2005 Legislative Session: First Session, 38th 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)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2005

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 3, Number 2

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Page

Introductions by Members

Statements (Standing Order 25 B )

Surrey business awards

D. Hayer

Watershed conservation in Coquitlam

area

D. Thorne

Trade relations with China

R. Lee

Youth programs in Newton

H. Bains

Seniors services in North Shore

K. Whittred

Port of Prince Rupert

G. Coons

Oral Questions

Alcan power production in Kitimat

R. Austin

Hon. R.

Neufeld

C. Evans

B.C. Hydro power sales to U.S.

C. Evans

Hon. R.

Neufeld

Hiring of Gary Cowan for fast-track

program

H. Lali

Hon. M. de

Jong

B. Ralston

Ownership of shipping terminal on

Ridley Island

G. Coons

Hon. K. Falcon

Government support for forest industry

B. Simpson

Hon. R.

Coleman

Future of Port Alice pulp mill

C. Trevena

Hon. M. de

Jong

Closing of private rail crossings

D. Chudnovsky

Hon. K. Falcon

Second Reading of Bills

Civil Forfeiture Act (Bill 13)

(continued)

R. Fleming

D. Hayer

R. Hawes

H. Lali

Hon. R.

Coleman

R. Austin

I. Black

M. Farnworth

Proceedings in the Douglas Fir Room

Committee of Supply

Estimates: Ministry of Agriculture and

Lands (continued)

G. Gentner

Hon. P. Bell

R. Chouhan

S. Simpson

G. Robertson

B. Ralston

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2005

The House met at 2:03 p.m.

Introductions by Members

C. Trevena: The North Island is a truly wonderful place, and I'd like to introduce a guest from the North Island: Kelly Carson. She is a councillor in the town of Port McNeill. I hope the House would make her welcome.

R. Hawes: In the gallery today is the mayor of Maple Ridge, Kathy Morse, here to talk about a number of issues with various ministers. Could the House please make her welcome.

K. Conroy: I think it is my week to introduce guests, and it probably won't happen again for a long time.

I'd like to introduce my sister and my niece from Whistler, Sana and Amanda Marsh; my granddaughter, Dera, who I hope maintains for an hour up in the gallery; and a friend of my son who is here from Calgary, Wayne Anderson. I would also like to point out that our son, Ben Conroy, is in the gallery again today and has been in the gallery every day at two o'clock for the past week and has thoroughly enjoyed the process.

I'd ask you to all join me in welcoming my guests.

[1405]

R. Austin: It gives me pleasure to introduce six people who are visiting from my constituency. Specifically, they are coming here from Kitimat.

I'd like to introduce Ray Brady and his wife Ruth. Ray Brady is formerly the mayor of Kitimat. We also have Gaetan Pazsgay, a community activist who has lived in Kitimat for 48 years. As well, there is Steve Saunders, a CAW member who works at Alcan; and finally, two business people: Lloyd Hubbard, a retired business person from Kitimat, and Tony Deni, who currently runs a business there. I'd like the House to make them welcome.

Hon. B. Penner: It's my honour to recognize and welcome to the Legislature a conservation officer who has been awarded a conservation officer of the year award. I had the pleasure of having lunch with both Jeff Ginter and his wife Brenda Ginter here from Dawson Creek, British Columbia. Would the House please make them welcome.

Statements

(Standing Order 25

B) SURREY BUSINESS AWARDS

D. Hayer: Teamwork creates strong business, and last night I saw how successful that is. I attended the annual Business Excellence Awards held by Surrey Chamber of Commerce in Surrey-Tynehead. Many businesses were nominated, and to achieve that status means they were all winners. Without teamwork, without everyone working together, none of those businesses would have made the honour roll list. In addition to being successful, these businesses and awards also celebrate the diversity of Surrey. In the '90s I served on the board of directors of the Surrey Chamber of Commerce for many years, and as president. I know how important that diversity is to their success.

With that, I would like to name the 2005 award winners for the small business segment: Sigma Logic Inc. and Vicki Singh. Runners-up were Ranger Wheelchairs/Access Mobility and That's My Ball. For medium-sized business: Canada Washworld and Anand Kishore. Runners-up were Black Bond Books and Fruiticana.

For large business: Morgan Creek Golf Course and Ron Good. Runners-up were Home Depot North Surrey and Pivotal Partners. Student entrepreneur of the year: SRS Packaging and Sendip Gill. Runners-up were Abbey's Accessories and popYOUlarity.com. Not-for-profit business of the year: Surrey Food Bank and Robin Campbell. Runners-up were Surrey Firefighters Charity Society and Surrey Crime Prevention Society. New business of the year: Les Grand Dames Consignment Boutique and Ramona McNeil. Runners-up were In the Company of Friends and KickStart Communications Inc. Business person of the year: Tony Singh of Fruiticana.

Runners-up were Larry Hamblin of PCS Wireless Communications and Rue Bains of Indo-Canadian Times International Inc.

I would ask everyone in the House to join me in congratulating these business success stories.

WATERSHED CONSERVATION

IN COQUITLAM AREA

D. Thorne: Today I'd like to tell the House about the Como Watershed Group, which is an environmental protection group in my riding committed to the conservation of the Como Creek watershed. This is a very congested watershed including central Coquitlam, the south slopes of Maillardville, the Fraser Mills area and portions of the highly developed Lougheed Highway and Freeway 401.

Originally founded to work with the city of Coquitlam to provide stewardship to Como Lake, which is a renowned urban fishing and recreational area in the lower mainland, this group has quickly expanded to over 80 active volunteers involved in many collaborative activities, which include watershed restoration, environmental education, water quality monitoring and last but not least — what I'd really like to talk about today — providing valuable input into the land use planning processes in the Coquitlam area.

Because the CWG members have a diverse array of skills and expertise, they're currently providing a credible resource to the city of Coquitlam and to our community. Recently, they've been working with the Beattie group. I'm sure we're all familiar with them. They have a new development proposal. The old Fraser mill site in Maillardville. It's a large and exciting

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development proposal on an area of 83 acres with one kilometre of waterfront on the Fraser River — a proposal that will be a mix of residential, commercial, light industrial and community use.

[1410]

CWG and Beattie are proving that the consultative process can work if it is genuine — if it starts soon enough and if it is actually more than just notification to the community after the fact. Because of their ongoing working relationship, this environmental society is supporting Beattie's proposal and calling it a smart growth development. Many hurdles have been eliminated for all concerned. Hopefully, this is an excellent example which they have created and which will be followed in many communities.

TRADE RELATIONS WITH CHINA

R. Lee: I would like to pay tribute today to a great and growing partnership between our province and the people of China. Over the next five days B.C. will host a delegation from Guangdong province.

Led by Governor Huang Huahua, nearly 600 major leaders of government and representatives of enterprises will visit Vancouver and Victoria. While in B.C. the delegation will meet with representatives from our new Asia-Pacific trade council, a key component of the Asia-Pacific gateway strategy announced in February's Speech from the Throne.

Their visit will culminate on Monday in Vancouver with a Hong Kong–Guangdong business forum hosted by Governor Huang and Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang. More than 1,000 political and corporate leaders will participate in this forum to strengthen economic and trade cooperation between our two regions. Last year two-way trade between Canada and the Hong Kong–Guangdong region amounted to $9 billion.

B.C.'s links to Hong Kong and Guangdong are deep. Many British Columbians were born there, and have brought their skills and vibrant culture with them to our province.

In fact, this year marks the tenth anniversary of B.C. and Guangdong being officially twinned as sister provinces. Since 1985 Vancouver has served as the sister city to Guangzhou, Guangdong's capital city.

It is vital that we continue to foster strong ties and friendship with all our Asia-Pacific partners. As our province continues to grow, we need to build on our relationships with the world's emerging economies, including Guangdong, to promote British Columbia's goods and services and keep our economy moving forward.

Please join me in welcoming our friends from Guangdong and Hong Kong to Canada's gateway to the Asia-Pacific and offering our best wishes as our harmony continues to blossom.

YOUTH PROGRAMS IN NEWTON

H. Bains: Last Saturday I had the opportunity — along with the Attorney General, the member from Tynehead and many other community leaders — to attend the first invitational tournament and community launch, a program targeted to help youth.

The community in and around the Tamanawis high school area of Newton became aware that there were a high number of complaints of youth loitering, underage drinking, youth violence, vandalism, etc., in their community during the weekend hours. On most given weekends, community citizens would see youth engaging in high-risk behaviour and knew that something had to be done.

Three community agencies — Surrey school board Safe Schools program, Surrey RCMP and South-Asian Frontline Education program — came together to create a response to these community issues. This partnership resulted in the creation of the Newton Youth Hoops program. This recreation-based program runs from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. each Saturday evening at Tamanawis high school and is open to youth from all Surrey areas.

The purpose of this preventative program is to provide meaningful interaction between youth and community leaders, including Surrey RCMP youth-target team members, so as to foster positive relationships among community members. The program has over 25 volunteers, each certified in non-violent crisis intervention and first aid, who support the program. The community volunteers range from doctors to teachers to students and to date have volunteered over 1,100 hours to the program. The program was launched April 8, 2005, and has seen close to 1,300 youth participate in six short months.

This was an event put on to introduce this program into the community. Anyone could have come and seen what Newtonites are all about and had a fun night out in the community watching the youth participate in the program, which included a basketball tournament and skills competition followed by awards and dinner. Please join me in thanking those volunteers for coming up with such a creative program.

SENIORS SERVICES IN NORTH SHORE

K. Whittred: Today I rise to pay tribute to the Lionsview Seniors Planning Society, which is a strong voice for the seniors community of the North Shore. They work hard to promote ongoing planning of health, social and other activities that affect the quality of life of our seniors. They believe that individuals have the desire to live independently and to be responsible for their own health.

[1415]

I met recently with representatives of Lionsview about their most recent project, a study on North Shore seniors housing needs. Together with municipalities and the health region, they surveyed 421 seniors on the North Shore.

The survey found that seniors want to remain in their homes for as long as possible and really only want to move for either health or financial reasons. However, it did find that if they have to leave the longtime family home for any reason, seniors want housing that allows them to live independently. They also want

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housing that's adaptable to changing health needs as we age. Access to public transportation was extremely important, as was proximity to stores and services. They want to stay in their same general community, and most of all, they want to be able to keep their pets.

Concerns were raised about affordability. With increasing rental costs on the North Shore, more and more seniors are facing financial hardship. I was pleased to be able to report to the group the recent expansion of the SAFER program. Of the 7,200 more seniors who will become eligible for the grant, many will be from North Vancouver. I want to thank the Lionsview Seniors Planning Society for the many hours of volunteer work they contribute to the community and for the important work they do.

PORT OF PRINCE RUPERT

G. Coons: At this time I would like to bring to the assembly's attention a great vision that is unfolding in my home community of Prince Rupert and throughout the region. The northwest coast has nurtured the human spirit for thousands of years. The vastness of the land and the immensity of the sea have generously supported the Tsimshian Nation for over 10,000 years. Their traditional territory stretches south to the Kitasoo, north to the mouth of the Nass and up the Skeena just east of Terrace.

