2001 Legislative Session: 2nd Session, 37th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes

only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

(Hansard)

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2001

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 2, Number 11

CONTENTS

Routine

Proceedings

Time

Introductions by Members

Oral Questions

Government handling of nurses' dispute

J. MacPhail

Government handling of health

professionals' dispute

J. Kwan

Sale of Skeena Cellulose

R. Harris

Chevron oil refinery and pollution issue

R. Lee

Physician supply in B.C.

I. Chong

Charter schools

S. Brice

Motion without Notice

Committee of Supply to sit in two

sections. Hon. G. Collins

Throne Speech Debate

Hon. R. Coleman

D. MacKay

R. Stewart

V. Anderson

P. Bell

H. Long

B. Locke

R. Visser

Hon. B. Barisoff

T. Christensen

Health Care Services Collective

Agreements Act (Bill 15). Hon. G. Bruce

Introduction and first reading

[ Page 275 ]

TUESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2001

The House

met at 2:03 p.m.

Prayers.

Hon. G.

Campbell: Prior to introductions I would just like to take a moment to say

thank you. Last week British Columbia hosted the annual Premiers' conference. It

takes place in our province once every decade. I just want to say that the

professional assistance we had from our office of protocol, from the people who

were at work and making sure that this conference worked on behalf of British

Columbians and all the Premiers, was exceptional. I want to say thank you to

them.

I also want

to say thank you to the literally dozens of volunteers who took time out of

their lives to make sure that all of the delegates who came to the annual

Premiers' conference felt comfortable, recognized the incredible city we have

here in our capital city of Victoria and understood the way that people feel

about our province, as they carried out their deliberations. It was a very good

conference because there were an awful lot of very good people that worked very

hard to put British Columbia in the best light. On behalf of the entire

government, I'd like to say thank you very much.

[1405]

Introductions by Members

Hon. G.

Hogg: I'm pleased today to introduce a visitor from Edmonton. She is the

executive director of the Alberta Association of Services for Children and

Families, and she's in British Columbia discussing various models of

accreditation with our staff. Would the House please welcome Ms. Catherine

Hedlin.

Hon. S.

Hagen: We have as guests in the House today two people from my community of

Comox Valley, one of the most beautiful parts of the province. I'd like to

introduce to the House Mr. Lucas Stiefvater, who is the manager and owner of

Kingfisher Spa and Oceanside Resort, to which all of you are welcome to come and

spend a weekend at your expense, and Mr. Glen Griffiths, also from Kingfisher

Spa and Oceanside Resort. Please make them welcome.

Hamilton: I would like to welcome to my constituency teams representing

Calgary, Windsor and Victoria who are participating in the Canadian Big League

Softball Championships. The championships are hosted by Little League District

No. 7, and games will be played at Juan de Fuca Parks and Recreation Centre

until Friday, August 10. The winning team from there will go on to play in the

Little League World Series in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Would the House please make

these young ladies welcome.

Oral Questions

GOVERNMENT HANDLING OF

NURSES' DISPUTE

MacPhail: Over the weekend the B.C. nurses tabled a new offer to the

government, and the nurses have made substantial progress and are bargaining in

good faith. The Minister of Labour also inserted himself in the process by

meeting directly with the union. We've had media reports from that. There was

also an emergency cabinet meeting today. Even Vince Ready was involved. His

recommendations could have been instrumental in resolving the transit dispute

earlier than was chosen by this government.

It's our

view that the two sides are now closer than ever to a resolution. The

cooling-off period has taken a step toward conclusion today.

Mr.

Speaker: Order, please, hon. member. Please put your question now.

MacPhail: The government has a choice that they can ask the parties to

bargain in good faith. The government can legislate, or they can actually meet

with the parties and bring Vince Ready in to resolve the matter. Will the

minister today commit that he will bargain in good faith with the good office of

Vince Ready and not legislate a settlement?

Hon. G.

Bruce: It was a very long weekend. It's a situation I've found myself in, in

several instances now, of picking up pieces that were left from the past. It's

very difficult dealing with a situation when you're coming in after the damage

has already been done. This isn't, of course, the first issue we've had to deal

with. These two together will be the second and the third. I'm working very hard

in all of what I can do to bring about a proper and effective resolution to this

issue.

MacPhail: By the minister inserting himself directly into bargaining, he is

now fully in charge and must take full responsibility for the actions that occur

subsequent to today. The consequences of a legislated settlement are clear: the

resignations, the recriminations, the resentment. They're a workforce that will

not be able to carry out its duties. All of that is to the detriment of patient

care. The Minister of Labour has not even uttered the words "patient

care."

[1410]

Again to

the Minister of Labour. The nurses have compromised, but it takes two to

achieve a settlement. The Minister of Labour has now put himself in charge. Will

the Minister of Labour take the olive branch that's been offered? Will he make

sure that the current pride of this government in recriminations for the past is

set aside, and will he offer a compromise of his own making?

Hon. G.

Bruce: Patient care is absolutely the highest of our priorities, and I am

convinced it is the

[ Page 276 ]

highest priority of the professional nurses in our health care system.

Certainly, the people of British Columbia want a resolution that will ensure that

we have good-quality patient care throughout the province when they need it.

GOVERNMENT HANDLING OF

HEALTH PROFESSIONALS' DISPUTE

J. Kwan:

A legislated settlement will break the Premier's promise to value health care

professionals. Patients are counting on this Premier to honour his promise to

health care professionals. If this government's dispute with HSA does not get

resolved, that will also throw the health care system into chaos. Will the

minister get directly involved in this dispute with the health professionals, as

he has with the nurses, or will he let HEABC do his job? Most important of all,

will he give HEABC the mandate to do his job?

Hon. G.

Bruce: It's a very difficult situation, as everyone knows. In speaking with

me yesterday, the parties have shown their position as a change. They are still

millions of dollars apart. It's a very, very large amount of money.

One thing,

though, I think is really important to know. Whatever does happen, the people in

our health care system — the paramedicals, the nurses — will be the

highest-paid people in Canada, doing a very important job for all British

Columbians from one end of this province to this end here.

Mr.

Speaker: The member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant with a supplemental

question.

J. Kwan:

The fact is that dealing with the issue around health care, with the health

professionals, would cost the government only a fraction of what this government

had given to the corporate donors, their backers.

Again, to

the Minister of Labour. I know that he's trying to portray a tough-guy

position, but the question is: will he put aside politics and put patient care

first? Will he work towards making sure that the mandate is given to HEABC to

offer a fair settlement to the health care professionals?

Hon. G.

Bruce: Let me make it very clear that this government has put politics

second. We sit in this House having to undo and deal with a

situation that the former government made an absolute mess of: the health care

system in this province. After ten years of neglect by the NDP, we as the B.C.

Liberal Party, the government today in British Columbia, are going to have to

fix it. We know the responsibility of undertaking that role. We understand the

task at hand. We will fix it for the people of British Columbia.

SALE OF SKEENA CELLULOSE

Harris: My question today is to the Minister of Competition, Science and

Enterprise. It was reported last week in the media that the government plans to

close Skeena Cellulose if an investor is not found for it by the end of August.

Skeena Cellulose is a major contributor to the economy of a lot of communities

in the northwest.

My question

to the minister is: can you tell the House what the government is doing to

ensure the future of Skeena Cellulose?

[1415]

Hon. R.

Thorpe: First of all, let's be very clear. This is about 6,500 families in

the northwest. We are working with our partners to return Skeena Cellulose to

the private sector. We have just concluded an extension of our banking

arrangements with the TD Bank. We continue to meet with potential purchasers. I

am working together with my ministry staff, SCI staff, the local 4 and all of

our partners in trying to resolve this very complex issue as quickly as we can

in order to return Skeena to the private sector.

Mr.

Speaker: The member for Skeena with a supplemental question.

Harris: The operations of Skeena Cellulose are scattered across the

northwest. There are facilities in Prince Rupert, Hazelton, Smithers, Kitwanga

and logging operations out of Stewart. Is this government considering the option

of selling this facility as a whole or in pieces? Can the minister give us his

position today?

Hon. R.

Thorpe: Our ideal goal would be to sell Skeena Cellulose in total. However,

we realize there are families and communities throughout the northwest that are

involved. We will entertain the sale of parts of the company if people come

forward with offers to buy part of the company.

CHEVRON OIL REFINERY

AND POLLUTION ISSUE

R. Lee:

Mr. Speaker, the residents of Burnaby North are very concerned about pollutants

being released into the environment by the Chevron oil refinery. In fact,

residents may have been kept in the dark by the company as to the seriousness of

on-site pollutants. Can the minister tell my constituents what steps her

ministry is taking to solve this problem?

Hon. J.

Murray: My ministry is concerned about the potential risks that MTBE and

other petroleum products can pose to health and to the environment. Chevron has

that obligation to fully disclose information to the public, and that has not

been happening adequately. As a result, in July my ministry ordered an issue for

full disclosure of on-site data, and Chevron has agreed to that. Chevron has put

forward several ways that communication to the public will be improved, and all

contaminated-sites reports will be made public.

[ Page 277 ]

Mr.

Speaker: The member for Burnaby North with a supplemental question.

