1974 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 30th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes

only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1974

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

4603 ]

CONTENTS

Motion Adjournment of the House on matter of public importance.

Mr. D.A. Anderson — 4603

Mr. Speaker — 4603

Hon. Mr. Strachan — 4604

Mr. Speaker — 4604

Routine proceedings

Oral Questions

Changes in Premier's travel plans. Mr. Phillips

— 4604

Interior contractors forced to join IWA. Mr. D.A. Anderson — 4604

Transfer of LCB employees to ICBC. Mr. Wallace — 4604

Removal of railroad on White Rock waterfront. Mr. Liden — 4605

Cars difficult to trace due to ICBC computer error. Mr. McClelland. — 4605

Tracing of stolen vehicles. Mr. Curtis — 4606

Grants to B.C. energy consumers. Mr. Wallace — 4606

ICBC replacement of IBM computer. Mr. D.A. Anderson — 4606

BCR work stoppage. Mr. Fraser — 4606

Help for small loggers. Mrs. Jordan — 4607

Teacher/trustee talks. Mr. Schroeder — 4608

Exemption of additional vehicles from full tax. Mr. Smith — 4608

Landlord and Tenant Amendment Act, 1974 (No. 2) (Bill

169).

Second reading.

Mr. Smith — 4608

Ms. Brown — 4611

Motion Adjournment of the House on matter of public importance.

Mr. Speaker's

ruling — 4613

Landlord and Tenant Amendment Act, 1974 (No. 2) (Bill

169).

Second reading.

Mrs. Jordan — 4614

Mr. D.A. Anderson — 4621

Mr. Morrison — 4624

Mr. Richter — 4626

Mr. Curtis — 4628

Mr. Fraser — 4629

Mr. L.A. Williams — 4633

Hon. Mr. MacDonald — 4636

Division on second reading — 4637

Assessment Amendment Act, 1974 (Bill 170).

Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Barrett — 4637

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 1974

The House met at 2:00 p.m.

Prayers.

Mr. D.A. Anderson (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to

make a motion for the adjournment of the House to discuss

matters of urgent public importance.

Mr. Speaker: Excuse me. I think the Hon. Member knows

the proper time is not now.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Oh, very good, I'll….

Mr. Speaker: I would certainly let you know when the

proper time is.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Hon. E. Hall (Provincial Secretary): Mr. Speaker, I have

some visitors today from the Fraser Valley Christian Secondary

School in Surrey; there are 35 pupils from that school. I hope

the Members will make them welcome this afternoon.

Hon. J. Radford (Minister of Recreation and Conservation):

We have with us today students from David Thompson high school,

Vancouver South. They are accompanied by their teachers Mr.

Hurley and Mr. Minichello. I would ask the House to welcome

them here today.

Introduction of bills.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Mr. Speaker….

Mr. Speaker: I take it you have some matter under

standing order 35. The rule is that you submit the matter to

the Speaker.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: That's correct, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: You do that first, I understand.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: According to my reading of the

rule, I stand in my place first and ask leave to make a motion,

then I hand it to you. But your

interpretation of the rule is

quite good, and I will certainly hand it to you now while I

read out another copy of it.

Mr. Speaker: That would be very helpful if I had a

copy.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Excellent,

I have an easier time in this party getting a seconder than

does my friend on my left. (Laughter.)

Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to make a motion for the

adjournment of the House to discuss a matter of urgent public

importance, namely the chaos resulting from the Autoplan agents

ceasing operations on behalf of ICBC. This is an urgent matter,

as required under standing order 35. As there is no other

likelihood of discussing this matter at another time, in this

respect the matter is urgent both as to its basic importance

and to its timing.

As background, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to point out that we

have reached a crisis situation in this province with regard to

ICBC.

Mr. Speaker: Excuse me. Hon. Member, before launching

further on it, I don't think the purpose of the statement of

the matter is to engage in a debate on what your opinion is of

the matter. I think the importance of it must be directed to

whether it's a definite matter, and where the facts are not in

dispute. That is, that there is a definite fact that you can

attest to that is in existence at this time — not something

that's apprehended, but actually exists at this time.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Mr. Speaker, that's why I delayed

putting this in until such time as we had a cessation of

activity by Autoplan agents. I couldn't do it last week because

it would have been anticipation, so I will carry on, with your

permission.

The complaints of the insurance agents and their withdrawal

of services as part of their efforts to secure adequate

compensation for their work on behalf of ICBC are symptoms of a

larger illness. This withdrawal of services has placed the

public of British Columbia in real difficulties since it is

virtually impossible to insure new vehicles or change the

insurance provisions on other vehicles. Despite the thinly

veiled threat contained in the letter sent to all agents on

November 1, signed by Mr. Bortnik, saying that….

Mr. Speaker: Now, order again. The important thing is

a statement of the matter itself, not the background or the

history, or who said what to whom last year or last month or

last week. The important thing under this rule is that you

state a definite matter that is not in dispute, that everyone

knows about, and that you go no further at this stage until the

matter has been considered by the Speaker, first, as to whether

it meets the requirements of the rules. If it does meet those

requirements, then it's put to the House. If nine Members agree

with you that the business of the House should be, in effect,

adjourned to deal with this ahead of everything else that's on

the order paper, then at that stage some debate could take

place.

[ Page 4604 ]

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Right.

Mr. Speaker: I think from the statement of the matter

that you've given me, without reading it in greater detail than

you have and without launching into argument, I think I should

consider the matter.

Hon. R.M. Strachan (Minister of Transport and Communications): I would

like to help you consider the matter, Mr. Speaker.

Some Hon. Members: Oh, oh!

Mr. D.A. Anderson: I'm not even allowed to do

that.

Mr. Speaker: The only thing I'm concerned about is,

not arguments on the merit or demerits of this proposal, but

merely on a statement of the facts.

Hon. Mr. Strachan: Yes, and whether or not there's an

urgency — I think that's….

Mr. Speaker: That's one thing I have to address

myself to.

Hon. Mr. Strachan: That's what I would like to

address myself to and help you address yourself. I think you

should know, Mr. Speaker, that a substantial number of the

agents of this province have this morning indicated that they

are continuing to sell ICBC.

Mr. Speaker: I am going to suggest….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Three of them — one of whom got

his job through Cocke.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please! I am going to suggest

that at 3 o'clock I give the House an indication of the

situation in regard to this motion. I have had no advance

notice of it from the Member, although as a courtesy I think it

should be given.

Interjection.

Mr. Speaker: No, at 3 o'clock I will interrupt the

proceedings long enough to advise the House on the question,

because you are entitled to time in which to debate the matter,

should it be as the Hon. Member suggests.

I point out that in Ottawa in the event they decide that it

is a matter which deserves special consideration, the Speaker

may adjourn the matter, generally, until 5 o'clock before debate of it.

In this case I think we'd be entitled to a little time to

look at it after question time. I think question time could

otherwise proceed, then that gives me time to look at the

question the Hon. Member has proposed.

Oral questions.

CHANGES IN PREMIER'S TRAVEL PLANS

Mr. D.M. Phillips (South Peace River): Mr. Speaker, I'd like

to address my question today to the Premier and Minister of

Finance.

In view of the shutdown of the British Columbia Railway by a

walkout, in view of the strike by the Autoplan insurance

agents, in view of the strike which has shut down Can-Cel, in

view of the arbitration proceedings which have begun between

the teachers and the trustees, in view of the pending ferry

strike, in view of the problems being encountered by the forest

industry and the result in unemployment deriving there from,

does the Premier and Minister of Finance contemplate any

changes in his travel plans, which begin this week?

Hon. D. Barrett (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I won't ask the

Member to repeat the question, but I will take it as

notice.

Some Hon. Members: Oh, oh!

INTERIOR CONTRACTORS

FORCED TO JOIN IWA

Mr. D.A. Anderson: May I ask the Minister of Labour

whether he's aware of complaints by interior independent

contractors, in particular those represented by the Northwest

Logger's Association, that they are being forced to join the

IWA against their will?

Hon. W.S. King (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, no, I

have not. If the Member has some evidence, I'd be interested in

seeing it.

TRANSFER OF LCB

EMPLOYEES TO ICBC

Mr. G.S. Wallace (Oak Bay): Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask the

Minister, of Transportation and Communications how many Liquor

Board employees are being transferred to work for ICBC, and

will their salaries and costs be borne by ICBC, The Liquor

Control Board, or the Department of Transport and

Communications?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: There are not very many

[ Page 4605 ]

Liquor Control Board employees involved, I know that, but

I'll take the question as notice.

Mr. Wallace: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Will

they be asked to do overtime work as part of their commitment

to be transferred?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: You would have to check the rights

of the workers under the….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please! I think if that is a

supplementary question, the Hon. Member for South Peace River

(Mr. Phillips) is quite correct. It should not really be taken

at this time. I'm sorry, I apologize to the House, my mind must

have been on something else.

Interjection.

Mr. Speaker: No, you usually wait until the question

is answered by the Minister, then follow with your

supplementaries that go with it.

REMOVAL OF RAILROAD ON

WHITE ROCK WATERFRONT

Mr. C. Liden (Delta): Mr. Speaker, I'd like to ask a

question of the Minister of Transport and Communications. Some

15 years ago, they started a programme in White Rock for the

removal of the railroad from the waterfront. I understand that

last week the mayor of White Rock met with the Minister in

regard to a study that might be shared federally, provincially

and locally. I'm wondering if the Minister is prepared to make

some statement as to where we are with the possibility of that

study.

Hon. Mr. Strachan: No, I haven't. I did meet with the

mayor of White Rock, and there is a federal bill which allows a

50 per cent sharing between the federal government and other

areas for relocation. What Mr. McDonald, I think is his name,

was asking was that a study be made. I want to examine the

impact of the terms of reference and the scope of such a

survey, but I can assure you that the department is working on

an answer for Mr. McDonald and others who are interested, and I

will have a decision made before the end of the year.

CARS DIFFICULT TO TRACE

DUE TO ICBC COMPUTER ERROR

Mr. R. H. McClelland: (Langley): Mr. Speaker, my

question is to the Minister of Transport and Communications as

well. In view of the fact that independent insurance agents are

suggesting that ICBC's blunders are causing increased workloads for them,

would the Minister confirm that there has been a serious

computer error and that thousands of vehicles are missing from

the computer rolls, non-existent as far as ICBC is

concerned?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: I have not heard any such thing. I

said last week that most of the accusations made against ICBC

by Members of the opposition were erroneous, misleading or

untrue. This one probably is too.

Mr. H.A. Curtis (Saanich and the Islands): Deny it!

Mr. Speaker: Order, please.

An Hon. Member: What are you, stupid or

incompetent?

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Strachan: I like to check my facts before I

get up here and spout off the way they do. I'll check it. But

they're batting zero, zero, zero up to now; they have been

wrong 100 per cent.

Mr. McClelland: A supplementary question on the same

issue, Mr. Speaker. I'd like the Minister to either confirm or

deny that the number of vehicles missing off the computer rolls

is between 250,000 and 400,000. Would the Minister care to

either confirm or deny that?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: I will check it, but frankly, I

think it's another one of your fairy stories. I don't believe

it.

Mr. McClelland: Be careful, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Speaker: I gather that it appears to be, from the

statement made, that he will return to the House with the

information the Member has sought. Can we go on to some other

subject?

Mr. Curtis: On the same subject, Mr. Speaker….

Mr. Speaker: I think, in view of the answer, that it

appears to be a taking of notice of the question. Would not the

Member agree that that is so?

Mr. Curtis: Mr. Speaker, with respect, it is not a

supplemental; it's on the same subject, ICBC and the

difficulties that are being experienced.

Mr. Speaker: Would the Hon. Member

[ Page 4606 ]

proceed?