Prince Rupert's strategic location has always made it a vital, traditional trade link. Today the significance of this route cannot be overestimated, as the port of Prince Rupert — the new world port and a world-class container gateway — unfolds before our very eyes. The city of Prince Rupert and the whole northwest trade corridor will accrue the benefits that will stimulate a diverse economy.

Ensuring that the north becomes a major opportunity gateway for transpacific trade, investment in tourism was an effort that has crossed all political lines. I would like to express my gratitude on behalf of all the constituents in the North Coast for the hard work and dedication of all the federal and provincial government staff, all the MLAs and MPs who struggled diligently to make this happen.

However, our region is not yet out of the woods as far as economic prosperity. There are still many months or years before we reap the benefits, but we are very optimistic about the future. I must give special kudos to port president and CEO Don Krusel and all the port staff who toiled endlessly to make this dream a reality.

Mr. Speaker: I might commend the members from both sides for sticking to the way two-minute statements are supposed to be.

Oral Questions

ALCAN POWER PRODUCTION IN KITIMAT

R. Austin: For over four years people from Kitimat have attempted to meet with this government to express their fears over the use of electricity generated from the Kemano power plant. I'd like to ask the Deputy Premier: what has this government done to ensure that the people of Kitimat benefit from the water resources that should be powering the Alcan smelter?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Yes, there have been a lot of discussions in regards to Alcan's generation of electricity. It is this government's opinion, by recommendations from the Attorney General's ministry, that Alcan is living up to its agreements from the 1950s and the mid-1990s in how they handle the power that's generated at that site.

[1420]

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

R. Austin: Three weeks ago here the minister said that this was before the courts. I'd like to point out that the district of Kitimat is not suing the provincial government, which is why I asked what this government was doing to help the people in my riding.

My question, again to the Deputy Premier, is: what is her government doing to ensure that the people of Kitimat benefit from the local water resource?

Hon. R. Neufeld: This government continues to work with every community, regardless of where it's at in the province of British Columbia, to make sure that communities benefit from the resources that happen in their area.

We work with Alcan on as constant a basis as the government can to encourage them to actually upgrade, to build new plants in Kitimat that will employ people in Kitimat, to keep Kitimat going. We have worked with a project that was just announced for Kitimat, which will see a lot of jobs created, and that's the Enbridge proposal, if in fact it goes through.

There's also an LNG plant proposed for Kitimat, which this government works on, that the Ministry of Economic Development and my ministry work on.

Yes, we have done a marvellous job of working with every community in this province. It actually shows up in unemployment stats, which have never been lower — never been lower — in the province of British Columbia than they are today.

Mr. Speaker: Member, there are only a few people who get further supplementals. Do you want to move on to the next question? Have you got another question?

R. Austin: Yes, I do.

There is a serious disagreement between the people of Kitimat and their principal employer in the community. It involves the use of a public water resource. The government is sitting on the sidelines as though it is an observer. Will this government commit to standing up for the local community and all British Columbians by ensuring that Alcan uses the incredible water resource to generate jobs rather than making windfall profits?

Hon. R. Neufeld: We continue to work with the community of Kitimat, as we always have, to make

[ Page 1014 ]

sure that Kitimat remains a resourceful, bubbling community that provides all kinds of jobs for the people that live there. We will continue to do that.

Looking forward to the future, to the things that are happening in Kitimat, whether it's Alcan talking about actually rebuilding a plant, whether it's a pipeline that would terminate there, whether it's a condensate line that would start there and go east, an LNG port….

There are all kinds of positive things happening in the area called Kitimat in British Columbia, as there are in a whole bunch of other parts of the province. But I would draw that member to think back just a short time ago to a member of a party that for ten years didn't do anything, and in fact rewrote agreements that actually put some more difficult things in place for the community of Kitimat. He should read history.

C. Evans: That obfuscation went on almost long enough to be a filibuster.

Okay, let's get past all the sort of "aren't we groovy, trying to help people out." This is a real simple one to the Minister of Energy. Is Alcan Aluminium Ltd. an aluminum producer that has a water licence to produce power at Kemano, which is appurtenant to their smelter at Kitimat? Or, as some suspect, is Alcan now registered as an independent power producer in British Columbia with a water licence to produce electricity appurtenant to nowhere?

[1425]

Hon. R. Neufeld: Leave it up to the member for Nelson-Creston to try and take something that was signed in the 1950s, which had numerous interventions by the previous government during the 1990s — remarkable interventions by the NDP, some commitments that they never kept up to — and he wants me to speak to something that's before the courts in this House.

I can tell you that what we're doing for Kitimat and what we do for every community, unlike the last administration, is actually work with those communities to create employment.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Continue.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Anywhere across the province you can have a look. The stats are there — the lowest unemployment rate ever, since the 1980s, in British Columbia; the highest investment rates of any time in this province's history.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Hon. R. Neufeld: The highest rate of small business, regardless of what stat you want to use.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. R. Neufeld: It's great. More good news, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

C. Evans: That minister is absolutely right. The deal was signed in 1949. It was signed by Liberals and Conservatives. It was then defended by Social Crediters. It was then defended by New Democrats. This government is the first ever to sit on that side of the House that said this multinational aluminum company can abandon the people of Kitimat and sell the power in the United States — the first one.

B.C. HYDRO POWER SALES TO U.S.

C. Evans: Okay, I'm going to ask this really gently here because….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Put your question, member.

C. Evans: It's a really simple question. Is B.C. Hydro or Powerex selling now or negotiating to sell power generated at Kemano for the production of aluminum at Kitimat to the United States aluminum producers to ship back into the world market to compete with the workers at Kitimat?

Hon. R. Neufeld: Absolutely interesting question.

First off, the member should check. We're a net….

[Applause.]

Thank you. Give me a little more.

British Columbia is a net importer of electricity today and has been about six out of the last ten years, simply because that government never built one plant in British Columbia. In fact, you know where they went to build the plants? It was in Pakistan — in Pakistan.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members. Listen. Listen. If you want question period to continue, we're going to have some order.

The minister continues.

Hon. R. Neufeld: Do we trade electricity with the U.S.? You're darn right we do. We have always done that, and that makes an average of about $150 million a year for the Crown corporation called B.C. Hydro to actually keep rates low in the province.

It was that government…. He was part of that government that actually sold electricity to plants south of the border — aluminum plants, by the way — at an industrial rate of about two cents while he charged companies in British Columbia twice as much. In fact, it absolutely amazes me that that member would ask that kind of a question.

[ Page 1015 ]

HIRING OF GARY COWAN

FOR FAST-TRACK PROGRAM

H. Lali: Will the Deputy Premier please stand up and enlighten this House and tell us if the Premier's fast-track guru for economic development projects, Mr. Gary Cowan, was fired?

Hon. M. de Jong: I know the matter was canvassed in estimates just within the last 24 or 48 hours. I'll take the question on notice.

Mr. Speaker: Member, you don't get a supplemental. Is this a new question? Member, is it a new question?

[1430]

H. Lali: I'd like to again ask the Deputy Premier if she maybe can give an answer to this one. For the price of $180,000 per year plus benefits, will the Deputy Premier please inform this House how many projects were successfully fast-tracked by Liberal insider Mr. Gary Cowan, and what did Mr. Cowan produce for this kind of sweetheart deal?

Hon. M. de Jong: Again, I know the member canvassed the issue extensively. I'll take the question on notice.

B. Ralston: Let me just briefly review this matter. The government hired Mr. Cowan on a contract. He was fired — we just learned that momentarily — after seven months. He was paid $180,000 for those seven months of service, plus benefits for two years. Plus, he received $75,000 in severance. He completed zero projects — money for nothing, and more money for nothing in $75,000 worth of severance.

Can the Deputy Premier please advise the House when her government started providing severance for failed contract work?

Hon. M. de Jong: I know that the hon. member asks the question because he wants specific, reliable and detailed information. I've tried to communicate to him and other members, through the earlier round of questions, that we're happy to provide that and will take the question on notice.

Mr. Speaker: Member for Surrey-Whalley, do you have…?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Do you have a new question?

B. Ralston: Yes. Well, subject to your ruling, I believe it's a new question.

On his first day in office the Premier hired the president of the B.C. Liberal Party, Andrew Wilkinson, as a deputy minister. In 2003 the Premier moved the same Andrew Wilkinson to the Economic Development Ministry, and he was the deputy who signed Mr. Cowan's contract.

Will the Deputy Premier simply admit that this contract was a sweetheart deal for a B.C. Liberal friend and insider?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: The member needs to turn the page and go to what's called plan B when something isn't actually working out the way he wants it to.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. M. de Jong: That's difficult to do if the page is blank, but nonetheless, Mr. Speaker….

Look, I don't think the member accomplishes anything by denigrating the reputations and names of people who come to the public service and decide that they want to work for the people of British Columbia. Now, he may think it serves some useful purpose to speak of those people in a way that besmirches their reputations, reputations earned over a long period of time — people who decide to come here and put their talents to work for the British Columbia people — but I think it's shameful.

I've said to the member that if there's information he wants, we're happy to provide it. But he should think twice before he comes into this chamber and starts besmirching the reputations of talented British Columbians that want to work for the province of B.C.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

OWNERSHIP OF SHIPPING TERMINAL

ON RIDLEY ISLAND

G. Coons: I have a question for the Minister of Transportation. There is a major controversy brewing in my riding, in Prince Rupert. I've had numerous constituent inquiries regarding Ridley terminal, the $250 million state-of-the-art bulk-handling facility.

The Premier, at a joint British Columbia–Alberta cabinet meeting, indicated that he wanted to ensure Ridley is available for everyone. Can the Minister of Transportation please explain why this government has backed away from a plan that would have kept Ridley terminal in public hands?

[1435]

Hon. K. Falcon: Actually, the member should know that while it was in public hands with the federal government, it consistently lost tens of millions of dollars. One of the things I would think that member would

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like to see, as we certainly would on this side of the House, is to actually have an operator with private sector investment ensuring there's fair and open access for all the folks and the businesses that would utilize Ridley terminal. That's exactly what we have been representing to the federal government, and that's exactly the outcome we would like to see.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

G. Coons: Thank you for the answer. It's interesting. In April — just before the last provincial election, may I add — this province approached the federal government about taking over Ridley terminal. Since then you've backed away from open access, leaving it exposed for one company — an out-of-province company — to control access to this facility. This will have a significant impact on the global competitiveness on B.C. companies.

Can the minister please tell us if this was just another broken election promise or if there is some other reason you didn't keep this commitment?

Hon. K. Falcon: Actually, the member has his facts wrong again, which shouldn't be altogether surprising. The fact of the matter is that the federal government was in the process of engaging in a bidding process. We're well down the road with a potential purchaser, which the member indicated. Our government was concerned. We wanted to make sure there's fair and open access to all users of Ridley terminal. We let the federal government know that we wanted to put a freeze in place on the process that they were engaging upon so that we could have an opportunity to examine what options are available to protect the interests of shippers in British Columbia. We did exactly that.