R. Lee: Will

the minister tell my constituents what actions her ministry is taking to ensure

the protection of their health and safety?

Hon. J.

Murray: The ministry is working with Chevron to have the company collect and

treat the groundwater on the site, test groundwater off of the site to check for

any possible contaminants, set in motion a series of research projects that will

assess any risk to public safety and that will look at how this came about in

the first place and how we can avoid it in the future. So, again, any study

results will be made available to the public upon completion, and the ministry

will continue to work with the city of Burnaby, the people of Burnaby and

Chevron to make sure that the kinds of communication that are needed are

happening.

PHYSICIAN SUPPLY IN B.C.

I. Chong:

Currently B.C. graduates one doctor for every 32,225 British

Columbians. That's the worst medical-grad-per-capita ratio of any province. In

the past B.C. has had to recruit doctors from other provinces and other

countries. So my question is to the Minister of Health Planning. Can she tell us

what she is doing to improve and reverse this awful trend?

Hon. S.

Hawkins: It is true that B.C. graduates only half the medical students we

need, and we know we must do more. That's why we are committed to a ten-year

health human resources strategy that includes a physicians strategy. We are

committed to working with UBC medical school to set up satellite medical schools

at UNBC and UVic, and we hope to get new medical students in there by 2004. The

Minister of Advanced Education and I have met with both universities and the

dean of medicine, and we're really working hard to move that forward.

Mr.

Speaker: The member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head with a further supplementary

question.

[1420]

Chong: The fact of the matter is that the B.C. Medical Association has

reported that 100,000 British Columbians currently do not have access to a

family doctor. So I still need to ask the Minister of Health Planning to tell

British Columbians what her government is doing to find a solution to this

problem of access to a family doctor.

Hon. S.

Hawkins: We are very aware of that issue, and I am very concerned. We all

know that patients do better when they have continuity of care from a general

practitioner. Again, in the few short weeks that we've been here, we've been

working on a physician strategy to help patients meet those needs. That's why we

are committed not only to increasing medical school spaces but also to

increasing residencies. We've looked at options to increase spaces across the

province. We're also working with the minister responsible for immigration in

aggressive recruitment of foreign medical grads.

CHARTER SCHOOLS

Brice: I have a question for the Minister of Education. The Minister of

Education has made a number of remarks concerning the need for more choice in

schools. My constituency office has received calls on this matter asking if the

government intends to allow charter schools in B.C. Will the minister stand in

the House today and tell British Columbians if she intends to open the door to

charter schools in British Columbia?

Interjection.

Hon. C.

Clark: I keep hearing the member for Vancouver-Hastings talking about her

interest in health care. If only she'd shown that kind of interest in health

care for the last ten years when her government was in power, we wouldn't be

having the problem we're having today.

But I'll

speak to the member's question. Before the election and during the election

this government said that we would not be welcoming charter schools into the

system. Now, after ten years in British Columbia, we have a government that's

going to keep its promises. No, we will not be welcoming charter schools into

the system.

We believe

that choice can be welcomed through the public system as it stands. We think

that we can create differences within our public school system that will

accommodate the needs of every single child. There is no reason that a parent

should have to pull their child out of the public school system in order to

access the kinds of choices that are going to work for that child. That's what

we're working toward in the public education system, and I look forward to doing

that with school boards and with every single member of this House.

[End

of question period.]

Orders of the Day

Motions without Notice

COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY

TO SIT IN TWO SECTIONS

Hon. G.

Collins: By leave, I'd like to move the following motion.

Leave

granted.

Hon. G.

Collins: It's fairly long. I'll read it to the House. It is just a

relatively standard motion that will

[ Page 278 ]

allow us to have estimates take place in two Houses of the Legislature.

[Be

it resolved that this House hereby authorizes the Committee of Supply, for

this session, to sit in two sections, designated

section A and

section B,

section A to sit in such committee room as may be appointed from time to

time and

section B to sit in the chamber of the assembly, subject to the

following rules.

The standing orders applicable to the Committee of the Whole House shall be

applicable in both sections of Committee of Supply, save and except that in

Section A, a minister may defer to a deputy minister to permit such deputy

to reply to a question put to the minister.

Subject to paragraph 3, the following estimates shall be considered in

Committee B: namely, the Ministry of Provincial Revenue; the Ministry of

Health Services, which includes the Minister of State for Mental Health and

the Minister of State for Intermediate, Long Term and Home Care; and the

Premier's Office, which includes the Minister of State for Intergovernmental

Relations.

All estimates shall stand referred to

Section A, save and except those

estimates which shall be referred to

section B under the provisions of

paragraph 2 of this order and such other estimates as shall be referred to

section B on motion by the Government House Leader, which motion shall be

governed by the provisions of standing order 60A. Practice recommendation #6

relating to consultation shall be applicable to this rule.

[1425]

Section A shall consist of 19 members, being 17 members of the B.C. Liberal

Party and two members of the New Democratic Party. In addition, the Deputy

Chair of the Committee of the Whole or his or her nominee shall preside over

debates in

Section A. Substitution of members will be permitted to

Section A

with the consent of that member's Whip, where applicable where applicable,

and otherwise with the consent of the member involved.

For

the second session of the thirty-seventh parliament, the members of

Section

A shall be as follows: the minister whose estimates are under consideration,

the Messrs. Bennett, Bloy, Bray, Hamilton, Hunter, Jarvis, Lee, MacKay,

Manhas, Penner, R. Stewart and Visser, and Mesdames Locke, Orr, Sahota,

Trumper, Kwan and MacPhail.

Fifteen

minutes prior to the ordinary time fixed for adjournment of the House, the

Chair of

Section A will report to the House. In the event such report

includes the last vote in a particular ministerial estimate, after such

report has been made to the House, the government shall have a maximum of

eight minutes and the opposition a maximum of five minutes, and all other

members cumulatively a maximum of three minutes to summarize the committee

debate on a particular ministerial estimate completed. Such summaries are to

be in the following order: first, other members; second, opposition; and

third, government.

Section

B shall be composed of all members of the House. Divisions in

Section A will

be signalled by the ringing of the division bells four times; divisions in

Section B will be signalled by the ringing of the division bells three

times, at which time proceedings in

Section A will be suspended until

completion of the division in

Section B.

Section

B is hereby authorized to consider bills referred to committee after second

reading thereof, and the standing orders applicable to bills in Committee of

the Whole shall be applicable to such bills during consideration thereof in

Section B. For all purposes

Section B shall be deemed to be a Committee of

the Whole. Such referrals to

Section B shall be made upon motion without

notice by the minister responsible for the bill, and such motion shall be

decided without amendment or debate. Practice recommendation No. 6 relating

to consultation shall be applicable to all such referrals. Finally, bills or

estimates previously referred to a designated committee may at any stage be

subsequently referred to another designated committee on motion of the

Government House Leader or minister responsible for the bills as

hereinbefore provided by rules No. 3 and 9.]

I so move,

Mr. Speaker.

Motion

approved.

Hon. G.

Collins: I call Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne.

Throne Speech Debate

(continued)

Hon.

R. Coleman: I'm pleased to have the opportunity to retake my position in the

debate on the Speech from the Throne, which I stopped last week in order to

bring in legislation to put the buses back on the road in the lower mainland of

British Columbia. When I was giving my remarks last time, I spoke just briefly. I'll summarize as I move into the conclusion of what I had to say

and then yield to one of my colleagues across the floor.

I spoke

about what our government would do, how our government was going to be

accountable, how our government was going to rebuild our economy and keep our

commitments, being a government that would put before the people of British

Columbia what it said it was going to do: follow through on what they said they

were going to do and complete that plan over the period of time that we were in

government. That is very critical to our success and credibility.

I also

talked about accountability relative to balanced-budget legislation and

truth-in-budget legislation. I also talked about establishing measurements for

the cabinet ministers and that fact of the forgoing of pay relative to them

completing their service plans and meeting their budgets. I also talked about

the government caucus committees and the work that they will do and how we are

opening up government for access to the public and to members of this

Legislature.

Just as I

was past that, I started to talk about merit employment and a professional

public service. I'd started to tell a story about a person related to my

ministry when I became the Solicitor General, relative to consumer protection in

this province. I want to go back and finish that, because that was where I was

cut short. I think it's instructive that I complete that today.

[ Page 279 ]

As a

minister — for those of you that don't understand — you get briefed on

relatively huge amounts of information on different sections of your ministry

that you're responsible for. In the case of my ministry, one of those sections

is consumer protection. It covers a whole plethora of things, everything from

cemeteries to motor vehicle dealers and the rest of it — all relative to one

department of government that almost works on a cost-recovery basis.

[1430]

When I had

my briefing with the particular individual by the name of Terry Barnett, who

runs that division of government, I asked one question at the end of the

discussion. I said: "What would you like to do? What would be important for

you to change to make your portion of this ministry work better?"

Immediately, the individual moved into a discussion about how there's a number

of pieces of legislation, about 13 in total, that are affected by consumer

protection in the province of British Columbia, how they could be consolidated

into one fair trade act, how the implementation plan of that could go forward to

reduce regulation and red tape and actually improve the enforcement of consumer

protection in the province. My only job as a minister was to say: "Okay, do

it."

