2012 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 39th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes

only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 30, Number

ISSN 0709-1281 (Print)

ISSN 1499-2175 (Online)

CONTENTS

Page

Routine Business

Introductions by Members

Tributes

King George Dragons basketball champions

S. Chandra Herbert

Introductions by Members

Introduction and

First Reading of Bills

Bill M212 — Workplace Bullying Prevention Act, 2012

R. Chouhan

Statements

(Standing Order 25B)

Pink Shirt Day

K. Heed

Cyberbullying awareness

D. Donaldson

Friends Against Drunk Driving

M. Dalton

Book about Edmonds Community School

R. Chouhan

Guide-outfitters

D. Barnett

Community social services workers

N. Simons

Oral Questions

Infection control at Burnaby Hospital

A. Dix

Hon. M. de Jong

K. Corrigan

M. Farnworth

Municipal property tax for ports and Fraser River dredging

V. Huntington

Hon. B. Lekstrom

Role of Patrick Kinsella in liquor distribution privatization

S. Simpson

Hon. R. Coleman

M. Karagianis

B. Ralston

Support for children and families

C. Trevena

Hon. R. Coleman

Ministerial Statements

Pink Shirt Day and prevention of bullying

Hon. C. Clark

A. Dix

Orders of the Day

Budget Debate (continued)

D. Barnett

S. Simpson

K. Krueger

D. Black

J. McIntyre

M. Karagianis

B. Bennett

J. Brar

B. Stewart

S. Hammell

B. Simpson

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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 2012

The House met at 1:34 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Routine Business

Prayers.

[1335]

Introductions by Members

Hon. M. Polak: Today in the gallery we will be joined by two classes from Langley Christian Elementary School. They are led by their teacher Mr. Tim VanHemert. Accompanying them is a large group of parents who are volunteering their time to make sure the students get an enjoyable trip to Victoria and to the Legislature today. Would the House please make them very welcome.

Tributes

KING GEORGE DRAGONS

BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS

S. Chandra Herbert: I bring great news to the House. The King George Dragons clinched the Lower Mainland AA boys basketball championship spot. They're now going to Kamloops, March 7 to 10, to take on the rest of the province. So please congratulate them and their coach, Darko Kulic, for doing us all proud.

Introductions by Members

R. Sultan: In the House we have two of the best lawn sign people on the North Shore, John and Cathy Cave, who operate Take Off Now. If the urge to take off now grabs you, they will arrange a package tour to Cuba, Mexico or an Italian cruise liner. John will drive you to the airport absolutely free.

Hon. H. Bloy: It is a privilege today to introduce three students that have joined us today from Simon Fraser University. We have Arvinder Dhillon, who is a member of the student society board and SFU senate and a former, soon to be reappointed, student rep on the SFU board of governors. Marc Fontaine is also a student rep on the board of governors, while Sara Moghaddamjoo is a student member of the SFU senate. They are here with faculty and staff, and they're part of SFU day in Victoria.

We also have with them Wilf Hurd, a former member of this House and government relations person for Simon Fraser University. Would the House please make them welcome.

J. Rustad: Our wildlife is a precious resource in B.C., and managing it is incredibly important. We have a group of people here today with the United Sportsmen's Association that are very involved in managing wildlife. I'd like to introduce to the House Sean Holloway, Brett Logue, Dan Brooks, Bryan Martin, Stewart Fraser and Vince Cocciolo.

They came and met with our caucus today. They're involved with guide-outfitters, and they're very passionate about our wildlife and conservation, as well as, of course, opportunities for hunting. Would the House please make them welcome.

P. Pimm: Today in the precinct I have constituents, in fact, from Fort Nelson, B.C. I'd like the House to help me welcome the mayor of Fort Nelson, Bill Streeper; the city manager of Fort Nelson, Randy McLean; and the strategic planner for Fort Nelson, Colin Griffith. Would the House help me welcome them, please.

Introduction and

First Reading of Bills

BILL M212 — WORKPLACE BULLYING

PREVENTION ACT, 2012

R. Chouhan presented a bill intituled Workplace Bullying Prevention Act, 2012.

R. Chouhan: I move that the bill intituled Workplace Bullying Prevention Act, of which notice has been given in my name on the order paper, be introduced and now be read a first time.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: Continue, Member.

R. Chouhan: Today is Anti-Bullying Day. While this day sends an important and effective message, there is still much more work to be done to prevent and protect victims of this abuse. Victims of bullying have suffered severe trauma caused by harassment, and in some cases, it has led people to commit suicide.

Harassment causes psychological and physical harm. It includes wilful acts, patterns of behaviour, ignoring and isolating people. It is

an act to humiliate and intimidate people. Bullying does not stop on the playground. It can carry on to the workplace. On the job, bullying is an issue that affects a large number of workers in every sector of our workforce.

In the workplace, victims of bullying are unable to work to their full capacity. This not only impacts individuals, but also the business. The productivity is affected and becomes a financial loss for the business owners.

This act carefully defines harassment and provides

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measures and procedures for workers to report incidents of workplace harassment.

[1340]

It provides sound policy for investigating incidents and making workers accountable for acts of harassment.

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

Bill M212, Workplace Bullying Prevention Act, 2012, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

Statements

(Standing Order 25B)

PINK SHIRT DAY

K. Heed: The last Wednesday of February is known across this nation as Pink Shirt Day. It is a day where we as Canadians take a stand against bullying.

It started in 2007 when a student at a Nova Scotia high school was bullied for wearing a pink shirt on his first day of school. He was harassed, called a homosexual and physically threatened.

Two grade 12 students heard what had occurred and decided to act. They went to a nearby discount store and purchased 50 pink shirts. They contacted their friends and classmates hoping to get them on board with their cause, which they dubbed as "the sea of pink."

The response was overwhelming. Hundreds of students showed up wearing pink, some of them covered from head to toe. Students say it was a powerful moment when the victim of the bullying walked into the school and saw the sea of pink.

It took only two students who were not willing to turn a blind eye to initiate change. Their efforts transformed into an international campaign against bullying, where celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres have publicly praised their cause and where every police officer working in West Vancouver, under my command, proudly wore a pink shirt as part of their uniform of the day.

Pink Shirt Day has become an annual tradition in this House, and I am pleased to see both sides continuing this campaign. By promoting awareness, we will initiate change. I am proud this change started with the next generation, who showed the country how to do the right thing, because I know what it's like to be bullied and to deal with the consequences of bullying.

CYBERBULLYING AWARENESS

D. Donaldson: Cyberbullying is a problem in society. Statistics indicate 42 percent of kids have been bullied on line.

Cyberbullying does not end at three o'clock on school days. It can occur 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The results for victims can be tragic, with several high-profile suicide cases in the last number of years.

Cyberbullying has increased in recent years. Girls are twice as likely to be victims and perpetuators of cyberbullying. I know of young women in Stikine who have received repeated negative messages on Facebook and Twitter from female peers using very degrading words. Much of cyberbullying involves sexual harassment. With boys it's often about homophobic slurs.

There are ways to address cyberbullying. Only 25 percent of school districts in the province have anti-bullying policies explicitly addressing sexual orientation and gender identity. The government needs to be a leader, ensuring all schools in the province have such policies.

Another avenue is through peer pressure, making cyberbullying unacceptable. So today, on national anti-bullying Pink Shirt Day, I am launching an awareness-raising contest in Stikine with Smithers hockey product and Vancouver Canucks defenceman Dan Hamhuis, called Don't Let Cyber Bullies Score!

It's for 13- to 18-year-olds. They must describe their own or others' experiences with cyberbullying through a poem, written or in slam poetry version by audio and video, submitted to Stikine MLA offices. The deadline is March 16.

Hawkair, the Gitksan Government Commission, Smithers RCMP community policing, school district 54 and local radio stations the PEAK and CFNR are also on board. The prize is a trip for two, airfare, accommodation and tickets to see the Vancouver Canucks play Calgary, March 31 in Vancouver, and of course, the goal is: don't let cyberbullies score.

[1345]

FRIENDS AGAINST DRUNK DRIVING

M. Dalton: Earlier this month there was a tragic accident in Maple Ridge. Two teenagers were killed, and others were seriously injured.

The accident has shocked my community, and as you drive along Dewdney Trunk Road, you will see a large memorial with dozens of bouquets, notes and other memorabilia placed by grieving family members, students and friends. Grief has also inspired six teenagers to start a campaign and a new society called FADD, Friends Against Drunk Driving.

I met with FADD members last week, and they told me that their goal is to educate and save lives through positive peer pressure. They aspire to talk to students before

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they grad and share about the very real dangers of drinking and driving. They told me that kids feel like they are immune to death and often tune out when adults talk on the topic. All the high schools in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows have opened their doors to them.

Ryan Nunez, Brendan McHugh, Gabby Kalinich, Connor Schuchard, Andy McComb and Jake Cantin are the teen directors, and they have been overwhelmed by the support they have received. In the past couple of weeks their Facebook page has had 3,000 likes from all over the world. They are working on a website, logo and marketing products. They have been interviewed on CKNW, the Fox, the Beat and featured in local newspapers.

FADD has received e-mails from others who have lost loved ones through drunk driving, and it wants to develop support groups. FADD members believe that if one life is saved, it's all worth the effort.

I commend these young people for the effort they are making and believe they are making a real difference.

BOOK ABOUT

EDMONDS COMMUNITY SCHOOL

R. Chouhan: I would like to talk about a book about an exceptional school and its staff which happens to be located in my constituency. The students at Edmonds Community School come from all over the world. Their parents are often refugees who have overcome harrowing events and circumstances in order to find safety in Canada. Like them, their children have often escaped war zones and witnessed horrific events before finally landing at Edmonds.

In From Bombs to Books Edmonds School principal David Starr shares the deeply moving stories of his students, their parents and the staff at Edmonds who support them. He describes the upheaval many of these families have undergone and how they managed to flee some of the most dangerous lands and people on earth.

He paints portraits of students who are often troubled by what they have experienced but who are surprisingly happy, normal children who have put their family's grief and trauma behind them. He also describes teachers and social workers who have embraced these families and dedicated themselves to making a difference in their lives.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and thank Principal David Starr for writing his first book about the challenges faced by refugee students, their parents and teachers in an inner-city school.

GUIDE-OUTFITTERS

D. Barnett: Today I would like to give a very big thanks to the guide-outfitters from the United Sportsmen's Association for visiting us here at the B.C. Legislature. They bring in tourists from the United States and all over the world to experience B.C.'s one-of-a-kind hunting.

Guide-outfitters support B.C.'s economy in a huge way; 237 guiding businesses bring in up to 4,500 hunters and over $100 million annually. What many people do not know is that many guide-outfitters are family-based businesses. Many are ranchers or trappers, and I know some that are operating in their fifth generation.

Guiding is a huge part of our tourism industry. When hunters come to experience British Columbia, money goes into our hotels, motels, airports, gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores and more. Every pocket of every community they visit benefits from their stays with us, and many visitors leave without harvesting an animal. They come for the experience — to take some beautiful photographs and fun stories to share back home.

Guide-outfitters are also very strong advocates of healthy wildlife practices. One of their main goals is to increase wildlife numbers through proper wildlife management.