TRACING OF STOLEN VEHICLES

Mr. Curtis: I'd like to ask the Minister of Transport

and Communications if he could explain why it is necessary for

RCMP and other police forces to turn to individual insurance

agents when they are tracing down an automobile that has been

damaged in an accident, or that may have been stolen. If there

is no problem with the computer, then why are the police having

to turn not to Motor-Vehicles, not to ICBC, but to the

insurance agents?

An Hon. Member: In the middle of the night.

Hon. Mr. Strachan: Mr. Speaker, the opposition are

getting very adept at couching accusations in the form of

questions.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. Strachan: I don't believe it. There may be

an isolated case. Send it to me.

Mr. G.F. Gibson (North Vancouver–Capilano): Mr. Speaker, on

a similar subject, to the Hon. Attorney-General: could I ask

him if he has any reports from the RCMP as to the great

difficulty of tracing automobiles because of this ICBC foul

up?

Hon. A.B. MacDonald (Attorney General): Nothing has

reached my personal attention.

Mr. Gibson: Could the Attorney-General investigate it

then, Mr. Speaker, because I'm told it is serious.

GRANTS TO B.C.

ENERGY CONSUMERS

Mr. Wallace: Mr. Speaker, could I ask the Attorney-General

if he has decided on a programme of grants to B.C. energy

consumers this winter?

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: Any such question should be

addressed to the Minister of Finance, and in the spring, in the

spring.

ICBC REPLACEMENT OF

IBM COMPUTER

Mr. D.A. Anderson: To the Minister of Transport and

Communications: following the previous question and because of

it, because of breakdowns in ICBC's IBM computers, may I ask

whether ICBC is negotiating for another or a replacement of its

IBM computer?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: Not at this time. We had a normal….

Mr. D.A. Anderson: No negotiations?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: I wish you people would go over

and have a look at ICBC sometime. There's a normal replacement

factor; they take it all the time.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: May I ask the supplementary: are

we to assume from his reply that a computer purchased in the

spring of 1973 is now being considered for replacement under

the normal process?

Hon. Mr. Strachan: No. There's a programme laid out of

computer build-up. It's still going on. It's part of the

development of the company; you people don't seem to realize

that. This was planned — a normal build-up of computer capacity

is necessary in a growing company. They were planned a year and

a half ago.

BCR WORK STOPPAGE

Mr. A.V. Fraser (Cariboo): On Thursday I asked the Minister

of Labour, as vice-president of the BCR, what he was doing

about the serious work stoppage on that railroad. He replied

that it was in the hands of the Labour Relations Board. There

have been changes, and I'd like to direct my question to the

president of the railroad: is he aware of this serious work

stoppage now throughout the whole system, and what does he

intend to do about it?

Hon. Mr. Barrett: Mr. Speaker, I am aware of the

serious work stoppage. We have placed a position with the

unions on behalf of the Crown corporation, and our position

still stands.

Mr. J.R. Chabot (Columbia River): A supplementary question:

You are pursuing the equivalent of an injunction against the

union. Are you seeking the equivalent of an injunction against

the unions?

Hon. Mr. Barrett: That isn't even a question.

Mr. Chabot: It certainly is, because you are seeking

an injunction against the unions.

Mr. Speaker: I don't think that you can ask for a

legal opinion from our Minister of Labour or even the

Attorney-General on any matter that is really a matter for the

courts.

Mr. Chabot: I'm not seeking a legal opinion. I'm

asking whether B.C. Railway is seeking the

[ Page 4607 ]

equivalent of an injunction against the unions and the

workers of B.C. Railway.

Mr. Speaker: Then you are asking it as a matter of

fact whether they are at the present…. I'm sorry. Does the

Hon. Minister of Labour have any reply?

Mr. Fraser: No, the president of the railroad.

Hon. Mr. King: Mr. Speaker, there is no action before

the courts with respect to the railway dispute.

Interjections.

Hon. Mr. King: Do you want to hear the answer?

An Hon. Member: Are you the Minister he said?

Hon. Mr. King: They don't even know the question, Mr.

Speaker, how can they listen to the answer. There is no action

before the courts with respect to the BCR dispute.

Mr. Chabot: Supplementary question, Mr. Speaker: is

B.C. Railway attempting to obtain a cease and desist order from

the Labour Relations Board against the unions of BCR?

Hon. Mr. King: That question should be directed to

the management of the B.C. Railway, Mr. Speaker.

Interjections.

Mr. Chabot: Mr. Speaker, this is top management. That

answer is being sought from the president of the railway: are

they attempting to obtain a cease and desist order against the

unions and the workers of B.C. Railway?

Hon. Mr. Barrett: The Member knows very well that

there is a case before the Labour Relations Board concerning

which union is certified to represent those workers. Along with

that, there is an explanation asking the Labour Relations Board

to clarify the situation. You are trying to be political about

a situation that needs the sympathy of the whole House.

Mr. Chabot: Mr. Speaker, I didn't ask that question

that was answered by the Minister, as played by the Premier. I

asked: is the B.C. Railway at this time attempting to obtain a

cease and desist order against the unions and the workers of

B.C. Railway? It's a simple question.

Hon. Mr. Barrett: The Member does not listen to the

answer. The answer is yes, and there is a….

Some Hon. Members: Oh, oh!

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please!

Hon. Mr. Barrett: Mr. Speaker, that is a false

statement by that Member. It is totally incorrect.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please!

HELP FOR SMALL LOGGERS

Mrs. P.J. Jordan (North Okanagan): Speaking of the drastic

unemployment situation and the timber situation in British

Columbia, I'd like to address my question to the Hon. Minister

of Lands, Forests and Water Resources, having spent my weekend

meeting with a number of small independent operators who are

virtually being wiped out by the current forest industry

situation.

Is the Minister prepared to bring forth some emergency

situation to help the small independent contractors and loggers

who are facing monthly payments of anywhere from $800 to $2,000

and up for their equipment and have no way of earning this

money at this time and have no way of protecting themselves

from the loss of their equipment, which they'll never

regain?

Hon. R.A. Williams (Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources):

The government has actively been considering legislative steps that would improve

the lot of the independent sawmilling sector in particular, Mr. Speaker.

Mrs. Jordan: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker. I was

referring specifically to those independent operators that go

in with their Cats and their crawlers and their drag machines.

They are two- or three-man operations, and the employees can go

on unemployment insurance…

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. I think that the Hon.

Members know the question.

Mrs. Jordan: …but the management are responsible

for the insurance, the overhead and the payments on this kind

of thing; and the legislation you're contemplating is coming

too late.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please!

[ Page 4608 ]

Mr. Phillips: A supplementary question, Mr.

Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: I think it's time the Hon. Member for

Chilliwack had an opportunity as well.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: If legislation is contemplated shortly,

as we've several times been told, surely then we can stop on

that and ask the Member for Chilliwack to ask his question.

Interjections.

Hon. R.A. Williams: I thought that the legislation on the

floor would have been dealt with long since, Mr. Speaker.

An Hon. Member: Is it yours?

TEACHER/TRUSTEE TALKS

Mr. H.W. Schroeder (Chilliwack): The question is for the

Minister of Education. In how many regions or zones have

negotiations been resumed in the teacher/school trustee

dispute?

Hon. E.E. Dailly (Minister of Education): I don't have that

information. I would have it for the House, I believe,

tomorrow, after meeting with some of the trustee

representatives.

EXEMPTION OF ADDITIONAL

VEHICLES FROM FULL TAX

Mr. D.E. Smith (North Peace River): Mr. Speaker, my question

is for the Premier and Minister of Finance.

Under

chapter 63 of our statutes — the Coloured Gasoline Tax

Act,

section 10(b) — there is a provision to exempt certain

motor vehicles and vehicles from the requirement to pay the

full amount of tax ordinarily levied against vehicles that use

the roads. Would the Premier consider by regulation extending

this exemption to track vehicles, snowmobiles and vehicles of

that nature, since they're presently required to pay tax on

gasoline, yet are prohibited from using any public roads in the

province?

Hon. Mr. Barrett: Mr. Speaker, it's a matter of

policy that the Member is requesting to be changed and, of

course, that can't be handled in question period.

Mr. Smith: No, it's not a matter of policy.

Orders of the day.

Hon. E.E. Dailly (Minister of Education): Public bills and

orders, Mr. Speaker. Adjourned debate on Bill 169.

LANDLORD AND TENANT

AMENDMENT ACT, 1974 (No. 2)

(continued)

Mr. Speaker: Bill 169. I believe the Hon. Member for

North Peace River adjourned the debate at 12:51 p.m. on Friday,

having started at 12:44 p.m., if I'm correct, or close to that.

I'll find that out precisely and let the Member know before his

time is up.

Mr. D.E. Smith (North Peace River): Mr. Speaker, last

Friday, while taking my place in the debate on Bill 169, I was

interrupted by the clock, as you so rightfully pointed out. I

do not intend to cover the same material that I did last

Friday, or to recycle any other suggestions put before the

House at that time, but I would like to take the time that is

remaining to me to lay before the House a few more thoughts on

rental control.

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I would like to suggest to the

Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. MacDonald) that rent control will

not work. It has been tried in many jurisdictions, and it has

been found to be a failure. In my opinion, it is as useless as

trying to capture the wildcat with a butterfly net. You'll have

just about exactly the same results.

[Mr. Dent in the chair.]

I suggest to the Attorney-General that at this time, whether

he realizes it or not, believe me, he has a wildcat by the

tail. Neither the suggestions that he has made for the

appointment of a rentalsman, or the programme that we have had

outlined to us by the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson)

will do anything to provide more adequate accommodation in the

Province of British Columbia.

All you have done is hastily draught legislation to pacify

some tenants, and to keep your backbench quiet.

Mr. Attorney-General, through you, Mr. Speaker, you've

contributed more to the problem of housing than you've solved.

You've moved the problem from being serious to a position where

it is now critical.

In my opinion, Mr. Attorney-General, the best form of rent

control ever experienced, with the greatest impact upon the

delivery of rental housing at the most competitive rate

possible, is a 5 to 7 per cent vacancy rate in the province.

But what do we have in British Columbia? Thanks to your

meddling in the housing field, our overall rate is less than

0.5 per cent, and that, Mr. Attorney-General, is just 10 times

worse than the rate experienced by our

[ Page 4609 ]

neighbouring Province of Alberta.

Interjections.

Mr. Smith: Toronto does a better job than we do in British

Columbia, as you know.

Right here on the island, in the greater Victoria area, the

vacancy rate for apartments is incredible: in the Fort Street

area, 0.5 per cent; in the Cook Street area, 0.1 per cent; in

the Hillside area, 0.5 per cent; in the James Bay area, 0.1

per cent vacancy; in the Oak Bay area, zero, vacancy.

Your rental freeze created the housing freeze. There are no

new rental units being built and, what's worse, no new rental

units on the planning boards. The only units coming on to the

market are those that were planned or started two years ago —

and you know that, Mr. Attorney-General.

If the Attorney-General knows anything about housing, then

he must know that the lead time required to assemble land, to

arrange financing, to select a building contractor and to get

the construction of rental housing units underway is from 18 to

30 months. So here we sit in British Columbia with the greatest

opportunity for building and the greatest need in all of Canada

for an accelerated building programme, and what is happening?

Our housing shortage becomes worse daily. Sawmill operators cut

back production and lay off workers, though they should be

gearing up to supply more and more lumber to the domestic

market.

What has happened to the domestic market? The demand is down

and sales have slipped. Mortgage money takes wings and flies to

Alberta or to the U.S., and everyone who previously had been

involved in building new accommodation in the Province of

British Columbia has said in recent months, particularly in the

last year, that they'll divert their attention to other parts

of Canada. Why? It's because of government policy and the fact

that they do not in any way trust the policy of the NDP, as

expressed today, to be the policy of the NDP six months or a

year from now.

