 municipalities together, focusing on a growth management plan for the capital region. It’s going to take into account not only the physical infrastructure but the social infrastructure. I’m talking about policing, ambulance services, provision of services like water and sewer, waste management, and also looking at a governance model once we’ve collated all this information.

If we don’t do it, we are at risk of losing a considerable amount of investment. Predicted investment is about $39 billion. If we don’t move very positively with leadership, we may lose tremendous investment in the province. Mr. Bonko: It’s taken a long time to get to this point. Bill 211 and the capital region growth management plan both create long-term growth management plans for the region. They both establish regional boards. They both have provincial representation. They both include a land-use strategy, and they both create regional growth plans. The government cannot deny – ca nnot deny – the similarity.

To the Premier: why did your government vote against Bill 211 when they both accomplish the very same thing?

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071722 Mr. Stelmach: First of all, it’s a private member’s bill. You know, he’s been in the House a few years and still doesn’t understand the difference. Very clearly, all 24 municipalities are onside. They’re working towards one common goal. The other thing, which is very important here, is that this may be a model that we can use, perhaps share with other municipalities in the province of Alberta in terms of working together, planning towards much more effective delivery of public services.

That’s where the savings are, and that’s where we can reduce a lot of the tax costs to local taxpayers. Mr. Bonko: There’s no legislative basis for the government to guarantee that regional planning will get things done. Despite the Premier saying that the province will have the partners, there’s no mechanism to do this. The Premier does not have a legislative leg to stand on. To the Premier. On affordable housing the best solution your government could come up with to protect renters was a website listing bad landlords to shame them, not exactly a stroke of genius here.

Is this Premier going to have the same tactic to force the capital region to come up with a plan if they can’t agree: put their names on a website? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, one thing I will tell you is that we’re not going to use the same kind of strategy as the Liberals and try to hammer the municipalities. We’re going to work with them. At the end of the day we said: look, we’ll come up with a governance model that’s going to be fair. I talked to most of the leaders. They agree that they will come to that governance model. Part of that model is already in the municipal sustainability report.

W e ha v e c onse ns us . W e ’ r e m ov i ng f or w a r d. W e ’ r e g oi ng t o bring this to a close in January of 2008. We’ll have all the relevant information, and then we’ll be prepared next spring. If we have to change legislation or amend legislation, we’ll have all that informa- tion with the support of the municipalities, and I would then ask for the support of the opposition. The Speaker: Third Official Opposition main question. The hon. Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods. Safety of Human Services Workers Mrs. Mather: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In Alberta health and social service workers in the human services sector are 12 times more likely to be the victims of workplace violence than workers in traditional job sectors. Too often front-line workers in the Depart- ment of Children’s Services are punched, grabbed, pushed, and verbally threatened by their clients. Casework overloads caused by staff shortages and increasing poverty issues increase worker risk. While the department has protocols for reacting to an episode of violence, little is done to prevent attacks.

To the Minister of Children’s Services: when was the last time your staff conducted a province-wide audit of the implementation of the occupational health and safety code in the Department of Children’s Services, and what were the results? The Speaker: The hon. minister. Ms Tarchuk: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are a number of areas in there to address. The very first thing I want to say is that I agree with your member’s statement that our social workers deserve our support and also to say to the House that I take this role as Minister of Children’s Services – and I know that you would agree – very seriously.

I see that my number one role is to ensure that this government is placing as much effort into and value on our social infrastructure as our physical infrastructure, and I can tell you that that is the case. I can also tell you that we value the professionals who are servicing that social infrastructure. In fact, I can say that I’m very proud that most of the initiatives that I have been able to announce since the budget have been focused on valuing and respecting our staff. 1:40 The Speaker: The hon. member. Mrs. Mather: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

What little preventative safety measures and procedures exist in the Department of Chil- dren’s Services are piecemeal, inadequate, and inconsistent between regions. For example, Children’s Services sets no provincial standard on the number of hours and frequency of staff safety and violence prevention training. There are also no standards for workplace security measures like plexiglass barriers, panic buttons, for the location of visitation rooms, or for the safety of human services workers working alone after hours.

To the Minister of Children’s Services: when will your department develop clear and consistent workplace violence prevention standards that apply to all provincial and contracted social service workers province-wide? The Speaker: The hon. minister. Ms Tarchuk: Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. The second thing I’d like to address is actually the comment about resources. I can tell you that I think that the Children’s Services employees do a fabulous job in this province taking care of the interests of children and families.

I can tell you that just this week alone I’ve had the opportunity of visiting staff in three different sites. When it does come to resources, I do think – and I know that you’ve also been taking a look at this – the casework practice model that we have started to implement in 13 sites across the province, preparing for a rollout, will make a significant difference and improvement on workload issues in this province. Mrs. Mather: Last year, following the tragic death of social worker Boni Frederick, the American state of Kentucky implemented a new piece of legislation called Boni’s bill.

Among other things, this legislation included new standards for the creation of secure client visitation centres, provisions for social worker access to criminal records with one-hour turnaround time, and mandatory staff safety training twice a year. Also, recognizing the widespread impact of worker burnout on health and safety, the state hired an additional 100 workers. To the Minister of Children’s Services. Alberta, too, has had its share of human service worker assaults and fatalities, yet little has changed. Has your department looked at these measures, and if so, why hasn’t it implemented them?

The Speaker: The hon. minister. Ms Tarchuk: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, there are a couple of questions there. A couple of things: if there are any particular instances that you know about, because I know that you’re good at following up, if you’d like to share the information with me, I’ll do due diligence as well. What I can tell you is that safety of staff is of utmost importance to us. In Children’s Services we do have a provincial occupational health and safety committee.

It is their job, with representation from management and employee representatives, to recommend solutions that do address the kinds of situations that you’re talking about. I

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1723 understand that the policies and guidelines are on the website. Like I say, I’ll take a look at the Hansard and follow up with some information, but if you want to give me more details on specifics, I’ll follow up with that as well. The Speaker: The hon. leader of the third party, followed by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Castle Downs. Election Finances Mr. Mason: Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. The Premier has admitted that soliciting donations from the Beaver waste manage- ment commission was unethical.

The Liberals did not get any unethical money from the commission, but it was not for lack of trying. We have two parties in this province, the Liberals and the Conservatives, who appear to engage in unethical fundraising. Clearly, we need some legislation to protect Albertans from these two parties. Will the Premier finally do the right thing and introduce comprehensive changes to election finance rules in Alberta to make these types of unethical donations illegal? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, a number of times I rose in the House to say that our government’s plan is to introduce legislation.

We want to consult with the two leaders to build good legislation. This is more focused on legislation tied to the campaign fundraising for leadership causes. You know, I don’t know what the other parties have in mind, but if we do this together, we would have good legislation in place, and we would avoid this kind of situation. It will be very clear-cut. The Speaker: The hon. leader. Mr. Mason: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Well, you know, these are not exceptions to an otherwise properly functioning set of election finance rules. It’s just not the case.

With the Liberals taking $103,650 from big oil and gas donors last year and the Tories taking $314,550, it’s no wonder both parties have been soft-pedaling the need for royalty reform. Why won’t the Premier commit right now to cleaning up Alberta politics and get big money out of politics and limit donations to individual citizens? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, we’ve come a long way this session in terms of opening up this Legislature to greater democracy, more openness, more transparency. Quite frankly, it came with the support of the opposition parties, and I thank them for that.

We’ve got more to do, and we’ll definitely move in that direction, again, in partnership with the two. We have the Conflicts of Interest Amend- ment Act, 2007, that’s going to be proceeding through the House and lifted, you know, for an all-party review, which to me is an impor- tant piece of legislation. There will be other legislation coming through. I want to work together with the other two parties to ensure that we have the best legislation in place. The Speaker: The hon. leader. Mr. Mason: Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker.

Well, we saw how transparent the government really was when they got that report from the Affordable Housing Task Force and kept it secret until they made all their decisions. The province of Manitoba and the federal government have already limited political donations to individuals, and I would say that democracy is doing just fine in the province of Manitoba. There’s a basic democratic principle here. The financial support of our political process should depend on individual citizens, not corporations or unions or municipalities or even waste-water commissions, Mr. Speaker.