Now, the

response of the civil servant was: "This is refreshing." This

individual had been briefing ministers for a number of years, had talked about

issues in and around the ministry for a number of years, and had never been

given direction or been allowed to go and take that initiative forward so that

they could use their imagination and get better results for government. Hon.

Speaker, that's all that was asked.

Reinforced by a phone call within ten days

was a binder with a plan to consolidate those pieces of legislation, to outline

the benefits of that consolidation, both the cost analysis and the benefit to

the consumer in British Columbia and its protection. That's what a professional

public service is all about. It's about us giving them the initiative to do the

job that we want them to do.

As a

minister of the Crown in the position of the Solicitor General and Minister of

Public Safety, it is important that I say a couple of words about my ministry as

I move towards the conclusion of my comments today. I'm responsible for a

variety of things in addition to consumer protection through the ministry:

gaming, liquor licensing, police, Corrections, residential tenancy and a number

of other things.

You can

imagine the work that needs to be done in and around these areas. The previous

government was, frankly, absent in its real responsibility to the structure of

gaming in the province and how it should be managed and regulated by government.

Well, we're going to fix that. This government was absent in taking initiative

relative to how liquor licensing should be managed for the benefit of everyone

in the province. Hon. Speaker, we're going to work on that.

On the

policing side of this province, although we do have a provincial force in the

RCMP, accountability measurements and how they are going to perform have to be

improved. Frankly, municipalities have told me that, and looking at my own

budget in dealing with it, I'm aware of that as well. In Corrections, hon.

Speaker, we have a number of facilities around the province that deal with a

number of things, and as I learn about Corrections, I am finding that we've got

some pretty interesting and innovative programs relative to the people that are

held in Corrections in B.C.

We did

promise, in the New Era document, another commitment, which we've already

initiated the early work to start on: the modernizing of the Residential Tenancy

Act in this province — something which has been a bit of a hobbyhorse of mine

for the past five years. In 1996 the then Attorney General asked me how long I'd be taking in the estimates debates on residential tenancy,

and I said: "I think we'll take a couple of hours." His response to me

was: "Well, that'll be good, because I never understood that act when I was

in law school, and I still don't understand it today."

I was

promised a plain-language rewrite of that act by the previous government in

1997. It is now 2001. There is no plain-language rewrite. There is no work that

has been done on it, and it is time to move it forward. That instruction has

been given, because in our New Era document we made that commitment, and we'll follow through on it. We're going to aggressively move on the

goals of the Premier to reduce regulation and red tape, improve operations and

deal with issues in an upfront, honest and open manner in the ministry.

Having said

that, I also must talk about my riding just briefly here today. All of these

members of this Legislature have waxed upon it, and they all say, "I think

I come from, or I am part of, the best, or maybe the best...." I do represent the best riding in the province. It's Fort Langley–Aldergrove,

Aldergrove and Willoughby. There's a difference between my riding and these

other ridings.

[1435]

You know,

being at the museum the other night for a reception at the Premiers' conference,

I took a moment to have a look at the model of Fort Victoria. You should know

that Fort Victoria was built after the fort at Fort Langley, but the fort at

Fort Langley and the Hudson's Bay Company will celebrate 175 years in British

Columbia next year. It is the birthplace of British Columbia. It is the

birthplace of our government, and it's in the middle of the riding of Fort

Langley–Aldergrove.

This is a

great community.

Interjections.

Hon. R.

Coleman: I used to get less from the government side than I do today.

It's a

strong family community. It's a community built on what I refer to as the

volunteer capital of Canada. This is a community that no matter where you go,

you will find community centres, you will find parks, you will find water parks,

you will find gymnasiums, and you'll find arenas. Those were all initiated

because volunteers got together and raised the

[ Page 280 ]

money and did the work. That's the history of that community.

The history

of Fort Langley–Aldergrove is a history of people working together to build a

strong community and a strong future for all of us, but it's also about friends.

It's a remarkable community of friends that stand by one another. Even though

it's only 50 kilometres outside of Vancouver, this riding actually knows one

another. This riding doesn't feel like an urban centre but really feels like a

community where people can know one another, know their neighbours and trust

their friends.

It is also

a community that has been waiting a long time for a vision for British Columbia

— a vision that will change their children's future, a vision that will change

their businesses' futures, a vision that they can look back on and say, as the

birthplace of British Columbia, that we can now look forward to greatness in

B.C. once again. I just want to reiterate what that vision is. That vision is

the same as the vision for every member of this Legislature, except two. That

vision is this.

"1. A

top-notch education system for students of all ages." What a remarkable

thing, which we need for our children and our families and the future of our

economy, to have a top-notch education system.

"2.

High-quality public health care services that meet all the patients' needs where

they live and when they need it." Rest assured, Mr. Speaker, that that is a

commitment of the members of our government. We will work toward point 2 of our

vision, to have that health care system.

"3. A

thriving private sector economy that creates high-paying job

opportunities." It's very important that we build a future for our young

people and for the people of our province, to have those opportunities and

careers in the economy.

"4.

Safer streets and schools in every community." That's a vision. That's what

we talk about when we care about our community, and we have volunteers and

friends within them. It's what we believe in.

"5.

Better services for children, families and first Nations." Nothing could

be more important in building a strong foundation for our children and our

families for their futures than that they can be safe, strong and build a future

for themselves in this province.

"6.

The fastest-growing technology industry in Canada." We know that's where

the emerging economy is. We know that it's important to all of us. We've made

that commitment in our vision to do something about it.

"7. A

leading-edge forest industry that is globally recognized for its productivity

and environmental stewardship." You know, it's high time that we stood up

and told the rest of the world that we have the best foresters in the world. We

have the best environmental standards on the land base, and we do not play

second fiddle to anybody when it comes to managing our land.

"8.

Greater equity and equality for British Columbia in Canada." I think we saw

the start of that at the Premiers' conference, where our Premier took the

leadership last week and started to actually bring the Premiers of this country

together to work on a longer-term vision for this country. That's what

leadership is about, and that's what we need to build that equality within a

strong nation.

[1440]

"9.

The most open and accountable democratic government in Canada." We're the

home of the open cabinet meeting. We're the home of the government caucus

committee where every member of our caucus can come forward and put forward an

opinion so it can come forward to cabinet and to other operations of government

so we can work together. We are the home of open government, and we will get

more open. We will do an even better job, and other provinces will follow suit

as they see what the success of openness, honesty and integrity in government

can do for a province.

"10.

Responsible, accountable management of your public resources and tax

dollars." You couldn't ask somebody else to give you money and say:

"Let me do with it what I wish, and I'll never be accountable to you in any

other business enterprise if you're dealing with a financial institution."

We are given the tax dollars of the people of this province to manage and to

operate this province properly, and that means we need to have performance

plans. We need to have business plans, and we need to measure our outcomes so we

know that we are doing the best we can for the people of B.C. with the money

they give us.

I'm proud

to be back in this House after another election. I'm proud to be back in this

House because here we are today, part of the cusp of the true vision of great

government in Canada. We will be here in four years, having taken a pen and

checked off the plan. We will be here telling British Columbians that for the

first time in the history of B.C. a government was elected that was accountable,

that followed through and did exactly what it promised to do. We'll all be proud

of it on that day.

MacKay: Mr. Speaker, my first duty as I stand in the House for the first

time this afternoon is to congratulate you on your election to the Speaker's

chair of this House.

What a

great honour and privilege it is to stand in this House as the elected MLA for

the largest geographic riding in the province. Although the boundaries have

changed over the years, it is also a great honour to follow in the footsteps of

people such as Cyril Shelford, who represented portions of the riding now called

Bulkley Valley–Stikine. Mr. Shelford was a Minister of Agriculture and later

served on the B.C. Forest Resources Commission.

The riding

of Bulkley Valley–Stikine, in case you didn't know, is in the northwest

portion of this province. By road it starts east of Burns Lake, and at its apex

it travels into the Yukon and then back into B.C. to access the small community

of Atlin. To drive this distance it would take approximately 20 hours of

non-stop driving. Let me put that in perspective. If you got in an automobile in

Vancouver and started driving east, and I left Burns Lake at the same time,

after 20

[ Page 281 ]

hours of driving I would arrive in Atlin, and you would arrive at the

Alberta-Saskatchewan border.

Another

example of just how large Bulkley Valley–Stikine is, is that today in Victoria

we are at latitude 48.5 degrees. Smithers, which is where I live, is at 55

degrees, and Atlin is at latitude 59 degrees. The riding of Bulkley

Valley–Stikine is made up of several smaller communities. Smithers, Houston,

Burns Lake and the Hazeltons make up the majority of the population. We have

numerous smaller communities throughout the riding as well.

For the

past ten years we have been represented by the NDP. We split the vote in the

1996 election, along with several other ridings, and gave the NDP another five

years. What a terrible five years that was. What a terrible two terms those

were. Thank goodness it's over.