We have a commitment out of the federal government that whoever ends up operating Ridley terminals, it will be on the basis of fair and equal and open access for all users in British Columbia. That's exactly the right thing to do.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

FOR FOREST INDUSTRY

B. Simpson: The Minister of Forests and Range has made it perfectly clear that he doesn't like us to use the word "crisis" with respect to the forest industry. Well, there are many voices that are calling the situation in our forest industry just that.

The Truck Loggers Association is calling it a crisis. The Coast Forest Products Association is calling it a crisis. Even the CIBC called it a crisis in the briefing that the minister was given just last week. This week senior leaders in the forest industry have referred to the situation as "the perfect storm." When will the Minister of Forests and Range admit that we have a crisis on our hands?

Hon. R. Coleman: That's not what CIBC told me. CIBC said that the next one to three years are going to be some of the most difficult years in the North American forest industry unless jurisdictions adjust and industries adjust to build long-term sustainability in their business. That includes governments.

I have launched a review, frankly, with the Coast Forest Products Association. All the people that the member has spoken to I have asked for submissions on what they think the fix is on the coast and what they think some of the fixes are in the interior. I've undertaken to move quickly on those fixes to see if they can be done sustainably for the people of British Columbia and for the companies involved. At the same time as we're doing that, we're working on a long-term strategic plan for forestry — period.

I think it's important. I'm not going to say that the forest industry doesn't have its challenges today. The member knows very well, as well as I do, that it does. I also believe that if we think outside the box, take the time to listen to our producers and the organizations affected by forestry and sit down with our officials and work out a long-term sustainable plan, we can get ahead of this thing.

That's one thing CIBC World Markets told me. B.C. was better positioned to react to this situation in North America than any other jurisdiction in Canada, because it was already ahead of a curve on the changes it had made.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

[1440]

B. Simpson: I would like to correct the minister on what the CIBC actually said. It did say it was a crisis. It did say that if there was reasonable intervention, things could be turned around. But it also said that the intervention had to be timely and immediate. It also said that there is one portion of the B.C. industry that did show some positives, and that was only the interior. The coast industry was not in that comment by CIBC.

This government, for example, has chosen to address the mountain pine beetle epidemic by lifting the allowable cut throughout the interior. That's what is driving the interior industry. However, that has created a chip oversupply, which has now reached crisis proportions, and independent sawmillers in the interior are now struggling with that. We will see mill closures and job losses.

Will the Minister of Forests and Range tell us what he is going to do now — not a plan, now — to intervene with that chip oversupply crisis?

Hon. R. Coleman: As the member knows, the chip issue is to deal with the pulp side of the industry and not just the sawmilling side. It is basically the waste material that comes out of the sawmills and has been going into pulp mills across British Columbia over the last number of years.

The member will also know, and I'm sure he does, that there is a pulp problem worldwide right now. There is a depression in the marketplace. Therefore, we have a situation where pulp mills that are cutting fibre

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are only saying, "We want to take our own sawdust and chips," because frankly, they're at capacity.

What we have seen is a reduction in capacity, and the reason is because pulp right now is at a significant situation. We have a Competition Council looking at that. Former Premier of British Columbia Dan Miller is one of the people working on that. I spoke to Dan at the UBCM convention. I have asked him to accelerate their recommendations on pulp to me. I haven't received them yet. As soon as I do, I will be sitting down with that group to work on solutions.

FUTURE OF PORT ALICE PULP MILL

C. Trevena: Yesterday the Minister for Economic Development said of the Port Alice Specialty Cellulose mill: "We recognize the value of an operating mill to the people of Port Alice and all British Columbians." The minister also said that he is now willing to consider the environmental remediation suggested by the proposed buyer once his business plan is approved.

Given the government's recognition, albeit late, of the value of the Port Alice mill to the B.C. economy, I'd like to ask the Deputy Premier whether she will assure this House and the people of Port Alice that the review of the business plan is the final stage in this year-long saga.

Hon. M. de Jong: There was a very poignant moment at the UBCM about three weeks ago, when an individual stood up in the midst of a larger forum where people were exchanging ideas — civic leaders, provincial ministers and MLAs. That individual said to the crowd that he wanted to thank, personally, the work of the Minister of Economic Development and the government of British Columbia. From anyone else, that might have been nice but somewhat less significant. It was from the mayor of Port Alice.

So I do want to assure the member and, through her, her constituents, particularly the people of Port Alice, that the minister and the government are doing everything humanly possible to ensure that there is a satisfactory resolution. She is right. The government takes very seriously our broader duty to ensure that the plan being presented by the proponent is a sound one.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental?

C. Trevena: I do, Mr. Speaker.

The mayor did recognize the minister, but the work started extraordinarily late. It started this summer. The people of Port Alice have waited a year. They are now desperate. There is no government subsidy involved in this deal. So what I would like is for the Deputy Premier to tell the people of Port Alice and to tell this House whether the government will commit to the reopening of the Port Alice Specialty Cellulose mill.

[1445]

Hon. M. de Jong: It's a curious question. With due respect, what do you think we're doing? We have been working as a government, and this pre-dates even the time period that the member is speaking of. I hope she hasn't forgotten that there was another proponent involved that came into town and then ran away from town, leaving a lot of people in the lurch. We actually do take seriously the obligation of government to ensure that we do everything possible.

The member has been reluctant — and I think I know why — to explain that she apparently has a different set of standards about when environmental liabilities should be forgiven and when they shouldn't. I'm always interested to hear her views on that. But rest assured that the government and the minister are doing everything humanly possible to ensure that this proponent has every opportunity to work with the community, to work with government and to see that mill operate again.

CLOSING OF PRIVATE RAIL CROSSINGS

D. Chudnovsky: On September 13 the Minister of Transportation was asked in this House to explain why hundreds of British Columbians received threatening letters from CN demanding that they pay for the maintenance, operating and administrative expenses for private level crossings. The minister claimed: "Nothing has changed." That came as a complete surprise to people like 77-year-old widow Jean Davis. She told the Quesnel Observer : "We have never paid for the crossing before."

Can the minister explain why the government failed to consult with landowners like Jean Davis about the financial impact the B.C. Rail privatization would have on them, and why he claimed nothing has changed?

Hon. K. Falcon: Actually, something has changed. What has changed is that under the previous government in the operation of B.C. Rail, what would happen — and what has always been the practice of B.C. Rail and other railways — is that when they improved railroad crossings, those costs have always been historically passed along to the landowners, whether it's local government or individuals such as the lady that the member mentioned.

The difference is that because of political interference, those bills are often either not sent, not collected or not paid. As a result, not surprisingly, taxpayers had to write off over a billion dollars as a result of the kind of mismanagement they imposed on B.C. Rail.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. K. Falcon: Today we have a situation where we have a private sector company leasing the railway from us, the operation of the railway, investing hundreds of millions of private sector dollars at no risk to the taxpayer for lower rates and better service.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

[ Page 1018 ]

It goes on to say: "In the event of evidence of pollution or contamination, the burden shall be with the applicant — the person on whose land the crossing lies — to prove that the pollution or contamination was not a result of this agreement or anything done in relation thereto."

Was the minister aware that CN would demand that citizens give up their right to be presumed innocent in the case of an accident on their land and bear the burden of proof for contamination and pollution?

Hon. K. Falcon: Actually, I do know that CN was requiring that the owners had sufficient insurance in place, liability insurance in particular, to ensure that they are protected as well as CN is protected from eventualities such as the kind the member mentions. But one thing I will say that possibly the member and I are in agreement with is that I felt that the tone of the letter was totally unacceptable.

I felt that the way in which the letter was written was totally unacceptable, and my understanding is that CN is now working with all of the folks that it sent those letters to, and is making some changes to reflect the fact that they can actually operate in a more cooperative manner with British Columbians. My understanding is that they are and they will.

[1450]

[End of question period.]

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 13 and in Committee A, continued estimates debate, for the information of members, on the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

Second Reading of Bills

CIVIL FORFEITURE ACT

(continued)

R. Fleming: It's a pleasure for me to be able to speak to Bill 13 today and express my cursory thoughts on that legislation and maybe outline some reasons why I support the bill that the Solicitor General is bringing forward but also to express some reservations which I think this opportunity for debate is about.

In looking at other jurisdictions that have adopted similar-style legislation, as the intent of this bill is, it's an evolving process. There are amendments, subsequently, that undoubtedly are going to be required. What we try and do best here is make sure we get as much of it right the first time and that the legislation can be saved from any potential flaws that there may be in the drafting.

Let me speak to some of the elements and the principles within the bill that the opposition supports, which I support. First of all, the intent, very clearly…. To say this bill is timely might be understating the matter. I think it is something that is perhaps best described as overdue.

When one looks at the influence and growth of organized crime not just in British Columbia but across this continent, looks at the range of criminal activities that organized crime and gangs are now involved in…. They have expanded out of many of the core activities that they were notoriously involved in to take on many other types of narcotics, many other types of money-laundering activities, racketeering, extortion, etc. — violent crimes, highly profitable crimes, crimes that are costing the taxpayer and society in terms of the repercussions that are felt by ordinary people and by taxpayers and business people, communities and police forces in our municipalities.

[1455]

It is high time, in other words, that our government, our province, had legislation that went to the heart of the matter of organized crime and tried to disrupt their activities because many prosecutions have been unsuccessful to date not just in this province but elsewhere. So we need new tools to combat the threat of organized crime in our province. I believe this bill will give us some measure of assisting in that disruption of organized criminal activity.

I think another element that is undoubtedly supportable by both sides of the House is that Bill 13 lays out remedies. It lays out a system where victims can be compensated for their losses, for the negative effects of unlawful activities in their community and on them personally. That is the second important goal outlined in Bill 13, which this side of the House unhesitatingly sympathizes with and supports in terms of the intent of this legislation.

But in reading this bill, there still are obviously some areas of concern, and those are areas we believe should be addressed by the government. Some questions I have, in terms of not having the background available to us — although the minister may have, because he's much closer to it than other members of this House — are on the actual track record of this legislation in other jurisdictions.

I recognize that Bill 13 is basically copycat legislation from Manitoba, Ontario and other places. But what I would like to know is whether there has been a full and comprehensive review by this government, a study of similar laws in other jurisdictions. I'm sure there has. It would not be very responsible to proceed without one. In that discussion, I'm sure that what is of most interest to members of this House would be a

summary of what the effects of those laws have been. They're new bills, by and large. But it would be of great value to all members if we perhaps had some informa-

[ Page 1019 ]

tion available to us on how this type of legislation has impacted the public and the justice system. Has it delivered on the improvements that form the premise and motivation behind the bill in the first place?

As I said, bills such as this are new. They're almost untested. In Canada the oldest is about two and a half or three years old. So it's going to take time to get legislation like this right. But I certainly do agree with the government that we must get started. On that there is no argument.