When will this government follow Manitoba’s lead on this matter and eliminate big money from politics? Mr. Stelmach: Mr. Speaker, I thought I just heard from the hon. member no acceptance of any money coming from unions. I’m quite sure he’s going to brin g that forward when it comes to discussion in this House in te rms of the regulations with the proposed legislation. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Castle Downs, followed by the hon. Member for St. Albert. Capital Region Municipal Planning (continued) Mr. Lukaszuk: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

In his questions a few seconds ago the Member for Edmonton-Decore clearly shows how clueless he is relative to regional co-operation and how he doesn’t mind certain capital residential regions subsidizing the others. I’d love to see him explain his position in front of Mayor Mandel. Mr. Speaker, the capital region integrated growth management plan is a monumental accord that was signed between the municipal- ities. I would like to ask the Premier: how will the entire capital region, all residents of the capital region benefit from this plan, which I understand makes all the mayors happy? Mr. Stelmach: Mr.

Speaker, there are a number of components, of course, to the value of the plan to the citizens; first of all, co- ordinated planning, and it’s not only for transportation but for waste water, sewer treatment, all of those particular areas that municipali- ties have a common share in. Secondly, how do we ensure the social side, the social costs like policing, the social needs of the various communities? How will they be a ffected with this growth? How can we co-ordinate those services, reduce the costs? But the other is of course leading to environment.

I believe we can reduce the footprint, certainly, on the environment by working together with all the municipalities. That’s part of the action plan and a benefit to every constituent in the area. Mr. Lukaszuk: My first and last supplemental to the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing. Maybe he can explain to the Member for Edmonton-Decore, who would rather blow out a candle to prove to us that it’s dark out there, what we can do as legislators, including the Member for Edmonton-Decore, to make sure that this plan works, works well for all Edmontonians and works well for the entire capital region.

The Speaker: The hon. minister. Mr. Danyluk: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. First of all, we have had consultation with municipalities. Municipalities and this government very much believe that we need to work together as far as regionalization, as far as working together as regions. I will be meeting with the municipalities as well as an implementation team consisting of the deputy ministers and a project manager and the municipalities and municipal leaders. Industry and the federal government will be at this meeting.

It will take a concentrated and a co-ordinated approach to make this happen, and I think that all leaders are committed. The Speaker: The hon. Member for St. Albert, followed by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Mill Creek.

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071724 Education Funding Mr. Flaherty: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, another day, another school board forced to make really difficult decisions. Last night the Edmonton public school board announced the impacts of inadequate operational funding on their school district. My questions are to the Minister of Education. Does the minister accept that this year’s funding shortfalls are undoing the progress that school boards like Edmonton public have made on class sizes? Will this pattern continue across the province in Alberta schools? 1:50 Mr. Liepert: Mr. Speaker, I think I read the same newspaper

article that the hon. member read. What I happened to see was that the Edmonton public school board balanced their budget for this year. Here’s what I also happened to read. The chairman of the public school board said: we had to use some creative, innovative thinking to balance our budget. I would suggest that maybe that’s what we need, some creative, innovative thinking, which we sure aren’t going to get from that group over there. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Flaherty: Thank you. I’m insulted, Mr. Speaker, terribly.

Edmonton public’s budget only contains enough room to expand the teacher compensation package by 2 per cent in this year’s negotiations. I will remind the minister that the cost of living in Edmonton increased by almost 6 per cent last year, and therefore a 2 per cent increase will reduce the quality of life for teachers in this province. Does the minister acknowledge that forcing teachers to fight every few years to maintain their standard of living has a negative impact on attracting young people to the profession of teaching? Yes or no, Mr. Minister? Mr. Liepert: Well, Mr.

Speaker, I find it absolutely incredible that this hon. member would stand in this Legislature and falsely accuse me several times of combining and not separating negotiations from the unfunded liability issue. Now this hon. member wants me to get involved in negotiations. I will remind the hon. member that negotiations will take place over the coming months between the school districts and the locals of the ATA. The government will work with the ATA to solve the unfunded pension liability. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Flaherty: Well, thank you again, Mr. Speaker.

Edmonton public did not receive an increase in their maintenance budget this year. This means they will have to continue to defer required maintenance on many of their schools. Deferred maintenance today equals an unnecessary need for new schools tomorrow. To the Minister of Education. We have been down this path before. Calgary and Edmonton need 66 new schools today b ecause your government neglected school infrastructure in the ’90s. How can you ensure that we aren’t repeating the same mistakes? Do you have a plan, Mr. Minister? Tell us. Mr. Liepert: Mr.

Speaker, I think I heard him say that they received no additional funding for maintenance. That’s absolutely incorrect, so I’m just assuming that everything else he’s saying is equally incorrect. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Mill Creek, followed by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Ellerslie. Edmonton Ring Road Mr. Zwozdesky: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Keeping goods and services on the move and helping people get to their places of work, learning, or leisure and then back to their homes as safely and efficiently as possible requires a sophisticated, well- planned roadway system.

It also requires a great deal of co-opera- tion among cities and municipalities as well as several strategic financial and economic partnerships. Population growth and economic growth in and around Edmonton are absolutely phenome- nal, and the need for ring roads, overpasses, and so on is absolutely critical. My questions are for the Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation. When will your ministry and our municipal partners see the southeast leg of the Anthony Henday ring road completed and at what cost? Mr. Ouellette: Well, Mr. Speaker, I’d like to thank the hon. member for the excellent question.

The Anthony Henday Drive southeast is a great project that is progressing normally and is scheduled to open this fall. It’ll be part of the Edmonton ring road. I’d like to add that the Anthony Henday Drive southeast project is also a very successful P3 project. The total cost over three years for construction and maintenance, which will be like a 30-year warranty, is $494 million total. It will make traffic around Edmonton run more smoothly and efficiently and is also a very good deal for the Alberta taxpayer. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Zwozdesky: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

That is indeed great news, particularly for my constituency because it borders that particular leg. I’d also like to know something about the roadway connections elsewhere. What are your plans, Mr. Minister, for the northern sections of this capital ring road system here in our area? Mr. Ouellette: Mr. Speaker, the 2001 functional planning study for the north ring road is being updated to reflect current traffic projections and provide a plan for 30 years and beyond.

When it’s complete, the northern leg of the ring road will stretch from the western edge of Edmonton all the way across the top of the city, then across the North Saskatchewan River and link to the Yellowhead near Sherwood Park. The timing for the design or construction of the north ring road is not set, but the 2005 goal was to have it all completed within 10 years. Mr. Zwozdesky: Well, Mr. Speaker, it appears some good news is coming.

Yesterday’s announcement of good news, in fact, with reference to the terms of reference for the capital region integrated growth management plan is extremely important and is very well supported by all 24 capital region municipalities, as we’ve just heard. I’d like the Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation, however, to please explain how these plans relate to the overall transportation plan for the Industrial Heartland in our area, where about $46 billion worth of construction projects are already planned or under way. Mr. Ouellette: Well, Mr.

Speaker, the plans for the ring road fit very well with the overall transportation plans for the Industrial Heartland area because transportation of g oods will be done more efficiently around the capital region. The Industrial Heartland area will definitely benefit from the construction of the ring road around Edmonton because of a better access to transportation routes. My overall objective is to make sure that all the areas around Edmonton take advantage of the benefits of the ring road now and into the future.

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1725 The Speaker: The hon. Member for P eace River will follow the hon. Member for Edmonton-Ellerslie, who I’ll now call upon. Hon. Member for Edmonton-Ellerslie, remember the rule. If you choose to wear an identifiable piece of clothing, logos and what have you, you must provide one to every member of the Assembly. So by tomorrow would you ensure that every member has the right-fitting tee-shirt, compliments of the hon. member? The hon. Member for Edmonton-Ellerslie. Mr. Agnihotri: What’s your size, Mr. Speaker? Arts Funding Mr. Agnihotri: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Alberta needs to get serious about diversifying the economy. This government must move away from dependence on the oil industry and take advantage of the opportunities in other sectors, including book publishers and the film industry. They aren’t receiving the support they need. The province has already lost six publishers, and only 30 per cent of the remaining publishers received provincial funding last year. To the Minister of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture: why isn’t the minister doing more to support this very important sector? Mr. Goudreau: Mr.