Let me take

you back to the north once again and give you an example of problems we face

that those in the south take for granted. During our recent provincial election,

to vote in the advanced poll the residents of Atlin were told that the advanced

poll was in Dease Lake. That sounds easy enough, but let me remind you that the

driving time between Atlin and Dease Lake is eight hours of non-stop driving one

way.

[1445]

The

communities of Atlin and Dease Lake are in the same health region. When a

specialist arrives at Dease Lake, the people of Atlin are told they can see the

specialist, but they need to drive for eight hours to see the doctor. Then they

must overnight and return the following day. Fortunately for the residents of

Atlin, we have a memorandum of understanding with the Yukon that allows those

residents to travel into Whitehorse for medical treatment, a travel time of

about two hours.

Our highway

system into the northern part of my riding leaves a lot to be desired. For the

most part, the roads are gravel and oftentimes very rough, making travel time

slower. Economic activity in the northwestern part of this province has been

reduced to a terrible state. Our once active mining community has been chased

from the province by taxes and regulations. We need to address these concerns

and ensure land tenure to those who would invest dollars looking for minerals,

with the subsequent job opportunities for the people who live in the north.

We have

gone from spending $250 million a year in mining and exploration in the early

1990s to approximately $19 million in the year 2000. This accounted for huge job

losses in the mining industry, losses in airline services and losses to service

industries, to name a few. As a new government, I would like to remind this

House of the fiscal update which was delivered on July 30. We committed to get

rid of the provincial sales tax on industrial machinery for logging, mining and

energy sectors. We committed to get rid of the corporate capital tax over the

next two years. We committed to reduce the corporate income tax on January 1,

2002; and to encourage exploration for new mines, a 20 percent flow-through

share credit has been created.

We must ask

ourselves: did anybody listen to that? Did the mining industry listen to the

fiscal update and good news that came from it? Let me quote from the Mining

Association of British Columbia news release dated July 30, 2001: "If it

was the intent of the provincial government to send a message that British

Columbia is open for business, then they have succeeded in doing so."

The people

of my riding continue to wait for Skeena Cellulose to be picked up by private

interests. Unemployment in the Hazeltons, which was impacted by the closure of

the Carnaby mill, which is owned by Skeena Cellulose, is now close to 80

percent. If the unemployment rate was that high in the lower mainland or

Vancouver Island, the reality of the numbers I speak of would be unacceptable.

Well, Mr. Speaker, I want you to know that these numbers are not acceptable to

the people of the Hazeltons. With the commitment of this government, I know we

will find solutions to the problems we face in Bulkley Valley–Stikine and the

rest of the province.

Health care

is one issue that is common to all of us. Perhaps I should rephrase that comment

and say the lack of health care. The lack of any long-term plan for the delivery

of health care over the last ten years has brought us to the state of crisis we

now find ourselves in. At one time we had nursing programs in our northern

college systems. They were dropped. We have been burning out our physicians for

years with no plan to help them. All of the people in the health care system,

patients as well as medical people, have been neglected over the years.

This

government has committed to long-term planning for operational and capital

funding to ensure that the people of the province have access to health care

where they live when they need it. The people in all the small communities that

make up the riding of Bulkley Valley–Stikine look forward to improved health

care.

[1450]

There is

another health care issue that was ignored for the past decade. The health care

issue I speak of is the health of our number one industry and in particular the

health of our forests. The central regions of our province are facing a problem

of such proportion as we have never experienced before. I refer to the

infestation of our lodgepole pine in the central interior by the mountain pine

beetle.

This

infestation is not something that has happened overnight. An area twice the size

of Vancouver Island has gone from a once healthy forest to a forest that, for

all intents and purposes, is dead. Estimates of the amount of timber now

affected are close to 60 million cubic metres. One needs to realize the loss of

revenue to the people of this province and the economic and social impact on the

forest-based communities in the affected areas in order to appreciate the crisis

we face in the forest industry.

I am

pleased to report to this House that a few short weeks after this new government

was sworn in, the Premier announced a task force to address this problem. Four

MLAs from the north were assigned to

[ Page 282 ]

seek public input, and I can now report that we have visited communities from

100 Mile House to Smithers, seeking input from the people affected. A total of

11 communities were visited. We are in the process of preparing a report for the

Minister of Forests, from which a plan will emerge on how best to deal with the

pine beetle infestation.

acknowledge, and a lot of my constituents acknowledge, that the past ten years

have seen a steady decline in the quality of life we enjoyed in the northern

part of this province. We care about the community. We enjoy hunting and

fishing, and many used to make a living by extracting our abundant natural

resources. That is what we used to do, and we look forward to that lifestyle

once again.

Many of us

acknowledge that a return to that way of life will not happen overnight. The

B.C. Liberal government, under the leadership of Premier Gordon Campbell, is

committed to bringing back trust in government to the people of this province.

We all want a great education system, a health care system we can rely on, and

we want a return to prosperity. We have been given a large mandate by the people

of this province.

In closing,

I would like to leave you and this House with this quote: "When the people

are afraid of the government, you have anarchy. When the government is afraid of

the people, you have democracy."

Stewart: I rise today to address the Speech from the Throne, because I

believe it contains some of the key things that this government will be moving

forward with in the next few months — some of the key priorities that must be

achieved in order to bring British Columbia back to where it ought to be.

[J.

Weisbeck in the chair.]

In my own riding — or adjacent to my riding — next

weekend, I'd like to invite everybody to come out to our Acadian festival

recognizing the Acadian involvement in British Columbia over the years. It will

be next Saturday in Port Moody, and I look forward to seeing as many people as

possible at our Acadian festival. I know that my colleague from Port

Coquitlam–Burke Mountain will undoubtedly be able to be there as well.

An Hon.

Member: If you speak, and in French.

Stewart: Yes, you'll be invited to speak in French.

Earlier —

I think it was last week — legislation was introduced in this House that

addresses the issue of parent volunteers in our schools. As a parent with four

children, I want to specifically mention that legislation. It goes a great way

in addressing some of the fundamental issues that British Columbia now faces.

For many years British Columbia has perhaps ignored the volunteer sector,

ignored the role of parents in the education system and ignored a great many of

the fundamental truths that British Columbians, I suspect, hold true.

[1455]

The parent

volunteers legislation will enshrine in legislation for the first time the right

— I believe the inalienable right — of parents to work in the schools, in

the school system, to the betterment of their children's education. I truly

believe that piece of legislation is symbolic, as well as fundamentally

important, in the way in which British Columbia will move forward in the next

decade.

Since the

House began sitting again, we've heard from the member for Vancouver-Hastings.

She has said many times that from this point forward, the mess that we find

ourselves in as a province is our responsibility. It is the responsibility of

this government. It is not the responsibility anymore of the government that

created it.

I want to

speak to that. The throne speech clearly sets out a path that we must take to

bring British Columbia back to prosperity, to bring back some hope for the

future, for our children's future. That hope was taken away by the previous

government. So when I hear that member stand in this House and say that from now

on everything that happens, all of the results we get, are the results of our

government, it makes me shudder a little bit. It ignores the horrible, horrible

government, on so many issues, that we've seen for the last ten years in this

province. That government has had a shameful, shameful record. We have an awful

lot of work to do in the coming months and years to try to put right again some

of the issues, the problems, that were created.

When I was

speaking a few days ago in response to the economic update, I quoted from a man

much smarter than myself — which doesn't narrow it down very much. I was

quoting someone who said that the problems of today, the problems we have

created, will not be solved at the level of thinking that created them. I

believe that's entirely true. We must move on. We must reinvent the way

government does things.

We have

been in power, this government has been in office now for 60 days. I

understand how the member for Vancouver-Hastings might think that after 60 days,

the world has changed. That may well have been the idea of long-term planning

for the previous government: anything that happens in the next 60 days.

Well,

that's not what long-term planning is. For a business long-term planning is the

next decade. For a household long-term planning may be the next 20 years.

Surely, for a government long-term planning must be longer than has been

happening in the last ten years in this province. We must reinvent the way

government works. We must insist that government plan ahead, put in place a true

business plan for the future, a plan to get our economy sustainable once again.

That, I think, is our number one priority.

I may never

do this again in this House. I'm going to be quoting from a former Premier. This

particular Premier was quoted in the weekend newspapers — the member, as he

was then, for Vancouver-Kingsway, the

[ Page 283 ]

Premier through the '97-99 period. Some of the things he said were

enlightening. We've been saying them; it's not like they're new ideas. But it

was enlightening to see that someone who was leading perhaps the worst

government that this province has ever seen has come around a little bit.

An Hon.

Member: Who was that guy?

Stewart: I'm not going to mention his name, because he lives on in infamy.

He says that the problems with this government were a sheer size question:

"It's like using a huge backend loader to move a little pebble. These are

clumsy mechanisms that are very, very expensive."

He goes on

to talk about the kinds of cost drivers that affect the way government

operations move. He says that in times of economic downturn, there's less tax

money to fund it all, but the cost drivers just keep driving. "It's hard to

see how that's sustainable," he concludes, "unless government is

reinvented."

[1500]

Well,

that's an interesting thought that Mr. Clark has said. It's an interesting

thought that the former Premier of this province would have come to —

unfortunately a couple of years past the time when he could have done anything

about it. I urge the current member for Vancouver-Hastings to perhaps read the

former Premier's words and understand some of the wisdom — and I use the word

really cautiously — which Mr. Clark included in his comments in the Saturday Sun .