The five-year waiver, with respect to your rental controls,

is nothing, particularly when at somebody's whim or fancy — by

an order-in-council or by a change of regulations — you retract

that offer six months down the way or whenever people have

started building again on a reasonable basis.

Rent increases, for those people on fixed incomes today and

in the future, and particularly when their rents are increased

by 10.6 per cent, will become an impossible obstacle. Why? I'll

tell you why, Mr. Speaker. It's because the Attorney-General

cannot comprehend that rental grants should be available on a

humanitarian basis according to need to those people who need

them the most — to people in low-income and in fixed-income

situations.

The rental grant, as it is presently in effect, is nothing

more than an attempt by the Attorney-General to buy votes on an

indiscriminate basis.

If you want to do something to help, if you are as

humanitarian as you or your government suggests, then help

those people on low and fixed incomes with a grant that

reflects something tangible other than a mere pittance.

The Attorney-General talks about rapacious landlords, but he

conveniently overlooks the plight of many small investors who

have invested their life savings in an apartment block with a

reasonable expectation that the income would keep them during

their retirement years. Those people now find that the

combination of inflation and increased taxation and the freeze

on rents has put them in a position where they stand to lose

everything.

Is this how a government that cares demonstrates its concern

for people? Have you no compassion for the large number of

small investors who have to date provided the bulk of the

rental housing in this province? If the Attorney-General

doesn't believe that, then perhaps he should read the real

estate study on the impact of foreign capital in the housing

market in British Columbia. It was found at that time by that

study that by far the largest amount of rental accommodation in

the Province of British Columbia was provided by small

investors, investing their life savings in either a small

apartment block or a condominium or a duplex-type of

development in which they had reasonable expectation that the

income from that would keep them for the rest of their

lives.

We have a report from Dr. Cragg — 89 pages of information,

Mr. Attorney-General, put together in a comprehensive document,

a crash programme to try and analyse the problem of rental

accommodation in the Province of British Columbia and to

suggest a number of ways that we can solve the problem.

And what has the Attorney-General said about Dr. Cragg's

report? He has rejected it out of hand. One paragraph on one

page doesn't completely adhere to the wishes or the thoughts of

the Attorney-General so he rejects the whole 89 pages of the

report.

Hon. A.B. MacDonald (Attorney-General): I didn't say

that.

Mr. Smith: Mr. Attorney-General, the reason you use for

rejecting the report was contained in one paragraph on one

page. You gave the impression — even though perhaps you now wish

to correct that impression — that you were prepared to reject

the whole report on the basis of one paragraph on one page. Is

that a reasonable approach when a person has taken as much time

as went into that report to document the problems that we have

in the field of

[ Page 4610 ]

accommodation in the Province of British Columbia and

recommend some reasonable solutions to the problem? I think

not.

Rent control discriminates in favour of tenants of

controlled premises and against the tenants of uncontrolled

accommodation. I think the Attorney-General will agree with

that. A backward-looking measure, Mr. Attorney-General,

inasmuch as tenants who were in accommodation when rent was

first frozen received security of tenure. This contributes to

tenant reluctance to give up tenure of controlled premises, as

you well know, and adds to black-market problems as well as key

charges and many other forms of non-legal activities and

transactions between tenants and landlords.

Let's say you happen to be a person of sufficient income to

pay a substantial bonus for a key. Who is going to report it to

the Attorney-General? The person who pays the money? The person

who receives it? I think not.

Mr. Attorney-General, there is one thing that we do agree

on. We agree there is a people-need out there, as you suggest,

respecting housing.

An Hon. Member: A 20-year need.

Mr. Smith: Then could I suggest to the Attorney-General that

he do something, along with the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr.

Nicolson), about increasing the housing stock available in the

Province of British Columbia? That's the solution to the

problem, Mr. Attorney-General.

May I suggest to you that you review immediately your stupid

land freeze and subsequent agricultural zoning which has

resulted in a large quantity of land that will not even support

a Billy goat being frozen into an agricultural freeze?

Deputy Speaker: Order, please. Will the Hon. Member

please address himself to the principle of the bill, and also

relate his remarks to the principle of the bill? Would he

address the chair, please?

Mr. Smith: Mr. Speaker, the suggestion I have just made is

certainly pertinent and right in line with a suggestion to help

solve the problem of accommodation in the Province of British

Columbia.

There are all kinds of regional districts which have

reported in recent months that the agricultural freeze has

indeed enclosed and encompassed large blocks of land which will

never produce anything agriculturally. Yet they are in the

agricultural freeze. Now, why should that land be held as

agriculture if in fact there is no future for it in the realm

of producing food and products for the benefit of the people of

this province?

Deputy Speaker: Order, please. I would ask the Hon. Member again to relate

his remarks to the principle of the bill.

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: In a starving world we intend to

protect farmland.

Mr. Smith: Okay, that's a great statement: "In a starving

world we intend to protect farmland." Nobody disagrees with the

protection of farmland. But I'm suggesting, Mr. Attorney-General, that there are large quantities of land presently

within the freeze which should be released for the building of

new homes to provide more land area to a more reasonable price.

Isn't this the way to solve part of the problem: to reduce the

cost of the land for building purposes?

May I further suggest that another way to reduce building

costs is by removing the 5 per cent sales tax on all building

materials going directly into new construction or the

renovation of older rental units?

There is another suggestion I have, Mr. Attorney-General,

Why don't you reduce the interest rates that people have to pay

today by an offsetting grant for people wishing to build,

particularly those people who are unable to do so because of

low incomes or an inadequate income according to the present

standards. Refund a little bit of money that the Treasury has

been so glad to take from industry in the province, the

petroleum industry, the sale of natural gas, the sale of forest

products. Just take a little bit of that and put it back into

the hands of people who have an urgent need for housing and a

desire to own a home of their own but, because of their

particular financial position, cannot qualify at the present

time for a mortgage.

Set up policies in the Province of British Columbia which

will encourage the channeling of more mortgage money into home

and apartment block construction. That will never happen, Mr.

Attorney-General, if money which is available today can lay

unused, really, for housing construction on deposit at 9.5 or

10 per cent without any risk whatsoever. The mortgage money is

just not going to be available.

Finally, may I suggest to the Attorney-General that he

restore the confidence of the construction industry in the

future of this province by guaranteeing that money invested in

apartments and rental units will not become a second-class

investment and force those people so investing to either lose

money or take less than a reasonable return. This should be

done by legislation, because I do not believe, from the people

to whom I have talked, that they have any confidence in the

government of the day or the direction that they will go six

months from now, irrespective of what the Attorney-General may

say on the floor of this House. It is unfair for the

Attorney-General to ask one sector of society to

[ Page 4611 ]

subsidize the rental accommodation of another sector. And

that is exactly what you are doing with your rent control

today.

We do not need ghettos in the Province of British Columbia;

we can certainly do without them. We do not need substandard

housing, and we should get rid of that as quickly as possible.

But we should replace it with new units available to people at

a reasonable rent. We do not like to see the demolition of

houses that are older strictly because of the fact that they

will no longer return to the owner a fair return, or any return

in many cases. We do not want to experience the rapid

deterioration of the present housing that will be possible with

rental controls in effect.

The housing stock that we have available to us today will go

downhill. Repairs will be left undone; maintenance will not be

the same as it was in the past. As a result of that, we'll

experience, if you continue the path you have chosen, the same

type of housing problems, the same type of ghettos and the same

type of substandard housing accommodation that many other parts

of Canada and many other parts of Canada and the world

experience today.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose the rent ceiling because it is a

measure which asks one segment and one segment only of our

society to stand the brunt of inflation for all others. As

such, it is unjust. It's a hasty, ill-conceived solution which,

if made part of government policy, will make shelter even more

scarce than it is today. And it couldn't be much worse than it

is right now.

In British Columbia we may be able to brag about the fact

that we have the second highest wage scale in all of Canada,

second on the average only to Ontario. But what does it matter

if we have that second highest wage scale in Canada if you

can't find a place for you and your family to sleep at night?

This is the type of thing that we object strenuously to. Your

solution is really no solution at all.

Ms. R. Brown (Vancouver-Burrard): I've heard so much being

said on behalf of the landlords and how terrible this bill is

going to be for the landlords that I think maybe I should say a

couple of words on behalf of the tenants.

I rise to support this legislation not just because most of

the constituents who live in this Burrard constituency are

tenants but also on behalf of the rational and reasonable

landlords who live in the constituency too. This bill is not

supposed to solve the housing crisis but rather is designed to

protect the tenant as well as the reasonable landlord.

We've heard a lot about Dr. Cragg's report and about the findings that he came

up with which show that, really, if there was going to be a ceiling on rents,

it should be in the vicinity of 20 or over 20 per cent, I would like to read

from a much more modest report which was done by a Mr. Hanson in the Vancouver

area. He drew most of his information from the annual publication of the Real

Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

What Mr. Hanson found was that the annual operational costs

on a low rise apartment block — and most of the apartment

blocks in the Burrard constituency are three or four storys —

from August 1968 to 1974 went up approximately 4 per cent per

year. This is quite a different figure from the figure we get

from Dr. Cragg.

And again, using this publication of the greater Vancouver

area:

"The operational costs on a highrise building would go

up from $556 to $777" — again, just under 4 per cent — "over this same

period, 1968 to 1974."

I think if we accept some of these figures, we will see that

the figure of 10 per cent is really quite a reasonable one and,

for the reasonable landlord, is satisfactory.

What this bill does, Mr. Speaker, is to really protect the

tenants. It protects the tenants such as those in Park Lodge,

for example, at 169 East 10th Avenue who found their rent was

increased $120, $175 a month this year. That was the kind of

increase they were looking at.

It protects the tenants, for example, between 2129 and 2147

Yukon. We read in The Vancouver Sun of February 1974

that 11 to 12 of these tenants were being forced to move

because their rent increases in some instances went over 107

per cent.

It protects the tenants in some of the highrises, for

example, like Century House, another of the highrises in the

Kitsilano area, who found out their increases were going in

some instances up to 50 per cent.

Really, this is protective legislation; this is not

legislation designed to solve the housing crisis. The housing

crisis has to be dealt with in other ways.

Mrs. P.J. Jordan (North Okanagan): Well, why don't you?

MS. Brown: One of the things that we heard from the Member

for Langley (Mr. McClelland) was that any kind of legislation

that puts a rent ceiling on rentals that can be charged will

turn cities into slums. I think a couple of the cities that he

mentioned were Washington, D.C., and I think he said something

about Sweden.

I've never been to Washington, D.C. and I have no plans in

the near future to go there. But I have spent some time in the

City of Stockholm. I've lived in an apartment while I was there

and had the opportunity to visit a number of apartments while I

was there. These were not apartments of wealthy people; these

were apartments of senior citizens, sole-support mothers and

people living in very ordinary kinds of apartment-

[ Page 4612 ]

Unlike the statements made by the Member for Langley, I did

not see any rats in the corridors; I saw no signs of massive

decay. I found Stockholm to be a beautiful and vital city. I

think the Member for Langley owes those people an apology for

the kinds of statements he made about that city.

Mr. R. H. McClelland: (Langley): Is there a black

market in houses over there?

Ms. Brown: As a matter of fact, I have visited New York. I

can assure you that the reason why the people are leaving the

ghettos and the centre of New York has very little to do with

housing. I don't know whether you've heard about some of the

other things happening in New York or not.

But most of all, Mr. Speaker, one of the things that I found

in Stockholm among the tenants was a sense of security that the

people had there. They found that they could budget because

they knew from one year to the other precisely what the

increase in their rent was going to be.