Secondarily, our concerns about this bill are with the substance of it, some of the implications of its provisions. Other members have talked about civil liberty arguments and have looked at some hypothetical situations that would be very difficult, where the bill might not work and might have unintended consequences that make victims out of suspects. I won't repeat those arguments. I think those are points well-made, and I've heard acknowledgments from members on the other side of the House that those concerns are valid. The member from West Vancouver was acknowledging that before we recessed earlier today.

The main criticism I'd like to advance is that the bill lacks specificity in the types of unlawful activity that it is targeting. I guess the question really is: should it not be first and foremost a priority to target the most serious criminal offences, including organized crime?

[1500]

I noticed even the name of the bill is somewhat indirect. I don't know if that's intentional or not, but it contrasts with Ontario's act, which has a different name than the civil bill that we're talking about here. I think they call theirs the Remedies for Organized Crime and Other Unlawful Activities Act.

Most importantly, I think — the members have talked of it before — our concerns are really around what this bill maybe doesn't do. Some of that is outside the purview of the legislation itself, but it forms the context for the debate we're having today. Those concerns about what this bill does not do primarily focus around things like crime prevention in the first place, protecting and compensating the victims of crime and, part and parcel of that, addressing the needs and concerns of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

I agree. I share the philosophy. As a former city councillor, I can tell you this. The government should be tough on crime. To tolerate it invites other problems, but I believe that governments — and I wish we could see it from this government — must be equally tough on the causes of crime.

To be tough on the causes of crime means that a government has to have a commitment to the well-being of society, that it must dedicate equal resources to make work pay, for example. I look at the record of this government in its previous mandate where they introduced a two-tier minimum wage a whole $2 an hour lower than the minimum wage. I'm sorry, but that doesn't do it. That is not making work pay.

There are many social causes of crime, and to be tough on crime — the actual crime that is taking place in society — one must be a very good steward of society and be equally tough on the causes of crime. Mr. Speaker, when you close the doors to a better life in society for a whole

section of the population, you open doors to a worse life for those people — sometimes an unlawful life, unfortunately, and that is the reality.

[S. Hawkins in the chair.]

Continuing on this path, what the bill does not change, unfortunately — and the budget was a better opportunity to do this than this legislation obviously — is the fact that this government has eliminated services for victims of crime. It's leaving innocent victims of crime to fend for themselves, in effect, and to heal themselves alone after they have survived criminal activity that has borne consequences on their lives. The government record also indicates an insensitivity — I think that's the best word for it — towards victims of crime.

[1505]

This government's actions are best highlighted by things like the dramatic cuts that we've seen to victims services, to families who have lost children or parents to a drunk driver, a violent offender or a sexual offender. They can no longer turn to a counsellor working alongside our provincial prosecutors to get help.

That's a sad fact. I think it speaks to the bill that we're talking about today. I think it speaks to the credibility of the government introducing it that they don't have a balanced approach when it comes to addressing both crime and the tools we need to successfully prosecute it but also to address the causes of crime in our society.

You know, grief-stricken relatives of people who have been murdered, wounded, are now…. It's up to them to find information on their own, to access the help of a professional, to bring calm to their families, to lean on anyone for support and comfort. That's up to the individual now. Government no longer provides that type of victim services, and that is a shame.

There are so many other important issues and problems that this bill doesn't even come close to addressing, which have been created by this government. British Columbians are currently struggling with dramatic funding and service cuts that have been made by the

[ Page 1020 ]

government, including cuts to the counselling funding that I spoke to — cuts to counselling funding for those even convicted of domestic violence, if you can believe that, cuts to funding for sexual assault centres. These are crimes taking place in our community. These are services that help victims of those crimes, and they have been cut relentlessly and deeply by this government.

Rape crisis counselling has been cut. Of course, who can forget that $40 million was removed from legal aid funding for ordinary British Columbians to access the justice system in this province?

So there's a list of problems now occurring in our justice system, many of which have been created by the government, that this bill doesn't even begin to address. It forms an important context that is the background to this bill.

I've had the chance to speak to some people in the law enforcement community who have studied this bill, some who were consulted by the government on this bill prior to its drafting. Of course, it had a previous iteration that never came to pass in the previous session of the Legislature.

I think it's important to be clear because there's been some expression of what people think the promise of this bill is, particularly from the other side of the House. It's important that we look at how this bill will function in practice. What a number of police officers told me is that people should be aware that Bill 13 — and any proceeding under it — is probably not going to happen unless a certain threshold of recovery can be met. It could be quite a high threshold. The cost of proceeding would probably be at a minimum $25,000 perhaps.

So there's a whole range of criminals and criminal activity there, parties that are identified as having property that could be sold and used to compensate victims, where that threshold would never possibly be high enough.

Let us not think, for example, that this bill will threaten petty criminals, though they may be organized in our community, because it won't. It will simply be uneconomical to pursue justice under the terms of this bill, to seek compensation. You will not, for example, probably ever see a landlord go after somebody who has rented their premises for a grow op to recover damages, given that the people who can be identified as tenants or parties to the lease are not likely going to be the big fish.

[1510]

That is for government to find another way to tackle, but it won't come through this bill. I think some members have been mistaken in thinking that perhaps it will.

Indeed, to get compensation through the processes of this bill, you're probably going to have to identify criminals with significant assets that can be disposed of. You're probably talking about real estate in the realm of highly organized criminal activity. Generally, these criminals are clever enough to structure their assets in such a way that will avoid action that is possible under this bill. I mean, that's just a fact.

That's not my opinion. That's the opinion of senior persons in the law enforcement community. It may hold some promise to get, if you will, less-organized criminal activity brought to bear. You may have some mid-level operators who can have their property disposed of so that a civil action would be successful under this bill and the compensation would flow to the victims. For that alone, the legislation is worth it.

But when you look at what is on British Columbians' minds when they think of crime in the province, it's generally the things that most immediately affect them in their communities, in their neighbourhoods, on their block — things like property crime; persistent nuisance crime; rising levels of violence, unfortunately, from the proliferation of drugs and addict activity in the communities.

That is the thing that unfortunately, makes some people live in fear, afraid to walk their own streets in the evenings. I know this is a concern in many communities across British Columbia, not just the lower mainland. It's important that we tackle that type of crime because it's the type that is most immediate and most frustrating for British Columbians in their daily lives.

I think we're going to have to focus very hard, and this side of the House is certainly willing to work with the government to find solutions to those types of crime. We will do that. We would be happy to work with the Solicitor General on finding solutions to that. I think we're, again, talking about those types of crime of most concern, those that have the closest ties to social problems that need to be addressed, the causes of crime.

Taking the profitability out of crime for organized criminals is a laudable goal, and it's something that this government should have acted on before now, quite frankly — back when Manitoba and Saskatchewan were enacting bills of this type, perhaps. There is no objection to that, because there certainly are a number of social implications that affect all of our quality of life that have to do with organized criminal activity in B.C.

We on this side of the House support the government on measures that will help address that, help attack the financial reward of crime that organized criminals thrive on and that gives them incentive for the heightened activities we're experiencing now in British Columbia.

I outlined some of the elements and principles within this bill that we support. Obviously, the targeting of organized crime is the main one. Depriving organized criminal participants of the gains of their unlawful activity is something we wholeheartedly support.

[1515]

We believe that victims should be compensated where possible, but again, most victims of crime will never be able to access the measures set out in this bill because they aren't victims of this type of organized criminal. They're victims of smaller players. The costs of accessing justice will be too high to ever make this bill useful to them in their lives.

[ Page 1021 ]

But as I've said, the fact that this will give a tool to our law enforcement community in British Columbia to go after some of the largest criminal players out there, possibly successfully…. Where they cannot make criminal charges stick in the courts, they can at least inflict some damage and disruption through this civil process. That alone is the reason why I certainly and, I believe, all members of the House will probably be supporting Bill 13. It speaks to the need of why we need to get started on having this type of legislative tool here and today.

D. Hayer: On behalf of my constituents, who have faced and are facing the threat of neighbourhood grow ops and meth labs, I wholeheartedly support Bill 13, the Civil Forfeiture Act. This bill, which allows the seizure of the profits from illegal activities, will be a significant tool in the war against illegal acts. This act will penalize those who commit such acts where it counts most: in the pocketbooks.

There seems to be little incentive for certain people to abide by the law. The penalties levied by the courts don't appear to be a great deterrent. Many of my constituents and people from Surrey agree with that statement. This act, however, will not be part of the justice process. It will be applied through the civil courts, and any penalties applied under Bill 13 will be in addition to any fines or sentences handed down. That double whammy of penalties will help take away the incentive of illegal acts, particularly in the area of grow ops and meth labs.

In many of the neighbourhoods of my riding of Surrey-Tynehead, grow ops are permanent. They have invaded all parts of my community at every level, and they are, as a matter of fact, in every city in Canada. We hear about them in the news almost daily.

This act will allow the seizure of expensive homes that are being used to grow and harvest marijuana. This act will cause people who do things beyond the law to think twice before setting up an operation. They will know that their investment in their homes, in their cars, their vehicles and other products of their illegal activities will be seized and will be forfeited.

I don't think we will ever stop some people from pursuing illegal activities, regardless of what we do, but if we can cramp their style and cut out some or all of the profits of their activities, it will be a major step in solving the growth of those operations.

The biggest concerns in neighbourhoods are the threat of fire from grow ops and meth labs and the safety concerns about the grow rips targeting the wrong home. We have heard many times about those issues in the daily news — home invasions and simply the threat of being next door to people who care nothing about the law or for the respect of others, other family members or the neighbours.

In addition, these illegal operations threaten the safety of our front-line safety personnel — our police officers, our firefighters and paramedics — when they respond to what, at first, may have appeared to be an innocent emergency call. We want to make sure we protect those there to serve us. When we are leaving, out of the dangers, they are going to those places to protect the innocent. They should not have to face the dangerous chemicals, electrical hazards or even firearms when they're responding to an emergency.

Because of that, I believe it is very necessary to enact this bill to ensure the safety of our first responders and to ensure the safety of our law-abiding families in their own neighbourhoods and all British Columbians.

[1520]

This bill is not a first. Four other provinces of Canada have similar laws in place. Many countries across the world are using it in the battle against illegal activities, and they have been successful. If there is one way to slow these lawless people, it is to take away the profit of the activities, and that is what this act is designed to do.

Therefore, I fully endorse and support the civil forfeiture of the proceeds of illegal activities. This act is going to help all British Columbians, all Canadians, and I urge every member of this House who respects the law, who respects our constituents, to stand up with me in supporting Bill 13.

I have held many forums in my constituency. We had one a few years back, when my good friend Chuck Cadman, a past Member of Parliament from Surrey North was alive. We had RCMP members there, and Surrey firefighters, school trustees, school counsellors, B.C. Hydro people and more than 500 of my constituents from Fraser Heights community. They were all talking about something like this. They said government had to move on it and look for the solutions.