Speaker, certainly over the last couple of months I’ve had an opportunity to meet with the book publishers, and I’ve assured them that through the AFA, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, we would continue to provide them with support. As part of the overall review that we’re doing this year on the AFA, we will include the comments that the hon. member has indicated to me, and we’re doing that in light of seeing if we can provide them additional support. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Agnihotri: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the same minister.

Failure to plan for the future has resulted in an extremely high cost of living and in shortages of workers in all areas. Because of this, Alberta is having a hard time remaining competitive with other jurisdictions when it comes to attracting filmmakers. Has the minister considered removing caps on incentives offered to filmmak- ers? Mr. Goudreau: Well, certainly, Mr. Speaker, we are wanting to also grow the film industry in the province of Alberta. Again, I have met with that particular industry. We did some very specialized funding last year where we gave an additional $12 million to support the film industry.

We are presently looking at a couple of pilot projects that we think might come forward here in the very, very short while. They’re pilot projects that we’re an ticipating to be successful and will give us direction as to how we might fund the film industry in the future. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Agnihotri: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. To the same minister. The Alberta Liberals recognize the value of arts and the culture sector.

Will the minister adopt the Alberta Liberal plan and immediately increase funding to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts so that cultural industries are able to remain competitive and thrive in Alberta? 2:00 Mr. Goudreau: Mr. Speaker, the member opposite will know that in our budget we did increase the funding to the arts community in the province of Alberta. I need to indicate that Albertans and this particular government really value the arts community. We recognize that they are a very important and integral part of the quality of life for all Albertans. We will move forward to supporting that. Thank you.

The Speaker: The hon. Member for P eace River, followed by the hon. Member for Calgary-Varsity. Mountain Pine Beetle Control Mr. Oberle: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Critics of forest management and forest harvesting in Kananaskis Country continue to downplay the mountain pine beetle threat to the region. My question is to the Minister of Sustainable Resource Development. Why not do as the critics request and leave the infestations to manage themselves as they say was done to good effect during an earlier beetle attack in Waterton national park? Dr. Morton: Mr.

Speaker, I had the privilege of visiting Waterton national park on June 2, and I inspected the pine beetle killed area there. You can see that in the absence of any intervention there has been virtually no reforestation: certainly no lodgepole pine, a few spruce, but mostly scrub willow. The ground is covered with deadfall, which of course will stunt further growth and also put wildlife at great risk. The Waterton solution may work for the national parks, given their priorities, but it’s certainly not what Albertans want. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Oberle: Thank you, Mr.

Speaker, and thank you to the minister for that answer. My first supplemental, again to the same minister: is this just theory or can he point to specific examples that suggest that the current strategy really will result in healthier forests in the future? The Speaker: The hon. minister. Dr. Morton: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. By complete coincidence, I can point to a specific example. On that same trip to Waterton I had an up-close view of the West Castle Valley, where pine beetle also occurred in the 1960s.

We inspected some blocks that were salvage harvest there, and I’m happy to report that they have been reforested, replanted, and are doing very well. We also had the opportunity further down the valley to see some commercial harvest that was from the 1960s, and it is now prime 40-foot lodgepole pine. As I’ve said before, if we truly want healthy forest in Alberta, doing nothing is not an option. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Oberle: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again, thank you to the minister, and I’m really impressed that he has specific examples that he can just whip out.

My second supplemental to the same minister: how will Alberta’s approach to mountain pine beetle differ from what was done in Waterton? Dr. Morton: Mr. Speaker, national parks and the province of Alberta have different management priorities and different manage- ment techniques. We manage our forested lands for multiple uses.

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071726 Parks Canada has different priorities and has a policy of minimal intervention. What works for them is fine. But, as I’ve explained in here, what hasn’t worked in Waterton, particularly the lack of reforestation after pine beetle, simply is not acceptable in Alberta. Thank you. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Calgary-Varsity, followed by the hon. Member for Edmonton-Calder. Speaker’s Ruling Interjections by a Member The Speaker: But first of all, does the hon. member have any idea what this might be? Can he see this? This is a piece of paper. The first time today that the hon.

Member for Calgary-Varsity’s voice was heard over everybody else’s, I wrote down two. I was going to interject and say: look, let’s have some more decorum. Then I went to three and I crossed it off; then I went to four and I crossed it off; then I went to five and I crossed it off; then I went to six and I crossed it off; then seven and I crossed it off; eight and I crossed it off; nine and I crossed it off; 10 and I crossed it off; 11 and I crossed it off; and 12 and I crossed it off. Thirteen times today. If the hon. member has any more energy, use it now with your questions, okay?

Commercial Vehicle Inspection Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. At random roadside vehicle inspections the commercial trucking industry fails at a rate of approximately 35 per cent. Commercial truck operators are legislated to have mechanical inspections completed on their equipment annually. School buses at random roadside inspections achieve a pass rate of approximately 95 per cent. School bus operators are required to submit their vehicles to mandatory mechanical inspections every six months.

At an additional cost of approximately $1.5 million annually commercial vehicle inspection program administration and audit duties have been contracted to Transtrue Vehicle Safety. This upstart firm is reportedly unable to meet the program and audit requirements due to personnel shortages. My questions are to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transporta- tion. What guarantee do Albertans have that the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation and Transtrue are meeting their obligations in CVIP goals? Mr. Ouellette: Mr.

Speaker, this ministry is very committed to traffic safety, as I’ve been saying all along here. We’re always working on innovative things and implementing more things in traffic safety. Just this week I was out at the Leduc safety inspection station. We’re using a new image camera that actually can take a picture of a truck going by. It can check their weights, it can check whether their wheel bearings are overheating, it can check whether their brakes are even working, which ones are coming on or not, just by driving by the thermal image camera. That’s the type of innovation that we’re working on all the time.

The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Chase: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My unbridled enthusiasm today comes from having a fourth amigo in Calgary. Although CVIP-related work has been contracted to Transtrue Vehicle Safety, fully capable people remain in the employ of Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation. Will the government commit to an investigation to determine why the CVIP is not administered utilizing government employees still working for the ministry? What’s the point of this Transtrue outfit, that can’t deliver? Mr. Ouellette: Mr.

Speaker, we have a lot of different private contractors that work through Infrastructure and Transportation on all different aspects of the ministry. We believe that all of our partnerships work great with us together, and whenever they have problems, we work with them to try and fix those problems. On to his amigo problems: I just wonder. He needs every amigo he can get, Mr. Speaker. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Chase: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m not sure that the minister is aware of the Transtrue

section within his ministry, but I’d look forward to his evaluation of them. Will the government commit to improving the commercial vehicle inspection program, CVIP, by requiring all Alberta-based commer- cial vehicles to receive and pass mechanical inspections every six months? Mr. Ouellette: Mr. Speaker, everyone knows how busy we are in this province. We are always looking at innovative ways and better ways to make sure that we have the safest highways in the country. We are always looking at better ways to make sure that everybody is getting their vehicles inspected, and we will continue doing so.

The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Calder, followed by the hon. Member for West Yellowhead. Education Funding (continued) Mr. Eggen: Thanks, Mr. Speaker. This Education minister is robbing our students to please the fiscal hawks. Because of this budgeting, classrooms in Edmonton public schools will be packed to capacity next year, and Edmonton Catholic will have less than half the money they need for maintenance. By starving the educa- tion budget, this minister is forcing school boards to think creatively and innovatively, I suppose: should we cut instruction, or should we cut our infrastructure?

To the Premier I would ask: what has provoked the government to do this to the province’s education system? Why are you putting the bottom line ahead of our chil- dren’s learning? The Speaker: The hon. Premier. Mr. Stelmach: Well, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Education is very important to this government and to all Albertans. In fact, if you look at the last 10 years, the funding to sc hools has increased by over 86 per cent, and in that same period inflation has increased less than 30 per cent, maybe 28 per cent. So we’ve more than kept up with inflation.