[1350]

I support B.C.'s guide-outfitters and thank them for helping the rest of the world experience B.C.'s great outdoors.

COMMUNITY SOCIAL SERVICES WORKERS

N. Simons: Tomorrow marks the beginning of Community Social Services Month, a time when we make an effort to recognize the work of over 15,000 people in British Columbia who, whether we notice every day or not, enrich our lives by making our communities a better place to live.

Who are community social services workers? They are the people who work with women and children who've experienced domestic violence or abuse. They provide counselling to people who suffer from addictions or trauma in their lives. They care for our children by giving them the great start that they need through early learning and care. They counsel victims of crime and prevent crime by working with young people in restorative justice programs. They help house the homeless. They help people find jobs and help people from around the world settle in our beautiful province. They make sure that people with developmental disabilities live the full lives that we expect in our communities.

Here are a few testimonials from some of those who work in this sector. Karen works on a crisis line. She says there's a kernel of resilience in everyone, even those who've experienced massive trauma: "It's an honour and a privilege to help nurture that resilience and help it flower in each individual."

Dorothy has worked with people with developmental disabilities for 20 years. She says: "I've enjoyed my journey with them tremendously…. There's nothing I wouldn't do for them. I believe community social service workers have enhanced their clients' lives a thousand times over…. I've learned how important it is to treat each individual with respect."

Ted works in a homeless shelter. He says: "The people

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who come here are down on themselves. They don't know where they're going to turn. We help them turn that around and help them get back on their feet."

Cam tells of when he took a resident to a wrestling event. "His favourite wrestlers came by, and they hugged…and the look on his face was like pure gold. I'll never forget it." He says: "I get to work with people who enjoy helping other people. We're not in it for the money; we don't make much of it. But we care about people, and we are good at it."

So I ask the House to join me in recognizing March as Community Social Services Month.

Oral Questions

INFECTION CONTROL AT

BURNABY HOSPITAL

A. Dix: Senior medical leadership have taken the unprecedented step and put out an unprecedented warning about patients being at risk at Burnaby Hospital. I quote from a letter signed by seven clinical department heads and other physicians from the hospital. "The current CDAD infection control management at Burnaby Hospital at best is a serious hazard to the patient population served by the Fraser Health Authority."

Over the past two years the hospital has recorded 473 cases of patients suffering severe complications stemming from C. difficile , and 84 of those cases involved the death of the patient. Will the Premier request that the B.C. Centre for Disease Control do a review as to how the health authority is ensuring adequate infection control standards at Burnaby Hospital?

Hon. M. de Jong: As I mentioned a few days ago in the House, I did have an opportunity to visit and tour the hospital in Burnaby. I must say that I was impressed, as I generally am, with the professionalism and dedication of the staff.

I will say this, because Burnaby, like a number of the facilities in Fraser Health, is confronted by challenges associated with population growth. We are in the midst of a major master-planning exercise with respect to the campus. I think the member will know that the extent of the investments that have taken place in Fraser Health around hospitals and care facilities is extensive. The number of residential care beds has grown by thousands.

There are challenges, but the master-planning exercise that is underway today is designed to ensure that the kind of care that people expect and deserve at Burnaby Hospital will continue.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition has a supplemental.

[1355]

A. Dix: With the greatest respect to the Minister of Health, the letter is dated January 9. The letter states, amongst other things, that "such is the degree of the CDAD problem and the ineffectual response to it that we believe it could be objectively considered medical negligence."

What we have is a serious problem at the hospital — rates of infection well above not just the provincial average but the regional average, significant concerns expressed by the doctors involved.

So my question was very specific, because I think this is a pretty serious situation for people in the community and for confidence in the hospital and for the confidence of those people, as the minister says, who are very hard-working and working at the hospital. Will the minister today ask the Centre for Disease Control to take steps to review what's going on at the hospital so we can take action now to address what he has to agree is a serious public health problem?

Hon. M. de Jong: I want to offer this assurance to the member and members of the House. We actually track this on a daily basis. In fact, I would assure members of the House that there are far more mechanisms in place than ever before to ensure that we are tracking this kind of disease — C. difficile , by the way, being a challenge that is confronted by medical facilities not just the continent over but the world over.

There are mechanisms in place. As always on these matters, I can assure the member that we will be guided by the advice that we receive from the clinicians, who are dedicated to ensuring that patients receive the safest and the best possible treatment in our hospitals.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition has a further supplemental.

A. Dix: Well, in this case, the people involved, the physicians directly involved, are describing the situation as a serious hazard. Tracking the problem is one thing; doing something about the problem is another thing.

In addition, the physicians in this case want a review of the facility housekeeping contract to break the chain of infection and to protect patients. So I guess my question to the minister is very simple. I mean, this is not a new problem. It's true. Infection rates have been higher over time, but this is a significant letter sent to the head of the health authority on January 9. It talks about the extent of the hazard in the view of those people working at the hospital.

Isn't it reasonable to do what I think the government probably should have done at the time and ask an external review to come in and address the problem? Isn't that a reasonable response to a serious public health question?

Hon. M. de Jong: One of the reasons we established

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the patient care quality review mechanism is to ensure that there was an agency in place that could assist in addressing issues as they are presented and as they arise.

Again, I want to assure the member that part of the site-planning exercise that is underway is designed to ensure that there are — as we redevelop the Burnaby site, like we have other sites in Fraser and British Columbia — more single-room-occupancy beds that operate to reduce the possibility of infectious disease transfer.

There are issues. They arise. The member has raised the issue here, but we have a system and a clinically based mechanism in place to ensure that patients can enter our hospitals confident that they are receiving the best possible care in safe surroundings.

K. Corrigan: We're talking about a very serious disease that sometimes kills, has killed, one that's highly infectious. Here's a doctor's assessment: "The sustained endemic rates of CDAD at Burnaby Hospital have ranged between two to three times the national and provincial averages for more than the last two years."

So for two years this sometimes lethal infection has raged through a major hospital in the Lower Mainland. Infection rates up to three times the national average. Infection that has been linked to hundreds of cases of serious illness and dozens of deaths in my community. This has been going on for two years. What I want to know: has the minister read the letter, and has he responded to it?

[1400]

Hon. M. de Jong: A couple of things come to mind. First of all, I don't want anything I say to convey that I or the government or the ministry or the health authority don't take seriously an issue like this and the threat that C. difficile represents.

I will say this. At the time I visited the hospital, to the extent that the issue was raised, the clinicians I met with indicated to me that they felt all appropriate steps were being taken. I do rely to a certain extent on the information that I received when I was at the hospital.

In addition, I would offer the member this assurance. People like Dr. Doug Cochrane, I can assure the member, who plays a leading role with the patient care quality review board, have a level of expertise — which I hope the member isn't challenging — in developing recommendations around which issues like this can be dealt with. We will continue to follow those recommendations.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

K. Corrigan: In the letter it says, as was stated previously, 473 recorded cases of patients suffering severe complications after contracting C. difficile at Burnaby Hospital and 84 deaths. These figures do not take into account two further outbreaks that resulted in unprecedented unit closures later last year.

What's the government's health authority doing in the face of these outbreaks? Cutting the position of an infection control officer specializing in C. difficile .

The record has been hiding, ignoring and delaying. The site director assigned to the hospital chose to minimize its chronically high C. difficile rate. That's what the doctors say in the letter.

My question, going back to the minister again: has the minister seen the letter, and has he responded?

Hon. M. de Jong: I don't begrudge members of the opposition raising issues that are important, and important to British Columbians. But to suggest that people don't care or people are ignoring the problem is simply inaccurate and unfair.

The Provincial Infection Control Network that was established in 2005 was dedicated, in part, to addressing the specific kind of problem we are discussing today.

The member can come into the chamber on any given day and suggest that her judgment or the judgment of one of her colleagues should supplant that of a clinician or a learned expert like Dr. Cochrane. I will not do that.

I will, however, be guided — and the government will be guided and the health authorities will be guided — by the advice of clinicians and take into account the concerns expressed by clinicians who practise within the hospital. Of that, you can be sure.

M. Farnworth: I don't doubt for a minute that the minister cares about the issue. The minister stated here today that they have procedures in place. Well, those procedures clearly, if you listen to the clinicians, the people working in Burnaby General Hospital, are not working today — 473 cases of infections, 84 cases of related deaths.

Here's how the doctors are characterizing the current infection control systems that are in place: "At best, a serious hazard to the patient population served by the Fraser Health Authority. The coordination of this activity at both the local and regional levels, at best, is chaotic."

This is an intolerable situation for health care in Burnaby, the Lower Mainland and British Columbia. Will the minister commit to having the Centre for Disease Control come in and do a review of the methods and the processes that are in place, and listen to the clinicians who are dealing with this unacceptable situation every single day?

[1405]

Hon. M. de Jong: Look, as I mentioned a few moments ago, we take very seriously the observations of clinicians. In fact, we have incorporated them into the process of review to a far greater extent than has ever been the case in British Columbia — the Provincial Infection Control Network, patient care quality review boards and, of course, clinicians on a daily basis who

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provide information.

The extent to which we take this challenge that confronts medical facilities around the continent and around the world seriously is revealed in the fact that we have invested $7 billion in the construction of new facilities that are better equipped to control outbreaks of a phenomenon like C. difficile.

So lest there be any doubt in the member's mind, the commitment of the government to work with clinicians is ironclad, and it is revealed in the investment that we have made on behalf of all British Columbians to build the best and safest hospitals anywhere in the world.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

M. Farnworth: What is pretty clear is that the physicians working in Burnaby Hospital don't think the right things are being done or that enough is being done. I'll remind the minister. Why else would they say: "It can be objectively considered medical negligence. As such, we believe the Fraser Health Authority has placed itself at significant risk of medical legal action based on generally accepted principles of medical litigation."?

In their own letter they complain about how things are chaotic and not working, and they list 16 recommendations that could be implemented, that could make a significant difference in dealing with this terrible rate of outbreaks of C. difficile, which is two to three times the provincial and national average.

So will the minister take the concerns of the clinicians and the physicians seriously, sit down and implement the recommendations that they have outlined to deal with this unacceptable situation at Burnaby Hospital?

Hon. M. de Jong: I appreciate the passion that the member brings, but I again want to assure him that the government and I and the health authorities take the matter very, very seriously. I can provide the member with this information. We have data that speaks to the rate of infection, tracks it on a daily and monthly basis. I can provide that information to the member.

I don't dismiss for a moment the value of observations being provided by clinicians who are working on the floor of a hospital like Burnaby, but I will say this. We need to work with them. We need to work with the nurses, we need to work with the administrative staff, we need to work with the broad group of people who are responsible for administering care, and we have to ensure that the investments this government has initiated on behalf of the taxpayers of British Columbia continue so that old facilities can be upgraded to ones that are better equipped to address the spread of disease like C. difficile.

MUNICIPAL PROPERTY TAX FOR PORTS

AND FRASER RIVER DREDGING

V. Huntington: The Minister of Transportation has frozen and is now permanently subsidizing the property tax rate for B.C. ports. He's not going to take changes in economic growth into account, and he's not going to account for growth in revenues and profits. To make matters worse, because tax rates differed, his municipal compensation formula is patently inequitable. Delta, which hosts Canada's largest container port, receives less compensation than Squamish.