I found that unlike so many of the tenants in this country —

and I am myself a tenant in this city — there wasn't this kind

of anxiety around the whole business of being a tenant and

wondering from one month to the next or one year to the other

just what would be happening to the rent and whether they would

have to leave.

I found that they were quite different from the kinds of

tenants we have living in my constituency. The tenants and

senior citizens who live in Century House or in the Yukon

apartments or the Park Lodge apartments after many years — in

some instances 35 years — were being forced to move because

suddenly the apartment block changed hands and the new owners

came in and raised the rent in some instances, as I said, over

107 per cent.

What this bill also allows, of course, is that the landlords

can base their increases to some extent on the kind of

renovations they do in the buildings. If there is going to be

any extensive kind of renovations, this can be taken into

account when the rent is raised.

I think the City of Vancouver has to take some kind of

responsibility for what is happening to rental in that city.

It's ridiculous for us to say that the housing shortage started

with the 8 per cent increase because this is just not so. There

has always been a shortage of housing, and we inherited this. A

number of people on the other side, too, have agreed that it is

tied to inflation in mortgage rates; it is tied to the fact

that the loophole was plugged in the federal income tax.

It's also tied to the fact that the city has been very slow

in using some of the opportunities open to it in terms of

building accommodation. There is absolutely no reason why the

City of Vancouver cannot under

section 15 of the National

Housing Act do like the Rotary Club or the Lions or any other non-profit

organization and go into the building of non-profit housing.

There is absolutely no reason why they can't do that.

It's just not good enough for the city to say that there is

no housing because you've brought in an 8 per cent

stabilization bill or a 10.6 per cent ceiling on rents. That's

not true.

There is absolutely no reason either why the City of

Vancouver cannot negotiate much more aggressively with the

federal government in terms of the National Defence lands at

Jericho. These are the kinds of things that, if they really are

that concerned about housing, a responsible civic government

will do. The City of Vancouver keeps talking about Jericho and

keeps saying that they should negotiate. But they are putting

much more effort in terms of negotiating for parkland than they

are putting into negotiating for housing.

I think that if the City of Vancouver has decided to limit

the growth of the city by deliberately encouraging the housing

crisis, they should come out and say so. But I don't think they

should do it by subterfuge or in this kind of underhand way by

blaming rent stabilization bills and this kind of thing.

Someone mentioned Mayor Vander Zalm and foot-dragging. Well,

Mayor Vander Zalm is an amateur compared to the City of

Vancouver when it comes to foot-dragging. I don't know how many

of you can remember back to the first time the city started

talking about developing the False Creek area. In 1969 and in

1970, a beautiful, huge study on False Creek was published. We

were told at that time that all this marvelous housing was

going to be developed. In 1970 we got a first report; in 1971

we got another glossy report; in 1972 another glossy report; in

1973 another glossy report. More studies are being done. Up to

this point, not one single piece of housing has been built.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Now, there's absolutely no reason why the City of Vancouver

needs to study the False Creek area ad infinitum through two

different kinds of governments. Of course, it started with

Campbell, it's going on through Phillips, and it may go on

through whoever else comes along.

When it comes to housing shortage, the land is there and the

City of Vancouver could have done something about it if it was

really serious about it. But it would much rather sit back and

blame it on the provincial government because of the rent

stabilization bill.

I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that this

bill is not designed to ease the housing crisis — that's not

what it's there for. This bill is designed to protect the

tenants against rent gouging, against

[ Page 4613 ]

instability and the insecurity they now experience under the

present system. If the City of Vancouver, which is the only

city that I can speak for because those are the people whom I

represent, were really serious about housing, there are a

number of things that it could do, and could do right away,

without Waiting for any movement on part of the provincial

government.

One of the things I found interesting, Mr. Speaker, was that

the very same people on the opposition benches who are

screaming about the lack of housing in Vancouver are also the

same people who are screaming that the 1,700 acres of land we

have in the endowment lands should not be touched, that it

should be there for the benefit of wildlife. Right? — 1,700

acres that should remain as park.

These are the very same people who are screaming at us.

about the lack of housing in the area. There seems to be a

basic contradiction here, but I'm quite sure that when they

give it more serious thought….

The model village of Tapiola in Scandinavia, which holds

many hundreds of people, only uses up 600 acres of land.

Certainly, if you were to build on even a part of that land, it

would leave way over 1,000 acres.

I don't want to digress, but I think it's interesting that

the new president of the university is now talking about

bringing an industrial development onto this same land which we

are being told should be preserved for parks, for wildlife and

whatever. Anything is better than putting housing on there for

people on fixed incomes, or people on low incomes. I think we

have to look at that basic contradiction too.

I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Housing

pointed out a number of things that cities also do which

aggravate this problem — and I want to support him in this — in

terms of the building codes and the basic kinds of requirements

that municipalities ask for. I think that Vancouver, for some

reason or another, is even more excessive in this regard than

some of the other municipalities, and certainly should take

another look at this.

I also want to go on record as saying that I do not see this

bill as being the total and complete solution to the tenant's

problem, because I do not believe that we will ever have

equitable treatment of tenants until tenants have collective

bargaining rights. I believe that very sincerely.

I introduced a private Member's bill on that issue and I'm

going to continue introducing that bill until somebody takes a

look at it. It's a basic right that we should have in this

society, that people should be able to sit down and bargain

about these things. Only through the process of collective

bargaining will tenants really have some say on the kinds of

rents they have to pay, the kinds of conditions they are going

to have to live under. Also landlords will have that kind of

right too.

In closing, Mr. Speaker — and I'm not going to use my 40

minutes because I don't want to be tedious and repetitious, as

have been some of the other Members whom I have had to listen

to for the past couple of days — I would like to say that I

give very strong support to this piece of legislation. I'm

certainly expecting great things of it until we have some kind

of legislation which gives tenants in this province the right

to bargain collectively on the kinds of rents they pay and the

kinds of housing conditions they have to live under.

Mr. Speaker: I wonder if the House before going on,

proceeding on this debate, would give me leave to report back

on the application made by the Hon. Second Member for Victoria

(Mr. D.A. Anderson).

Leave granted.

Mr. Speaker: The Hon. Second Member for Victoria

raised the question, under standing order 35, of a proposal to

adjourn the House to debate a specific matter. He stated the

matter in the following way: "…namely the chaos resulting

from Autoplan agents ceasing operations on behalf of ICBC."

May , at page 370 of the 16th edition, says that the proposal to

adjourn the House should not be offered when facts are in

dispute or before they are available. It's one of the

pre-conditions.

No evidence of chaos has been indicated other than the Hon.

Member's statement that large numbers of British Columbians

"are not receiving driver's insurance renewal forms from ICBC."

His further statement:

"This withdrawal of services has placed the public of

British Columbia in real difficulties since it virtually is impossible

to insure new vehicles or change the insurance provisions on other

vehicles."

It is my understanding that agents do not have any assigned

responsibilities for driver's renewal forms. These are, by law,

handled solely by the Motor Vehicle department and government

services. The Minister states in the House that there is no

present difficulty whereby a substantial inconvenience is

occurring to the public, and that additional staff had been

supplied to the motor vehicle offices to handle any

processing.

He further advises the House that a substantial number of

agents are not ceasing their activities under ICBC. Thus the

Chair has no clear-cut case at this time that the matter,

namely "chaos resulting from the Autoplan agents ceasing

operations " does exist.

The facts are therefore in dispute at this time in

accordance with the rule cited in May, aforesaid, In addition,

the matter sought to be raised must involve more than the

ordinary administration of the

[ Page 4614 ]

law under the existing Act.

For that authority I also refer you to the 17th edition of

May , page 364. There it cites examples of disputes, such as one

dealing with the Wages Council Act, proposals to wages councils

under

section 20 of the Wages Council Act of Great Britain. At

the bottom of that page, is one of the examples: matters must

involve more than the ordinary administration of the law. It

also refers again to a matter of refusal to do something about

a marine wireless dispute, which was termed urgent and

imminent. In both cases these are matters that are covered by

ordinary administration of law.

In consequence of the dispute, as it were, as to the facts,

and the mere use of the word "chaos" really isn't evidence that

I need to make the decision. Other than that, I must say it

doesn't conform to those requirements and is not, therefore, in

my opinion, within the ambit of standing order 35 as it has

been raised.

Would the Hon. the Member for North Okanagan continue with

the debate on Bill 169?

Mrs. Jordan: Mr. Speaker, I listened with great

interest to the Hon. Second Member for Vancouver-Burrard, who

is walking across the floor — I hope she's repenting and that

some good common sense has entered into her thoughts.

I must say, with regret, that I felt her presentation was so

typical of what we hear from the ivory tower and elitist

circles in any society. The people suddenly decide that their

comfort leads them to a position where they can become

do-gooders, and with all good intention, they do become

do-gooders. But they don't take the time to study the problem,

to analyse the problem, and to think up and work out long-term,

practical solutions. They grab at any straw that comes in the

wind.

Any two-minute visit to Sweden or to a pub in England, or

whatever happens to catch their fancy, becomes the magic base

from which they come up with instant and so-called magic

solutions which, in essence, have very long-term devastating

effects on the very people whom they're supposed to be helping.

And in this instance, very long-term and devastating effects to

the economy of a jurisdiction.

The Hon. Member said in quiet candour that this bill was not

designed to ease the housing shortage. I would say to her,

right on! There hasn't been one signed bill, this one or any

other one, brought before this Legislature since this

government took the power and responsibility that has been

designed to factually relieve the housing shortage in British

Columbia.

A housing shortage, which has been greatly increased through the mumbo-jumbo

of legislation that some of these wizardry Ministers have brought into this

House and through the maze of conundrums and contradictions that this government

has introduced into our economic system in this province.

Madam Member is right on. We say: why not? Instead of

standing very weakly and rather in an ivory-towered fashion

defending what can be described as a disastrous piece of

legislation, not standing up in this House as part of the

government, why is that Member not encouraging her colleagues

as part of the government, and not encouraging her Ministers,

who are indeed the power of this government, into doing

something about this crisis they have created in British

Columbia, and bringing in some legislation which, if you must,

patterned after the suggestions put forth by this party, which

are workable and which are indeed designed to ease the housing

shortage in British Columbia, to encourage not only the

development of private housing which will, in turn, create

vacancies in the apartment market, but indeed to stimulate the

construction of apartments in this province so that we don't

have to be even discussing this sort of restrictive and

out-of-date legislation.

The Member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) — I think she

was referring to the City of Vancouver, although I was confused

because I was sure she was referring to the government — said

that they have produced glossy report upon glossy report.

Indeed the NDP has. They've produced report after report not on

glossy paper. The Cragg report is one that they

commissioned.

Mr. R.T. Cummings (Vancouver–Little Mountain): That's the

City of Vancouver.

Mrs. Jordan: They have produced commission after

commission, board after board, committee after committee in

this province in just two short years, and not one that I can

recall, not one of those reports, glossy or unglossy, or those

committees, those high-priced special appointees by the

government, the boards or the legislative committees, have

brought in reports that have in any way solved the growing

problems in this province as they increase under this

government.

That Member is absolutely right. She is a Member of that

government, and she knows where the sins of this government

lie.

Interjection.

Mrs. Jordan: You're quite right, Mr. Member. The

Member as asked how many companies on the skids this government

bought for $6 million — such as they did in Vancouver. That

company hasn't created one new housing unit to help create a

gap in the rental situation. That's $6 million, and all we get

is a partnership in another company…

[ Page 4615 ]

An Hon. Member: Too bad.

Mrs. Jordan: …and glossy reports, which we can't

discuss under this bill but which we shall be prepared to

discuss in the future.