We have more things in store in terms of the government dealing with the teachers’ unfunded liability. We’re dealing with that as a separate issue. We want to settle that as quickly as possible. We’re always working with teachers and school boards towards improving the quality of education in this province. 2:10 The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Eggen: Thanks. Well, you know, Mr. Speaker, with all due respect, you have to pay the price of what public education costs in this province. Certainly, a 3 per cent operational budget when we have upwards of 5 to 6 per cent inflation: the two just don’t match

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1727 up. We’re losing a lot of good recommendations from the Learning Commission. School boards are having to choose between well- maintained classrooms and proper numbers of teachers. I would like to ask the Minister of Education, please. Perhaps he has some advice for innovative and creative thinking for school trustees. Should they let their class sizes grow, or should they just let their schools fall apart? Mr. Liepert: Well, Mr.

Speaker, I’ve stated on several occasions in this House that when the Learning Commission made its recommen- dation regarding class sizes, they recommended that we implement it over a period of five years. Well, this is the third year, and we have fully funded class size initiatives. The hon. member doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about when he says we’re not funding class sizes. Half a billion dollars in three years. Mr. Eggen: Well, Mr. Speaker, certainly, this budget will result in choices.

Maybe schools w ill try to cut back so that they can maintain their class size, but it will be at the expense of something else. There’s simply not enough money to be in keeping with the balance, the cost of providing public education today in this province. So I ask the minister once more. Perhaps I’m not sure what he’s up to here, but certainly it feels like it’s a razing of K to 12 education. What are we going to do afterwards?

Are we going to have another Learning Commission to try to put it back together again, are we going to rely on private schools to come and fill up the gap, or are we going to end up going back to having emergency funding in the fall like we had to do last year? Mr. Liepert: Well, Mr. Speaker, there was a comment made by the hon. member at the beginning of his first question about starvation. I would suggest that there are many departments in this government that would gladly accept a $5.6 billion starvation budget. The hon. member continues to talk about underfunding.

The Premier has just mentioned some numbers that – I don’t know if the hon. member can’t add or what his problem is, but in the last 10 years education funding to sc hool boards has gone up 86 per cent. Eighty-six per cent. They love to tie numbers to inflation. In the same time inflation has gone up 28 per cent. I suggest we do the mathematics. The Speaker: The hon. Member for West Yellowhead, followed by the hon. Member for Lethbridge-East. Railway Safety Mr. Strang: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Some of my constituents as well as diverse or ganizations such as the Canadian Chemical Producers’ Association, coal companies, and the Alberta Forest Products Association have expressed concerns regarding the level of service provided by CN in Alberta. My first question is to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transportation. Can he tell this Assembly what can be done to remediate this situation? Mr. Ouellette: Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that there is room for improvement when it comes to CN’s level of service in Alberta.

I have written to the federal minister of transport to make him aware of Alberta’s concerns about all rail service in western Canada. Alberta is a major source of railway shipments, with a total volume of 47 million tonnes, which is 20 per cent of all shipments originating in Canada. These CN service issues include inadequate car supply, lack of timely train service, and the recent strike at CN. That said, I understand that the newly introduced Bill C-44 will address most of Alberta’s concerns regarding CN’s level of service. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Strang: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

My first supple- mentary question is to the same minister. Can the minister provide more details about the immediate action that can take place to help ensure CN provides the level of service that Alberta industry has the right to expect? Mr. Ouellette: Mr. Speaker, I believe that Bill C-44, that amends the Canada Transportation Act, will address most of this province’s concerns. The intent is to clarify and strengthen the act’s current provisions that protect rail shippers from market power by railways.

I would also like to remind the hon. member and this Assembly that railways are a federal jurisdiction, which limits the province’s influence. That said, my department is currently reviewing the new legislation to make sure that it improves on the situation in Alberta. We will also conduct formal public consultation with our stake- holders regarding this new legislation. The Speaker: The hon. member. Mr. Strang: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. My second supplementary question is to the same minister.

The American government has recently introduced a piece of legislation that would address railroad competitiveness and service improvements. Is this type of legislation something that the Alberta government should be looking at? Mr. Ouellette: As I was saying before, Mr. Speaker, our goal is to ensure that goods and products can move effectively and efficiently for the benefit of the industry and Albertans in general. But, again, railways are under federal jurisdiction. My department is aware of the new proposed legislation, which is called the Railroad Competi- tion and Service Improvement Act.

I have instructed my staff to review this proposed legislation to see if there are any improvements or aspects of the legislation that the province could provide as input to the federal government. The objective is to make sure that Albertans get the best benefits from the railway industry. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder Ms Pastoor: Mr. Speaker, to receive government support services, an adult with fetal alcohol syndrome disorder, commonly known as FASD, must fall below a specific IQ level.

However, this support system does not take into account adults with FASD who may be above the IQ level but lack basic functioning ability or for safety reasons, theirs and society’s, require support. To the Minister of Seniors and Community Supports. Will this government commit to reviewing available supports to ensure that these adults with FASD don’t fall through the cracks? Mr. Melchin: Mr. Speaker, absolutely correct.

When we designed programs for persons with developmental disabilities, they were very much designed to help a certain classification of individuals, and they don’t always encompass all forms of disability, FASD being one of them. In that respect we’re pleased to be working very closely with Children’s Services so that we can look at how we address those needs. They are ones, in particular, that don’t fall under persons with development disabilities but are a group of people for whom we are very concerned about providing the right level of service. Ms Pastoor: Thank you for that.

We’ve also heard from experts that treatment facilities for addictions require more training to be

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071728 able to meet the needs of the FASD clients. Again to the same minister: will the minister consult with the FASD experts and addiction agencies to develop appropriate programs that are flexible and tailored to meet the individual needs of Albertans with FASD once they turn 18? Mr. Melchin: Mr. Speaker, we do actually, as I mentioned in my last comment, work very closely with Children’s Services, who actually provides the lead role on behalf of a number of departments.

These cross a number of issues like health from when they are children from one to 18 and certainly to becoming adults. So all of our departments are actively engaged on this issue to ensure that we consult with those other groups that you’ve mentioned, make sure that we find out what are the right services that should be provided at the right time to the right person in the right place, and we’ll continue to do just that.

Ms Pastoor: Recently the Minister of Children’s Services an- nounced that $4 million would be awarded for fetal alcohol spectrum disorder networks but has given no indication as to how or where the money will be allocated. To the Minister of Children’s Services: given that the ministry recognizes that FASD is a lifelong disability, how much of this money will go towards s upporting adults with FASD, and who decides the distribution of these dollars? The Speaker: The hon. minister. Ms Tarchuk: Thank you very much. I can tell you that in the next several weeks we’ll have more information forthcoming.

What I did announce, when I announced the additional $4 million added on to the $6 million that we currently spend on FASD, is that we will be establishing seven FASD service networks, and they will be responsible for providing access to very targeted prevention programs, diagnostic and assessment services, and also offering advocacy and support across the lifespan for those with FASD and for their caregivers. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Wetaskiwin-Camrose. Budget Consultation Mr. Johnson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The Alberta government’s budget has been criticized for increasing spending too much, not lowering taxes enough, not providing enough funding for municipal- ities. Several of my constituents are concerned about the govern- ment’s saving policy in light of the province’s prosperity. To the Minister of Finance: what are you doing to ensure that Alberta’s priorities and my constituents’ c oncerns are considered as the government begins planning for the next budget? 2:20 The Speaker: The hon. minister. Dr. Oberg: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Included in my mandate letter, which I received on becoming Minister of Finance, was the mandate to do a prebudget consultation. Indeed, what I am very pleased to announce today is that we have launched a website, which is at www. budgetconsultation.alberta.ca, which will allow each and every Albertan the access, the ability to put in their thoughts about next year’s budget. Despite the fact that we’re not voting on the budget until tomorrow, work has already begun to ensure that next year’s budget is going to be just as good and just as exciting as this year’s. Mr.