"We were an old-fashioned activist government, with no money. So you're

naturally driven to look at ways you can be an activist without costing

anything. And that leads to regulation."

Well, it

did indeed lead to regulation. It led to the creation of regulation for

regulation's sake in many cases. One of the key tasks that this government must

face in the coming months and years in trying to reinvent the way the people's

business takes place here in Victoria and across the province will be to

eliminate much of the regulation that was created by the past government, the

kinds of regulation that stifle business creativity — not just business

creativity but business investment — and stifle the creation of jobs. We won't

be eliminating regulation to help business; we'll be eliminating regulation to

help people who want jobs. I don't know anyone in British Columbia that thinks

British Columbia can get by without jobs.

Mr. Clark

goes on to say that public sector unions have to decide: are they going to try

and work with the government to reduce costs and protect the system and promote

progressive values, or are they going to be like business unions and merely

advocate for more money for their members? "I think that here in B.C. we're

a little betwixt and between."

I don't

believe that the working people of British Columbia, though, see it like Mr.

Clark. I think the working people of British Columbia believe that we can work

together, that government can work with the labour sector and move forward to a

new prosperity. I hope and I pray that B.C. will be able to see economic peace

and economic prosperity, brought upon by a new level of understanding between

labour and government. I really hope and pray that we will be able to bring that

in the coming months.

Mr. Clark

concludes his comments with something that I believe is one of the most telling

comments: "For a private sector union to be successful, the company has to

make money." Mr. Clark speaks specifically of private sector unions in that

case, of course, but that doesn't apply only to private unions. That applies

also to government all across this province. We must look at government using

the tax dollars that it is provided as efficiently as possible.

When we

speak of government doing something, we must change our mind a little bit,

change the way we think of that. We must think not of government developing a

program or government supplying a particular benefit to a sector but of

taxpayers doing that, because that is in fact what is happening. We must say

that taxpayers can't afford more than that or that taxpayers want to provide

this program to this particular sector or that taxpayers believe that we should

be more efficient, because that is what taxpayers believe, and I believe it

strongly myself.

We must go

forward with a government that is efficient. That does not mean that we can

ignore the needs of British Columbians — the needs of minorities, the needs of

persons with disabilities, the needs of youth at risk, the needs of sexually

exploited youth, of single parents, of families coping with poverty and

unemployment.

[1505]

I want to

speak for a moment about the issue of drugs and youth. My 15-year-old daughter was 13 at the time. I took her to a forum that was organized by

the former member for Port Moody–Burnaby Mountain. Now she's the member for

Port Moody–Westwood. It was a drug forum dealing specifically with the issue

of at-risk youth. It was meant to scare us as parents, and I'll tell you, it

achieved that. I believe it achieved it for my daughter as well. It was meant to

make us understand that the issue of at-risk youth is vitally important to the

health of our communities, is vitally important to our children, and that we

cannot think that it's going to happen in some other city to some other family.

We must think of it happening to us right here at home, right here on our

streets and in our homes.

I was

speaking this morning with one of the most vocal spokespersons in my community

on the issue of sexually exploited youth. I know she believes that we can make

some inroads and achieve some things to improve the situation for sexually

exploited youth and for youth at risk in our community — at risk of drug and

alcohol harm and all sorts of things. I know we can do that. I will work as hard

as I can for the future of our children and the future of my community to make

sure that happens.

We must

also recognize that we have inherited from the previous government an incredible

debt and an unsustainable economy. We must turn that around. We must do what we

can today, in the coming months

[ Page 284 ]

and years, to make sure this government reinvents itself and that this

economy regains its position as the number one economy in Canada — indeed,

looks forward to its position as the number one economy in North America. We can

do that. I believe that with the capable people in this House, the colleagues

that have stepped forward and sought election to represent the people of British

Columbia, we will move forward in the coming decade and re-achieve British

Columbia's position in North America.

Anderson: Last week I spoke on the economic situation of the province, and I

had a concern at the time that most of the coverage we received in the media

throughout the province from the throne speech and the other presentations had

to do with the financial aspects of our planning and programming. Of course the

financial aspects are very important, because the economy provides the jobs. The

jobs provide the income that every father and mother must have if they are to

provide the necessities of life for themselves and particularly for their

children.

Today

I'd like to focus on another aspect of both the throne speech and the economic

outlook of our province. Our province is rich primarily because of the people

who live in it, because of the boys and girls who grow up here and find that

they have the opportunity for the fullness of life — education, recreation,

social interaction and personal growth.

Last week's

throne speech attempts to set out, on behalf of the people of the province, an

expression of their wishes, which were reflected to us as we were elected to

become the government at this particular time. As we heard from them their

wishes and desires, so the throne speech was our way of summarizing and putting

together the priorities of our people.

The initial

paragraph of the throne speech, after the normal and expected greetings, was

simply this: "On May 16, the people of British Columbia elected a new

parliament and a new government. In so doing they supported my government's

sweeping vision for economic, social and institutional revitalization."

[1510]

Sometimes

we overlook the social and institutional revitalization, which is really what

our programs are all about. It's in the social life that our people really come

to express who they are and find their personal well-being.

The

paragraph that leads into this section, which has to do with the social

well-being of our province and our people, is called simply "A New Era of

Hope." Within that

section there is a promise. My government's new era of

hope will extend beyond the economy to critical services for people. That's

further elaborated in these words: "All of these commitments will be

backstopped by a new approach to provide children and families with the support

they need to lead healthy, happy lives. The new Minister of State for Women's

Equality will play an important role in that endeavour, as will the Minister of

Human Resources."

What I

would focus on is the reason we are here. True, we have to have businesses, we

enjoy working, we enjoy creating and we enjoy developing. But for every family

person the focus of their life is primarily in their home-family interaction and

with their neighbours and their friends. So we have seen in the pioneer

communities right across Canada — and for that matter, around the world, but

particularly here in Canada — that when people move into a new community and

begin to develop, the first thing they do is build a school.

As soon as

they established their businesses and began to interact and stabilize the

economy, they established a school so they could teach the upcoming generation

and also so they could go to the school on the weekends and have their dances

and their social lives together. Or, if they didn't have a school, they'd run to

the barns and the community centres. And they were the community centres for

their midnight activities throughout the year.

Hon.

Speaker, the schools, the churches and the religious organizations are

fundamental to the life of our community, so they are fundamental to our reasons

for being here in the Legislature. I'd just like to take a moment as we are here

today and focus on some of the ministries, some of the organizational structure

that is in place. The majority of our funds, of the money that we raise as

government — the majority of the taxes that are provided to us by the people

of the province — is spent on our social activities: health, education and

support services for our people.

We need to

focus on the reality that we as a nation, we as the province of British Columbia have put a priority on helping each other, on being neighbourly

together, on providing services for those who could not provide it for

themselves. We have discovered that often those of us who are providing services

to others in the end become those who have need of the services ourselves. It's

a give and a take.

If we look

at some of the ministries, we focus on what the real work of the government is

about. Taking them alphabetically, there is the Ministry of Advanced Education,

which says that education is a lifelong undertaking. This means that,

particularly today, every adult, every business and every profession has to

continue to learn or they will be outdated and their business will cease to

exist. It may be a technical education, it may be a skill education, it may be

the initial university education or upgrading, but whatever it is, a fundamental

part of our educational system today is advanced education.

[1515]

We have our

community colleges around the province. They're called community colleges

because they take an interest in the community itself. It's not just training

individuals. It's enabling a community to come together and have in their

locality the kind of education which is appropriate to the needs of their

community. It means that the education is on their doorstep.

We go from

Advanced Education to the Minister of Children and Family Development and the

new

[ Page 285 ]

Minister of State for Early Childhood Development. In this focus we have said

as a government that our opportunity and responsibility is to be concerned with

the development of children even prior to the time they are born so that they

have a healthy opportunity in life and an early start and so that the

educational opportunities for them begin when they are born. The process of

education and development prior to their entering the formal school system is

going to be of primary importance to us in our programming.

This means

that there will be recreational opportunities, child care opportunities,

opportunities for assessment of special needs children from the time they are

born until they go to school so that their needs can be met as early as possible

in life. We have learned that if you meet the needs of children before they go

to school, then that well-being will continue for the rest of their lives. If we

don't meet their needs during that early childhood development, the difficulties

that go unserved during that period of time will be with them and with us for

the whole of their lives.

So early

childhood development and enabling the support of our families…. Also, hon.

Speaker, you will find throughout the whole of this throne speech an emphasis on

family development, on family cohesion, on family support, on the opportunities

we have to support each other to have healthy communities so that we can have

healthy people, so that we can have healthy children. The best protection we can

give to our children or to each other is prevention, to make sure that the

difficulties in their lives don't come in the first place.

With that

focus on community we have a new title for a ministry, called Community,

Aboriginal and Women's Services. We have said that this is a new era; it is a

time to change things. It's not the time to do the things that have been done

before, because we know they didn't work. So we have a focus on the communities,

because that's where people live, in communities; that's where people work, in

communities; that's where people play, in communities. Unfortunately, that's

also often the place where people fight: in communities. So it's in the

communities that we have to put our focus.