In spite of what the minister might believe, we all want to see an economic climate in which business can do long-range planning. But the job of government is to create a fair and equitable playing field on which that long-range planning can operate. It is not the job of the provincial government to subsidize a large federal entity — in perpetuity, mind you. Port Metro Vancouver is not a B.C. Crown corporation.

[1410]

Will the minister at least agree to open discussions with the municipalities and negotiate a base tax rate that will ensure equitable compensation to local B.C. communities?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: The Ports Property Tax Act, which we were able to enshrine and make permanent last week in our budget, is something I think we should all be proud of in this province. It's created all kinds of economic development. To date, about a billion dollars' worth of investment in our ports and an additional up to $2 billion are on the books as a result of making this port property tax permanent.

For the member, when she talks about what it means for different communities…. Let me tell you what it means, Member, for your community. It means jobs for the families and the men and women that work there. Member, we have to ensure that our ports are amongst the most competitive on the west coast of North America, because it is a competitive environment in which we operate. We're going to ensure that we're the gateway to the Asia-Pacific not only for British Columbia but for all of Canada and North America.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

V. Huntington: I'll tell the minister what it also means. It means the destruction of one of the finest ecosystems in the world and the using up of prime agricultural land in this country.

The CAO of Port Metro Vancouver says the government subsidy is essential to support competitiveness. Just when did the people of B.C. say their taxes should support one of the largest corporations in the province, a corporation that has already received hundreds and

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hundreds of millions of dollars in support from B.C.?

Mr. Speaker, the minister will subsidize Deltaport in perpetuity, but he won't commit matching funds so we can dredge a harbour to keep a local community alive — the same community, by the way, that hosts the port. If the minister insists on giving ports an annual $5 million property tax subsidy, will he at least contribute the dredging dollars needed to keep small businesses alive in Ladner?

Hon. B. Lekstrom: I will address both questions she raised there. One is on the continuation of the port property tax — again, something that I want to be very clear. We make communities whole based on their rate and the differential. So communities do not lose money in this, and I want to be very clear on that.

On the issue of the Fraser River dredging. I know we've had the opportunity to meet on that, and I appreciate the member's input on that. We have met more than once on this very issue. I think the proposed solution of periodic dredging, after a catch-up on the dredging, is something we have to pursue. We agree on that.

Port Metro Vancouver has funds available. We're going to work with them. I know that the city has actually put funds available as well. They've moved it forward. We're working on that. I'm confident — as we've said in our discussions, Member — that we're going to find a solution to this to make sure it works for everybody.

ROLE OF PATRICK KINSELLA IN

LIQUOR DISTRIBUTION PRIVATIZATION

S. Simpson: The government has confirmed that they have no business case for the selling off of the liquor warehousing and distribution operation. They cannot tell us whether they are looking to create a private monopoly or breaking the business up.

However, we do know that B.C. Liberal insider Patrick Kinsella and his client Exel Logistics engaged with ministers, trying to buy this business. We have been down this road before with Mr. Kinsella with B.C. Rail, and we know how that turned out.

Will the Premier assure this House that due diligence will be done on this scheme and made public before any request for proposals is contemplated?

Hon. R. Coleman: Well, at least the member opposite didn't make up some other meetings I supposedly attended and that he decided that I had gone to, and he doesn't have to come back into the House this afternoon and apologize for the last time he accused me of that.

I said before, when this question came up, that there will be a fairness analysis of any bid process. It'll go out to RFP. It'll be an open process to the public. It will be fair. It will be well managed. It will be balanced, and there will be a fairness lens put on the proposal.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

S. Simpson: I'm sure the government and the B.C. Liberals would have told us that there was fairness on the B.C. Rail deal too, and we saw how that all worked.

[1415]

We've seen research from Pricewaterhouse and from the University of Saskatchewan telling us that the privatization of liquor in Alberta has created a host of problems around pricing and availability. The company behind the Alberta operation is a subsidiary of Mr. Kinsella's client, Exel Logistics — no business case and what is appearing to be an inside track for a single proponent. We are worried about the fairness and the intelligence of this decision. How does the Premier plan to ensure fairness and no repeat of the B.C. Rail debacle with the Liquor Distribution Branch?

Hon. R. Coleman: It never ceases to amaze me how this particular member likes to throw basically libellous comments across the House about people in the public and British Columbians and companies but never goes outside and actually backs it up with the facts.

The fact of the matter is this. We will go to an RFP. It'll be an open process. The bids will come in, they will be analyzed, and they'll be dealt with by a fairness commissioner to make sure that they are fair and balanced in the decision that is made.

It is a good decision for the province of British Columbia, because the other alternative — to spend extra money to build new warehousing and stuff — would be a waste of taxpayers' money, versus to get an opportunity to sink the money back and put it against the debt of the province and build a fiscal plan for British Columbia, long term for British Columbians, versus what you might want to do.

M. Karagianis: Mr. Patrick Kinsella is a top donor and key political backer of the Premier. So a very straightforward question to the Premier: did she meet with Mr. Kinsella, and did they discuss selling off the liquor distribution?

Hon. R. Coleman: Quit tilting at windmills. Get your head around the fact that we're going to go to an RFP, an open bidding process for somebody that might want to come in and buy the Liquor Distribution Branch and give better service to British Columbians and actually put some money back into the government's coffers so we can do more things for health care and education. Actually, we may have an opportunity to increase productivity and jobs for British Columbians as a result as well.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

M. Karagianis: The Premier seemed pretty anxious

[ Page 9568 ]

to speak yesterday on all questions. So again, a question straight to the Premier. It stretches the realms of believability that she wouldn't have met with her good friend and key political backer Mr. Kinsella. When did they meet, and did they discuss the sell-off of liquor distribution in this province?

Hon. R. Coleman: Oh, I get it. They don't know about RFPs because they probably never did one in the ten years they were in government. They don't know about competitive bidding because they never did that when they were in government. Certainly, they don't know about putting a fairness commissioner on a file like this to make sure it's fair to all parties that bid so the right proponent with the right proposal gets the bid.

That's what we're going to do. It'll be fair, it'll be open, and it'll be balanced. It'll be the right thing to do for British Columbians.

B. Ralston: Poma Dhaliwal, vice-president of the Alliance of Beverage Licensees in British Columbia, questioned why the government would want to sell off the profitable, publicly owned liquor distribution system, which isn't broken. After all, the Liquor Distribution Branch contributed $899 million in government revenue this fiscal year, and no one in the public is asking for this sell-off. Will the minister confirm that the only person who's asking for this sell-off is Mr. Kinsella and his lobbying firm?

Hon. R. Coleman: To the member opposite: I guess I could give you a briefing in how we actually extract our revenue out of liquor. The sell-off of the Liquor Distribution Branch will not affect government's revenues one iota.

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The fact of the matter is that we take our funds from the markup and the taxes of the liquor as it comes through the system. That's how we make our money for the taxpayers of British Columbia, and we'll continue to do that.

Now, I know they don't like to see us paying down debt or finding money to make government more efficient. I know they're opposed to jobs. I know they are not fiscally conservative and don't actually believe in balancing the budget, but on this side of the House, for the future of my children and grandchildren, I'm proud of the fiscal changes we're doing in British Columbia today.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

B. Ralston: I don't know why the minister is proud of $706 million in phantom revenue that has been concocted for this three-year fiscal plan. At the front of the budget document…

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

B. Ralston: …the Deputy Minister of Finance, quite properly, has expressed a reservation about the likelihood of this sale resulting in real revenue.

How much of the $706 million is pencilled in for the sale of the Liquor Distribution Branch?

Hon. R. Coleman: When you get over the grassy knoll behind the shade of the tree over in the corner, you'll find a fair and proper process with regards to putting up a tender for the Liquor Distribution Branch in British Columbia, and you'll find out we also protected revenues. But don't worry, hon. Member. I know the agenda on the other side of the House.

The Leader of the Opposition just said yesterday to the Vancouver Province columnist that government should drop its net zero mandate and put more money on the table to get a negotiated settlement with teachers. That means he would drop $1.3 billion more on the me-too clauses in every collective agreement we've signed in the province of British Columbia and flush a few billion dollars more on top of the $6.8 billion he's already flushing.

You can't pay the bills. He wants to push us into debt. He wants to destroy the economy of British Columbia, and we're not going to let that happen.

SUPPORT FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

C. Trevena: I'd like to address some of the real priorities for the real people in this province. This week saw the release of the Metro Vancouver homeless count. The results point out the lack of supports for children and youth under the B.C. Liberals over these last 11 years. Mr. Speaker, 56 people with children were found homeless, the highest number ever counted. The majority of those children were 12 years old or younger, and there were five children under the age of one. That's five babies.

The Premier says families first. What about those families? To the Minister of Children and Family Development: when will we see a provincewide plan to address these shameful statistics, a plan which really helps B.C.'s most vulnerable families?

Hon. R. Coleman: Last spring 145 people were street homeless in the city of Vancouver, a drop of 82 percent in the city. In Metro Vancouver last spring the drop in the people who were homeless in the entire region of Vancouver was over 54 percent.

I just want to give the member three numbers. Six thousand — that's the number of people that are no longer homeless in British Columbia since 2006. Ten thousand — the number of families that are receiving rent assistance in the province of British Columbia, where

[ Page 9569 ]

they live, till they support their families. That's for low-income families in B.C., something you voted against. And 18,000 seniors households in British Columbia get a cheque quietly every month to offset the rent where they live in British Columbia so that they can have a quality of life — something you also voted against, hon. Member.

[End of question period.]

Hon. C. Clark: I rise to make a ministerial statement.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Ministerial Statements

PINK SHIRT DAY AND

PREVENTION OF BULLYING

Hon. C. Clark: Today we mark Pink Shirt Day here in British Columbia. It is a very, very proud day for me personally, to sit here in this chamber and see so many members who are wearing pink, see so many kids up there in the gallery wearing pink — to even see the jaded, cynical journalists who report on us in the press gallery, many of them wearing pink.

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I think it says a lot about our commitment here in this province to combat bullying. This started for me in 2006 when I hosted a radio show. One day a woman phoned in, and she said something to this effect: "You know what? Bullying just happens. It builds character, so kids should just get used to it." That comment passed into the ether, as many comments do on the radio.

I got an e-mail from a woman named Brenda. She wrote to me and said: "I want to come on your show, and I want to tell my story about bullying." And she did. She spent an hour talking about how she was a bully, how she'd locked two little girls in the back of a car and convinced them that she was kidnapping them and they were never going to see their parents again. She talked about how she'd beaten a girl so badly in the school yard that she broke her clavicle.

Then she talked about the impact that had had on her life, how she'd led a dysfunctional life addicted to drugs and alcohol and never able to have a real relationship, as a result of the knowledge that she had harmed so many people because she was a bully.

When she left the studio, she looked me in the eye and said: "You know what? You have a bully pulpit here on the radio. You have to use it to do something about bully-

[ Page 9570 ]

ing." And I didn't know what to do.