Johnson: Well, I’m pleased to hear that the government is asking for input from Albertans for the next budget. Can you assure Albertans that their responses will be considered as you develop the government’s next budget and not just to satisfy the demands of your mandate letter? Dr. Oberg: Yes, absolutely, Mr. Speaker. That’s one assurance I can definitely give. We’re looking to hear what all Albertans have to say. Not only have we put it on the web, on the Internet, but we also have a toll-free line at 310-4455.

Those people who do not have access to a computer can call up and receive the budget consultation document. Our intent is to use this information very much in doing the next budget. Mr. Johnson: A final question. What plans, then, do you have for the results once the consultation is completed? Dr. Oberg: Well, Mr. Speaker, given the compressed timelines that we have for this upcoming budget, with the budget now fixed at February 14, we’re going to utilize this consultation, these results by around the end of August, the first part of September as we start to get into the finalization of our budget.

They will first go to our cabinet policy committee, and that information will be made available to those committee members. It will then go on to Treasury Board and subsequently to caucus and will be put in the budget and the budget speech. This is going to be more consulta- tion than any budget has ever had in the province of Alberta. The Speaker: Hon. members, that was 82 questions and responses. head: Presenting Petitions The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-McClung. Mr. Elsalhy: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I have two petitions today.

The first one has 123 signatures, and it reads: We, the undersigned residents of Alberta, hereby petition the Legislative Assembly to urge the Government . . . to: 1. Ensure that the remuneration paid to employees working with people with disabilities is standardized across the sector, regardless of whether these workers are employed by government or community-based or private providers; 2. Ensure these employees are fair ly compensated and that their wages remain competitive with other sectors . . . 3. Improve employees’ access to professional development opportunities . . . and 4.

Introduce province-wide service and outcomes-focused level-of-care standards. The second one has 260 signatures, Mr. Speaker, and it reads:

Whereas the ongoing rent affordability crisis is contributing to Alberta’s worsening homelessness situation, we, the undersigned residents of Alberta, hereby petition the Legislative Assembly to urge the Government of Alberta to take immediate, meaningful measures to help low-income and fixed-income Albertans, Albertans with disabilities and those who are hard-to-house maintain their places of residence and cope with the escalating and frequent increases in their monthly rental costs. Thank you. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview. Mr. Martin: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’m rising today on behalf of the Member for Edmonton-Strathcona and myself to table a petition with 83 signatures on it. The petition notes the Conserva- tives’ continued refusal to protect Alberta families from rent gouging

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1729 and urges the government to immediately introduce temporary rent guidelines. This brings the total signatures on this petition to 443. Thank you. head: Notices of Motions Mr. Renner: Mr. Speaker, to the best of my knowledge there are no Written Questions or Motions for Returns on the Order Paper; therefore, no notice should be required. head: Tabling Returns and Reports The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Manning. Mr. Backs: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am very pleased to rise and table the package that was given out this morning at the Alberta mental health research partnership program launch, a very successful launch of a program of mental health research that will be provided. I was very pleased to see that and pleased to see this program go forward. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview. Mr. Martin: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to table copies of a letter from Bertha Clendenning. Bertha has been hit with a $150 rent increase despite the state of disrepair her building is in.

She’s asking what the government will do about the situation. I have a second tabling. On behalf of the leader of the NDP I table copies of a letter from Robert McLeod. Robert is a former journalist with CFRN. He is receiving a rent increase of 15 per cent. He’s urging this government to introduce rent increase guidelines like most of Canada’s other provinces. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre. Ms Blakeman: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I’d like to table five copies of correspondence from a constituent, Nicole Braseth, who’s noting that her rent will only go up by $200 if she signs a one- year lease. If not, it’s going to go up by $400 a month. She would love to get a mortgage and buy a house of her own, but as a univer- sity graduate with a student loan she’s required to carry as a result of this government’s policy, that isn’t a possibility. She notes that Saskatchewan is starting to look good. Thank you very much. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Glenora. Dr. B. Miller: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I’d like to table five copies of a petition with 20 signatures urging the government to take immediate, meaningful measures to help low-income and fixed-income Albertans, Albertans with disabilities and those who are hard-to-house maintain their places of residence and cope with the escalating and frequent increases in their monthly rental costs. The Speaker: The hon. Member for Strathcona. Mr. Lougheed: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As chair of the Premier’s Council on the Status of Persons with Disabilities I’m pleased to table five copies of the annual report, 2005-2006. head: Tablings to the Clerk The Clerk: I wish to advise the House that the following documents were deposited with the office of the Clerk. On behalf of the Minister of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture responses to questions raised by the hon. Member for West Yellowhead, the hon. Member for Whitecourt-Ste. Anne, and the hon. Member for Edmonton-Ellerslie on May 30 and 31, 2007, in the Department of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture 2007-08 main estimates debate.

On behalf of the Minister of Health and Wellness a response to Written Question 9, asked for by the hon. Member for Edmonton- Calder on behalf of the hon. Member for Edmonton-Strathcona on May 7, 2007. On behalf of the Solicitor General and Minister of Public Security pursuant to the Horse Racing Alberta Act the Horse Racing Alberta 2006 annual report. head: Orders of the Day head: Government Bills and Orders Committee of the Whole [Mr. Shariff in the chair] The Deputy Chair: Hon. members, we will call the committee to order.

Bill 43 Appropriation Act, 2007 The Deputy Chair: Are there any comments, questions, or amend- ments to be offered with respect to this bill? The hon. Member for Airdrie-Chestermere. Ms Haley: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to briefly address the Appropriation Act, 2007. This is a really big budget: over $30 billion under the expense and equip- ment/inventory purchases line.

I like to do my own analysis of things, and with a great deal of help from my assistant Bartek – well, actually, he did the review of revenue and expense changes over the years that I’ve been in the Legislature. I thought it might be interesting to others to hear some of the changes. In 1993 our revenue wa s $15.4 b illion. This year we’ve fore- casted over $35 billion. Over that period of time revenue has had some really wild fluctuations, but on average over that period of time it has grown by 6.27 per cent per year.

Expenses, on the other hand, went from about $16.7 billion in 1993 to about $33.1 billion this year or, put another way, an average expenditure increase between 1993 and 2007 of 4.47 per cent. Inside that number is one number that stands out particularly dramatically, and that is health care. In 1993 spending on health care was approximately $4 billion per year, and this year it’s over $12 billion, or a 300 per cent increase.

Interestingly enough, I’m not sure that on a day-to-day basis the issues of health care that people worried about in 1993 are any different from the issues they worry about today: mostly wait time issues and hope that new dr ugs will get coverage under the provincial system. 2:30 In addition to health care concerns in 1993 people were also worried about keeping their homes. For those that don’t remember, we had an unemployment rate of close to 12 per cent at that time. One of the biggest issues of the day was personal and corporate bankruptcies.

We were $28 billion in debt and had a deficit in 1992 of $3.5 billion. We had very high provincial taxes, not just the initial tax rate, Mr. Chairman, but also at least two additional taxes stacked on top, commonly known as surtaxes on high-income earners. It is no wonder that people were leaving our province.

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071730 I experienced the boom in the late ’70s and the early ’80s, when the price of everything went up, and the federal Liberals at that time brought in wage and price controls on a Canada-wide basis. Inflation was running high, interest rates were high, taxes were high, and wages were literally frozen. We had rent controls which froze rents at a high level. It took years for rent and interest rates to come down despite the increasing rise in unemployment and vacancy rates, that hit everyone hard.

There were entire office buildings in both Edmonton and Calgary that were sitting empty, not to mention all the empty homes that were owned by the Alberta Mortgage and Housing Corporation. It took years for those foreclosed and empty homes to be sold and at no small cost to the taxpayers fo r government intervention in the marketplace. By the time all of the addition was done, there was about $3 billion in losses for Albertans. There was no new construc- tion for almost a decade. That’s how long it took for us to dig our way out of a marketplace intervention by both the federal and provincial governments.

One of today’s biggest issues is rent increases, not to mention the rise in the cost of housing. I know that everyone would like us to be able to just fix this, but frequently the cure is worse than the illness. According to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, rental vacancy rates are the lowest in Alberta and British Columbia due to strong population growth in both provinces. The average rental vacancy rate in Canada’s 35 major centres was 2.8 per cent in April. The lowest rates in April 2007 were in Calgary at .5 per cent, then Abbotsford at .6, Kelowna at .7, and Victoria at .8.