There are many different ways to achieve this, and I think this is one of the tools the government has that can help ordinary British Columbians, law-abiding British Columbians, and at the same time take away the incentive that some of the people who don't obey the laws have to make illegal profits.

R. Hawes: It is, for me, quite a pleasure to stand up and speak to this bill. It's a bill that to me, has been a long time coming. We began talking about this quite some period of time ago under a former Solicitor General. When he first mentioned that he was looking at bringing in legislation like this, I can tell you I felt extremely excited about it.

I thought about the prospects. I thought about what has been going on in my community and in, I know, communities all over this province. I thought about the frustrations that people are having on a daily basis with what they see as a lack of justice in their cities and just an absolute lack of any kind of tool to stop what has been going on in their streets and neighbourhoods, affecting their families and their kids.

I thought about that legislation, and I thought, you know, if only we could get that through. It went out for some exposure. I spoke to dozens and dozens of people about this over the past number of months, and I've yet to meet someone who didn't think it was a wonderful idea. But I don't associate with those who are in illegal activities, really. I don't know people who are in the

[ Page 1022 ]

drug business or in other businesses that might perhaps feel the sting of this.

They probably don't like it, but certainly, the moms and pops I talked to absolutely loved this piece of legislation or the prospect that it might come. I want to congratulate both Solicitors General for the work they've done to bring this forward.

I've listened to some of the discourse from previous speakers. At least for the folks that I represent, I want to make absolutely clear the difference between criminal law and civil law and the burdens of proof in both. In criminal law, the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, and in civil law, it's a balance of probability.

I just want to cite an example that for me, clarifies the differences. O.J. Simpson was found innocent of murder in a criminal court. When that verdict was handed down, there was outrage from at least the people that I associate with and, I presume, all across North America. There was some outrage because people had followed that trial. There was, I think, in most people's minds, even beyond a reasonable doubt of guilt, but the jury said he was not guilty, so O.J. Simpson was not guilty.

[1525]

The recourse that was left for the relatives of O.J. Simpson was to take up a civil litigation, and they did that. As far as I know, O.J. Simpson was found guilty in a civil court and fairly hefty fines were applied against him. That's sort of what the difference is. There's a different burden of proof. Certainly, the balance of probability in O.J. Simpson's case was that he was guilty. Beyond a reasonable doubt? Well, a jury said no.

That's sort of the same thing here. Now, all of us have seen in court cases all over the place people who have been let go. From the ordinary citizens' viewpoint — certainly, from any reasonable person's viewpoint — they know there was an illegal activity going on, but the courts for one reason or another said the person was innocent or allowed them to go.

I'm thinking of a recent case in Mission where the RCMP spent some considerable time tracking a grow operation. They took their battering ram to the door. They knocked on the door, announced that it was the police at the door and then smashed the door open. Inside they did find a grow op, but when it went to court, the judge said the time between the police knocking on the door and announcing that it was the police and battering the door down was not a reasonable time.

Regardless of the evidence found inside, the case was totally dismissed, and the people walked free — the perpetrators, who were clearly engaged in an illegal activity. In this case, if they had assets, I would suggest that if this went to a civil court, any reasonable person would say the balance of probability would be that those folks were involved in an illegal activity.

The frustrations that moms and pops feel across this province, and certainly that I feel, the outrage sometimes, is when we see that kind of result falling out of our court system. I get that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is to protect us and all, but often, for many of us who are not engaged in any nefarious activity of any kind, it would sometimes seem that the Charter provides greater protections for those who would do illegal acts and impinge on the rights of those who are innocent.

I'm extremely pleased that this bill is coming forward the way it is coming forward, and I really do understand the balance of probability. I do think that's going to go a long way to alleviate the concerns of a whole lot of people who sometimes don't like what falls out of our court system.

There are times that other tools have been used to prosecute those who are involved in illegal activity. I think of things like Al Capone. He went to jail in 1947, or maybe earlier — I think maybe he died in '47 — and he went to jail for evading income tax. They couldn't get him for all the illegal activity — well, other than evading income tax — but they used a different tool. This is a different tool.

I want to touch a little bit on what is happening in my community and probably, I think, in other communities. The grow ops. I was the mayor in my city for almost a decade, and through that time, grow ops were increasingly a problem, as they are all across this province. Our police chief did a bit of a study. He went back into 30 cases that the police had investigated, went through all the things they had to go through to get search warrants and actually busted the grow ops and charged the people that were involved — 30 cases.

The average cost of each of those cases to the municipality for the investigation work was about $10,000, and he found that the maximum fine imposed was $1,500. That's the maximum. There was one case where there was a prison sentence of 90 days handed down. That, I'm sure, was to a repeat offender. In a grow op situation, $1,500 is less than the cost of a business licence. That's nothing.

The penalty for operating a grow op really is tantamount to nothing. The problems associated — for the neighbours, for the neighbourhood, for the community — are huge all around these grow ops, and I consider the people who live beside them to be victims. They go without compensation. They live in fear of what might happen at any given time if their house is mistaken by those who are involved in that kind of activity and in the ripoffs and all that we hear about.

[1530]

But even worse, I think about crystal meth labs and the dangers that they pose in communities. When they get caught, the same kind of thing seems to be happening. Whole neighbourhoods are being evacuated. People in hazmat suits are going in to take these crystal meth labs apart, and the lawbreakers that are running them seem to get away with very, very little more than a slap on the wrist. That's very offensive to most of the moms and pops out there, number one. Number two, there is no deterrence. The profits that these people are reaping are staggering.

This does give an opportunity to go at that problem and at least take away the big profitability from a lot of these people. That's one.

[ Page 1023 ]

Mr. Wal-Mart, they called him. Mr. Wal-Mart is the guy who was arrested a couple of weeks ago in Maple Ridge driving a Hummer. He had two safes in the vehicle, both stuffed with drugs. He had — I can't remember the dollar amount — $15,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 in cash. He has been charged before and is well known to the police. Well, he got out with $2,000 bail. There's every likelihood that he's out conducting his business now and recouping the $2,000. He'd do that in a night.

Where's the penalty for this fellow? He's going to continue pushing those drugs out there. I'm boggled when I think about the kinds of things that are happening within the justice system with those kinds of people. This guy will leave. He'll drive away from the courthouse in his Hummer. Does anyone think he got that Hummer by working in a construction job or in an office? Where do you think he might have got that money? Gosh, I think the balance of probability…. Probably he got that Hummer by selling some of those drugs that they found in the two safes in the vehicle he was driving.

Now, he's not convicted. He hasn't been convicted of this one yet. He hasn't been to court for it yet. But even if he were found innocent in a criminal court, the chances are that he got the assets that he has from an illegal activity. This bill would at least allow us to have some sense of justice, finally, in our community for what we see as obvious for all of us — what the rest of us think of as an injustice.

In my community…. I think there are a lot of communities like that. I've heard other members of this House talk about the Viper. In my city, there are Hummers, Ferraris and Corvettes, and there are big houses and lots of gold and jewels and wads of money. These people are ostentatiously showing off their wealth with no other visible source for that money than what seems obvious to the rest of us. The kids out there also see that.

I've got kids that I have talked to who know people who are engaged in that kind of activity, and they tell me that what's frequently talked about among these kids is: "If I'm not going to university, why should I get a job in the mill when I can get a job working for him? Everybody that's working for him is driving a new Mustang and has a big wad of dough and has a boat, and he's bigger than the police now. The police can't touch him. We know he's bigger than the police." That's what our youth are saying in my community, but I don't think that's isolated. I think that's going on all over the place.

I sit there burning, watching these guys drive around in those cars, knowing what they're doing and wondering why can't we touch them somehow. I have talked to the police, and the police say they're very clever. They do have an army of kids out there selling for them, and that army of kids is divorced just enough that we can't hammer these guys in a criminal court.

But you know what? If you were to examine them as to where they got those assets — "Where did you get the money for that Ferrari, sir?" — I guarantee you that the answer, though they may make it up, could easily be tracked back. There would be absolutely no way they could show where they got that money other than, by the balance of probability, through some illegal activity.

[1535]

I've heard quite a bit of talk here in this House from other members about how this could be used. "There could be innocent people entrapped, etc." So I just think about myself. Nobody could ever come to me and say: "Where did you get those assets?" — if I had any. Nobody could ever say, "Where did you get those assets?" without my being able to show where I got them. I file income tax returns.

All the money that I make runs through and is reported to the government. If I buy something, I can show where I got the money, how the money left my bank account and how I paid for it. That's how I think everybody operates. If you operate with just the cash in your pocket, you still have a record of how you got that cash. Everyone has that. If Uncle John gave you the asset, Uncle John has a record of where he got it and how he gave it to you, so all of that can be tracked back.

What this does is that this act — and this is where it's so different from the proceeds of crime legislation that has been in effect for so long in this province — takes the burden of proof off the state and puts it on the person who is in the illegal activity.

Under this proceeds of crime, the state has to prove conclusively that the money came from that illegal activity. They've got to track the money through bank accounts, and it's an impossible procedure, almost, for the Crown. That's why, under proceeds of crime legislation, we don't see a lot of stuff taken. This, though, says to the person in the illegal activity, "You prove where you got the money," rather than the state proving it. It's a shift in the burden of proof, and I think it's high time we went that way.

I just want to speak for a moment about some of the stuff I've heard in this House. The member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast said earlier: "If it has failed in the past to meet the needs of police forces because it makes their job harder, perhaps we need to make sure that they have the resources necessary to do their job. But I don't believe in weakening the law to make law enforcement easier." He's saying that the police don't like the burden of "beyond a reasonable doubt" because it makes their job harder. I just think that's absolutely rubbish.

This has got nothing to do with making the police job easier. The police aren't looking for a way to make their job easier, but they don't want to have a huge sack of rocks on their backs like they do now, where they work hard to bring a conviction, only to see a slap on the wrist, a $1,500 fine and all of their resources expended. For what? So the fellow can drive away in a Hummer?

This has nothing to do with making the police's work easier. The same member said that if the purpose of this is just to raise money for general revenue — if

[ Page 1024 ]

that's all it is — then we should say that. Well, this has also got absolutely nothing to do with raising money for general revenue. Again, that's just absolute rubbish. What this has to do with is bringing a sense of justice that this province has been crying out for. Moms and pops have been crying out for a way to deal with what's been poisoning their neighbourhoods for a long time, and this bill does it.

Same member: "I would like assurances, eventually, that residents in the same home out of which phone calls could be made that involve an illegal activity will not be subject to the harsh and heavy hammer of this legislation." Then: "What about the mother of a 17-year-old who's dealing marijuana from his upstairs bedroom?" Would that mother lose her home? No, this is not aimed at that mother. This is not aimed at somebody who's living upstairs where there's somebody doing something in the basement suite. This is aimed at those who are engaged in an illegal activity and the assets they acquired from that illegal activity.