A couple of months later I was reading the Globe and Mail , and they did a story about national heroes. Among the national heroes that they chose were two young men, David Shepherd and Travis Price. Those were the two young men that my colleague referred to a few minutes ago — the two young men in Nova Scotia who, when they saw a grade 9 boy being bullied at school for wearing a pink shirt, decided that they were going to stand up and do something about it.

They were going to stand in the way of the bully and make a statement that said: "If you are going to bully him, you're going to have to bully us too." So they went down to the dollar store, they bought 50 pink shirts, and they put them on themselves and all their friends. The next day there were a bunch of kids wearing pink shirts, and the day after, even more kids, until the last day of school that week when everybody except the bullies was in pink.

I read that in the paper, and I thought: "You know what? We can do something about bullying here in British Columbia." I sat down with the people in management at my station, and I talked to them about how we wanted to do a pink-shirt day, and we needed their support to do it. None of us thought that it would be successful. We thought that if we went out and sold T-shirts, we might make back some of the money we spent on it. We couldn't believe the response that we had in just a few months to put it together.

We were sold out of T-shirts in a matter of weeks. There were thousands of kids wearing pink on their own in schools, thousands of people in workplaces, police officers, RCMP, bus drivers. We saw ambulance drivers dye their white shirts pink for the day. We saw people in offices all over the province wearing pink. People in schools in Egypt were wearing pink because they wanted to take a stand against bullying.

They were amongst the people, the hundreds of people, that I heard from who talked about how bullying had dramatically affected their lives, how in some cases it had traumatized them for decades. The thing about bullying is that when you are victimized by a bully, you often never, ever get the chance to make good, to find closure, to ask for an apology, to feel like you had justice out of the situation.

The trauma that you can feel from that…. For some people it's short-term, and for many, it's over years and years. It can last a lifetime. I learned that in the last many years that we worked on Pink Shirt Day — me and many colleagues across the province.

I'll say this about bullying. We often use the word "bully" to refer to a lot of things, but I want to be clear about what it is. Bullying is when one person purposefully, intentionally harms another repeatedly and gets something from it. They get attention. They get a sense of self-esteem. Who knows what they get?

I learned that the way to stop bullying is multifaceted. There's a lot that government can do to stop it. There's a lot that government can do to try and prevent it. But government is not the majority of the answer.

I said, when I was in the private sector: "If I ever get back into government, I'm going to do something. I'm going to ask government to do something about bullying." So we included it in the throne speech, and we are going to do something this session to address bullying. We are going to take bold action on this.

[1430]

But I want to be clear. The way to stop bullying — and all the kids up there will know this, because they will have learned it in class — is to stand up, to step in. When you see someone being purposefully harmed, you stand up for them and say: "That's not acceptable."

It doesn't matter if you're at school or if you're at home or if you're in your workplace. Step in, and deprive that bully of oxygen, because if the bully doesn't have an audience, the bully won't have a reason to do it anymore.

So I want to say thank you today to all of the members of this House who have decided to take

part in Pink Shirt Day, because today we come together. We find unity in a common cause that matters to every single one of us, whatever our political view.

I want to say thanks to all the professionals, all the adults, all the teachers and educators, all the parents, all the folks who work in daycares and especially all the kids. Today is the day that we say: "For the next 365 days, whenever I see bullying happening, I'm going to stand up, I'm going to step in, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that that bully doesn't get the attention that he or she wants."

A. Dix: I think this day across British Columbia…. It's very moving in the Legislature to see people wearing pink, but it's even more moving…. I know the Premier — like I, like all MLAs — has gone to events that have been student-led, youth-led events that have made a real difference.

I want to thank the Premier for her remarks today and for the work she has done on this issue. I think it's important work that we have to do together. I think symbolically, we in the Legislature have to show our own example in this regard.

The Premier has said that action is going to be taken. We want action to be taken, and I want the Premier to know that both on the question of workplace bullying and especially on the bullying involved in our public schools and all schools in British Columbia, we're prepared, absolutely, to work with her under all conditions, work together under all conditions, to see that change happens now.

It is, as I say, inspirational that this is a movement that was started by young people, driven by young people, who have taught all of us, I think, a lesson about how to make social change. It's our obligation here as their representatives and the representatives of the voters of B.C. to give that life and to give that action.

So let's work together over the next little while. Let's get the job done together in the ways that we can. As the Premier rightly says, it's not all about legislation. It's about our daily lives and what we do every day.

I want to thank the Premier. I want to thank all of my colleagues in the Legislature for their support of this. Now let's get the job done. Let's work on this together in this session.

Hon. I. Chong: I ask leave to make an introduction.

Mr. Speaker: Proceed.

Introductions by Members

Hon. I. Chong: I sometimes don't immediately notice, but I do see in the gallery a good friend, a constituent of mine, a former mayor of Oak Bay who did not seek re-election. We wondered what he would do with his time. Apparently, he's got time to watch question period. I would ask the House to please make welcome Christopher Causton.

Orders of the Day

Hon. R. Coleman: Shockingly, we will do the budget debate continuation again this afternoon.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members, if you could go off to your other duties.

[1435]

Budget Debate

(continued)

D. Barnett: To continue on with my speech to Budget 2012, we also provided over $1 million to the Association for Mineral Exploration B.C., the Mining Association of B.C., Aggregate Producers Association of B.C. and their industry partners. The money will be used to further develop human resource strategies designed to meet the increasing demand for skilled labour in B.C.'s mining sector.

[D. Horne in the chair.]

Over 450 employees provincewide will gain the essential skills they need to succeed, while increasing productivity for employers through a $1.5 million investment in essential skills training. Our province has the greatest increase of apprentices in the whole country, and it is our job to see to it that they are supported as best as possible. We are also extending the training tax credit program, which encourages employers and workers to get involved in apprenticeship programs.

At Thompson Rivers University we have increased annual operating grants by $11.2 million, which is a 20.9 percent increase, and provided 111 new funded student

[ Page 9571 ]

spaces since 2005-2006.

The government also supports First Nations and aboriginal communities through its aboriginal training-for-employment program, which helps participants pursue further studies and employment opportunities in a variety of fields. Just last month the Xeni Gwet'in First Nations Government in the Williams Lake region was granted $150,000 to support hands-on training and in-class instruction, as well as career planning and skills for various occupations.

We recently learned that lumber exports to China rose by 60 percent in 2011, surpassing the $1 billion mark. As part of Canada Starts Here, the B.C. jobs plan, the government is investing $550,000 to help the B.C. silviculture industry.

The investment will develop new human resource strategies to meet the challenges of a changing labour market over three years. The funding will go towards developing a human resource strategy to ensure the industry can continue to develop, recruit and retain reliable and capable workers. This is a very welcome funding announcement for my riding, which relies a great deal on the forest industry.

Health care. We know that health care is a priority for all British Columbians. We will continue to work hard to identify best practices for delivering care and finding administrative savings, and we will continue to work to reduce the rate of growth in health spending and achieve key health outcomes that lead the country.

In my riding we've had a number of wonderful health-funding announcements over the last year. We just announced that $200,000 will go to each of the 100 Mile District General Hospital and the Cariboo Memorial Hospital and health centre in Williams Lake to strengthen public access to emergency services in rural communities. We announced $106 million for the northern cancer control strategy, including a new B.C. cancer centre for the north in Prince George, as well as a $26 million expansion of Quesnel's G.R. Baker Hospital.

The Ministry of Health budget will increase by $1.5 billion over the three-year fiscal plan to nearly $17.3 billion in 2014-2015. We are determined to make our health care system the best in the world, and total spending on health care equals 42 percent of our government spending.

Government spending in the Ministry of Health reached $14.64 billion in 2010-2011, which is an increase of 69 percent since 2000-2001. There is no doubt in my mind that we are working hard to get adequate funds into health care while making our system the best it can possibly be.

Investments in infrastructure in our communities are critical for a strong province. I'm incredibly proud of our government's track record on transportation. We have invested wisely in our infrastructure, and we're finally catching up to what the NDP didn't do for the entire period of the 1990s.

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Since 2001 this government has invested more than $45 billion on capital infrastructure. We have seen infrastructure investment all across the province, from the Port of Prince Rupert to the Port Mann bridge. In 2010-2011, 92.1 percent of projects met their budget and schedule. This is because we know how important it is to British Columbians that we get work done on time, so they can sooner get themselves to work and support their families.

In my riding alone I have seen millions of dollars in road improvements and repairs as well as the construction of two spur dikes and flood prevention infrastructure. In 2010-2011, $50 million was invested as part of the Interior and rural side roads program, and from 2011-2012 through to 2013-2014 we'll have invested another $152 million. This makes sure rural roads are safer and more reliable and eases access between rural communities. We have invested $33 million as part of the oil and gas rural road improvement program.

Our government knows very well how hard the mountain pine beetle has hit rural communities, and we are investing $30 million per year to facilitate the safe and effective transportation of harvested mountain pine beetle–killed timber to repair damage done to the highway system by the extraordinary increase in heavy truck traffic and to help ensure the goals and objectives of the B.C. mountain pine beetle action plan are met.

While I'm talking about mountain pine beetle, there are a few facts that I would like to present. I heard from a member across the way about an issue at Twinflower Creek area, which is in my riding. It is created by pine beetle, by drought, by factors and by Mother Nature. I'm very interested in the comments from the member across the way.

Because of the mountain pine beetle there has been an increase in harvesting, and harvesting is very important if we want to create jobs and have an economy. What frustrates me is that I have lived and been a part of this pine beetle for the last 30 years, I guess, since it first started. In the '90s, when many of us were working and part of local government, we asked the government of the day to help us mitigate this by allowing management of parks. But no, we couldn't mitigate. We let Mother Nature take its course.

Now we hear that the problem is created by government. Well, the problem is not created by government. And in the Twinflower Creek area there is a mitigation plan being put together cooperatively with the community. It's called the Big Creek watershed storage assessment project. It's funded by the Cariboo-Chilcotin pine beetle coalition, which of course….

L. Popham: Did you tell the ranchers that? They don't know….

[ Page 9572 ]

D. Barnett: Excuse me. They are aware of it.

Investing in this is the provincial government and industry. When this plan is put together, I believe it will be a plan for all watersheds in British Columbia affected by pine beetle.

We have also put a lot of time, energy and money into fighting the pine beetle issue. For example, I will give you a breakdown. So $185 million was given to the Northern Development Initiative Trust to help northern economic diversification communities diversify their economies — $30 million specifically for beetle mitigation. To date, out of that $185 million and the $30 million being utilized, $32 million of this fund has gone to 101 projects, leveraging $205.5 million in total funds.

[1445]

And $50 million for the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust to help communities. Since 2005, $236 million on Forests for Tomorrow for reforestation activities will ensure long-term timber supply.

I could go on and on, but what amazes me is this is such a huge economic-dependent community — the Cariboo-Chilcotin and others. To hear the opposition say that this government has done nothing…. I just cannot believe those words were said, because we have done so much to help these communities.

We support, and we still support, these pine beetle coalitions, which cover three-quarters of this province of British Columbia, yet when the opposition was asked to participate when we first started these coalitions, the answer was: "No, we are not interested."