This government is only recycling money and, like many

recycling plants in North America today, it is unprofitable,

and the recycling of the money in this province that's going on

by this government is not creating new employment, it is not

creating new housing, and it's not creating new apartments for

people to live in.

I was very interested in the Member's comments on the

Swedish apartments. She said she had an opportunity to visit

some, and that's very nice. I hope she enjoyed herself. She

mentioned also that she had an opportunity to visit some

apartments belonging to senior citizens, and she was very

impressed with them. I'm sure she is, because the reports

coming out of Sweden point out that this is one of the major

housing and rental problems in Sweden. It is that the great

socialist state embarked on socialist housing and did much to

discourage the development of private housing and private

apartments, and concentrated, as this government is doing, on

socialist state control — in this instance state ownership of

apartments and housing.

They put on very nice apartments in the original instance —

two-bedrooms, three-bedrooms, living-room, dining-room, all the

things that people could desire — good floor area and

reasonable rent. But what has happened is that the state, as

always happens, cannot keep up this pace. It was just a

glorious attraction.

So what has developed in Sweden today, and in Holland and in

some of these areas where these socialist experiments have been

carried out so extensively, is that one person holds a major

living unit — major in size, major in attractiveness, major in

location — at a very low cost. Young families and large

families who are looking for housing today, or young couples,

cannot find that type of accommodation, and they find

themselves squeezed like mice in a pillbox into tiny, cramped,

one-room, one-bedroom apartments, at exorbitant prices. Often

it's not just one family but two or three families, Mr. Member,

paying this exorbitant price and, as I say, living in a

situation that can be described as little better than mice in a

shoebox.

An Hon. Member: What about the black market?

Mrs. Jordan: And what an environment for children!

You talk about why there are problems in the ghettos of New

York, Madam Member, and you say that those problems have

nothing to do with housing. I would suggest that when you're in

New York you go into those areas. You will find that housing,

indeed, is one of the basic reasons for those problems — the

stinking, stagnant places that these people have to live in,

the squalid circumstances, and the psychological effect of

people living one on top of the other like cordwood, and what

this does to mothers and fathers and children.

And the black market that grows up! Indeed, in Sweden today

there's a massive black market in housing. You find those that

were privileged to enter at a low cost — still at low cost —

large, adequate apartments at government or public expense, are

now renting out the rooms in those apartments to families and

to people under unhealthy conditions, again crowded and at

exorbitant prices. So they who contributed nothing to the

circumstances are black-marketing living accommodation from a

preferential position and making a fortune at the expense of

young people and young families, or those who just didn't get

on the pecking order in time.

It's inevitable, because the state, in a monopoly position,

as we see with ICBC, does not allow for competition, does

nothing to spur other people's ideas and becomes stagnant in

its own in terms of what it can finance, and in terms of its

design.

If Sweden had not embarked on this programme, had it, in

fact, encouraged other people to get into the housing and

apartment business, then you would have had a natural shuffling

of people. I don't suggest, as in British Columbia, that

everything's going to be cured overnight. But what we're doing

in legislation like this is taking outmoded and outdated

legislation and trying to update it into a problem of

today.

The government is very fond of quoting Sweden and its great

ideas, but the problem with them is….

Hon. D. Barrett (Premier): Did you table the report this

morning?

Mrs. Jordan: Mr. Premier, you've got so many reports

I wouldn't have time to read them all. That is your problem.

You are completely untrained, through you, Mr. Speaker,

completely unable to understand that life is not a social

worker's theory, life has to do with people.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please! Order, please! What is

your point of order?

Hon. Mr. Barrett: I understood, under the rules of

this House, that when a Member quotes from a report, there is

an obligation to table that report. The Member says she's

quoting from a report from Sweden. I'd just like to know what

report she's quoting from.

Interjections.

[ Page 4616 ]

Mr. Speaker: Well, may I…? Order, please! May I

answer the point of order? Order! Would the Hon. Member please

be seated for one moment to allow the Chair to deal with the

statement?

It is not required for a private Member to table documents,

although it may in certain debates be a requirement of the

Ministers of the Crown to do so. In this case, it is not one

where the Hon. Member is forced to table any documents. The

Hon. Member, however, should not really address other Members

personally from her seat, but should make her statements to the

Chair.

Mrs. Jordan: Mr. Speaker, I don't want to take up my

time listing the number of reports that this House would like

to have from the Premier's office. If he's so preoccupied with

presenting reports, maybe he'll give us some of those. But I

think the Premier's comment right now is very typical of one of

our problems in British Columbia.

I would quote a headline of November 2, discussing the

Premier's visit — state visit I believe it was — to Ottawa,

that "Buffoonery Could be Hurting British Columbia's Tax

Bite."

Mr. Speaker: Order, please! Here again the Hon.

Member is indulging in personal allusions. When the debate is

on the general principle of Bill 169, would the Hon. Member

please address herself to the general debate on the principle

of 169?

Mrs. Jordan: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate

your point, and it isn't nice for any of us to think that we

have a buffoon for a Premier.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please! I think that is

unparliamentary. I wish the Hon. Member would withdraw that. I

think that any insult offered across the floor would be

unparliamentary on either side.

Mrs. Jordan: Well, I'm just quoting a paper….

Mr. Speaker: I don't think that you can do indirectly

what you can't do directly. Would the Hon. Member please

withdraw?

Mrs. Jordan: Well, I'll withdraw that and read the

headline that says: "Buffoonery Could be Hurting British

Columbia's Tax Bite."

Mr. Speaker: There again, Hon. Member, you're not addressing

yourself to the general principle of the bill.

Mrs. Jordan: Mr. Speaker, if you will just wait one minute, I can. When

the Premier was in Ottawa clowning, he should have been discussing such serious

problems that British Columbia has, such as money and incentives and programmes

to relieve the rental situation in British Columbia. I quote the Premier himself,

Mr. Speaker, if you wish, to prove my point. As recently as last week at the

B.C. Federation of Labour conference at Harrison, the Premier said that "British

Columbia can't fight housing crisis alone."

Mr. Speaker, the Premier was saying then that they have to

have Ottawa's help. Yet we find that when he was in Ottawa the

previous week and should have been seriously discussing these

matters with the Minister of Finance in Ottawa, Mr. Turner, and

with the Prime Minister of this country, he was behaving in

less than a serious manner and in a manner that certainly did

nothing to enhance the image of British Columbia and, most

importantly, did nothing to secure the confidence of the

federal government that we did indeed have a serious problem in

British Columbia. Even if it is of this government's making,

it's imperative that we all try to find a solution.

Mr. Speaker, these are some of the things that make the

Member for Burrard's statements very hollow indeed, except when

she says that this bill will not help the housing situation —

and she's quite right. We would urge the government just on

that point to stop studying out-of-date legislation and

bringing us into the future backwards, but to examine some of

the current, reasonable solutions and practical solutions that

there are to these problems.

I'm always amazed how this government, Mr. Speaker, seems to

have an uncanny ability to take a solution and try and upgrade

it, and make it part of an acute problem. We're living with

this more and more on a daily basis in this province as this

government blunders from one crisis to another, which in most

instances have been part of its own making.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to call your attention to the

fact that during the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition

(Mr. Bennett) on Thursday he emphasized that rent controls

implemented to put a ceiling on rent increases have indeed

become part of the problem. Rent controls have become part of

the problem of high prices in the housing market, and rent

controls are a major part of the reason that the rental housing

market is tighter now. It's tighter now than it has been in

British Columbia for the last 20 years.

Without repeating comments made by other speakers, I would

like to expand on this theme and show one or two specific

examples of the very negative effect that the rent control this

government idly imposed has had. It's a sad fact to state that

it's painfully obvious that the government has offered no

solution, short- or long-term, to the problem of scarce shelter

in British Columbia, and they have presented us once again with

a bill which will only make things

[ Page 4617 ]

worse, a bill which makes rental housing more difficult to

obtain, a bill which forces up prices in the uncontrolled

sector and a bill making it even harder than it is now for a

young family or a young married couple or new families moving

to this province or, indeed, older people on fixed incomes to

have an opportunity to have and purchase a house of their own,

let alone to find an apartment.

The Hon. Attorney-General has suggested that his 10.6 per

cent ceiling will provide a fair return on equity for the

landlords. We must first ask: is the Attorney-General of this

province the sole dispenser of economic power in this province?

Is the Attorney-General seriously prepared to take this

position? That's what he's doing in this bill, Mr. Speaker.

Unless he has something up his sleeve that he hasn't divulged

to this House, that's exactly what he's doing. It's not only a

matter of seeming so; it is a fact that he has chosen himself

the sole dispenser of economic power in the Province of British

Columbia. The facts of the matter are that this

Attorney-General and this government are wrong.

Most rental apartments today, Mr. Speaker, have been built

with mortgage financing on which the interest rate is subject

to adjustment every five years, just as with houses, just as

with other business loans. What would be the fair return to the

landlord who built his suites of a six-unit type four and a

half years ago with an 8 per cent mortgage, when that mortgage

is adjusted six months from now and he will not be paying the

8.5 per cent mortgage rate on which he predicated his return

and his expenses, but he'll be paying 12 per cent or perhaps 14

per cent on the money that he borrowed, the money that he used,

the money that he stuck his neck out with to provide rental

housing in British Columbia? If you examine the books, Mr.

Speaker, you'll find that under those circumstances in light of

the Attorney-General's bill, he will be paying 1.5 per cent

more for his financing than he is getting under the

Attorney-General's — the arbiter of justice in this province —

scheme of a fair return.

I'd like to point out too, Mr. Speaker, that it is not the

corporate giants or the rent gougers, who the government would

have us believe is the major problem in this area., They're in

a minority, a very great minority. The majority of rental units

in this province are smaller dwellings, smaller apartment

blocks and duplexes, which are owned by individuals.

Typically, as the Hon. Member for South Okanagan (Mr. Bennett) pointed out,

it could be a farming family from Saskatchewan that sold out a

section or two

sections of land for $200,000 or $300,000, which would allow them, as a couple

who worked all their lives for that money and were lucky enough to get a good

return on their farm in Saskatchewan, to buy a big apartment building in British

Columbia. But that's all they have to live on, the income from that apartment

building. That, under this bill and under the policies that this government

has evolved will be nothing.

In the area that I represent, Mr. Speaker, we're not a

wealthy area. People have worked hard for everything they've

got. Many of them, whether they were shoe clerks or even had a

little shoe store or a ladies' dress shop, or if they worked in

a packing house, saved their money and built or bought duplexes

or maybe a quadruplex so that they could live in one unit and

their retirement income would come from the other units. This

has worked very satisfactorily for many of them up until we got

this gerrymandering legislation and this absolutely unrealistic

attitude that this government is imposing on the economics of

British Columbia and, in this instance, in the housing

sector.

I'd like to describe a specific situation, Mr. Speaker. I've

taken a fairly typical situation from the Vancouver area,

because most of the Members are Vancouver-oriented and that

seems to be the only thing they can understand.

A typical landlord that I found in Kitsilano has a 13-suite

apartment. It is 40 years old and he bought it two years ago

for $100,000, with a $30,000 down payment and a mortgage of

$70,000 at 9.5 per cent. The suites rent at $110 for a bachelor

unit and $140 for bedroom units. Now that's not too bad.

In 1973, his first full year of operation, the owner derived

approximately $700 cash and paid off a small portion of his

mortgage. Now, Mr. Speaker, I would venture to suggest that, as

frugal as you and your good wife are, you could not live on

$700 a year, nor would the welfare department expect you to

live on that. Yet this government has taken an individual's

initiative and investment and reduced it to below welfare level

and has reduced their standard of living to below welfare

level.