We put our

focus there by bringing together many of the other separate ministries —

Women's Equality, multiculturalism, immigration. All of these special interests

— that's what they are — and very important interests happen within

communities. It's the interaction of these which is fundamentally important to

us. Also, one of the stresses we have found in our community is that we have not

supported the aboriginal community in their style of community living, which may

be different from the style of other people around them.

When we

focus on communities and people living in communities, we focus on the

aboriginal understanding that the community is responsible for each other and

the collective opportunities that they have. We take a responsibility of

working with them not only in the treaty and reserve situations, which are their

homelands, but also in the urban communities, where in the past we have neglected

to recognize that the community of the urban area has a special opportunity and

challenge for those of our aboriginal people who come to join us there.

[1520]

It's not only

our aboriginal people but also our multicultural people who come from around the

world, where they have a different cultural understanding of community, where

they have different cultural customs which vary from each other. So we must

support ourselves and them in coming together, in sharing with each other and

enabling our communities to expand in cultural opportunities, to expand in

customs that we appreciate, to learn to think in new ideas and work together.

The

Ministry of Community, Aboriginal and Women's Services gives us that focus upon

community where we must live and work together. Within that focus there's a new

appreciation and awareness, which we used to have and which we forgot or

neglected — whichever word might be best appropriate — of the volunteer

services that the people provide to each other within communities. Sometimes we

call them charitable organizations. Sometimes we call them recreational

organizations. Sometimes we call them non-profit organizations, but there are

thousands and thousands of men and women of all ages who spend hours and days

and weeks serving each other through all this variety of organizations.

There are

thousands of those organizations within our communities. They're a fundamental

part of our governance within our communities' activities. This government

undertakes to recognize, respect and support those volunteer agencies in all of

their activities as they work together within our communities. It is important

that we realize that these are the agendas that we deal with every day in our

activities in legislation and in government.

We know of

education. I've talked about education for those in midlife and for seniors in

our lifelong education. I've talked about education for children before they go

to school, and then, of course, there is the education which children have in

the K-to-12 opportunities within our communities. The importance of that to

community was brought home to me one day on the east side of Vancouver as I was

attending a hearing by the local council people and the parks board people about

building a community centre.

They had

the social workers there and the child care workers there, and they all said how

important it was to have this centre for their children. After all the

professionals had spoken, the chairman of the meeting said: "I see there

are a lot of parents here. I haven't heard from you. Would you like to comment

on what you've been hearing?" One of the parents stood up and summarized it

very well for the rest of them and said very quietly and quite politely:

"I've been listening to what all these people have been saying, and I agree

with them. These centres are very important to our children, and I'm pleased

that you'll go ahead — I hope — and complete this centre. But just remember,

Mr.

[ Page 286 ]

Chairman, the school is the centre of our community. The school is where we

as newcomers go for help, because we know the teachers. We trust the teachers,

and we go to them first."

They knew

their own community, where the children were recognized and respected. It was in

that setting that they said: "Our community, as families, centres around

the school. Education is not something apart from the families of our community.

Education in our school system is the fundamental gathering place of the

families in our communities where we live."

So, hon.

Speaker, we put a prime emphasis on this, and therefore our emphasis is on

education being an essential service. It's not education just of the children.

It's education enabling the parents of the children to share with their children

in their development.

[1525]

One of the

things that's happened is that we used to have in our schools — particularly

in the lower mainland, where we have such a multicultural mix of people — what

we called multicultural workers and home-and-school workers. They were teachers

who worked with the children in school, and they worked with the parents at

home. But in our cutbacks and financial realities and with our change in emphasis,

these people were let go. What has happened is that our school system is

unintentionally separating the children from the parents, particularly in

multicultural communities, because the children learn new cultures and new ideas

that their parents don't receive. But when you have an interaction in a

community school — of which we have a number, and hopefully we will have more

— where the parents are part of the school and come in and participate in the

school activities, then the parents and the children change together. The

well-being and the overcoming of the division of the families are very

important.

Education

is a community activity, not just an activity between teachers and children.

It's an activity of parents and teachers working together in common. As my

colleague has said, the opportunity for parents to come and be in the school is

extremely important.

Another

part of the well-being of our people and to building themselves up as persons is

in our health system. I say health system because it's a system that enables

people to have healthy lifestyles, which is fundamentally important before we

come to health care. If we have fundamental health styles, then health care is

not as needed.

That health

style begins in the community, in the recreational opportunities. I myself had

the privilege, from the time I could go out the door, to participate in

community activities — in skating, curling, hockey, running and all of the

activities that were there for me on the school grounds, in the community

centres and the rinks. These were provided for us by the community.

I remember when I was a youngster, when we were involved in

recreational activities, the person who looked after us — and I say that in a

very positive sense — besides the coach and the planners of the team

activities, was the caretaker of the rink. The caretaker was around and knew who

we were, and we trusted him. The interaction between us and that caretaker in

the community setting was fundamentally important. So health and education are

community activities that we focus on for the social well-being of our people.

Then

there's the Ministry of Human Resources through which we collectively say to

those persons who have had difficulty in their lives, for one reason or another,

that we have support and help for them in their time of need.

Let me give

you an illustration that brought this home to me early in my life. I was

minister of a church in Regina and was out visiting, as ministers are prone and

supposed to do. I was given a name, and I went to visit an elderly lady. I

eventually found her on a third floor, up many stairs, in the one room where she

lived. It was about six feet by six feet. In there was everything she owned. She

was a very lonely person, and she was trying to survive.

Not many

years before she had been a farmer's wife. They had a farm and had lived there

happily all their lives. Her husband died, and in the process she lost

everything. She was left to live in that little room by herself in this urban

situation where she knew no one else, and there was no one there to help her

except community agents like the church and the nun volunteer and the charitable

organizations that would reach out to her. That was in the days before seniors

got financial support.

[1530]

The

supports that we provide to our seniors and to people with disabilities are very

important and very fundamental. I learned early in life that that need may come

very quickly upon every one of us, regardless of what planning or preparation we

think we've made. It's fundamental that we share with one another — with our

children, our adults, our singles, our unemployed — the opportunities that we

can collectively provide through human resources, which we could provide for

them no other way.

I talked

earlier about Advanced Education. One of the other ministries is Skills

Development and Labour, and again, one of the things I learned on the streets of

Vancouver as founding chairman of the Vancouver Food Bank was that there were

people who had skills but no places for their skills to be used. There were

people who wanted to have skills. They were receiving Human Resources help back

in those days, but if you wanted to get a new skill, you had to go off Human

Resources. Then you couldn't eat or have a place to live. It was a catch-22

position.

We want to

change that. We have promised that there will be equality and fairness in our

programs for the people of our province, and we're going to need the help of the

communities of our province to provide that equality and fairness. I wanted to

stress today that we're here in this process not just to talk about money and

jobs, though they're fundamentally important, but also to realize we're here to

provide the environment not only where businesses can survive but in which

communities survive.

[ Page 287 ]

It has

always seemed very strange to me that in this land of forestry and mining,

particularly, and fishing of late — particularly mining, where we knew a

new town and a new development was going to cease to exist some ten, 15 or 20

years down the road…. As soon as it was begun, you knew it was time-limited.

Instead of

trying at the very beginning for the change of that town, for the reorientation

or redevelopment when that mine closed and building it into the planning and

process, what do we do? We wait till the year before, and then the people are

dislocated. They lose everything they've gained in their lives, and many of them

commit suicide as a result.

We want to

have a planning process that looks to the future. It begins now. In this early

90 days between the election and September 3, we have said that there are 90

promises we'll fulfil. We'll begin the process of implementing them, but the 90

promises are but a small fraction of what we need to do in the next four years.

The leader

of the NDP opposition has said she'll grant us the 90 days. She'll grant us the

reality of implementing what we had in our platform, because the people said

that was what they wanted.

Penner: Very kind of her.

Anderson: Yes, that's very kind of her to do that.

She has

said — and I give her credit for this, actually — that what she will

challenge us on and criticize us on is what we haven't said we will do. Now, we

have said we will bring fairness and equality, justice and respect, and these

are implications that are going to be tested not in these 90 days but in the

next four years.

These are

the things that happen in the community. These are things that happen in the

relationships we have with one another. We have suggested and promised to the

people that once we're past the 90 days, we'll not begin to do less but begin to

do more. Our task is a renewal and a revitalization of our communities, of our

families and of ourselves.

[1535]

People have

always reminded me over the years that you begin change with yourself. If we're

not willing to learn new ways, to think new thoughts and take new risks

individually, then collectively we'll never succeed. We have challenged

ourselves to do that: to be different persons than when we came here, to grow

and develop, to put aside our prejudices, to put aside our biases and to listen

to the people of the province so that our communities can be healthy

communities, our families can be healthy families and our individuals of all

ages can be healthy, well-educated, socially able men, women and children.

P. Bell:

Mr. Speaker, again, I would be remiss in not congratulating you on the

elevation to your new position. I'd also like to thank the member for

Vancouver-Langara for such an eloquent speech; it was wonderful. Thank you.