The work that has been done and is ongoing has created economic development throughout three-quarters of British Columbia. I am so proud to be part of a government that recognized that fact and understands the issues in my riding.

The government is ensuring that all communities receive the benefits of B.C.'s strong economy. That is what we're doing through the pine beetle initiative, through other community initiatives — but working with our communities, not bringing issues out without all the facts. If we are going to have strong communities, united communities, the facts need to be known.

As I continue, this government is about economic responsibility, good fiscal management, balancing budgets and keeping triple-A credit. I could go on and on about the great things that this government has done and why I chose to be part of a good government — a good, manageable government; a government that understands; a government that finds the positive, not the negative; and a government that always knows both sides to the story, because there are always two sides to every story.

In conclusion, through innovative projects and programs we are working towards a stronger, healthier B.C. We are a province with many advantages. Our people, our resources and our jobs are inevitable and valuable. We have innovative and sustainable infrastructure projects and stable economic prospects. We have strong families and communities that benefit from robust health care, education and social sectors.

We as a government are doing everything we can to maintain and improve these strengths and to keep B.C. strong well into the future. I'm proud to support this year's budget, and I'm proud to represent the great people of the Cariboo-Chilcotin.

S. Simpson: I'm pleased to have my opportunity to stand in my place to debate the budget for this year.

It's always a pleasure to get the opportunity to rise in the House and to speak on behalf of the people of Vancouver-Hastings, my constituency, a constituency that I've spent most of my life in and that I'm very proud of. I'm very proud of the people of my constituency and of all the work they do, particularly all the work they do in supporting each other.

There's a wonderful tradition of that. I know that all of my neighbours in Vancouver-Hastings share my sense of value in being able to live in a community that functions in that way.

I'm really pleased to have the opportunity, as I said, to talk about the budget a little bit. Let me start with a bit of an overview of what I think are the real challenges with the budget.

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The first one is that it's not a particularly sophisticated budget. That's really problematic at a time when we are facing very complex issues — complex financial, social and environmental issues, sustainability issues. We know what they are. We talk about them in this place. We talk about them outside this place.

But what we've seen now is a budget that is just not sophisticated at all in how it responds to the issues and the challenges that are put in front of us by the global situation that we hear the Finance Minister talk about and by the complexity of the economy as we know it and our need to be able to sustain services for British Columbians.

If you look at the budget, I think one of the most telling things is the way that it deals with each of the ministries. This is a budget that, with the exception of health care, which got a bit of a lift, and a small lift in Education and a statutory lift in Social Development because of increasing income assistance rates…. We've seen a situation where there had to be a statutory lift there in order to meet those needs. But other than that, if you look across all of the other ministries, with the exception also of a cut, of course, in Advanced Education, they essentially are an across-the-board freezing of the budgets.

When you look into the service plans…. We know the service plans aren't the documents that they were a few years ago, where they provided pretty significant information and that information essentially isn't there anymore. But what it does tell us is that largely they've been frozen over the next three years based on this budget.

[ Page 9573 ]

This is a budget at a time when you should be looking at the economic realities, the impacts of those economic realities on our communities, on our citizens, on our most vulnerable citizens, and figuring out how to measure and look at the differences — how each one of those ministries plays a role in responding to those needs and then ensuring and trying to balance the budget in a way that ensures that each of those ministries is getting the necessary resources that they need in order to play their role.

But that's not what we saw. We saw a budget that instead just flatlined across the board.

It almost makes you wonder whether there is a Treasury Board under the B.C. Liberal government, whether there is a place to have a conversation about those priorities, whether ministers were coming to that Treasury Board to advocate for the priorities that they saw, to bring their budgets for their individual ministries forward to Treasury Board to talk about how they saw balancing demands with resources within their ministries and where they thought the priorities of government should be reflected within their ministries. But that's not what the budget shows us.

The budget shows us a pretty ham-fisted approach to how to deal with this. As a result of that lack of sophistication, the thing that usually comes with lack of sophistication is lack of vision. There's nothing visionary about this budget. There's nothing visionary because of this lack of sophistication and clearly the lack of work that went into the budget in order to make it work for British Columbians.

Now, I suspect that that lack of vision probably comes back to a hard political reality. The hard political reality is this. This is a government that is focused on two things. One is trying to minimize the amount of damage that they're going to face coming into an election in 2013 and believing that they need to balance that budget at all costs and need to portray that to get there, to see if they can save as many seats as they can save by 2013.

The other political reality of this is a set of by-elections in Port Moody–Coquitlam and in Chilliwack-Hope that are coming up sometime in the next few months, where clearly the government is pretty concerned about the possibilities that they face in terms of results in those elections.

[1455]

As a result, they've built a budget that affects everybody in British Columbia around a couple of narrow political objectives.

Any time you do that, any time you take something like a provincial budget, as large and complex as it is, as important as it is, and decide all of that work, all of that analysis, all of those complexities, all of those issues can be set aside in order to see if we can get a couple of steps closer to these political objectives…. That's what we've seen in this budget. We've seen the government do a number of things to get there, and some of it is particularly bad public policy.

Now, we've already talked — and I've spoken a little bit here — about the lack of vision as it affects across ministries and the decision of the government's conduct. But I want to talk about a couple of specific examples of poor public policy as it relates here.

The first one is this asset sale, the land sale — as somebody said to me, the going-out-of-business sale for the B.C. Liberals on their land sale. They've got $706 million that they've booked in this budget as returns on the sale of some hundred properties. Now, clearly the government, I would expect, should have some idea what those properties are. They should have some idea what they're getting for them, or it's pretty hard for me to understand how you book a number as specific as $706 million — not $702 million or $708 million but $706 million.

So there's been some thought about this, clearly, as to what properties they must be and how they value those and how we're going to get to $706 million.

In question period the other day the Minister of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation said, in response to a question around discussions with First Nations and obligations of government to consult around Crown lands in terms of treaty, that there had been no determination on those properties and that when that determination came, there would be the appropriate consultation.

The minister's comments…. I paraphrase, and I apologize if I get it wrong. But generally, she was saying we will have those discussions at the time when we identify those properties clearly. The question here is: how on earth do you figure out it's $706 million and that that's what you're going to get, if you don't have a list of properties?

We've asked those questions here, and minister after minister — the Finance Minister, the House Leader…. No, the Premier wasn't answering questions on land asset sales the other day, so we didn't hear from her on that. But we have had nobody tell us where this list is and how this list exists. That's a real problem.

When you talk to folks, not NDPers but people who understand the role of government and how government best performs, you will find very, very few people who don't want to buy those assets. Now, if they want to be a purchaser of the assets, they might think it's a pretty good idea. But if they're not looking to buy them, if they're just looking at what constitutes good public policy, they will tell you that you simply don't sell the assets that have a long-term public good in order to get through the next few months to try to balance your budget. That's just bad public policy. And yet the government is crafting a balanced budget around exactly that initiative.

Now, the other thing, of course, that we see with the government in terms of how they do this is where they're moving on Crowns and the decision around Crowns. I'll talk about two in particular.

We've had the conversation in this House numerous times about B.C. Hydro, and we know the government

[ Page 9574 ]

is booking about $1.8 billion of dividend over the next number of years from B.C. Hydro. However, we also know that, largely, this is driven by an issue around how deferral accounts have been established and put in place.

So 22, 27. I've lost count of the number of deferral accounts that have been put in place, which we hear from the Auditor General create the potential for upwards of a $5 billion hole in B.C. Hydro by the time they're maxed out. There's nothing good about that management.

[1500]

Then the question becomes: is this truly about being prepared to take what has always been viewed as the Crown jewel of the Crown corporations and run it into the ground in order to artificially create these dividends to offset expenses? Is that what we're talking about here?

Well, it certainly appears to be the case, because there's no justification. There's no plan that can be found — certainly not one that the independent officer could find — about how those deferral accounts work and where the resources are — or the plan, even, to be able to pay those accounts off. It doesn't exist. There's nothing about that that's good management. That's gross mismanagement. But it's par for the course for the B.C. Liberal government.

This government, as has been becoming clearer and clearer every day, has been mismanaging this province in the most horrendous way for years and years. That's becoming painfully clear. But it's not the only one. We have ICBC. Now, ICBC this past year was projected initially…. Originally, it was going to turn about a $277 million dividend. It didn't work. It turned out to be about half that, a little more than half of that — the dividend — which is fine. That's a reality.

Now we see, though, of course, that that dividend is essentially being projected to double or almost double, to go to $230 million and then, I think, up to $260 million in the next couple of years. Overall, between now and 2014 it's to return almost $1.2 billion to the provincial government as a dividend by 2014.

Now, the way this is being done is by driving up the rates, not on the optional so much — in fact, they're driving the rates on the optional down — but on basic insurance. This is the insurance that all of us are obliged to buy, and rightly so, to ensure that we have everybody properly insured who is driving a vehicle. They're driving that up by 11.2 percent.

On the optional insurance, where ICBC competes with the private sector, there's a 6 percent reduction in insurance rates. What you have is a situation where it's increasingly appearing that the government has decided that particularly those people who have the biggest financial challenges and economic challenges personally — the people who are most likely to only buy the minimum amount of car insurance that they require, which is basic, in order to get their car on the road — are the people who will pay for this. They're the ones who'll pay the 11.2 percent, and they don't get an offset of a reduction in the optional. So it'll be paid there.

We know, of course, that one of the biggest challenges in this province is inequality and the growth in inequality. Most people have got a car on the road. And those people for whom money is tight, who have a car on the road and who insure at the minimum levels they can, will take the biggest hit on this. So it reinforces that inequality.

As we know, there's about $3 billion of dividends projected out of those two Crowns alone to go to government over the next number of years — $3 billion of dividends. This is a problem. It's not that there's a dividend return to government. There's historically been a dividend return to government. There will be a dividend return to government from these Crowns in the future.

The issue becomes this. When the government manages the books through very questionable practices like deferral accounts or seems to be driving up rates or fees — in order to push the dividend up, not to enhance the viability of the corporation — that's a problem. We should be taking that dividend, hopefully because of good management of the Crown, and a fair return. We should be taking a fair dividend. But that is not what we're seeing in this case, because of the way the government has chosen to structure these two decisions — very problematic, very bad policy.

The other piece that we've seen — and we spoke about this a little bit earlier today — is around the Liquor Distribution Branch and, particularly, the warehousing and distribution aspect of that. The government has told us through the budget that the intention is to privatize that, to sell it off.

[1505]

That's a political decision. It's a policy decision. People have a right to make those political and policy decisions. But when you make them, you should have something to support that decision. We have asked continually for the business case that makes sense. No one has provided that business case on the government side. The Premier hasn't provided it. The Finance Minister hasn't provided it. The minister responsible hasn't provided it. Nobody can give us a business case. That's a problem.

We also know that at this point we can't get an answer on whether we're talking about a private monopoly. I've been reading about the situation in Alberta, where they have privatized. The entire system is private there, and they've encouraged us.