With the increase of maintenance and service in 1974, Mr.

Speaker, and the cost this year, so far he has made as little

as $300, and the year is nearly over. On top of that, in this

year 1975 he is faced with an expenditure of $30,000 to meet

fire department requirements for the upgrading of his

fire-prevention system. This money, Mr. Speaker, he will have

to borrow at a rate of not 9.5 per cent, but 12 to 14 per cent

if he's lucky. And what has he got for equity to get that

money? He now doesn't have an apartment building that is

economically sound. He's got a white elephant on his hands;

it's a losing proposition. Not only have you taken away his

investment and his livelihood; you have taken away his equity

and his security for improving that apartment building and for

meeting the regulations that are being imposed upon him by the

city officials in terms of fire protection and health.

Very necessary indeed, but he can't afford to do it. This

government shouldn't be jeopardizing the

[ Page 4618 ]

lives of those people in that apartment the way it is

through this type of legislation.

I ask you, Mr. Speaker, who in their right minds would want

to invest money in a proposition such as this? Who in their

right mind, what Member in this Legislature, what person in

British Columbia in their right mind would buy or develop an

apartment unit in British Columbia today? I don't hear any

takers.

The government won't even take the offer of a

well-respected, well-kept-up apartment building in Vancouver

that they can have for $10. Some confidence they have in their

legislation. An apartment building for $10; an apartment

building described by the media as well-kept-up and

fashionable. They have so much faith in their legislation that

they wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

As a consequence of this and other ill-conceived legislation

and the mumbo-jumbo that is going on by the NDP government in

the housing field, there is virtually zero new rental housing

construction in British Columbia and there is zero vacancies.

Zero, zero, zero means nowhere for people to live.

I wonder, Mr. Speaker, that you don't take the

Attorney-General and the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett)

of this province aside and tell them a few of the facts of

life. No one, big or small, will commit funds to rental housing

in British Columbia now. The Attorney-General should know; he's

conversant with mortgages of all levels. Would he put his money

into an apartment building today?

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: Yes.

Mrs. Jordan: No way. What are you trying to do:

squeeze people out so that you can get a cheap bargain?

The tragedy of this is that individuals' money and some

corporate money that should be going into housing and the

development of rental units in this province is falling over

itself to get out of British Columbia. It is joining the flight

of prospectors' money, engineers' money, mining money, forestry

money and all the other sectors' money that are fleeing British

Columbia. We are going to be in a situation of having a dearth

of a wide variety of capital available for such developments in

British Columbia.

With all this fancy legislation, what do we have to show for it? The Minister

of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson) and his glossy reports that the Second Member

for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) announced. Glossy report on glossy report,

commission on commission, no housing, no apartment units. Zero, zero, zero

for people to live. A fundamental right, the right to shelter, but the people's

government has taken it away from people and put it into a philosophical mumbo-jumbo

arena I which can't possibly make economic sense. Until they change their policy,

it can't possibly correct itself.

It is the people who are going to suffer.

My colleague from the Peace River gave the vacancy rates for

the Victoria area to try and bring home to the Members of this

government what the situation is right here next door to us. I

would advise you that in other parts of the province the same

thing is happening.

In the area I have the honour to represent, the Okanagan,

where we haven't ever had a shortage of housing — we thought we

were going to be over-built — there are no new apartments on

line. The only ones that are building are those that were on

line before this government came into office. The minute they

are finished they are full.

We have a situation where we've got senior citizens locked

in to housing units and apartments where they would rather not

be. We have a situation where landlords which are individual

families are frustrated in what is happening to their

investments and to the service they can provide in apartments.

And they are taking it out on their tenants. This is wrong; I

don't condone this. But those senior citizens who before might

have had a choice of places to live in units which they could

afford, no longer even have that choice. Now there is a growing

conflict with reasonable tenants and reasonable landlords

because everybody is frightened and insecure.

The reason this has happened and there is no housing is

because this government is frozen in freezes. Its rent freezes

created a housing freeze. They put a freeze on the construction

of rental housing and, through their freeze on land and the way

that they did it, created an artificial value for land which

freezes private housing because nobody can afford it.

I ask you, Mr. Speaker, who is the government helping by

this type of legislation? You must ask yourself this at night,

Mr. Speaker, and you must wonder yourself. How on earth are

your constituents going to find anywhere to live? How are they

going to be able to enjoy — those that do have a place to live — the same standard of living unit now as they did before?

The government is doing exactly the opposite, Mr. Speaker. I would recall for

your information some of the results of a survey that was taken of apartment

builders in British Columbia. These are people and businesses. Some are large,

yes, but some are small: duplex owners, three-story apartment owners, family

owners, people who presently own or are engaged in the equity financing of rental

housing. These people were asked what their future plans were for British Columbia.

Do they intend to build or do they intend to invest in any new apartments or

any new duplexes? I would like to quote you some of the answers, Mr. Speaker.

I have a few of them here and I've summarized them for your interest.

[ Page

4619 ]

One person said:

"I will not be doing anything in British Columbia. If we

could sell everything at market value, we would. We feel like

the apartment owners in New York who eventually abandoned their

buildings, "

And this is a family, Mr. Speaker, who came here not long

ago, about five years ago:

"Two years ago we were very confident about the future of

rental housing in British Columbia. However, unless the climate

changes, we are now considering no proposals of this

nature."

That's a family who came here to British Columbia with their

family money. It wasn't millions; they weren't the

Rockefellers. They were a family who had between them managed

to develop a fair amount of investment portfolio. That's what

their attitude is. One business person said:

"I will not supply any more until the present atmosphere

improves."

Another said:

"Under the present political climate the future is very

uncertain and certainly not conducive to rental

development."

Surely, Mr. Speaker, some of this must get through to the

Attorney-General. You know, I sometimes wonder when I listen to

the Attorney-General and I see the legislation he brings in.

And I listen to the Member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown)

who made it quite clear that her attitude is that the means, no

matter how hard on people, justify the ends. She has made it

very clear that she wants complete state control in this

province.

One wonders if that isn't the name of the game: squeeze out

everybody so the situation becomes so desperate that the

government falls heir, for very little or nothing, to what it

wants — complete control.

You know, they remind me of that definition of the American

politician. Somebody told me once when we lived in the States

that the perfect American politician was tremendous at rocking

the boat, tipping the people out, and making a hero of himself

by saving them. And this is what this government is doing in

the rental situation, and in other areas for that matter:

rocking the boat to the point where people are drowning —

drowning in lack of housing — and then they are going to come in

and make heroes of themselves by saving them.

Here's another answer from the survey:

"As a result of the government legislation, (blank) company

is no longer constructing rental apartment units in British

Columbia."

Here's another one:

"Rents will find their best possible level only by having an

adequate supply of suites available. Until this is realized by

the government, we will build only outside British

Columbia. Present and proposed legislation discourages any construction

or investment in rental suites or other rental accommodation at a time

when there are zero vacancies."

Now, Mr. Speaker, surely those comments must carry some

weight with this government in trying to understand what the

problem really is.

The solutions which our party has put forth through various

speakers are specific; the solutions that we offer are long

term; they are designed to meet the problems…

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: They sure are.

Mrs. Jordan: …but the rate they're going…. Beg

pardon?

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: They sure are offering

solutions.

Mrs. Jordan: Well, Mr. Attorney-General, I suggest if

you take that attitude that they'll have a better opportunity

of becoming action, than your never-never plans, because that's

what this government has indulged in — glossy, never-never

plans. Rocking the boat and drowning the people, and making

heroes of themselves trying to save them. Except they haven't

saved anybody in British Columbia yet, the very people that

they were elected to — they said — to help. "We're going to

help the little people, the little contractors in the forest

industry, the apartment people — all these little people."

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: You go out there, Mr. Member, and you

know what the people are saying. The very people that they drew

into their campaign glossary are the very people that this

government has hurt. They haven't hurt the big companies. Mr.

Speaker, they haven't hurt the big rental companies, or the big

mining companies. We're only two million people in British

Columbia, We're a drop of a bucket. They can afford to let us

go, but the day-to-day person in British Columbia — the small

engineers, the small apartment owners — these are the people.

The people who live in these apartments, the people who work in

the day-to-day jobs are the ones that this government, with its

never-never plan and its never-never lifeboat situation, have

hurt.

Your government is just enamoured with legislation that is

rigid and which is inhibiting to any type of free thinking and

we, Mr. Speaker, I'm sure you're not surprised to know, are

against this 10.6 per cent ceiling because it is a measure

which asks one segment of society to bear the burden of society

and, more importantly, it is a measure which is designed,

[ Page 4620 ]

through either purpose or stupidity, to hurt the very people

we should be trying to help; and those are the tenants in this

province. Those are the people who either don't want to own

their own homes, or simply can't afford to, or who are of an

age or a health condition that they can't manage their own

home. They're the ones who are going to end up in the NDP

ghettos that this government is developing.

Mr. Speaker, we don't want laws for the sake of laws, such

as we're getting from this government. We want housing, and we

want apartment units, and we want a free choice of apartments

for people. Young marrieds, single people, families, senior

citizens — why shouldn't they have the same choice as every

Member of that cabinet in their luxury housing? They don't even

want luxury; they just want clean, comfortable, practical

shelter at a price they can afford.

We want this housing in a programme that will put people to

work in British Columbia. I spoke earlier, Mr. Speaker, about

the problems in the area that I represent. I spent the whole

week-end meeting with some of the very people who can't get

anywhere to live, and also, what little they've got, in the

terms of equipment in the logging industry, is being snatched

out of their hands because they can't find anywhere to live.

They can't use their equipment, but they're responsible for the

overhead, and the upkeep, and the payments on that equipment.

And the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. King), on his $40,000 a

year salary, sits there and laughs.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: That's the problem, Mr. Speaker. We've

got a lot of laughing hyenas for cabinet Ministers.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: This is a province of them.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: We need Ministers who are concerned and

responsible and who will use what's above their neck and

think.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: Well, if the worst you can throw at us

is Phil Gaglardi, then I'd say we've got a good record.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: Because I could venture to say, if I

went into the constituency of the Minister of Highways (Hon. Mr. Lea)…

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: …that I wouldn't get the same

comments that one does from Kamloops, or Prince George, or

Hudson Hope, from little people, about the former Minister of

Highways, that he helped them.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: Only yesterday, Mr. Speaker, when I was

preparing to drive back to the coast, someone said: "Ye gads! I

wouldn't drive on these highways now."

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: "We have no confidence in the Minister.

He doesn't know what he's doing. He's like the Attorney-General

with his rental legislation."

Mr. Speaker, what about students in this province? They are

in the uncontrolled area. They're among the people where, when

you start pushing pressure…. You know, it's just like

quicksilver — you try to put your finger on the problem

An Hon. Member: You're running out of time.

Mr. Speaker: May I interrupt the Hon. Member to

advise her that she only has two minutes left?

Hon. J. Radford (Minister of Recreation and Conservation):

Thank the Lord.

Mrs. Jordan: Mr. Speaker, thank you.

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: I'll finish with this statement, because

our party…. I'm sure you want me to sit down, because you're

a bunch of people with a very guilty conscience — and if you

don't have, you should have, and. you would have if you

listened to the problems of the people out there. I would just

close with the plight of students who are being forced to live

in uncontrolled areas of cost, paying as much as $100, $150 and

$200 for rooms without board, who are being forced to live in

sub-standard conditions, and whose employment this summer and

the income they earned, and their budgeting for this year,

bears no relationship to the costs that they're having to bear

from the actions of this government.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge the government, in closing, to

make the office of rentalsman meaningful; to allow the people

around the province who know the problems to assist the

rentalsman in this area; and

[ Page 4621 ]

to adopt the constructive, practical programmes that this

opposition has put forward — which we can afford in British

Columbia — which will stimulate the building and development of

housing and rental accommodation in British Columbia, and

really get on in solving this problem and helping the people

who need help — and who are crying for help — those least able….