As I sit

down here in the first few days of being in this House as a newly elected

member, I'd also like to take time out to thank all the folks that are joining

us in the gallery today. I think it's probably a wonderful day outside, and I'm

glad that you've decided to come and join us.

I'd like to

start out today by talking a bit about education and the education system. I

believe that our education system needs to be revitalized and moved forward. I'd

like to draw a simile and liken our education system to that of a farmer. A

farmer who is a smart farmer quite frequently would save his best crop for the

following year as a seed crop. We failed to do that over the past ten years.

We've not encouraged our smartest and brightest young children to pursue the

field of education. In effect, we've not saved our seed crop for the following

year. What we've continually done is, in fact, sold our seed crop to the highest

bidder instead of saving those individuals. As a result, we're seeing that crop

get weaker and weaker each year.

Our

education system is absolutely critical to us, particularly in the riding that I

represent, Prince George North. We find it difficult at times to find any

teachers for some parts of a very isolated riding. I have community schools in

the city of Mackenzie that are faced with constant turnover of teachers. That

needs to end, and we need to take an active role in ending that process.

I believe,

really, there are four key things that every human being wants, in British

Columbia and in fact in Canada. The first is a strong education system. I've

spoken to that already. The second key component — and I don't think anyone would

disagree with this — is that we need to revitalize our health care system. Again,

it's diminished in its capacity, particularly over the last ten years. We need

to get back to the roots of our health care system and start providing services

to people when they need them and where they need them.

Again

referring to the community of Mackenzie, which is located about two hours north

of Prince George, the once-thriving hospital with an operating room and a

delivery care facility is little more than a first-aid post today. We have

individuals who cannot have a baby in Mackenzie anymore, in a town with a

population of 6,000 people. It's absolutely devastating for those individuals.

They have to travel two hours by road to Prince George, in some of the most

difficult road conditions anywhere in North America for about six months of the

year. Unfortunately, it's created an environment of turnover, and it's very

difficult to keep people in that community.

The third

area I'd like to talk about is the economy. I think all of us want to have an

excellent education system and a well-funded and excellent health care system,

but without a healthy economy that's impossible. We all want to have better

opportunities for our children, and in fact for our children's children, in the

years to come. In order to do that, we have to create that thriving private

sector economy. The B.C. Liberal government is committed to that.

[ Page 288 ]

The fourth

and final key component that I believe all individuals want is a safe

environment to live in. You know, I think we would all like to be in a situation

where we can close our doors at the end of the day and not have to worry about

locking them. That has all but disappeared over the last 20 or 30 years. We live

in a society full of crime, and again, we must aggressively attack that.

[1540]

You know,

whether it's a member of the government side or a member of the opposition side,

I'm sure that we would all agree on those four key points. The difference is the

ability to execute on those four points. Why is it that a gas station on one

corner survives and the one across the street goes broke? Why is it that a pulp

mill in one community thrives and makes big money, when another pulp mill goes

out of business? Why is it that one restaurant is successful and the next one

can't make it? It's the ability to execute, and I believe that's what we as a

government now bring to British Columbia: the ability to execute on our

commitments.

When you

review our first 62 or 63 days since we've been elected, the first and most

dynamic thing we did was introduce a 25 percent cut in personal income taxes.

During the election we were constantly queried on this and asked, "What is

dramatic?" and we purposely kept that to ourselves. We were told that it

would maybe amount to $20 per paycheque. Well, let's do the math. On a

26-pay-period year, $20 per paycheque is $520. Multiply that by a two-income

family, and it's $1,000, and $1,000 is dramatic. That's what we've executed on.

How are we

going to fund our health care system? How are we going to fund our schools? How

are we going to fund the health care contract that we're facing right now? We

have to do that through a thriving private sector economy. The only way to have

a thriving private sector economy is to be competitive in our tax regime. We

have moved in a significant manner on our first day in office to achieve that,

and I for one am very proud of that accomplishment.

The Premier

also announced the appointment of a B.C. Progress Board. I think that is one of

the key components that will lead us to a thriving private sector economy. If

you do not have the ability to measure your progress, you will not know where

you're going. If you're travelling down a new road, you're going to take a map

with you, and you need to measure periodically along that map to see if you're

moving in the direction that you want to move. I have a tremendous amount of

respect for the individuals who have been appointed to this board, including Mr.

Emerson, who is in fact chairing this board. I believe those individuals will

tell us if we are in fact travelling the road that we need to be travelling to

accomplish that thriving private sector economy.

When you

look back to the 1990s, the decade of decline, I think it's perhaps worth

reviewing where we were and where we travelled during that period of time. The

private sector investment growth, I think, is particularly worth noting. For the

period 1992 to 1999 the province with highest private sector investment growth was

New Brunswick, with 118 percent. That's over double in a period of seven years.

But there were other provinces that were not far behind. Alberta was at 107

percent. Nova Scotia had 104 percent, and so on down the line. Well, when we

look towards the bottom, what do we find? The second-worst province in Canada

was Prince Edward Island. They still had a 41.6 percent growth in private sector

investment, and I believe that's a credible number. Unfortunately, there was one

province that lagged behind that one.

Stewart: Who was it? Tell us, please.

P. Bell:

I'm asked who it was. It was the province of British Columbia at 11.1 percent

— from second-worst at 41.6 percent to 11.1 percent. I believe that speaks

volumes in private sector growth. Now, private sector investment growth

translates directly into private sector job creation. You can create all the

government jobs you want, but you're really not going anywhere when you do that.

[1545]

Private

sector investment growth. Again, Nova Scotia led the way in Canada with a 13.6

percent growth rate for the period from '96 to '99 — just a three-year window.

That's a very, very acceptable number, in my mind. Again, shortly behind Nova

Scotia was Alberta at 12.5 percent. People say that those are relatively small

economies, and those numbers don't mean anything. Well, let's look at the

largest number in Canada or the largest economy in Canada, that being Ontario,

which had a 10.6 percent growth rate in job creation in the private sector for

that three-year period.

Let's move

down the scale a bit. Let's go down again towards the bottom. We're not quite

there. For that same three-year period, Saskatchewan had a 4 percent job growth

in the private sector — not great, but respectable. We need to

look one step further to find our wonderful province. British Columbia was dead

last at 0.4 percent. What a shameful performance we had as a province.

Last, I'd

like to touch on the gross domestic product for the province. Now, that's our

measure of goods and services that we provided through that period of time.

Really, I believe, it's the measurement that indicates how successful we were as

a provincial economy. So we're back to the period of '92-99 again. This time we

find a new province leading the pack. Newfoundland, with the exponential growth

of their offshore oil, led the pack in GDP growth with 27.2 percent in the

seven-year period from '92 to '99 — a phenomenal growth rate. Right behind

Newfoundland we have Saskatchewan with 23.3 percent — again an exceptional

growth rate, and in fact that was done with an NDP government. Yet this

government failed to perform. Alberta, 20.9 percent, and again Ontario with 17.9

percent — exceptional rates of growth.

Well, let's

look down at the other end of the scale again. I hate to do this, but we have

to. Nova Scotia

[ Page 289 ]

had the second-lowest growth in GDP in Canada with 9.8 percent. So where did

we settle out this time? Well, I hate to tell you this, but we weren't even in a

positive number this time. B.C. had a GDP of negative 0.6 percent for the period

of '92-99. That decade of decline is behind us. We need to move forward now to

become a have province again instead of a have-not province.

So how are

we going to do that? Well, I'm proud to say, as a member of the core review task

force, that the Premier has appointed a group of ten folks to review every

single thing that government does. I think it's noteworthy to see that both the

Premier and the House Leader and Finance minister are on that committee.

An Hon.

Member: A couple of bright heads.

P. Bell:

A couple of very bright heads. We have a saying in that task force that we

need to leave no stone unturned. I hate to tell you this, but every time we turn

over another stone, we find something that we're not very happy about.

There are

971 agencies, boards and commissions in this province. Many of them are

quasi-judicial boards or agencies that are left to their own powers to review

different things that our constituents have to deal with on a daily basis. I say

quasi-judicial because they aren't responsible to the court system. In fact,

they really aren't responsible to government, so they really have the ultimate

power. We need to review all of those various agencies and make sure they have

the appropriate mandate and that they execute on what they're responsible for.

We need to

consolidate the delivery of services. During the period, again, of '91 through

2001, many things were done to hide the expense of services. In fact, ICBC has

responsibility for many different areas that are really not the responsibility

of a Crown corporation. They've been running the weigh scales and road safety

programs, different policing initiatives — things that are clearly not their

responsibility, which they should not be involved in. So we need to consolidate

those services, make sure that they are accountable to the appropriate

ministries and create efficiencies wherever we have opportunities.

You know,

efficiency is the key word. As a small business owner, I have learned how to

make what we refer to as penny-profit. That's the way we've had to operate our

businesses for the last ten years. Every cent counts, and we as a government

have to be accountable for how we spend all those pennies.