I read an editorial in the Calgary Herald from yesterday, I think it was, that said to British Columbia: "Don't do what we did." They still support the privatization, but they said: "Don't do what we did." Part of the concern is: are you going to create a private monopoly? Here's the challenge. If you create the private monopoly, you create a real problem in terms of how liquor gets controlled, how it gets distributed, availability, and you create pricing challenges. Even where they've regulated there, they found that problem. They've created that problem.

[ Page 9575 ]

We know the biggest breweries in the country are in the middle of a lawsuit with a subsidiary of the company who would like to buy here, who controls that operation in Alberta. It's over whether they can appropriately distribute properly their product, and they're suing over that. That's a reality there.

The other reality that we know is…. I've been looking — and I would love for somebody on the government side to correct me on this — across North America, and I've been trying to find the situation where you have private distribution in warehousing and you have public stores — publicly owned stores in a retail operation. You don't have them.

What you have in every other area where this has been done is either a public system or a private system. Now, the Premier and the Minister of Finance, when they've been asked whether this is phase 1 to privatizing the rest of the Liquor Distribution Branch and selling off the stores, have said: "Not at the moment." They haven't denied it. They haven't said no to it. They've said not at the moment. Every place else you look, that's what you see.

We had the minister responsible today trying to tell us that the money is in the stores and in the retail side. Well, if the money is in the stores and the retail side, you can certainly be assured that that's what the private sector will want.

The government won't tell us if that's the road they're going down. But it is the road that everybody else says…. That's the conclusion that everyone else has got to who went down that road. We know the people of British Columbia believe that the government-operated system gives them benefits and provides stability and security for them, and they like it. They prefer the government-owned system.

What are some of the other challenges? We've heard the Premier, though admittedly she doesn't talk about families first very much anymore…. That one is completely off the table. Instead, what we're seeing here is a Premier who obviously is trying to hang on to her job, and I understand that. So we're not getting any response that is substantive to the many challenges that families are facing, to the costs and the pressures families are facing.

We're seeing a government here that chooses to cut in one of the key areas that a provincial government can play a role in terms of the economy. I've heard this government tell us numerous times that governments don't create jobs and the private sector…. You know, the private sector is pretty important in creating jobs, and I agree with that — absolutely.

Interjections.

S. Simpson: I'll bang my desk too.

The private sector is where the jobs are. So when you talk to the private sector, when you talk to private sector employers, when you talk to people who are leaders in private sector industry….

[1510]

Interjection.

S. Simpson: Yes, as a matter of fact, we are talking to them more than ever, by the way. More than ever they're wanting to talk to us. The phone rings a lot these days.

What we're seeing here is the thing that they tell us the most. They would say: provide a trained, educated workforce. The biggest thing that the provincial government can do for them is to provide a trained, educated workforce. So what does this government do? It cuts the budget. Remarkable. It cuts the budget. We know they've turned their back on that area.

We also know that the government has not responded or reacted in any substantive way on the issue of poverty. Eight years — highest rates of child poverty in the country. Highest levels of overall poverty in the country. Half a million British Columbians living in poverty. About 130,000 of those are kids. There was nothing in this budget to support those people at all. There was nothing in this budget that tells us this government has any idea how it's going to bring poverty down, how it's going to break that cycle.

How do these failures occur? Well, as I said, they occur because we have a government that has developed a budget that is preoccupied with two by-elections and a general election in 2013, rather than what's good for British Columbia. That, more than anything — that approach, that lack of coherent thought — is really what we see here in terms of why this government is losing public confidence. The lack of coherent thought.

The other thing is that it's not just in this year. This is a government that will tell us that they want us to believe that they've done a good job. So let's look at just a couple of numbers about how well they've done. These come from the Progress Board. You'll remember that we did have a Progress Board. And I'll tell you, when the Progress Board was put in place, I thought: "Well that's a body that's probably going to end up a shill for the government."

I was wrong. The Progress Board did some very important work over the time that it was in place. It took its work seriously, and it did the work. And what did they tell us in their last report before the Premier killed them off? What did they tell us? Well, they gave us a little bit of an update on how things are going.

They told us how in the year 2000 British Columbia was fourth in the country in real GDP per capita and how in 2011 we're fifth in real GDP. We've fallen. They told us how in personal income in the year 2000, real personal income, we were third in the country and how in 2011 we've fallen again to fourth. They told us how in the year 2000 in terms of job creation we were fifth in the country

[ Page 9576 ]

and how in 2011 we are seventh.

In key area after key area after key area this government has failed British Columbians. It's failed British Columbians. Part of the big problem here is the legacy that they will leave behind, and this is a serious challenge. In '09-10 in the public accounts we learned that this government has signed $53 billion in contractual obligations. That's a pretty big number. One year later that number has grown to $80.1 billion of contractual obligations.

Now, what we will learn from people like Mr. Drummond, who did work recently in Ontario, and others is that these are obligations. The biggest problem with these obligations is that they remove the capacity of government to be innovative and make decisions. And the way they do that is that these are obligations that we've got to pay for, and we don't get to change that. So unlike operating matters, where you can be flexible and you can be innovative, these are obligations that you cannot change.

[1515]

The largest number there are in power purchase agreements, essentially — a large number of power purchase agreements — where we're buying power at a price that's higher than we can sell it for. That's the absurdity of this government's rationale.

We have a budget that has no vision, a budget that is pedestrian in its thinking, at best. We have a budget that does nothing for the most vulnerable people who need its support. We have a budget that is selling off British Columbia's assets — assets that belong to the people of B.C., not to the B.C. Liberals.

It's all about trying to survive an election next year. What I would say is they're trying to survive an election, but I'll tell you this. The people of British Columbia will get to make that choice in 2013, and all of the tricks and all of the spin in the world will not save this government from British Columbians' total disappointment and lack of confidence in the abysmal job that you've done for a decade for the people of British Columbia.

K. Krueger: The thing that I like the best about this budget is its drive to eliminate the deficits once and for all.

We were tremendously proud when we were able to eliminate the structural deficit that we inherited from the NDP government that preceded us. We were tremendously dismayed when, pretty much at the end of it, we did get caught up in the whirlpool that was created by the worldwide recession that started south of our border. We want to get out of it as fast as we can, because we continue to believe that that is the thing we have to do for our children, our grandchildren and, indeed, for everybody who's in the workforce right now.

It's a real pleasure to follow the member for Vancouver-Hastings, because he stands up and tells the truth about what he thinks. Everybody heard him in this chamber. Everybody can go back and read what he just said on the record. He made it very clear that he thinks it's a mistake for the government of British Columbia to be building capital projects.

He talked about numbers that are reported. We're proud of that. We're building the Port Mann bridge. There's hardly a jurisdiction around North America that feels the courage to launch big projects like that in recent years, let alone right now.

We're building the Evergreen line. We helped Canada build the Canada Line. We built for the Olympics, and we built infrastructure that we wouldn't have been able to afford without the Olympics for many years to come. But we know those are lasting things. Those drive an economy. They create jobs for British Columbians. They make our economy work because they make things more efficient.

But the member said: "No, no. The thing you should spend on is operating. Spend on operating, because then if things get tough, you can always choke off the operating costs." Well, that's not how it works. We all know that.

We have communities thrilled to have new hospitals built. They didn't see any new hospitals built in the NDP government years. But while they're building them, they say to us: "Why don't you just shell-in a few more floors? We know you don't need them right now. We agree with that. But it'll be cheaper to shell-in a few more floors right now. Then you can always, sometime in the future when we need it, budget for operating and hiring the staff."

Lo and behold, as soon as they're built, that community's doctors come forward and say: "Well, this is just silly. We've got empty space. We could fill it up with beds and patients and hire more doctors." The health authority is saying: "Well, good grief. We're having a struggle keeping up as it is." But oh no, we're pushed for that operating budget.

Sure enough, things do get tough. They got really tough for the NDP when they were in government, but they found they didn't have the courage to cut back the operating expenditures.

Indeed, we don't think it's right to cut them back in health care, and we don't think it's right to cut them back in education. So we've been determined not do that. We've continually added, over our 11 years in government, to the operating budgets for health care and education, but they're really pinching a lot of the other things we'd like to do.

I think it took tremendous courage for our Minister of Finance to stand up in this House and make a commitment that we're sticking to the course. We're going to eliminate the deficit. We think that's important. We're not going to impose the tax of carrying charges of interest on operating debt on our children, let alone our grandchildren. We're going to stick the course, and I want to give him a real round of applause for that.

[1520]

It's absolutely tempting to spend more on operating

[ Page 9577 ]

— absolutely. I almost worried about having Stockholm syndrome when I was the minister responsible for arts, because their arguments…. It isn't a pitch; it's the truth. They say, "Not only do we add tremendously to British Columbians' quality of life, but we actually are huge job creators," and they are. It's true. One of our goals is to create as many jobs as we can in British Columbia.

They also say, "We help you deliver on health care and education and social services," and they do. They go into the schools, and they help us with the education of children. They help to turn children on to their artistic abilities. They help tease those things out, draw them out, encourage them, teach them. They do all sorts of things for us. So we'd love to give more money to arts organizations, but we just don't have it right now.

Yet we've given quite a bit. We've got a very good track record as a government. The Premier and the Finance Minister just came up with some more. But it is really tempting to jack up the operating expenses and hope for the best, and we've seen examples of that.

The member actually raised the Drummond report. That's an Ontario report. We all know that. It says that those poor people in Ontario are looking at a $30 billion deficit in 2018. My goodness, that's six more budget years from now, and they're not expecting to be out of deficit? Certainly not. They are expecting to be running a $30 billion deficit. May we never, ever get there.

When I was the Minister of Arts, my critic was the member for Vancouver–West End, and he did a really credible job. He was always pestering me about giving them more money, and I agreed with him. I wanted to. I had to go to the Finance Minister of the day, and he also stuck the course. The key to our government's success, the reason we have a triple-A credit rating in the middle of these very troubling times, is fiscal discipline, doing what we said we'd do and sticking to our course. We don't want to tax the kids.

Ontario is a basket case financially, and we feel sorry for them. Their Premier this past week reproached Alberta for being successful — that the west has all this money coming in and that it's driving up the Canadian dollar and that, for heaven's sake, he doesn't want that. He'd like a low Canadian dollar because he's in such bad shape, his province, that he sees that as a better thing.

We did start our term in government in 2001 with a huge structural deficit. We employed a team of experts to tell us how bad it was. They came back and told us that it was really, really bad. We had the courage to stick with our plan. We had promised to cut income taxes to the lowest level in Canada for the bottom two tax brackets. We expected to do it over three years, I believe the target was, and our cabinet did it the very first day they were sworn in. The opposition just howled. There weren't very many of them, but they were very articulate.

They said, and the NDP membership around the province joined the chorus, "Those are tax giveaways," which always confounded us. If you let people keep more of the money they earn in their personal bank accounts or in their company bank accounts if they are employers, job creators, how is that possibly a giveaway? They earned the money in the first place.

Lo and behold, what do they do with it? They spend it on the goods and services that they want. That encourages more businesses to spring up and existing businesses to thrive and grow and provide more of those services and goods to people.