All of the major centres in B.C. posted a vacancy rate lower than 1 per cent. The highest average monthly rents for two-bedroom apartments in Canada’s major centres were in Toronto at $1,073. It was $1,051 in Vancouver, $1,037 in Calgary. One exception to the big-city rule was Fort McMurray, and it was the highest in the country at $1,681. It’s interesting to note that at the end of April, as opposed to the beginning of April, vacancies went up to 1.8 per cent, and that’s no doubt due to the universities and colleges both ending their semes- ters in Edmonton and Calgary.

In British Columbia when house prices went up like they are going up here now, the pressure to not have houses with basement suites for rent was reversed. All of a sudden people needed to be able to rent out basement suites to help them make their mortgage payments.

I believe that the same situation is actually occurring in Alberta and that residents of major centres in Alberta should be pressuring their municipal governments not to ban basement suites but to allow people to renovate and rent out units, a situation that I hope will change soon for the benefit of renters, with more suites available, but also for homeowners finding their mortgage payments a bit of a struggle with the upswing in housing prices.

Another interesting note is that of the 229,000 housing starts between May 2006 and May 2007 in Canada, 46,300 of them were here in Alberta, more than double what it would normally be for our population. One of the innovative things that the British Columbia government has done r ecently is to buy up some older hotel properties, and they’re doing some minor renovations to them and using the hotel rooms to help people who have a problem finding a home or even a bed on a short-term basis.

I wonder if there is merit, perhaps, in a Super 8 concept, that municipal, provincial, and federal governments working together on a short-term project idea could alleviate some of the stress that people are under with a short-term rental stay. I admire the people who built the Super 8 motels. They are prolific and seem to have one design, and they build it fast. I think it’s an idea worth looking at. Another interesting statistic is that Albertans have the highest percentage of home ownership in Canada. The average across the country is about 67 per cent, but in Alberta it’s over 75.

We also have the highest weekly wages in the country at $825 per week, about $70 more than British Columbia, $100 more per week than Quebec, and $200 more than Prince Edward Island. Combine that with the lowest overall taxes in the country, and it makes a little more sense why so many people are moving here. I’m sure it is also why retail sales continue to go up here more than other places, with a year-over-year increase this past year of 11 per cent. While I know that people are feeling pressured right now with rising costs, I also know that most people are pretty happy to be here.

The Conference Board of Canada is forecasting an overall growth rate of 4.1 per cent for Alberta this year, compared to 2.7 for Canada. I hope that we’ll all keep an eye on the dollar because if it hits par with the American dollar, I think that there will be major problems in our country, particularly in Ontario. The rising dollar is a wake-up call to everyone to improve their productivity, some- thing many manufacturers in Canada didn’t worry about when the dollar was trading at 70 cents. Truthfully, as Canadians we are not very competitive as to where our productivity should be.

However, as Albertans we have much to be proud of as Alberta has, by any measure, the most productive workforce in the country. I think our budget is a reflection of the growth in our province, and I believe that we have tried to address many of the issues created by such a vibrant economy. There is still and, I’m sure, always will be a little bit of fear inside of me of a repeat of the decline that we went through following the imposition of the national energy program. I saw what can happen, and I hope we guard against anything like that happening again.

I think we need to be careful not to get too far ahead of ourselves on program spending. I believe it is time for a thorough review of program line spending to ensure that money is being allocated to the highest priorities. I for one do not believe that the taxpayers of the province can afford to do everything for everyone all of the time. We need to constantly be reviewing programs. When a new idea comes along, I firmly believe that an old one must drop off if we are to keep things in balance. I do support economic diversification. I think that value-added for agriculture, forestry, and oil and gas is essential.

I also support commercialization of technology here in the province. I think, further, that we need to look at using our tax policy to ensure that some of those things get done. A tax credit, possibly, for a family looking after an aging relative, or a tax credit concept for renovating a basement to accommodate a renter, flow-through shares for mining technology, commercialization of technology: these are things that a provincial government can look at, and I really hope that we take the time to do so. My last comments, Mr. Chairman, would be about the perfor- mance measures that we are using.

While some of them are very good, I think we missed the point on some to do with health care or education, just as an example. I think Albertans should be able to understand, if we are spending an additional billion dollars on health care, what they are actually getting for it. Will more hips and knees be done, or will we be only paying everyone more? I think it’s very sad that statistics about health care are so far out of date, particularly in light of all of the money being spent on computer systems for the electronic health records.

How will we ever get to some kind of outcome management of the system if we don’t know what we are doing on an annual and rapid basis? For education I think the dropout rate is something that is important to Albertans. We all seem to know that thousands of young people could not access the University of Calgary last year, but I would hazard a guess that few, if any, know how many kids have dropped out of school at the high sc hool level. I believe that

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1731 outcome measurements do matter. While we may well indeed have one of the best performance measurement systems in North Amer- ica, as is evidenced by the Auditor General’s comments, I honestly think that it speaks more about the lack of performance measures other provinces or states have rather than how good ours are. But that’s just me, Mr. Chairman. I think that when you spend $30 billion, you really should have a better idea of what you’ve accom- plished with it. Like I said, it’s a really big budget, with no end in sight to the pressures that continue to build.

But if I had to choose, Mr. Chairman, about going back to 1993 and deal with all the problems that we had then versus what we’re dealing with now, I would pick today every day and twice on Sunday. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity. The Deputy Chair: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Centre, followed by Edmonton-Beverly-Clareview. Ms Blakeman: Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportu- nity to put a few comments on the record in regard to Bill 43, the Appropriation Act, which is our budget and outlines a fairly large expenditure.

I was very interested to hear the historical vignette that the Member for Airdrie-Chestermere put on the record. Indeed, the first year I was here, in 1997, I think the budget was $17 billion, and now we’re looking at considerably more than that.

So it’s been an interesting time. 2:40 Since I mostly concentrated my earlier remarks on the area of Health and Wellness, for which I am the shadow minister, I’d like to take this opportunity to talk about some of the issues in the budget that were there or weren’t there that are affecting more directly my constituents in Edmonton-Centre or are flowing from correspon- dence that I’ve had from people asking me to raise certain issues or wondering why something can’t happen. Having said that, the very first issue I have to raise is around medical error.

I’ve spoken a couple of times to an individual out of Calgary who raises a really good point in that we’re not really learning from our medical mistakes, our medical errors, because they are surrounded so much by the shadow of liability, probably stemming from the litigiousness of our neighbours to the south and what’s happened with their health industry and the amount of lawsuits that they have to deal with there and, therefore, sometimes the extreme measures that they go to to try and insulate themselves from that. But here, I mean, we can cast our minds back.

There was, I think, a ruling just the other day on an individual that died from acute appendicitis in a Calgary hospital. That mirrors the Motta case from several years ago. We’ve had a couple of other terrible tragedies in the medical field that I think everyone truly feels really awful about and would like to see not happen, but we’re not really operating with a process right now that allows for a really good, in-depth study without laying any blame. The example that’s been raised with me a couple of times now is the air travel industry.

They adopted, I guess when they first started out, a no-fault system with air disasters so that it wasn’t about laying blame or finding fault; it was about getting to the bottom of what had gone wrong so that they could make the industry safer. I think that that is an area that we need to look to if we could. I certainly think that’s still possible.

I mean, certainly, we get pushed into making choices because of our proximity to the United States, but in this case I would prefer to see us take a different route and to be able to study those medical errors or medical mistakes or adverse effects, whatever terminology you want to use, to try and figure out what went wrong and how we can prevent it and make the system better rather than worrying so much about somebody being able to sue somebody else because the basis of that is really a punishment effort in order to have people not do it again.

The other way of doing it is to say: let’s figure out what went wrong here to make sure that we can correct ourselves and never do it again. So two different ways of doing it, you know, trying to achieve the same end result. I would argue that the punishment route is not really getting us the answers. The second issue that I would like to talk a bout.