The member for Nanaimo said yesterday: "If I'm reduced to drug addiction by drug dealers and there are 50 of my neighbours in the same community who are in the same position, are we going to sue the drug dealer? Do we fault the drug dealer? Is it the drug dealer's responsibility?" Well, whose responsibility is it?

You know, drug dealers are sick — some of them, the ones who are addicted. I think that's maybe what he's talking about. But the ones who are dealing drugs strictly for profit, and particularly the ones who are manufacturing drugs like crystal meth, generally aren't drug addicts. They're profiteers. They are actually, in my book, murderers. There were 33 deaths last year from crystal meth, and the guys who make that stuff are murderers — nothing less.

[1540]

So to say, "Are the drug dealers responsible…?" You bet they're responsible, if it's the guys who are not addicted. We need treatment, as some members have said, for those who are addicted. But those who are profiting from crime, we need to punish. If we can't get them in the court system, then we at least need to have some justice so that they're not going to profit from illegal activity in this province anymore.

Are we prepared to take property away from people in our society who have not been convicted of a crime? Well, I've just spent a considerable amount of time talking about the burden of proof — and yes. Yes, we are. We are prepared to take away the property from people who aren't convicted in a criminal court of a crime. The Mr. Wal-Marts of the world, who have absolutely no other means of support other than an illegal activity, are going to lose their assets.

I, for one, certainly applaud the Solicitor General for this brave step and for saying, "Yeah, we're going to take property away from people who are very clearly involved in illegal activities," particularly the ones who are destroying our neighbourhoods, preying on our seniors with the phoney lotto scams and all the rest of that. These people are getting bilked out of money. If we can track their assets and they're in this province, we should be taking those assets and compensating…. Another wonderful part of this bill allows us to compensate victims.

The money will be taken from the person with the illegal activity, and the victims of his activity can be compensated with the very illegal profits they made. Great stuff.

The member for Maple Ridge–Mission: "Nevertheless, we must never, in my view, take lightly the civil liberties we enjoy in this country and this province. We must always guard them zealously and jealously, because they have been hard-fought-for and they are a true part of our freedom." I support that totally.

I support the right to quiet enjoyment for every person that lives in a house in this province. When the drug dealers move in next door and when they endanger your children and when they cause a huge disruption in your life and you're just sitting in your home, I would say that that's an impingement on your rights. We need to be able to correct that. This bill, I think, does protect rights — the rights of innocent of people and the rights of victims.

I think it's a wonderful way to do that. And the message it sends — wow. The message is just perfect: if you profit from an illegal activity in this province, we're coming for you, and we're coming for your assets, because you can't keep them. You know what? There are other places in the world that don't have this legislation. Maybe the message is: if you're going to be involved in an illegal activity, pick one of those areas. Don't come here, because we're taking your profit. These guys are in their illegal activity for one reason: money, profit, assets. That's the place we're hitting them here, and I think it's great.

"Our prisons are full of many folks," said the member for Maple Ridge–Pitt Meadows, "unfortunately, that are mentally ill, and we need to make sure that we take into account a person's mental illness. That does have a bearing on their behaviour, and it is a mitigating factor, and I…hope…the law to be enacted is not overbearing in respects such as that." I wonder, then, if that member is saying that if someone has a mental illness and, because of it, commits an illegal act but acquires a lot of assets, should those assets then be exempt simply by virtue of a mental illness? I don't think so.

Why would being mentally ill say that you have a right to have assets purchased with illegally obtained funds, when someone else will have them taken away?

[1545]

I think that if you're mentally ill, you should be treated. This government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on mental illness — incidentally, money that was promised by the previous government and never delivered and that is being delivered by this government. I think that people who are mentally ill should certainly be given treatment. There are lots of mitigating factors, and criminal courts do take that into account. But in terms of asset acquisition, I see no reason why, by virtue of mental illness, you should be allowed to keep assets that were acquired illegally — particularly when there are victims involved.

[ Page 1025 ]

The victim certainly isn't going to sit back in his or her home and say: "I've lost my wealth to that person because of an illegal activity, but it's okay because they were mentally ill." I don't think that's fair, and I don't think most British Columbians would think that's fair.

The bill is a bold step. It's a bold step towards providing justice. It's a bold step towards sending a strong message — a message to the young kids that are very easily influenced across our province: "You know what? Crime doesn't pay. Illegal activity isn't going to make you wealthy. There are people out there who are looking to make sure that you don't profit from illegal activity. Better that you stay in school. Better that you get involved in an honest endeavour." I think that's a pretty good message to send, and I think this bill helps send that message.

It also sends a message to municipalities across this province crying out for help. I know how tough it is at the municipal level to sit in a city hall and try to get things under control in your city, to try to have your citizens feel they're safe in the streets and to have your citizens feel that their neighbourhoods aren't being infested with drug operations.

I've sat at a city hall level and received desperate phone calls from people who say: "The cars come every day, all hours of the night and day. They're in; they're out. They're carrying packages. We know what's going on. My kids see them. They're walking up and down. They're taking drugs openly in the front yard and in the back yard of the neighbour's house, and I can't do anything. I phone the police and they aren't able to do anything."

So when we try to intervene and talk to the police, the police tell us: "Look, we know about it. It's under surveillance, but we're very restricted in what we can do. We have to get a search warrant, and we have to do all of the things under the Charter of Rights that make it fairly difficult." "We will get there at some stage," they say, "but it may be some time. We have to prepare a case." But in the meantime the neighbours are calling city halls all over this province, crying for help.

I understand that. I understand their fear, and if there are assets being obtained, this at least allows us to do something that's based not on beyond a reasonable doubt but based on the balance of probability. When people are gathered in homes like that and are acquiring assets and you see the big cars and you know they're not working, the balance of probability is that it's funds from illegal activity.

I have to say again that I am not only proud of the Solicitor General for the way this has been developed and brought forward, but I'm proud that the government that I'm part of saw fit to bring this bold step forward now and to be openly pushing the fact that we are never going to allow the illegal activity to be profitable in this province any further.

With that, I really do appreciate the time to speak to this bill. Anytime that you can speak to a bill that has this much positive influence, everyone should think it's a great pleasure. I think the members of the opposition, too, all know this is what the communities have been crying out for.

H. Lali: I rise to speak on Bill 13, which is meant to target and seize any assets criminals may acquire. You'll have to forgive me, Madam Speaker. I just broke my reading glasses, so they're sort of hanging on the tip of my nose here.

To seize any assets criminals may acquire through illegal activity, the bill will use existing civil court rules and processes to go after property, vehicles and other assets. I'm rising to support this bill, but at the same time, I will be outlining some of the concerns that we on this side of the House have with this bill. I'll get into that in a few minutes as well.

[1550]

The intent is to actually go after the property, vehicles and other assets of those individuals who are involved in criminal activity where they make financial and property gains — for instance, if somebody is showing on their income tax papers they're making only about $10,000 or $15,000 a year and yet they're able to afford these big SUVs like Navigators, and even Hummers and the like. They may have a big boat or a big house they're living in, yet they can't provide any kind of information as to how these were gained through any kind of an employment or through some investment that may have taken place.

Other countries — like the United Kingdom, Australia, etc. — and also Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario already have similar legislation. In the United Kingdom and Australia it is primarily used against the proceeds of organized crime.

Now, this bill says that the individuals and groups involved in organized crime and serious criminal activity should not be able to enjoy the proceeds of their unlawful activity. Also, it says it ensures that the victims are compensated. Preventing unlawful activities and remedying the negative effects of unlawful activities are also important goals as a result of this.

In one of the sections the bill allows the director to commence forfeiture proceedings in the Supreme Court, and the director must prove on a balance of probabilities that an unlawful activity has occurred and that the property at issue in the proceedings was either the proceeds of unlawful activity or an instrument of the unlawful activity.

We're not against…. We actually support the idea that the bill allows the director, with the approval of the Minister of Finance, to make payments out of this civil forfeiture account for several purposes, including compensation for the victims of an unlawful activity. The bill also allows victims of unlawful activity to apply for compensation from the civil forfeiture account. Essentially, the bill allows the director to decide how much a victim is paid and the manner of payment that is to proceed.

Our reading of the bill, as I mentioned earlier, has left us with several concerns that we believe must be addressed by government, and I'm hoping that in the committee stage we will be able to get to that and point

[ Page 1026 ]

out some of these to the minister in charge and also be able to see if we can't make some improvements to this.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

First of all, we are concerned with the track record of similar legislation in some of the other jurisdictions. We want to impress upon the government that they should do a full and comprehensive study — maybe they have, but I'd like to know if they have — of similar laws in some of the other jurisdictions to see what the effects of those laws have been and how they have actually ended up impacting the public and our justice system. We want the minister to actually point that out specifically. Perhaps we'll do that at committee stage.

We also feel on this side of the House that the bill is not specific enough in the types of unlawful activity it's actually targeting, and perhaps that needs to be spelled out. Should it not also be a priority to target the most serious criminal offences, including organized crime, in this province?

More importantly, I think, is that we are concerned with what this bill does not actually do in terms of crime prevention: protecting and compensating the victims of crime and also addressing the needs and concerns of the most vulnerable people in our communities. For instance, the bill does not change the fact that this government has eliminated services for victims of crime, leaving many innocent victims to actually go out and fend for themselves.

[1555]

Also, the government's past record over the last four years indicates a degree of insensitivity towards victims of crime. I'll get into that in a minute. Because of the government's dramatic cuts to victim services, for instance…. There are a lot of families who have lost young children — some even older children or even parents — to a drunk driver, for instance, a violent offender or a sexual offender.

The thing is that these victims are worried that perhaps they're no longer able to turn to a counsellor who would work alongside some of the provincial prosecutors to make sure those offenders are not only brought to justice but are also going to be taking some remedial kind of counselling, some treatment to make sure that they don't go out and repeat-offend.

A lot of grief-stricken relatives of people who have been murdered or have been wounded are being left scrambling for information, unable to access the expertise of a professional or unable to lean on anyone for comfort and support because of the funding cuts that this government has made over the last four years.

There are so many other important issues and problems related to this bill as well. A number of my colleagues who have spoken before me from this side of the House…. I tend to agree with the points that have been raised. I won't go into detail or even repeat a lot of those. They're on the record. Members opposite are aware of that. The minister is here. He's listening to this debate intently, and I know both he and his staff will go through that record of the statements that have been made by various members on both sides of the House in the debate that is taking place.

In terms of the many important issues and problems that have been raised, this bill does not even come close to actually addressing some of those. Actually, these problems have been created by this government through its lack of action or through cuts in funding. British Columbians are currently struggling with dramatic funding and service cuts that have been made by this government, including cuts to counselling funding for those convicted of domestic violence — I've briefly spoken about that already — but also the cuts to funding for sexual assault centres.

You know, legal aid, for instance, has been dramatically cut by this government. It compromises women's options in terms of leaving an abusive relationship — which is being able to keep their children. If they do leave, then we hear that the Crown may not prosecute cases of violence against women and, instead, offers offenders an alternative to prosecution. Then we also learned that many of B.C.'s sexual assault centres are being cut by over $100,000 each. Obviously, these changes and cuts to services will seriously compromise the safety and the security of women and their children.