I have the great privilege right now, and I did once before, of chairing the Small Business Roundtable, travelling around this province, meeting small business people. There is nobody more nimble, more able to spot an opportunity and rise to that opportunity, let alone identify a challenge and have some practical solutions to give to me for the government — nobody better at all of those things. Small business people really appreciated our tax cuts. They appreciated that they had more customers who had more money to spend.

Our economy popped up — not quite like a cork, but it came up fast from the extreme doldrums of the 1990s, when you had to go to Chiapas, Mexico, to find a jurisdiction doing as badly as British Columbia, incurring successive deficits in the '90s, going further and further into debt. People couldn't find jobs, so they left.

While the previous member was speaking, the member for Stikine heckled me and said: "What about that worker shortage at Mount Milligan?" We didn't have worker shortages anywhere in British Columbia in the '90s. We had unemployment. We had 50,000 British Columbians, most of them young people, leaving, looking for work. To have a mine under construction at Mount Milligan, which I'm fairly certain wouldn't be there if those members were still in government….

Interjections.

K. Krueger: We hear them heckling. I know this kind of hurts. I don't like to hurt them, but they should really face up to the facts.

[1525]

The member for Stikine, of all people, raised this and said: "What about Mount Milligan? They've got a worker shortage." That's a very good thing. That's jobs chasing people, and that mine will pay more to get people.

I actually read that article. It said that mining engineers from British Columbia went to Australia because they could make better money there. We'll just have to get them back.

We've got some of the best mineralization in the world. We've got new mines coming on all over British Columbia. The Premier expects eight just in the very short-term future, and we're going to have those workers coming back to British Columbia and workers moving to British Columbia.

[ Page 9578 ]

Interjection.

K. Krueger: The member for Stikine now says something about what about B.C. Well, my understanding is that we've got twice as many people training in apprenticeship programs for their Red Seals as we ever had under the NDP, and that's a tremendous thing as well.

The economy soared once we did those tax cuts that they consider giveaways. Once we did them, the jobs were created, the economy soared, and things got way, way better. I remember the day we celebrated for the first time in British Columbia's history that there were two million British Columbians getting paycheques — a milestone, an absolutely great milestone. That was under our B.C. Liberal government early on in the last 11 years that we've been government, and it has just kept getting better.

We've had a setback, with the rest of the world, recently, but we still have almost 400,000 more jobs, more people drawing paycheques, in British Columbia than we ever had in history before the B.C. Liberals became government. We've got the lowest taxes in Canada, up to $120,000 in income. We did pay off the accumulated NDP deficits, and we'll pay off this brief history of deficits we've seen since we got caught in the worldwide recession.

There were other kinds of deficits. It makes me laugh when I hear the candidate for the NDP who wants to run against my colleague from Kamloops–North Thompson, in the media saying that we've got to do something about the fact that there are people who temporarily have to occupy beds in the hallway at Royal Inland Hospital. Man, I hate to see that happen to people.

She doesn't realize, because she doesn't have the history of the matter, that in their whole ten years in office the NDP government of the '90s didn't build a single assisted-living bed or a single extended care bed in the whole Thompson health region.

The member for Esquimalt….

Interjection.

K. Krueger: Well, somewhere down there.

Interjection.

K. Krueger: The former chief of staff of the Dan Miller government in the NDP years says that's nonsense. It's nonsense that they weren't built, I say to the member, nonsense that they didn't build for the future as the population was aging. We could all see this problem coming, but they didn't build them — not one.

We have built more than 400 new assisted-living and extended care beds in Kamloops in our 11 years in government — more than 400. Presumably, if the NDP were still in power and still ignoring Kamloops like they always did when they were in power, we'd have 400 more people lining every corridor in Royal Inland Hospital. I don't know where else they could possibly be.

They rag on me, the NDP supporters in Kamloops, that we ought to get seniors out of the acute care hospital. I agree with them, because it's not the ideal setting for someone who needs extended care or assisted living. They need to be in a place that provides programs, more of a homelike atmosphere. It is fabulously expensive to have someone in the acute care hospital. We have been very successful in placing them, because we've built all those beautiful new facilities all over town. That's where people are, and they love them. They absolutely love them.

There was that House Leader's colleague a few minutes ago, saying: "No, no, no. Don't invest capital money. Spend your money on operating." Well, that's how you end up with people in hospital corridors with nowhere to take them, ever, because you didn't spend the capital you needed to. Mind you, they weren't generating any revenues, and that was a problem. They also were quite frightened of the deficits they were accumulating, and rightfully so.

They left us with these problems, and that was just one of the other deficits beside the obvious financial deficit.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

K. Krueger: The member has a lot to say right now. I'm sure he feels quite stung.

It's interesting. We have two former chiefs of staff from the Glen Clark era, the 1990s, and they're the senior people, the go-to people. One of them is the leader. Their results were absolutely awful, and they haven't changed a bit. He's still indicating, Mr. Chair, that he thinks they did things well.

Another deficit, of course, was in roads. The only new road I can remember them building is they worked on the mid-Island highway. It's a very small feat compared to the Coquihalla, but it cost 50 percent more to build the mid-Island highway.

[1530]

Did they do anything for the Sea to Sky? No. Did they do anything for the Port Mann Bridge? No. They let things sit or crumble all over the province. We had that deficit to clean up as well.

There was a deficit in post-secondary education. There again, the member who spoke before me from Vancouver-Hastings says that you shouldn't spend capital money, especially if it involves debt. Well, we created a university in Kamloops, Thompson Rivers University. The NDP wouldn't do it. The Kamloops people were beseeching them. Wouldn't do it. It's so successful that we went on and created regional universities all over British Columbia…

[ Page 9579 ]

Interjection.

K. Krueger: …and they're doing great.

The member is asking me how they are doing. We've got 1,500 international students at Thompson Rivers University this winter. We have a thousand in the summertime now. Every last one of them, I heard, brings an average of $35,000 into the local economy and into the British Columbia economy. We can do that. They are doing that at TRU. We were willing to take the risk, to borrow the money when we needed to and build things, and look how it's paid off. I'm tremendously proud of that.

We built the beds for the seniors. We built the new facilities. We're building the highways. We rehabbed the highways. We built the universities.

I was just told at a Camosun College board of directors meeting last week that Thompson Rivers University sets the standard in the province for the regional universities because they've never lost sight of the importance of skills training. They've never swung over just to the academic side.

Interjection.

K. Krueger: They get the odd recruit for these regional universities who says, "I'm a PhD, and I do not ever want to teach in a university where they teach welding" — as if that's a small deal.

In that regard, the member for Stikine was right with his heckle, because anybody who looks down on skills training like that really doesn't understand the importance to the economy or the importance of those jobs.

At TRU a person can come in and be trained as a teacher, and then he can be trained as a teacher of teachers. He can go and can ladder past his BA. He can get a master's degree. He can learn how to teach shop…

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

K. Krueger: …in high schools and, indeed, at the university itself. We have two streams, and neither of them is regarded as less honourable than the other. They're both honourable, and that's how we're building the economy and how we're going to rise to this huge challenge we've created for ourselves of thousands of new jobs opening up in British Columbia — well-paying, family-supporting jobs.

Highland Valley Copper. It's not as though the NDP had a track record of supporting mining — not at all. We all know that. Think of the Tatshenshini. Think of the fact that our exploration dropped to — what? The member behind me will remember the exact number. I think it's a 1,500 percent improvement we've had in mining exploration since we've been in government. People just left. There was no hope. If you found anything, the NDP government of the day didn't want you to be able to mine it.

We cut taxes, like we said we would. We cut them more than 100 times.

Interjection.

K. Krueger: And yes, Member, now we have nearly 400,000 net new jobs.

In Kamloops last year, Stats Canada just us told us recently….

I wish the member would stay, because I'm going to miss him. He can't heckle when he's not in his chair. I wish he'd come back and give me more inspiration. I'm never going to get through what I meant to say.

Stats Canada told us recently that we have 2,500 more new jobs in Kamloops than we did a year ago — 2,500 in one year. Isn't that amazing? I think it is amazing. We can't even really say for sure — the local government, the MLAs — where they all showed up. The private sector didn't build anything huge and brand-new, but it's because the economy is rising. A rising tide does lift all boats. People need employees. Businesses need employees, and they bring them in — 2,500 net new jobs, 400 in one month alone recently. It just keeps getting better.

How do we do that? How do we encourage that kind of confidence — that people grow their businesses and that they hire more jobs? Well, we do it by fiscal discipline.

It was really interesting when we debated the private member's bill the other day. We wanted to hear what everybody thought about driving for net zero, that we shouldn't be spending more money than we're taking in any longer than we absolutely have to and that we've got to get out of deficit.

The members opposite wouldn't rise to that, wouldn't speak to it and didn't even want to mouth the words "net zero." It's usually no problem getting them to mouth things, but that they didn't want to say. They wouldn't talk in the private member's debate. They talked about other things.

[1535]

In fact, they say things that they should never say, things that aren't true — for example, saying that we have the worst job creation record in B.C. history. Absolutely false. Nobody else has ever been a government that created 400,000 net new jobs in the time we've had.

They constantly throw out this false allegation that we allegedly have the worst child poverty rate in Canada. That's not true. The report that they draw that false statement from actually specifically says to not use their data in that way, because that wouldn't be accurate. That wouldn't be fair. We have tens of thousands fewer children living in poverty than British Columbia had with the NDP — tens of thousands.

Those allegations are false, but it's because they have nothing to cling to. They have no plans for what they

[ Page 9580 ]

would do to make things better for British Columbians if, God forbid, they ever became government again.

They continually want to attack us, try to bring us down, make these false statements, bring these allegations against us, but they have nothing to offer. They won't say what they would do. What they have done, disastrously, is hopped into bed with people like Bill Vander Zalm, and look how badly that turned out. Now people are saying: "What did you do that for?"

I did a round table in Dawson Creek, B.C., and people from around there, business people, came. There was one fellow, and he asked the first question in my Q an A after the round table. This was before the referendum result, which was sad, as we know. His question was: what can the government do to save the HST? I said: "I don't know if we can. How can you help us?" He said: "Oh, you've got to think of something, because I have four businesses. I service the oil patch. I clean 40 commercial buildings. I have a video store."

Interjection.

K. Krueger: I can't remember what the fourth one was, because the member is heckling me again.

That's good. You're keeping the juices flowing, Mr. Member for Stikine.

He said: "It has been great for my businesses. I desperately don't want to lose them."

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

K. Krueger: Oh, don't rebuke them, please, Mr. Chair, because it's part of the process, as far as I'm concerned.

He said: "How can you save the HST?" I said: "You've got to help us save it." He said, "We've got to save it," and he kept monopolizing the Q and A. By the end it was as if he'd driven himself into the confessional, and he said: "I led the charge for Vander Zalm in Dawson Creek. I went out and recruited everybody. I told them all these things about HST."

I'm sounding like the member for the Cowichan Valley all of a sudden.

He was so ashamed. It was like a conversion experience he'd had.

Interjection.

K. Krueger: Absolutely. Thank you.

He was ashamed that he ever worked with Vander Zalm. He didn't want to have done it, and he wanted us to undo it, but we couldn't. We couldn't reverse all the false news, and that unholy alliance cost British Columbians $1.6 billion that we've got to pay back. I don't know how anybody over there can criticize this year's deficit with a straight face when they and Vander Zalm teamed up to do that to the British Columbian economy and revenue.