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: Give the landlords 30 per

cent.

Mrs. Jordan: I didn't say "Give the landlords 30…."

Interjections.

Mrs. Jordan: Mr. Speaker, that poor Attorney-General

has got a fixation, and this is blocking him from looking

reasonably and logically at solutions. As long as he says,

"Don't confuse me with the facts, I've made up my mind,"

there is absolutely no hope for the people in British

Columbia.

Mr. D.A. Anderson (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, I appreciated, as

I'm sure everybody did, the statement by the previous speaker,

that the standard for that party is the standard of Phil

Gaglardi, and this government only has to live up, or down, to

that one to succeed.

Interjections.

An Hon. Member: Right on.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Order, please. Order! Would the Hon.

Member proceed, despite the interruptions.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: It's very difficult, Mr.

Speaker.

An Hon. Member: How many horses have you got on your

payroll?

An Hon. Member: Right on.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Mr. Speaker, the bill that we have

has been discussed at some length now, and it was discussed by

the Attorney-General when he introduced it in a very light and

casual way.

Interjections.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: He didn't discuss at all…

Interjections.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: …the whole question of the

five-year delay for any new building to have rental control. He

didn't discuss at all the question of supply, and without some

discussion of the question of supply, I feel that the

Attorney-General has really failed to explain this legislation

to this House. He has said — as he reads his little red book on

the quotations of Chairman Mao (laughter) — he has said that…. I have my little red book, Mr. Attorney-General — it's the

Speakers' rulings.

An Hon. Member: Trudeau's got a red book now.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: The one that you've got is

probably just as valuable. If the Attorney-General would put

down Chairman Mao's sayings for one moment, and listen to my

pointed and direct criticism, I do think he should have a

higher standard than that of Phil Gaglardi, and that he should

pay some attention to the question of supply. All the

legislation, and the amendments that he's brought in, really do

nothing unless we arrive at a better situation, in the future

than we have at the present time. Members such as the Second

Member for Vancouver South (Mrs. Webster), such as the

Attorney-General himself, who emphasized the temporary nature

of this legislation, have only emphasized that this is

transitional, and unless it takes us somewhere — unless it takes

us somewhere where things are better — it is legislation that

fails.

The legislation we have, of course, makes two categories of

apartment. First, the existing stock, the apartments that house

people such as myself, tenants in British Columbia — the

ordinary presently constructed rental accommodation — and we

will have our rents frozen. I shouldn't say "frozen" — we will

have them increase according to government-dictated figures in

the future, while those who come into the province, or those

new families which start up and are looking for new

accommodation, will, of course, be forced out — not into the

present stock of housing because none of us will wish to give

up our present stock of housing with the controlled rate — but

they will be forced into the areas of new housing which will be

totally uncontrolled and, because of the supply problem, will

be substantially higher than they otherwise would be.

In other words, the rents of the new buildings are going to

be one big chunk higher than the rents of existing

accommodation at the present time or, indeed, higher than it

would be were there no rent control whatsoever. The

Attorney-General knows that as well. It will be that way

because it's that small area of housing, namely the new

construction, that is going to take the whole brunt of any

market forces

[ Page 4622 ]

leading to higher increase in rents.

He knows it, and I know it, and everybody in B.C. knows it;

that within a few years we're going to have two categories of

tenants — those who are lucky enough to come under the

legislation at the present time, and those who are, if you

like, on their own forced, because of a supply situation, to

scurry around and find new accommodation only because there

will not be existing accommodation becoming vacant, except in

all likelihood in the case of death of present occupants.

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: But we have to encourage new

building.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: The Attorney-General says, quite

rightly, that you have to encourage new units, but what he's

going to do is create a small category of tenants and force

them to bear the whole burden of all new construction costs. In

addition, because of the uncertainty that his own statements in

this debate have created, namely that this is only temporary

legislation, he is assuming that the five-year holiday, which

he's talked about, will be believed by landlords and potential

landlords, and people who might potentially come in and build

buildings. I doubt whether they will believe because, as he

said quite flatly, this is temporary. He admitted it was

changed; he admits that he's departed from the Cragg report

which he himself commissioned to look into this whole

matter.

We've reached a situation where the amount of new

construction is likely to be far less than required, and

probably far less than what would otherwise take place, had it

not been for this ill-fated legislation.

We do have a real need for new supply. The present

provisions of the Attorney-General's legislation simply will

not give us the new supply that we need.

For example, there's the talked-about 3.5 per cent growth

rate in British Columbia — on an annual basis that's somewhere

between 3.5 and 3.8 per cent per year. Regardless of what

anybody in this Legislature does, that is the growth rate we're

faced with. In other words, just to stay where we are we have

to build that many new apartments and that many new houses in

every year. At the present time we're apparently simply not

doing that because the construction is down this year over

previously.

Until such time as we get legislation and some assistance in the supply area,

we're going to inevitably have more and more and more problems. The Attorney-General

probably has not lived in a jurisdiction where you have rent control and the

phenomena known as key money. I have — a situation where there were controlled

rents, where at the same time there was a large amount of new construction following,

which was exempted to rent control, and where to get into your apartment what

you had to do was to pay key money.

Sure, you couldn't pay rent at a higher rate than the

government allowed, but to get the key to the front door, you

paid from $2,000 to $10,000. Having paid your key money, you

then moved in and it was for a two-year or one-year rental

agreement, whatever it was. You then paid the regular rent. So

in net effect over the year or two years you had paid

substantially higher than the government-required rent

ceiling.

When this became illegal, or when efforts were made to make

this illegal….

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: We provide impetus for all these

new constructions.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Now, Mr. Attorney-General, let me

give you a couple of more cases…

Hon. Mr. MacDonald: You'd never get the key.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: …because if you succeed there,

you will succeed where every other jurisdiction which has had

rent control has failed.

For heaven's sake, be realistic. Be realistic on this

particular point: if you make key money illegal, the next thing

is that when you turn up at the door the landlord says: "Well,

look, we're going to have to redecorate this apartment." You

say: "Look, you don't need it." He says: "Well, I wanted to

redecorate it, and it's going to cost you $2,000 or $3,000 or

$5,000." Sure, he may put a few licks of paint on but it's the

tenant who will pay, simply because he has no alternative but

to pay.

Mr. Attorney-General, if you try and make that illegal, let

me tell you about subsidiary contracts which will take place —

and this has happened, once again, in the jurisdiction in which

I live — that is, to move into your apartment you have to

separately contract a purchase of some other object for a

substantial chunk of money. The most absurd thing I heard of

was that you had to purchase a cat which apparently went with

the apartment, and the cost was $3,000. Now you couldn't move

in unless you purchased the cat. You could wring the thing's

neck or drown it if you like, afterward; that wasn't illegal.

But to get into that apartment you had to enter into a

subsidiary contract to purchase this exotic animal, and own it

thereafter.

That's a subsidiary contract, and that is the type of method

that will be used to get around the law. You can be sure, Mr.

Attorney-General, that this type of thing will take place

because it has taken place in every other jurisdiction where

you have the two categories of tenant — those who are under

rent control, and those who are not.

[ Page 4623 ]

While I'm mentioning this question of the effects of rent

control and the effect of lack of flexibility, Mr.

Attorney-General, I would like to remind you of the problem

that crops up when a person changes his job.

Sure, let's say in Victoria they have their apartment, or

they have their rented home in James Bay, But instead of

working in the city area, suddenly they find that they're

working out of Sooke. They can't afford to give up their

apartment because they'll be unable to find another under the

rent-control provisions. If they go out for new apartment

accommodation, they will go out and face enormously high

increases for the reasons we discussed a moment ago. The result

is that they remain in their existing accommodation, despite

the fact they are working in a very, very distant part and they

have no alternative but to continue to drive that way.

The logical thing, the thing that happens in the

jurisdictions which do not have this type of bureaucracy and

control, is for the person to give up their existing

accommodation in Victoria and to find something equivalent in

the Sooke area, nearer their place of work.

If you have your two systems, and if it's not possible, as

it will not be possible, for people to switch, you will find

that you're going to create a large number of distortions of

this nature in your market system. The net result is going to

be substantial frustration, even for those people who continue

to remain in apartment dwellings where the rents are

controlled.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson)

who, very obviously, is not being trusted with anything to do

with housing — he's a designated ribbon cutter, to use his own

term — the last day of debate he made some statements regarding

housing which I thought were very foolish, because if we are to

get any increase in housing at the present time we are going to

have to get a fair amount of involvement by all three levels of

government, as was pointed out by the Second Member for

Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown), who spoke earlier, when she

commented upon the situation in Vancouver.

He talked about the problems of his own department. His job,

apparently, was to blame the federal government, just as the

Second Member for Vancouver South (Mrs. Webster) blamed the

municipal government.

Just for the record, Mr. Speaker, I would like to indicate

some of the figures which were not given on Friday when the

Minister of Housing spoke.

He talked about the involvement of the federal government and CMHC. Yet he

quite forgot to point out that under the insured-loan activity of CMHC we had

2,201 units for a total of $56 million in British Columbia last year. Those

are new units. For existing units you had a total of assisted purchases with

this regard, with respect to insurance, of 3,762 loans for a total of 3,856

units, and a total of $103 million.

When it comes to direct loans, you have

section 68 of the

NHA in which there were 2 loans, 12 units. This is the

lender-of-last-resort provision, apparently unknown to the

Minister of Housing. I wish he were here so he could perhaps

jot down some of the sections which he didn't know about on

Friday…where you have $205,000 under

section 58. Then you

have your loan situation there,

section 68 — 67 loans to the

tune of $1,287,000.

Under your assisted home ownership,

section 34 — new homes:

you have 744, for the tune of $20,158,000; and assisted home

ownership for existing units, you have 1,484 units assisted,

and the total value there of $42,151,000.

Under your non-profit cooperative of which there is a

number of variations,

section 15 and

section 34(1)(

a) new

construction: you have 2,083 units plus 440 hospital beds for

the bill of $29,880,000.

That is new construction — existing, you had 276

self-contained units, 150 hospital…$4,785,000.

Mr. Speaker, under the sections 40 and 43, partnership and

loans to the province, public housing: 916 units for $19

million for new loans; existing, 25 units, and the total there,

$240,000.

Loans with direct assistance: 2,387 loans for a total of

5,637 units and 670 hospital beds — a grand total of $116

million. In addition there is the direct federal involvement on

their own.

The total bill for CMHC, Mr. Speaker, comes to $160 million,

plus or minus a few which will not be determined until the end

of the year when the final programmes are taken up, which

compares fairly handsomely, I think, to the vote that we passed — vote 111 — of $50 million, or the total of the Department of

Housing, around $75 million — more than double the total for

the provincial Department of Housing.

I give these figures because apparently, from the speech of

the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Nicolson) he just didn't know

that these things were taking place. He's been designated

ribbon-cutter for a number of months now, but he hasn't

understood the ribbons that he's been cutting or the financing

of the developments which he has been involved in.

I think he's right, to this effect — that there has to be a

fair amount of federal as well as municipal cooperation. If

we're to get any real solution to the housing problem that we

presently have. But I do feel it's foolish, very foolish for a

Minister not to put forward the facts of the programme which he

so roundly denounces.