I'm just going to go back to legal aid, for instance. Who are the people who use legal aid? Well, the people who use legal aid are the ones who can't afford to go out and get a lawyer of their own, because they don't have the funds available through their employment to be able to hire…. It's the $100-, $200- or $300-an-hour fee or whatever fee lawyers these days charge. So they turn to legal aid. Who are these people? These are people who are amongst the disadvantaged groups in our society. Often we call these groups equity groups — aboriginal people, for instance.

Most aboriginal people in this province live under the poverty line and live on social assistance. These are people of colour, visible minorities.

[1600]

You know, there are a lot of visible minorities across this great province of ours who have been here for a long time, who have been able to make economic and financial advances, employment advances through their hard work and through their education over the last ten, 20 or 30 years.

[H. Bloy in the chair.]

But these aren't the people I'm talking about. What I'm talking about are the people in the visible minority groups who are lower-income or newly arrived immigrants, who basically come to this country looking for a better life and better economic opportunities. They come here with just the shirt on their back, just the clothes that they're wearing and maybe just a small suitcase full of clothing.

We're also talking here about women. A lot of women — especially single mothers or those women who have been involved in situations with an abusive

[ Page 1027 ]

husband, etc. — are not higher-income. They're lower-income.

Also, persons with disabilities. As you know, most people who are disabled, mentally or physically, are not able to compete in the workforce on the level that most of us, if not all of us, in this House are able to enjoy. You know, we're healthy. We've had good records of employment in the past with the skills that we have learned. We are able to go out and find gainful employment commensurate with our education and skills and make a decent wage. MLAs — we don't make a wage that's going to make us rich or anything, but we make a decent wage in this province that is able to sustain us while we do our duties.

The people that I'm talking about are the ones who belong to this family of equity groups and also their disadvantaged slot in society. They are the ones who are most likely to use legal aid if they are in some sort of trouble or if they are the victims of crime. So when the government made massive cuts to legal aid, these are the people they were hurting.

What does this bill address to help these folks? I talked earlier, briefly, about the cuts to sexual assault services by this Liberal government. For instance, I'm going to read from the B.C. Institute Against Family Violence. Penny Bain, the executive director, says: "The Solicitor General's cuts to sexual assault programs will create significant barriers to women obtaining the health and justice system services required to address the complex issues arising from these assaults. The ministry should address the need for more sexual assault services in the province by increasing support for victims rather than by cutting well-established and oversubscribed services."

There have also been cuts to rape crisis counselling as well. We're really concerned about that. In 2002 the government cut funding to community-based victim assistance programs and sexual assault centres by more than $1 million.

I've already talked about legal aid. Hon. Speaker, legal aid itself was slashed by 40 percent, and I just gave you an example of the kind of cuts that are hurting the victims of crime already. This bill doesn't do anything to address that.

We're also worried that by forfeiting a person's assets and property as a result of this bill…. Without rehabilitation, how does this bill actually help that individual who is a criminal, who is involved in criminal activity? How does this bill actually try and help to rehabilitate that person through social services or the criminal justice system? Or are we just putting that person in a position where they are more likely to become a repeat offender? That is a worry on this side of the House. The Solicitor General, the ministry, has to take that into account and make sure that these improvements to this bill are going to be made at the committee stage.

[1605]

We're also worried that rather than pursuing organized criminals through the criminal justice system, in which the standard of proof is high, the government will ignore the criminal liability of those people. Will the government only hold them civilly liable for their crimes? It's a worry. It's a worry for a lot of people out there, as well, who are worried that some of these criminals may, on the one side, lose their property because of this bill but then be free on the other liability side of things.

I'm also worried that the government's pursuit of civil forfeiture will be at the expense of criminal prosecutions by the Crown. Will resources put towards the former, which I mentioned, take away resources that are directed to the latter part? We're worried about that.

I guess there's always a worry that…. There are folks out there who are able to gain goods, you can say — whether they're cars or boats or big houses — through their own hard work and through their investments that they may have made. They are good, honest, hard-working citizens, or they may have had the fortune of having an older relative — perhaps a grandfather, a grandmother or an older uncle or somebody passing away — leave them a small fortune, with which they are able to go out and acquire these goods and products.

We are worried on this side of the House that this bill may go too far in not be able to actually see the difference — whether they're going after actual organized criminal activity or somebody who is an honest individual, who's been able, through hard work or through good fortune, to buy themselves a big house and properties and other things. These are the kinds of things that we on this side of the House are worried about.

You know, I understand where the government is coming from. They want to lower criminal activity in this province and be able to help victims who can be compensated through the forfeiture of these products that criminals may have been able to accumulate. I understand that, because there is quite a bit of criminal activity that takes place, I know, in all parts of the province, especially in the lower mainland, where you see a lot of folks….

It doesn't matter what ethnic group they're from. Crime cuts across all ethnic lines, and history has proven that. Criminal activity exists not only with longtime residents or Canadian citizens who've lived in this province for a long time but also amongst the new immigrant communities that have come here — whether they've come from Europe, other parts of North or South America or from East Asia or South Asia. We see that happening, actually, sometimes on a larger scale with gangs being formed.

Being a member of an Indo-Canadian community, I see that element. There are a few bad apples in our community who, also, are involved in this gang-related activity. I know the government means well by going after some of those bad apples who are involved in gangs, in large-scale, underground importing or production of drugs and then the distribution and sale of the drugs, the proceeds from which they actually end up buying, in many instances, large homes or driving

[ Page 1028 ]

around these large SUVs. I know the intent of this bill is to go after individuals like that.

[1610]

I am worried that this law may be used or misused. I don't think anybody's going to be going out of their way to use it — but inadvertently be misused. There are so many people, not just in the Indo-Canadian community but also in a lot of other communities, ethnic communities — it doesn't matter what part of the world that they come from — who've worked hard for a living. They've been able to save. They've been able to make investments. Many folks have had parents who were fairly well off leave behind a sizeable inheritance. A lot of these folks have land that they own in India.

They may have sold that land and brought the proceeds over. I'm worried that this bill does not inadvertently target those people.

Like I said, I just want to be clear. I'm not saying that the law is going to purposely do this, but I'm saying sometimes it could happen inadvertently. I'm just worried that does not happen in all these instances.

Like I said, I'm going to wrap up here. I believe that the intent of this bill is good, and I know what the government is attempting to do by going after the property of criminal activity. Then victims are able to go after it. But I also want the government to be mindful that they should not solely depend on this to try to compensate victims or to help victims get the services they need.

The government has to take a look at itself in the mirror and point some fingers at itself in that the funding the government has cut over the last four years has put victims of criminal activity and even domestic criminal activity in a bad situation. They are unable to fend for themselves or defend themselves because of cuts to sexual assault centres, cuts to rape crisis counselling and also cuts to legal aid funding that have taken place under this government.

I want the government to be mindful of that, and I'm looking forward to committee stage where we can put forward some of our positive points and alternatives to the Solicitor General in that debate.

Hon. R. Coleman: I rise to speak about this legislation as a member of this House who probably knows more about its history than any other member of the Legislature. I hark back to many years ago — and I mean many years ago — when I was in the RCMP back in the early 1970s. Back in the 1970s a piece of legislation like this might not even be necessary, not because of the fact we didn't have tools out there for law enforcement, but because some of those tools were actually used, and they were available.

They were dealt with on aspects of criminal investigations that led to the issues in and around whether somebody had actually accumulated their funds by illegal means, had bought assets or whatever by illegal means, by a certain process.

That process was this. My father was in charge of the special I

section for Revenue Canada back in the 1970s. The special I

section used to work very closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other law enforcement agencies. When there was a file identified on a large organized crime scale or a large drug scale, information was passed over to Canada Customs and Revenue — as we knew it then, Revenue Canada. They would launch an investigation and conduct an audit. They had more powers under their legislation than this bill will ever give to anyone. Anyone that's ever had the experience and the joy of seeing that expressionless person come to your business and want to do an audit, who comes from Revenue Canada, will know exactly what I'm speaking about today.

What happened three, four years ago was this. Justice ministers in this country met, and they said to the federal government: "We would like you to start using those powers again to help us fight organized crime." The gauntlet was thrown down to the federal government as an opportunity. It wasn't picked up. So we, as justice ministers of the time, talked about bringing in civil forfeiture legislation in our particular jurisdictions so that we could move forward and try and either put pressure on or find a piece of legislation that would give us success when it comes to civil forfeiture of crime.

[1615]

I heard someone here a minute ago talk about somebody getting an inheritance. If you know anything about forensic audits, you'll know that it's easy to track where the asset came from and where the money came from to find out whether it was by legal or illegal means. You will know that there are aspects of it…. We have people that specialize in that in our own Organized Crime Agency that can track this information in our own criminal element in British Columbia today.

I heard somebody yesterday say, "Gee, it's taken two and a half years to get this legislation to the floor of this House," and I can tell you why that was — simply because in British Columbia, when we draft legislation, we interpret the Charter of Rights and Freedoms somewhat differently than some of the other Canadian jurisdictions do. So the time spent on checking the language and drafting the legislation is somewhat more extensive in this province than it is in other jurisdictions.

But the reality of it is this. We started out in 2001 to try and build a relationship in the province of British Columbia that geared us to public safety and started to build a plan with our law enforcement community and provide them with the tools to deal with all aspects of crime in our province. That was no small feat to start with, simply because a previous administration chose not to meet with the law enforcement community, chose not to build a five-year plan for policing, chose not to have discussions about innovation and the future of how we can protect our communities, and therefore we've seen a couple of things happen.

The first thing we saw happen was no attention to budget or performance on the provincial police force. When we came into office in 2001 there was such a level of vacancies in the provincial police force of British Columbia that there were communities in British Columbia that had no policing and should have had.

[ Page 1029 ]

The reason was because they would never deal with their budget or provide them the resources that were necessary. The RCMP was having to manage its budget for the provincial police force with vacancies. They were managing by vacancy.

The first thing we had to accomplish was to try and bring this thing together to get some stability and have them fill their vacancies in British Columbia. While we did that, we sat down with the law enforcement community at the municipal and the provincial level and said: "What are the tools you need in order for you to do your job? What are the directions you'd like to see law enforcement go in the future so you can get more efficiencies?"

They talked about a number of things. They talked about things like integration, specialized teams, operations that they could use to actually build on things and different opportunities that exist as tools for the law enforcement community to do their job. On that list was the ability to (

a) either change the Criminal Code so that there would be an easier way for the large amount of paperwork that was required to go after the assets of criminals under the forfeiture of criminal proceeds, or (

b) find another way to do it.

Well, I can tell you, when you have the discussion with the federal government about legislation…. Anybody that's been in the law profession in this province will know that changing the Criminal Code is like watching a snail go across a piece of sidewalk in your front yard. It is a lengthy, time-consuming process that seldom gets to the end goal where we can protect communities.