I had raised in the debate for Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture the funding of the Winspear Centre and the inequities that are created there by the government’s support for the two Jubilee auditoria, placing the Winspear in a position of, essentially, unfair competition because they receive no funding whatsoever for the centre. Now, immedi- ately people will say: “Oh, that’s not right, you know. The Edmon- ton Symphony gets money.” That’s true, but the Edmonton Symphony is not the Winspear Centre. They’re two completely separate organizations.

Although one of them certainly uses and has office space in the other, they are separate organizations. I think the government – I hope inadvertently – has created an unlevel playing field here, that I’ve raised a couple of times in trying to get it addressed.

I’m aware now that there’s an additional complication in that situation in that I think the Winspear had been working on an arrangement to apply for a CIP grant and then was recently con- tacted and redirected that that grant had been suspended or that process had been suspended and would they please now apply under this new facilities program that the government has come up with in this budget. Well, the fact of the matter is that that’s going to result in about a $217,000 difference for the Winspear Centre, and I would like to see that difference made up.

So there is an issue here that needs to be addressed in that that level playing field needs to be achieved. I can’t say restored because I don’t know that it was ever there, but it needs to be achieved. There needs to be some sort of funding agreement in place that will address the Winspear because I can’t see the government taking away the support for the auditoria. That’s the other way to try and achieve that. But if you’ve got other brilliant ideas, I’m glad to hear them.

Essentially, you know, we have to have a level playing field here, and we cannot disadvantage one of our not-for-profits and, frankly, our best musical space in the province because the govern- ment can’t figure this out. There are enough brains there. I’m sure they can do it. The second situation is the one that’s been created by asking the Winspear’s application to be moved from the CIP to this new facility program and the resulting loss in eligibility.

I would propose to the minister that that difference be made up from the other initiatives fund that is at the discretion of, I suppose, the Treasury Board at this point in time. It used to be the minister of gaming. Of course, there’s no limit on the amount of money that can come out of that fund. There’s no application process. There are no criteria for it. It’s entirely at the discretion of the minister, and I would argue that the Minister of Tourism, Parks, Recreation and Culture should be pursuing that money to make up the difference for the Winspear Centre.

The next thing I’d like to talk about is around privacy. Increas- ingly I’m clipping articles out of the paper where protection of people’s personal information has gone awry. Ironically, the fail point in all of this is human deliberation, not human error but human deliberation, in that someone decides that they are going to misbe- have or use the system in a way that they’ve been told they shouldn’t be using the system for, and at that point no amount of safeguards

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071732 that are in place is going to make this better. A part of that, of course, is the amount of information that the government is now holding on us and collecting on us. I argue that I think the best set- up for this that I’ve seen is in the Health Information Act, in which it argues that, you know, the least amount of information should be taken in all cases and that it should be the least invasive information. Absolutely true, but we don’t follow that very much.

I was contacted by an individual out of Calgary raising concerns around the Calgary health region, that they have recently contracted out a portion of their human resource department to an offshoot of Telus, the Telus solutions outsour cing or something akin to that name. Essentially, this is, you know, well, obviously, human resources looking after recruiting individuals but then also setting them up with various benefit programs. So that’s a lot of very personal information that’s being held there. It’s financial informa- tion. It’s personal information, next of kin, medical information.

Just about anything you could want to know about anybody is held by that department. So it is causing this individual some concern that we now have a corporation that’s been contracted with all of this information. It seems to be a new field that Telus has expanded into, and perhaps they offered the Calgary health region some sort of a deal or something to get the contract. I’m sure it was a surprise to many individuals to find out that their personal employment and health information was now held by a private company, and they had not consented to it, nor were they particularly informed about it.

Perhaps that’s an area that should be looked at by the Privacy Commissioner. 2:50 I think it is an issue. It’s an issue for every single government department. I don’t want to see this costing us money, and by that I mean lawsuits. But I think it will cost us money in other areas if either people start to catch on and start to refuse to give us personal information to work with or if it starts to cost us money in other ways. If the systems start to fail us, then that will be equally grievous.

The next issue was brought to my attention by an advocate who had sent me a copy of a letter that was directed to the Solicitor General in January in which she noted that the Traffic Safety (Seizure of Vehicles in Prostitution Related Offences) Amendment Act was to be coming into effect. Her point was that she believes that the money that’s received through the fine program there would be better put into action going directly to the sex trade workers to help them with recovery and healing rather than – I think it just goes into the province’s general revenue.

This individual has continued to work on this – this is Sharr on Nelson – and I think has been in correspondence with the Solicitor General about this issue. It’s an interesting point because I also met several months ago with Kate Quinn’s group out of Edmonton. I’m not going to remember what the initials stand for. It’s the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton, I think it is, PAAFE, an excellent group. Now, they get their funding from the john school, but they’re also very limited in the money that they’re getting and were meeting with me to look for other possible sources of funding.

It is a frustration when we’ve got a community-based group that’s doing an excellent job, that is of great value to the government, and they’re out there struggling for funding. That’s not to say that the government should fund every single, you know, group that’s out there. I’m not saying that, and don’t try and put those words in my mouth. But I think this is a group that has proven their worth and has done particularly fine work around the issue of street prostitu- tion. Certainly, these women have immense respect from the police. They have immense respect from the sex trade workers.

I think they’ve approached with great creativity the whole issue of johns and how by using education as a tool they can help reduce the effect on our communities. So I would ask the government and particularly the Solicitor General, since I’ve got him sitting here, to look at some innovative ways of assisting in the core funding of this organization. The only funding they really get at this point is through running the john school and from the fees there.

I’d like to see a better, more reliable source of funding for them b ecause certainly for the work that they’re doing, they should have a larger budget to do it. Okay. The next issue. Rent. There’s been a lot said in this spring sitting of 2007 about the rent issue. We’ve raised dozens of different issues around it from the opposition side, you know, around all different kinds of people: seniors who are having to come out of retirement or postpone retirement b ecause they can’t afford their rent, people on fixed incomes like a pension or a social benefit that are really restricted in the kind of housing.

The end result of all of this, Mr. Chairman, is that they’re ending up in cheaper and cheaper accommodation in more difficult circumstances where their safety is at risk in some of the accommodations they’ve had to take, and that just causes a whole other set of problems, which usually ends up in the health care system. So once again I ask the government to look at temporary rent controls. I know that this is against your philosophy, but honestly what your philosophy is getting us today is not working.

Having people who are homeless or will be homeless phoning up and being told that they can put their name on a list to maybe come up with accommodation two years from now is just not addressing the problem. I think that when we’re at a situation where making $11 an hour can make you homeless because it’s not enough money, this is a serious problem. I think we need temporary rent caps in place in order to get us through this a nomaly, this failure of the market- place, this catastrophe or unusual circumstance, crisis, whatever you want to call it. But just digging your feet in and saying: “No.

We’ll have landlords raise their rents once a year. We’ll do a website to punish gouging landlords” – well, that certainly hasn’t worked – is simply not working, and we’re failing people that we shouldn’t be failing. I’d like to bring up one last issue about two government policies that are in existence that are pitting groups against each other. That’s around the policy for new school buildings coming through the Department of Education, you know, given a utility rate or use rate – I can’t remember what it’s called.

Really, it’s encouraging the closure of inner-city schools in order to open schools in the suburbs. This pits against the municipalities’ planning where in the metropoli- tan areas they’re trying to rejuvenate and densify through in-fill housing the downtown areas. So you’ve now pitted these two policies absolutely against one another. We’re closing the schools. We’re creating literally black holes in the centre of our downtown and inner-city communities in order to try and get schools in the suburbs. There should be sc hools in the suburbs.

There should also be schools and use of those school buildings in the downtown areas. So I need the government to look at a policy that they’ve set in place on either side of this that is not working, very much not working for our students, and it’s not working for our city planners and people that live in the cores of our cities and want to have a vibrant place to live. Finally, just a word on arts education funding. I’d really like to see a reinvestment in arts education in our schools.