If they're wrong, fine, but let's hit them for the

programmes that they are, Let's list what is being done. Let's

indicate how much money is involved. Let's not go, as he did in

his speech, and simply

[ Page 4624 ]

ignore what is being done, claim credit indeed for what is

being done by other levels of government and end up on a note

of belligerence instead of cooperation with the other levels

of government.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of this legislation and where it

should take us, the only real solution to the housing problem

in this or any other province is to have an adequate supply of

housing so that there is some excess capacity to the tune of

one, maybe two per cent. In cities elsewhere in Canada which

are affected in exactly the same way by federal tax

legislation, which are affected in exactly the same way by the

provisions of the National Housing Act, or the Central Mortgage

and Housing Corporation, you have excess capacity. The closest

we have is Calgary.

Interjection.

Mr. D.A. Anderson: Now, Mr. Minister, very close. It's about

the closest city to B.C. In another Canadian jurisdiction.

Calgary — there you do have some excess capacity, and there you

do have the type of situation which I think we should be

working towards in British Columbia.

The only way to get some minor excess capacity is, of

course, a fairly massive construction programme and we are not

going to get it until such time as the municipalities and the

independents, private contracts and developers, are fairly

secure that there will be provincial money available first for

servicing in the case of the municipalities, and secondly,

there will be some sort of certainty in the market and there

will be some sort of security in terms of their return.

The Attorney-General's proposals to treat new apartments so

very differently from existing is certainly based on the fact

that he thinks he's got the existing housing in the bag — as

indeed, I guess he has: it can't be moved — and then to simply

try and entice new development in by a five-year holiday.

Mr. Speaker, the five-year holiday just doesn't make any

sense to me. The type of landlord that we would like to have in

the Province of B.C. Is surely not the type of person who gets

in there to make the fastest possible buck, the largest number

of bucks in five years and then sells the property and gets

out. What we want is long-term, good accommodation, which means

they have to plan on substantially more than five years.

To put in a five-year provision makes it perfectly clear

that the Attorney-General realizes the problems he's going to

face with getting new housing, and yet to put it in does not

indicate whether we will solve the problem at all, and in his

introduction to this bill, he didn't spend any time on this one

issue at all.

[Mr. Dent in the chair.]

In my view, the way that we're going to have an increase in

the housing supply is by the Attorney-General, or the Minister

of Housing if the responsibility of industry devolves upon him,

getting together with your landlords, getting together with

your tenants and deciding that we are going to create a stable

investment climate for these people in the Province of British

Columbia.

The return must be adequate, equal to that of the rate of

return elsewhere in permitting them to get construction

proposals in which they can have some confidence. The rules

won't be changed on them in six months or a year or two years

or even five years later.

To continue with the two-price system — a free-market system

and a controlled system — is to just invite further and further

and further trouble. I have lived in a jurisdiction which had

it and I can assure the Attorney-General that ultimately the

only thing that happens is that you wipe the thing out.

That is what we should do at the present time: treat all

apartment and rental accommodation on the same basis right from

the word go and make sure that you don't in the future have two

types of tenants: one type lucky enough to be in controlled

rent accommodation and the other type forced to pay much higher

rents than they otherwise would because of the fact that the

whole burden of the supply problem will fall on their immediate

shoulders.

I am here speaking as a tenant when I indicate that the

tenants' interests are best served when you have only one type

of accommodation, not the two-type system which the

Attorney-General has brought in. The sooner we get back to that

and some decent construction starts in the Province of British

Columbia, the better off the tenants, landlords and the

government as well will be.

Mr. N.R. Morrison (Victoria): The Attorney-General, I am

sure, had a great deal of difficulty facing this session and

trying to solve the problem which he created in the hasty

decision to implement rent control in the spring session. I

don't really envy him those decisions because I am sure they

are difficult. I am sure he tries as best he can to deal with a

very serious problem.

But this legislation is characteristic of this government.

The interim bill was inadequately thought out; it was

improperly drafted, as the rentalsman has said; it was hastily

implemented. Then after chaos was created, which surely they

must have understood would happen, the government is now trying

to pull its foot out of the glue.

But instead of that, they are really more firmly implanting

both feet, now mired in the glue. The amendments to this

legislation are not going to improve that situation. It is

obvious that he doesn't

[ Page 4625 ]

understand the problem; it is obvious that he has no

understanding of how to solve it. It would appear that this

government would like to take complete control of housing and

of rental accommodation within this province. But I am sure

they know that they cannot yet force those regulations upon the

public of British Columbia.

However, they have managed to effectively discourage the

private sector from making any immediate attempt to solve those

problems. If you care to look at the results of the Canada

Savings Bond sales here in the Province of British Columbia,

they are tremendously oversold. Money that should have gone

into development of some kind is being funneled into savings

bonds. Money that should be used for long-term development is

now non-productive.

People are scared; they don't want to invest their money

into this type of development. Frankly, to further force an

inequitable freeze upon one segment of society — only that

segment of society which happens to be a landlord and which

happened at the time that rent bill was brought in to be at

that point a landlord — those people have had the choice since

to decide whether they would continue to build. It is obvious

that they have decided not to build.

In the City of Victoria, as far as I can find out, there is

only one rental accommodation going up, and that's the one on

the Gorge, a very large one. That particular one was committed,

as the Attorney-General knows, long before the rent freeze came

in. But at this moment I am unable to find any others which are

planned for straight rental accommodation.

It is true that there are some condominiums being built and

there are some subsidized rental housings being built for the

old age, and some through the federal government plans, but

nothing as far as a straight investment is being planned and as

far as I can see, there are none on the drawing board.

As the Attorney-General knows, it takes anywhere from 18

months to three years from the time the developer starts to try

to put the land together, to go through the rezoning

applications and secure the long-term financing. It's about 18

months minimum and probably three years maximum from the time

he starting before a tenant actually moves in. There appear to

be none starting in Victoria at the moment and therefore we're

certainly looking perhaps two years away before there are

any.

Even though this amendment bill allows for uncontrolled rents on new housing,

as I've just said, there are no new housing and no new rental housing starts

appearing right here in the city. Now if he knows of some that I'm not aware

of, I'd be very happy to have him tell us when he closes the debate. But I frankly

don't wonder that people would start. Who would want to start? Who would want

to take the risk today and who would want to take the assurance of the Attorney-General

that even though the bill says there will be five years of uncontrolled rents,

he could change that at the stroke of a pen?

It's obvious that this government has a bias against private

ownership of rental accommodation by individuals, and they have

a bias against companies. But they appear to have no bias

against the state being everyone's landlord. Perhaps that's the

direction in which we are heading.

By this bias, it appears that we are now going to have two

classes of renters. Those who by accident or happenstance were

living in rental accommodation at the date that the original

rent freeze came in and those who will be forced through no

decision of their own to take whatever accommodation is

available, and that's assuming that some is built. Frankly, I

doubt that it will be.

Well, I don't have a problem. I happen to own my own home,

but there are people who do have a problem. Those are the

people who are moving to this province, those are the people

who are coming where there is employment if they can find it,

or must move from their present employment to some other

location. They simply cannot find accommodation.

Already in Victoria we're experiencing some of the obvious

results of rent control. The second Member for Victoria (Mr.

D.A. Anderson) talked about key money, and that's happening

right here in the city. There are already people offering

incentives for people to find them accommodation. You see ads

in the newspaper where people are offering to pay one month's

rent to someone who will find them accommodation.

We're already finding the large experience of illegal

suites: people who are living more than one family to a

one-family apartment, people who are moving into basement

suites which are not legal and that aren't properly built.

We're finding already reductions in services. We're finding

areas where maintenance is not being done on the buildings,

where perhaps the elevator is not working and they just put it

off a little bit longer.

Interjections.

Mr. Morrison: Could I referee?

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Would the Hon. Member address the

Chair, please?

Mr. Morrison : That was a rather interesting interchange.

(Laughter.)

We're also finding that in many of the apartments the

live-in caretakers are now moving out and their apartments are

being rented. As a result the

[ Page 4626 ]

maintenance and the daily care of those apartments are not

being done as they had been.

We're also finding people in large suites whose needs have

changed. Perhaps their family has gone off to school or married

and left, but because they happen to be living in rental

accommodation where the rents are frozen and they are unable to

find smaller accommodation which would suit them, they are

staying in large suites where you perhaps have only one

individual where a family should be living. But obviously they

don't intend to move, and you can hardly blame them.

We're also finding the problem where people are afraid to

move to follow a job, because if they follow that job they

can't find accommodation at a price they can afford to pay. So

not only are they locked into the accommodation in this area,

but in many cases they're perhaps locked into an unsatisfactory

job, and when given the opportunity for an advancement, they

must turn that opportunity down.

We're also finding that we're having long waiting lists. As

a matter of fact, I suppose the day will come when you'll put

your child's name down when he's born on the theory that by the

time he's old enough to need accommodation he will have moved

far enough up on the waiting list to get it.

In this City of Victoria, which has twice the national

average of people over 60, we also have a high percentage of

those people who have been prudent over the years, who have

saved their money and have invested it for their old age. They

are receiving monthly incomes and watching those incomes buying

less and less and less. They thought those incomes were going

to be adequate. They had planned for their future, they

thought, prudently. But all of a sudden they're finding that

they are unable to look after themselves. What they thought

would be a happy future is dissolving into one of hardship.

Their rents are taking a higher percentage of their monthly

fixed income each year and they are concerned that this

legislation simply allows a regular annual increase of a rent

factor, but does not give them anywhere to where they might

move.

I believe that the solution to this problem is to build and

to build more and to encourage people to build more. But this

legislation certainly does not give them any encouragement to

build. If we had a surplus of accommodation, people would then

have the right to choose to live where they wanted to and to

live in an accommodation that suited them at a price they were

able to pay.

Rent control has been a proven failure; even the Law Reform Commission has

told the government that it's a failure. Even the rentalsman knows that it's

a failure. It's unfair to ask one segment of society to subsidize another only

by the happy accident that they happen to be owners of rental accommodation

at that point. And it's unfair for those people who are living in rental accommodation

to ask someone else to subsidize them.

We are now forcing people to be locked in, locked in for

indefinite periods, and people who are in rental accommodation

are unable to move. I believe that in British Columbia we have

the greatest opportunity to build new rental accommodation, but

these types of regulations certainly will not help. It is my

understanding that since this regulation came in about 7,000

proposed rental suites have been cancelled due to rent control.

Now it's true that some of those suites will perhaps be built,

and will be built and sold as condominiums, but they will not

come on the daily rental market.

I believe that this is unfortunate legislation, that it is

shortsighted, does not solve the problems, does not encourage

people to build, locks tenants into accommodation which is

unsuitable and is a very, very poor method of trying to solve

an extremely difficult problem.

Mr. F.X. Richter (Boundary-Similkameen): Mr. Speaker, in

speaking in this debate, I think that one fundamental point which had

to be made, and which has been one of the impelling forces that has

forced rental rates up is the fact of supply and demand. If we had a

sufficient supply of housing accommodation, we could fill the demand

and we wouldn't have the situation we are faced with today in having so

many people requiring houses. People have virtually got themselves into

a bidding operation to acquire this accommodation.

I was interested in what the Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr.

Nicolson) had to say the other day, which really amounted to

just a lot of scuttlebutt, as far as the Kiwanis Village in

Oliver is concerned. I am not downgrading that operation at

all, but certainly he can't take any credit for it. On a

previous occasion it was the former government which brought

about assistance for the first phase of their accommodation

there. He mentioned one of my relatives and so on. It wasn't

the fact that he was there for the opening; the main thing was

the assistance it took to get it started and brought to

fruition, not the fact that the opening was the big political

ceremony which he thought it would have for him. I actually got

more accolades out of the fact that I got the assistance from

government to get it started.

The same could apply, too, to the Penticton Senior Citizens

Home. Unfortunately, I was travelling on a select standing

committee at that time and was not in the area as much as I

would liked to have been. But I followed the progress of both

these operations in