So we started out to build the tools, and as we started to build those tools, we had discussions with justice ministers across the country. We were the first people to sit at a table at a national level and say, "Crystal meth is coming your way," three years ago. We were the first people, and so much so, to deal with the whole aspect of grow ops. I'll never forget my first justice ministers' meeting as a Solicitor General in those days, sitting across the table from justice ministers and talking about grow ops and getting a blank stare only four years ago. It wasn't on their radar screen.

I remember my last justice ministers' meeting where Ontario, Quebec and the prairies all said that one of the most significant problems we have in our jurisdiction today is grow ops, because they're being funnelled by organized crime. They are like a cash flow for organized crime. We said that in 2001 and 2002. We identified organized crime as a huge issue in British Columbia in 2001-2002.

I can remember members of this House in opposition and people that ran for government — for opposition this time and didn't form government — deriding me publicly about the fact that I was talking about organized crime, that it was a problem in British Columbia. Somewhere between then and now, they've had an epiphany that it actually exists in B.C., and it does. It really, really does.

[1620]

Grow ops fuel the gun trade and the crystal meth trade. The other drugs in our society are paid for by the cash crop that we have there. It is structured where we have the Hell's Angels and other organized crime groups involved in it every single day. These people go out there and destroy your and my communities, because they don't care.

Somebody says: "Well, okay, so how's that?" I'm going to give you one example: 252 samples of drugs were taken out of the Vancouver club trade — everything from Ecstasy to marijuana to heroin and cocaine. In that one survey over 52 percent of those drugs that are sold on the streets of Vancouver were laced with crystal meth. Somebody says that maybe we should be soft on a tool that might go after organized crime in our society — people that are ruining the lives of our children? As far as I'm concerned, if I had my way, this bill would be tougher, not weaker, than it is today.

I noticed how, in debates last night, some people glommed on to the fact that some of the money that we get from this might, heaven forbid, go to victims. They talked about the cuts to victims programs, and they talked of what they did about victims programs.

Let me set the record straight. There was never a cut in the Solicitor General's Ministry to victims programs, but I can tell you what happened, just so you know. In 2001, as the minister of the day, we took a look at the programs that serve victims in B.C. We went around to communities all across the province and talked to law enforcement, and we talked to people that were delivering programs in communities.

In one community that is now the home riding of a member of the opposition, the RCMP and the community group told us this: "Do you know you're spending $50,000 a year on a victims program here for special needs, for special victims programs in a community of under 5,000 people?" Yet we had the worst piece of highway in the entire country, where we have more fatalities, and we had no police-based victims program. Why were we spending money that way?

We did a review, and we looked at what we faced. In those days, do you realize that we had 22 — count them; 22 — different telephone lines in different communities all over the province of British Columbia — where sometimes a person that had a rape crisis would phone in and get a recording. They could leave a voice message, and maybe somebody would get back to them in an hour, two hours or ten hours. We had situations where you'd phone in and get a pager number, and you might get a call back. We had very few that were actually manned by people 24 hours a day. Almost exclusively, they were unilingual, in one language — almost exclusively.

So we said: "Look, this doesn't work. Let's take all the languages of British Columbia, let's have one telephone line called VictimLINK, let's put specialized people on that phone so they can refer people to the right places, and let's get it up and running." We helped tens of thousands more people with better services in the last three years since VictimLINK went into place than any other time in the history of the province.

Then we took the next step. We said: "Let's see how our money's targeted. Let's see where the values of the

[ Page 1030 ]

programs are and how the outcomes are." So we did that. We did that again with community groups.

As we came through that process, this is what we found out. If we retargeted, and we actually structured the victims programs differently in British Columbia, we could do two absolutely incredible things. First of all, we could make sure that the victims programs that existed were stable. Second, though, we could do something that had never been done in any jurisdiction in Canada: find funding within the envelope to create victims programs in any community in the province that had four police officers or more in it. We funded 18 new police-based victims programs in British Columbia as a result of that review.

[1625]

In addition to that, we knew that in communities of 100,000 people or more, we had an issue with regard to how we could help victims of other crimes, people that were sexually assaulted, where they needed to have other specialized victim support.

As we did that review, we created seven new specialized victims programs in the province. If somebody wants to stand up and say that restructuring and helping 18 additional communities, by creating seven new specialized victims programs and giving tens of thousands of people the opportunity to get help through a victim line in B.C. in any language they speak, was a mistake, go ahead and criticize us. We did the right thing on that program.

As we came through, as we've done with civil forfeiture, the review of tools that are required for law enforcement in communities on crime prevention and services, we looked at something else. We used to have a thing in British Columbia called a Criminal Injury Compensation Act. Now, in the Criminal Injury Compensation Act, there was over $22 million spent, supposedly, on support for victims in British Columbia.

We took a look at the Criminal Injury Compensation Act, which had its beginnings back in the days when the Workers Compensation Board wasn't providing victims assistance. So given the history — I'm not going to belabour whether it was one government or another, because it obviously transferred over a number of years…. What we found was this. Out of the $22 million being spent on victims programs, $8.5 million went out in pain-and-suffering claims to victims of crime. The average claim, we found, on the settlement was between $2,500 and $3,000 a victim.

A victim of crime, in order to get compensation, had to go through a tribunal process. They were actually revictimized by having to go through a process with the Workers Compensation Board tribunals to get to where somebody would recognize the damage they received in injury from a crime. What we did is spend time, as folks in our collective governments, revictimizing victims in order that they could get some help.

The other thing we found was absolutely remarkable, and that was that we were paying almost $5 million a year, out of $22 million in administration fees, to the Workers Compensation Board. We had over $12 million of a total $22 million fund going to things that either revictimized victims or gave administration to someone else.

We said that was wrong, so we created the Crime Victim Assistance Act and we changed things. What we did is we said that we want to get services to victims of crimes immediately when they've been victimized, and we want to add children of people who have lost a loved one through a homicide and other crimes. We want to add families. We want to add counselling and a bunch of other services.

This is what we did. We passed the Crime Victim Assistance Act.

We retargeted the dollars, and today this is what the benefits of the program include: medical and dental care; vocational rehabilitation for victims and members of victims' families; income support for victims or victims' families relating to lost or reduced income or an inability to provide services provided to self or to their family; counselling for the victim and the victim's family; protective measures to ensure the victim's safety; physical rehabilitation; travelling expenses for the victim or victims' families; repair or maintenance of prescribed personal property; compensation to victims' families for loss of love, guidance or affection; counselling for witnesses of serious crimes; and funeral expenses for families of victims.

None of that was available under the Criminal Injury Compensation Act.

So what would you like to criticize us for here — that we actually retargeted dollars and gave more services to victims on the ground within a short period of time or revictimized them through a tribunal process for two years? I pick the second solution — the one that says we'll give more services to victims for the same money immediately when they need it, rather than revictimizing them through the Criminal Injury Compensation Board.

As you build these tools, what you do is say: "Now that we've gone past the process of looking at how we improve our victims programs and their delivery, we start to look at other tools we can give them, whether it be things on impaired driving, issues around speeding, issues around traffic safety, issues around street racing — where British Columbia has the most innovative laws in North America." All of those things had to be dealt with as tools for police, as we came through that.

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As we came through that process, we also recognized that we needed to do some other things. When we became government, there was an organization called the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia. It was a separate, stand-alone agency that wasn't fully integrated with law enforcement on organized crime.

We sat down with law enforcement and had a conversation about the $9 million or $10 million we were spending there and the additional money we put into some specialized investigations — which I'm going to get to in a second — and said: "What's the real model here?" Shouldn't it be an integrated unit, and shouldn't it be under the management of the provincial police force — there's a reason for that, which I'll get to — or should it be a stand-alone unit that's going to

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start to build walls around itself and not share intelligence in policing?

What we did is we created the integrated force for organized crime. We put it in management with the provincial police force, and we did that for two reasons. The Organized Crime Agency at nine-point-some million dollars a year was 100 percent dollars to British Columbia. As soon as it becomes a provincial unit integrated with other municipal forces around the province, it becomes a part of the provincial police budget. When it does that, the province gets a cost sharing. They get 30-cent dollars from the federal government. So even just by making the one move, we found three million extra dollars to fight organized crime.

When we did that, we also saw something else happen. We saw the integration of that unit with the national gang task force. The national gang units and other organized crime agencies across the country started to bear some fruit. We saw some specific opportunities for investigations, where additional funds were asked for and given for investigations.

You've seen recently that some of the organized crime groups in British Columbia have had a little bit of shot at them where they've been arrested because they have been charged by police. For the first time in Canadian history in British Columbia, we're actually going after the Hell's Angels as an organized crime unit, as a group, under the Criminal Code. That was an investment made about three years ago today on the belief that we had people in law enforcement in B.C. that needed the tools to do their jobs. We gave them to them, and they succeeded, and that's the way it should be.

In addition to that, we have some other pressures out there that have to do with giving tools to police. One of them is in some of our ethnic communities, where we've seen a disproportionate number of homicides of young people, oftentimes involved in the drug trade. We sat down in that community two years ago and said: "Look, guys, we and the previous government funded a package for a couple of years of about $4 million. It had minimal success in solving homicides within this community. We need to have a new integrated unit to do this, but we need to build a relationship with the community so we can get a free flow of information to have some success."

We committed to fund it — $6.8 million a year for the gang task force. The gang task force is not just tasked with dealing with those homicides but is also tasked with dealing with the whole aspect around gangs in British Columbia. As a result of it and their integration with gang investigation units across the country, they're having huge successes.

At the same time, we said to police: "What other tools do you need?" They said: "We think an integrated homicide unit would work." So the first integrated unit we actually did in B.C. was the integrated homicide unit. That particular unit has people on it from all the law enforcement community across the lower mainland and the RCMP. All the homicide files are in one place. All the intelligence and all the investigators are on one team. Today, the best solve rate of any homicide unit in North America is the integrated homicide unit in British Columbia.

It's about tools. It's about giving them the tools to do their job, and part of the tools is giving them the tools to push back on people that want to profit or benefit from crime. They asked for an integrated unit, as did MLAs and communities along the SkyTrain unit. Before, they were all special constables. They didn't have powers of police. They had very limited powers. Today we have an 82-officer policing unit with broader powers, integrated into the rest of the law enforcement community. So the intelligence that's picked up on the SkyTrain can be shared with communities along the line.

That was done because people in the law enforcement community knew that another tool, another piece of integration could work, just like civil forfeiture is going to work as a piece of the tools, of puzzles, for communities in British Columbia.

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Something else we found out as we came through this whole process of finding tools…. Remember, it's because we were actually able to sit down and have a discussion with law enforcement. The police came to us a number of years ago, about two actually, and said: "We think there is a significant benefit if we would have an integrated sexual predator operations team." First of all, they had to explain to us what that meant. It meant that they know, the communities know, that the sexual predators that have continuously committed serious crimes are going to re-offend or breach their probation when they leave