I’ve just had to write support letters for a couple of my schools who are applying for grant programs all over the place, trying to buy band equipment, musical instruments for their students. This should not be happen-

June 13, 2007 Alberta Hansard 1733 ing, Mr. Chairman. This funding should be available through the school program. My constituents cannot understand how this government can be posting multibillion dollar surpluses, and we don’t have enough money to buy musical instruments for students. We don’t have enough money to buy schools. You know, people walk out their door and look at the cracks in their sidewalks and the potholes in their streets. They look at their paycheque stub and how much money they’re making and wonder why they’re homeless or they’re going to be homeless on that kind of a wage.

They do not see where the financial management of this government makes sense, where the government just seems to be hoarding money, but the people are not reaping the benefit of it. Yeah, some people are, and there’s great opportunity out there, and I think that’s wonderful. A rising tide should lift all boats, not just the yachts. I keep seeing this government put policies in place where the tide only raises the yachts, and that’s not right. It’s not right at all. So we need a better government financial policy – we’d just end up with a better society for everybody – because what we’ve got sure isn’t working.

Those are some of the issues that I wanted to raise while we were in Committee of the Whole on Bill 43, the Appropriation Act, which is essentially the budget for 2007. I look forward to additional opportunities to be speaking on this. Thank you very much for the opportunity. The Deputy Chair: The hon. Member for Edmonton-Beverly- Clareview, followed by Lethbridge-East. Mr. Martin: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to make some general comments about the appropriation bill, Bill 43, at committee stage. There’s absolutely no doubt that this budget is a lot of money.

When I look at it, $33.1 billion is a lot of money. Now, the questions that one asks: is it appropriate; is it the right amount; should it be less; should it be more? But the problem is that this government has created a monster. There’s no other way to explain it. We have such an overheated economy. The only way the government seems to be able to react – because clearly stated by the Premier is that they will not put the brakes on, that we are going to move ahead with the tar sands as quickly as we can, get it out as quickly as we can. That’s the economic strategy of this government.

Now, when you have an economic strategy like this, Mr. Chairman, then the reality is that it’s not that cheap to be able to do that. We create the overheated economy. As I said before in this Legislature, it’s economy on steroids. 3:00 Now, this budget. It seems to me that the government finally realizes that we have this particular problem. So what do we do? Well, gee, there’s a problem here. There’s a problem there. There’s a problem here. Let’s just grab some gobs of money and throw it at these problems and hope that maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’ll make the people stop complaining at least.

Again, finally admitted – and I still don’t see any difference – the previous Premier said we had no plan. We were having that debate right here in the Legislature when he said it. That’s the reality of what we’re facing with this budget, and that’s why it’s hard to get a handle on it. It’s catch-up, you know, with the economic strategy of booming ahead. So what do we do? Well, let’s look at some of the various problems. The Member for Edmonton-Centre was talking about housing.

This is, perhaps – well, there are so many others that I won’t say it’s the most drastic example of lack of planning but certainly one of the major problems. Yes, the government has reacted. As they say time and time again, there’s $285 million for housing. I was on that committee, Mr. Chairman, and it was a very good committee. When we looked at the figures of what it would take right now, if we actually wanted to do a major job as quickly as we could to bring on more housing, to look at supply, it was over about $450 million that you would probably need.

Now, we recognized that the government probably wasn’t going to do that, but we thought they should know the severity of the problem. This problem, as I’ve said many times, is going to get worse before it gets better. The other thing about it, Mr. Chairman, is that even if we start to use this money, the $285 million, which I hope we do – we all want to move ahead, working with the munici- palities as quickly as we can; I think we all want that – it w ill take time. That’s why the task force at the time said: “Okay.

We know that the government can’t buy rent guidelines because of their philoso- phy.” You don’t need it. To be fair and honest, you don’t need it at most times. It’s only during the boom economy. So we said two years in that report, Mr. Chairman. Two years would at least give time on the supply side to build so me of the infrastructure that’s needed, bring on basement suites, whatever else we could do to bring more housing on the market. That would give us breathing space. I think two years is probably overly optimistic, but at least it would be a start.

What was good about that is that for the time being that wouldn’t cost the taxpayers any money. We could deal with the problem in the short run without having to spend millions of dollars, to allow us time to catch up. Well, Mr. Chairman, the government, because of their ideology or the influence of landlords in terms of this govern- ment, refused that. Now we hear the horror stories.

It’s not just the most vulnerable, although it’s an important issue for people on fixed income, seniors, the disabled, all the other people that are, as they say, one cheque away from becoming homeless, but now we’re impacting thousands and thousands and thousands of people. I said this in the Legisla- ture. One of the other things in the task force that we recommended was to at least look, as they did in the previous boom, at helping people to buy their first house. They rejected that too. We reject rent guidelines. We reject putting money in to help people buy their first home.

So the reality is now that it’s not just the most vulnera- ble, but we have, as I say, thousands of people out there, Mr. Chairman, that are struggling. There’s no hope of buying a new home with the rising house prices. We saw in Edmonton over 40 per cent increase, Calgary 27 per cent increase. Calgary was already higher, the highest in Canada, so you’re not going to be able to buy a house if you have an ordinary wage. No hope there. At the same time no protection with rising rents, Mr. Chairman. So there we are. The $285 million, hopefully, will do some good down the way, but that’s down the way.

We look at the other areas. Health care, Mr. Chairman. Code burgundies in Calgary almost all the time. I don’t know what they call it now in Edmonton, but it’s the same thing. Emergency rooms are flooded over. They can’t keep up. They say that they can’t keep up. We need more hospitals. Finally, we’re building one in south Calgary that’s needed, but it has cost a lot more than it was meant to at the time because of the overheated economy. Long-term care. We need some help there with some of the problems. It doesn’t matter what the minister of health says; they’re still out there in terms of long-term care.

We look at education, and no matter how the Minister of Educa- tion sums it up, if you’re not keeping up to inflation, there are going to be some serious situations in the classrooms.

Alberta Hansard June 13, 20071734 You know, Mr. Chairman, this could be – I don’t know where it sits in terms of the negotiations. Th e minister of health is here. I know that there are big negotiations right now with the nurses, but I see the potential – and I hope that this doesn’t come about – of almost a public service situation that could become extremely serious. The teachers, 90 per cent of those contracts aren’t there. The nurses are demanding more money, and rightfully so. These groups are finding the rising cost of living difficult to deal with.

We could be into a major public service dilemma with both nurses and teachers in the fall. I hope that that’s not the case, but when I look at the funding and the money, I don’t know how else we’re going to get around it as these groups try to fight for cost of living at least. This is big worry. It should be a big worry to this government. We look at the infrastructure, Mr. Chairman. Well, the minister admitted that we can only do about a third of the roads that need it, that we have probably over $12 billion in infrastructure deficit. What are we going to do about that? The answer seems to be the quick-fix P3s.

The Minister of Education – I think this is going to go into schools – is now talking about some major announcement. I think we’re all speculating that there will be a raft of P3 schools, and we all know the problems there. They’re looking for quick fixes because of the problems that they have created, Mr. Chairman. That’s the point. When you have a boom economy encouraged by the economic strategy that you are in, there are the other problems that you have to deal with. You cannot do it on the cheap, and that’s what this government has tried to do in the past. Now, as I say, they’re trying to catch up right now.

Trying to catch up, so we throw a little bit of money here, there, and everywhere. Premier Klein said there was no plan. I would suggest that there isn’t particularly a plan that I can see at this particular time, certainly, not from this budget, other than spending more money on it. The other part of the plan is: don’t put on the brakes; let things go as the are. So I expect that next year will be even as difficult. 3:10 There are some worrisome trends on the horizon. We don’t know how it will play out, Mr. Chairman. One is the rising dollar.

I think the Minister of Finance said that if it stayed the way it was it would cost the Alberta Treasury $948 million. If it went to parity – and many analysts are predicting that it could go to parity with the American dollar – that would be $1.7 billion. Well, that’s a huge dent out of our treasury right at th is particular time with all of the needs that we have, all of the needs that I’ve just talked about. The other thing is on the royalty review, Mr. Chairman, and I think we’re already being set up, saying: well, all these problems are there, and therefore the poor industry can’t afford much more.

I think the fix is already in on that, so we’re not going to get anymore money there. We’re told now tha