Vander Zalm was a disgrace as a Premier. He was a disgrace when he libelled Ted Hughes. He has been publicly disgraced yet again. He wanted a jury trial. He got it, and they said: "You are libellous. Pay the man 60,000 bucks." Tragically, he loses money….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

K. Krueger: It's okay, Mr. Chair. I don't mind that. I think it's part of the process.

What I do mind is people saying things in here that aren't true and the inability to get up and respond to them because we've got all these structured rules. I really like heckling. I think it's a good thing. They actually are giving me fodder here, because the things they say are so funny and jar so dramatically with the things that they did in government.

I'll tell you something else that these members don't do that really bugs me, and that's these people who, for their own selfish interests, lobby government through the media, especially judges.

Now, any one of you members would really have a problem if you phoned a judge and said, "I don't think you're handling that case right" — especially if you're a cabinet minister.

We all know what happened. We had a judge recently saying that he let an accused child offender leave his courtroom, and he made political statements about this being because the government is not funding them properly. That is horrendous. I would rather have a guy shake me down on the street for money than let an accused child offender walk, with the prospect that he might offend other children. I was absolutely appalled. It's outrageous.

MLAs don't phone judges. Judges should judge individual cases before them. They should get them done. That is a tremendously inefficient system. It has inefficiencies built in every step of the way. It seems to have no drive to conclude cases.

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I think they've got to shake themselves up. They don't want us coming in and telling them how to do things better, but I don't think they should be politicking. I think they should be judging their cases.

It's dishonourable to start politicking from the bench. There have been a number of examples of that, including a group of judges actually suing the government for higher wages. When people hear what wages they get now, they're scandalized because they're so out of whack. They get paid way more than anybody who is elected to serve in this House or any of the people who work for us.

It's just completely unacceptable that they would then

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sue the people of British Columbia, through the government, because they want to do better yet. They want to be blind to the economic situation that other British Columbians and the whole province find themselves in. They should batten down the hatches and do their jobs, one case at a time.

Be happy that the level of crime is way down. Stop whining about how many judges there are, and get the work done. Do something creative.

There are call centres that actually do a very efficient job of making sure the next client who needs service gets the next server. Why couldn't we do that? They're already doing virtual court things. They're doing videos in courtrooms. I don't know, but there's no real good reason — except that they don't want to be watched — why judges don't want cameras in courtrooms. I think it's really healthy for the judges to be under public scrutiny.

I've long advocated the Court Watch system, which they use in other jurisdictions, where the public is encouraged by the organization. "Go on in and watch the judges. It's really interesting." When they know that people are watching, you would find the judgments that ensue a lot more along your line of thinking, because the judges aren't as accountable when people aren't watching them.

M. Sather: You don't like those judges, do you?

K. Krueger: It's not that I don't like judges, Member opposite. There are many good judges. There are some real bad apples. If you've been doing your reading, Mr. Member, you'll know about those and some of the outrageous things that they have said and done.

Now, when they laugh like that, I think they probably haven't been doing their reading, and they're not aware that we have some real problem people on the bench. We have way too frequent adjournments, way too many stays.

Interjections.

K. Krueger: Oh, and Member, it's not as though I don't know they're going to read it. I hope they're going to read it, and I hope they're going to have a real hard look in the mirror.

Some of those judges have no great drive to get things done, but they want to lecture. They want to hector the government. I hope this upsets them enough to sit down and talk to each other and say: "Well, those things the MLA said today are true. We've got to stop having these disgraceful cases of people walking from the courts."

It's tough to get people charged or get their case into court. We all know that. It takes a long, long time. Once they're there, the judge who's responsible should take that case very, very seriously. Every one of them should work at least an eight-hour day. I've been in court and seen judges just get tired of listening and make a pronouncement that didn't look very fair to me.

I think the judges should look at the way that they choose judges. I think the lists they submit for who should next get to be a judge are way too brief sometimes, and I don't think we know the half of that.

I encourage the members opposite to read about Court Watch and encourage their constituents. Probably lots of people don't know about that organization. I think that a whole lot of their constituents, just like me and my constituents, are flabbergasted by some of the things that judges do and some of the people that walk away with a slap on the wrist or even less.

The last NDP speaker, Vancouver-Hastings, said that he felt the budget was, essentially — this is a paraphrase — too straightforward. It needed to be more complex. What that is not even code for, because we hear it all the time, is that the government should just throw more money at every problem they raise — more of this, more of that. Don't keep driving for productivity or efficiency — or balance, of all things. Throw more money. He said: "Spend on the operating side. Don't build stuff." Again, that's my paraphrase, but that's what he said.

That's the choice that British Columbians had in 2001, when they elected us; in 2005, when they re-elected us; in 2009, when they re-elected us. That's the choice they'll have in 2013. Do you want a government back that says, "Don't build anything long term. Just dish out the operating money," especially to their buddies in the BCTF and other big public sector unions?

We all know that a huge percentage of our expenditures in health care and education are salaries and benefits. They say: "Shovel them more." Glen Clark bragged…. It's a matter of record. He bragged, "We're shovelling money off the back of trucks," and he literally was.

He created this Forest Renewal B.C. operation. The poor guy I ran against in 1996 was an incumbent. Somebody asked him in a public forum in Barriere: "What is FRBC?" He said: "It's a way to spend money."

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He was a very honest guy, and the crowd all just laughed uproariously. He was puzzled. He looked at me, and he said again: "No, it is. It's a way to spend money." And that's what it was. They were shovelling money off the back of the truck, and the NDP Premier was bragging about it.

Well, we say the way to go — and this is what our Finance Minister said in this budget — is to stick with the basics. Don't spend more than you take in. Pay off debt as fast as you can. Avoid interest of the future. Create conditions for a winning economy. Encourage the private sector and all the individuals in it by making their taxes as small as possible, including public sector workers.

I hear teachers representatives say they're not paid as much as teachers in other provinces. They pay lower income tax than teachers in any other province, and that's what we believe in. Take government's hands out of their

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pockets. Let them make their spending decisions. Let job creators create more jobs. Build families, and support them. Be open about what you're doing. Be accountable, and the formula that's worked for us for the past 11 years and worked so well for British Columbians will continue to work.

I'm so proud to represent small business, so proud to represent the people of Kamloops–South Thompson.

Interjection.

K. Krueger: Member, in spite of what you think of business, small business employs 1.05 million British Columbians. You're accountable to those, Mr. Member. You shouldn't be heckling about job creators, because you've got a lot of small businesses in Smithers and the Bulkley Valley. Some of them were probably large businesses before you were government. That's how you got a small business in those years. Buy a big one, and wait.

We didn't like that. We're building an economy. We're really colour-blind about it. We're electrifying Highway 37.

My time is out. Thank you for your patience.

D. Black: Thank you for this opportunity to address the Legislature on Budget 2012. I think I can promise the members of the Legislature that my address will be somewhat less bombastic than the member who preceded me.

I also want to thank the members of the Legislature for showing their confidence in me in choosing me to serve as Assistant Deputy Speaker. It's been an interesting place to sit in this Legislature, as you're doing yourself, and I think I've learned a great deal. One of the things I've certainly learned is a little bit more patience while I've been sitting in the chair, and that's probably a good thing for me.

As many members will know, I've made a decision not to run again in the next election as the MLA for New Westminster. I think, like other members of the House, that I announced my decision rather early, but it was based on the rampant election speculation that was going on at the time.

The new Premier was indicating to the people of British Columbia that there was likely to be an election in August or September of last year, and I felt an obligation to let my community know that I would not be seeking re-election. But the Premier changed her mind, and that's a theme that I think I'll be repeating quite a bit through my address today.

She now says that the election will take place in May of 2013, which is the fixed election date, but you never know. There are a few things on the horizon that could even change that. For instance, we have a couple of by-elections coming up that should be announced very soon, which may change things in the Legislature. It may change the Premier's idea about when the next election should be.

However, in spite of endless electioneering, I think probably it's a good idea to delay the election until 2013, because it gives the people of British Columbia an opportunity to really examine carefully the record of this government, the record of the budget that they're presenting today, and to judge what the priorities of this government have been in relation to what the priorities of a government-in-waiting may be.

It's been a missed opportunity for the new Premier to show that she really is different. She touted herself, as she was elected leader of the B.C. Liberal Party, as coming forward with some fresh ideas in a new way. Unfortunately, in spite of all of that fanfare, the promised change has not happened.

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The Premier said she'd put families first, and we can certainly see from this budget that families are anywhere but first. I would hate to see a budget from this government where they said they were putting families second, because families-first just isn't working for families in British Columbia. The question is: where is the substance?

The government speaker, the member for Kamloops–South Thompson who spoke before me, said it's really tempting for the government side to spend more money. He recognizes that there are issues within British Columbia that could do with bigger investment being spent.

I would bet anything that in the next budget, which will be a pre-election budget, that we will see a lot of spending coming out of that side of the House. We'll see a lot of speculation on what they would spend if they could only get re-elected once again. It will be a budget that would be overflowing with largesse to the people of British Columbia. I'd put money on that.

In this budget where are the protections for our most vulnerable residents? Where are they? Is our health care system really so perfect that the only thing it needs is higher MSP premiums? Is that the case? Where is the assistance for young people who need improved access to skills training and affordable university and college educations? Where are the new jobs that we keep being promised; and where, where, where is the commitment to lifting B.C.'s children out of poverty?

Once again this budget all but ignores the environment and leaves arts and culture behind. The legal system is in a shambles. Where are the solutions? A Canucks jersey and big smile just don't provide the substance that British Columbians need and want. This budget is a rehash of tired old plans — plans we have seen for the last 11 years, plans that didn't work in the past and are not going to work now.

Let's just talk about jobs. B.C. has lost more than 20,000 full-time jobs in the past year, and the unemployment rate in January was 6.9 percent. Fewer jobs were

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available in forestry, fishing, construction and mining. The Premier's jobs plan leaves job creation simply to the private sector. That didn't work for Premier Campbell, despite continued tax cuts. But this new Premier tries yet again to fool the people of British Columbia with the same old tired formula.

Of course, we do need family-supporting jobs in British Columbia, but where are they in this budget? What we see is a plan that lacks clear job targets at the same time it ignores major sectors of the economy, sectors such as forestry, tourism, the green economy. The advertising budget for this so-called jobs plan is $15 million — $15 million that could be better spent on services for the people of British Columbia.

The struggling construction industry got some modest help through a tax credit for first-time homebuyers. Yeah, it's a good idea to help people buying their first home, but this move does nothing to address the drastic need for affordable family housing in B.C. It really isn't going to have much impact on new-home construction, because the time frame is so short.

If we want a skilled workforce in the future, shouldn't we be investing in skills training and post-secondary education? The answer is yes. But young people and their needs are glaringly absent from this budget. In fact, colleges and universities will be hit by a 3 percent reduction in funding over the next three years. There is no increase to student aid while tuition in B.C. has gone up again for the ninth year in a row. Upon graduation the average