[1550]

We need to

create a user-friendly government. I went on the B.C. Ferries website on the

weekend looking for an opportunity to take a ferry from Prince Rupert down to

Port Hardy. I thought that might be a nice way to travel down to the Legislature

this weekend. Well, I'm somewhat computer-literate — I can work my way through

the process — and I can tell you I found it impossible to figure out when the

ferry left Prince Rupert. If I was struggling with that, I'm sure we probably

all would have trouble with that as well.

So I think

we need to make government more user-friendly. We need to find ways to explain

the services that we offer within government in a more thorough fashion so that

people understand what we offer.

The most

common complaint I've had since I started in this life of politics revolves

around the Workers Compensation Board. This particular agency seems to fail to

understand the complexities of what they're dealing with. They collect large

sums of money from employers, who struggle at times, and then they fail to offer

the services to their constituents — the people that are injured.

I have a

good friend who was injured about four years ago in an industrial workplace

accident. That individual has yet to be settled with the Workers Compensation

Board. Not only has he not been settled, but the injury that he's facing has

never been corrected. He's not had the services that have been necessary in

order to correct a hand injury.

This

particular individual dearly wants to go back to work. He wants to be a

contributing member of our society. But because the Workers Compensation Board

has failed to fulfil its mandate with that particular individual, we still have

someone that is struggling, at best, with his life. He's an honest,

dedicated individual. We need to do something with the Workers Compensation Board,

and we need to work on that quickly.

I'd like to

talk briefly about the Highway Constructors Ltd. model. That was introduced some

years ago by the previous government. It proved to be very ineffective and

lacked the ability to be competitive. This model established an environment

where someone else was determining the wages that were to be paid by a

particular company. No longer could a corporation bid on a government project

and try to be competitive. The wage rate was controlled, and it created an

environment where we literally spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of

dollars in overruns on the Island Highway.

Let's not

fool ourselves. Those tax dollars belong to everyone in the gallery here today.

They belong to everyone outside and to everyone in the interior and Vancouver. I

don't think that anyone wants to see dollars simply thrown away, and that is in

fact what was happening with HCL. We need to correct that, and we've started

that process.

Well, we

can't focus on strictly negative things. We need to talk about some positive

things as well. The 2010 Olympics are not that far away. I can tell you, as an

individual who ran in the Olympic torch relay for the 1988 Calgary Olympics,

that it's a tremendous experience. I still have my jacket from that time. In

fact, the Olympic torch relay is considered to be the first event of the

Olympics, so technically I was a participant in the 1988 Olympics, although my

physique and my hairline have changed somewhat since that time.

[1555]

The

potential infrastructure that will come to us through a successful 2010 Winter

Olympics is absolutely staggering. We're committed to spending

[ Page 290 ]

$44 million in the next four years to fund the process of this bid, but that

number will come back to us ten times over should we be successful in the bid. I

wholly support it even though I represent a constituency 500 miles away from

where the Olympics would occur. I believe that the infrastructure would extend

up through the Duffy Lake area and into Lillooet, Lytton and beyond. That will

be a tremendous opportunity for us. It will create opportunities in tourism,

certainly in the retail trade and certainly in the construction industry. There

are many tremendous opportunities.

Coming from

the north, I would be remiss if I did not take a few minutes to speak about the

forest industry. There are really four key components that are negatively

affecting our forest industry at this particular point in time, and we've

addressed all of them in the Speech from the Throne.

The first key component that we have to deal with is the softwood lumber agreement. I

can tell you that I'm excited to have the Minister of Forests working on this

particular project. The minister is probably the best individual that we have in

our caucus to represent us in the negotiations with the Americans. I wish him

well. I believe we will be successful in those negotiations. He's been very

proactive in his steps. He's already travelled to Washington, he's been to

Ottawa a number of times, and he's met with many of the stakeholders already. I

believe this area will move forward and that within a reasonable period of time

— it may take a year or a little more than that perhaps — we should come to

a successful conclusion for the softwood lumber agreement. That's absolutely

critical for us.

The second

key area that's devastating our forest industry right now is the current

stumpage system that we have. I, along with three of my colleagues, have been

travelling through the northern interior for the past few weeks, talking to

people about the mountain pine beetle. Although I won't get into all the

details, boring the members in the House today with those nasty little bugs, I

will say that the most common thing we heard is that we need to have stumpage

reform that accurately reflects the value of logs. Our system currently reflects

the value of lumber. At times the value of lumber and the value of logs can be

significantly different, especially in a flooded market like we have today.

The

practice of waterbedding has been devastating to our industry in the north.

Unfortunately, while some parts of the water bed have been at the low spot, in

the north we've been at the high spot, and it's made our industry extremely

non-competitive, particularly over the last five or six years. We need to deal

with that.

The third

key area that needs to be addressed is the Forest Practices Code. My

understanding of the Forest Practices Code is that it's about six feet high and

talks a lot about processes. Processes are great if you're a consultant, but

results are what is important to this government, I believe. We as a government

have committed to moving to a results-based forest practices code.

What does

that mean? What is a results-based forest practices code? Quite simply, we're

going to draw the picture for what the company has to achieve at the end of the

harvesting period, but we're going to allow that company to get to that phase in

whatever way they see best fits. We're no longer going to put handcuffs and a

blindfold on them before they go to the bush. We're going to allow them to

execute to the best of their ability.

conjunction with that, we need to hold our registered professional foresters

accountable. They want that accountability. They want the ability to work within

the code and produce the appropriate end result. No longer can we afford to have

our Ministry of Forests' green pickups chasing around the red and white and

yellow pickups of the companies, checking up on their work. We need to check it

once; we need to check it when it's finished; we need to hold them accountable.

The fourth

key component that needs to be addressed within the Forests ministry is Forest

Renewal B.C. I'm pleased that the minister has been very proactive in the

replacement of a politically appointed board of Forest Renewal and is

aggressively taking a review of Forest Renewal B.C. at this point. We all know

the staggering number of dollars that were spent in the first three years of

Forest Renewal B.C. without a business plan, well in excess of a billion

dollars. It was: "Whoever has a good idea, come on in, and we'll start

handing out the dollars."

Forestry is

the key driver for our economy in B.C., representing over $4 billion of direct

and indirect revenue, which accounts for almost 20 percent of our total

provincial revenue base. We need to nurture and look after our forest industry,

and we need to be aggressive with that.

[1600]

I'd like to

talk briefly again about education. You know, this government is committed to

introducing essential service for education in the coming few weeks. Given the

physique of our Education minister, I believe it will be necessary to introduce

that quite quickly. Over the last ten or 15 years the strikes that have occurred

in the education system have not occurred from the teachers. They've occurred

from a lot of the other complementary workers inside the education system, but

in fact, they have not been the teachers.

I find it a

bit confusing that the teachers are concerned about essential services

legislation, because what's gone on in the past is that they've ended up staying

home and not collecting their income for that particular day when they've been

forced off the property by a strike. That's not to mention the inconvenience and

disadvantage to the parents, who are counting on their children going to the

school system and not having that opportunity, and it's not to mention that the

kids are not having an opportunity to be in the class system actually learning.

I think we

need to expand our education system beyond simply the fundamentals of reading,

writing and arithmetic, and we have to take a look back at our high school

athletic programs and our high school music programs. It's my experience that

over the past

[ Page 291 ]

15 or 20 years, our athletic programs and educational programs have continued

to dissipate.

The

teachers are concerned that should they pile a bunch of kids in the back of

their vehicle and take them off to a program somewhere and they're in an

accident, they'll face a lawsuit. So they've created this risk-adverse

environment, where teachers are no longer prepared to take those kinds of risks.

How did we get there? It's been a disappointing process, and we need to turn

that environment around. We need to reinstate our high school athletic programs.

I know that many of the members here were active in athletics during their early

years. We need to re-establish those programs and make sure that we offer those

services to our kids.

You know,

our health care system is going to consume over $9.5 billion this year, Mr.

Speaker. Certainly it's the first priority for every member in this House —

all 79 of us. None of us would disagree that our health care system is in

shambles. It's our first priority, and we need to reinvigorate it. Our nurses

are frustrated. I understand and accept that. In fact, all our health care

workers are very frustrated. There's not a day that goes by in my constituency

office when we don't receive phone calls from someone speaking to one side or

the other of the issue.

What I

would like to do is suggest to everyone that we need to put our differences

aside. Our health care system is on the brink today. We can no longer afford to

bicker and argue and hold the system at ransom, because that's what's happening.

We need to move beyond this. We need to start working together until we can have

sufficient nurses, sufficient doctors and sufficient health care workers to

provide the services that we're going to provide in the coming years. I would

suggest to all the health care workers out there, all the management out there

and all the other individuals — the doctors involved in the health care system

— that we need to put our differences aside for a few years and work ahead

all as one.

Briefly,

I'd like to touch on the referendum process that we're advocating, Mr. Speaker.

I have a first nations group in my riding, the McLeod Lake band, which has just

signed off on a Treaty 8 adhesion, so they in fact have completed their treaty

process. They were very concerned about us moving to a referendum. They asked me

to explain it a bit, so what I said is: "You know, Treaty 8 was a

framework. It was the framework that you had to work with in the establishment

of your treaty." I asked them: "How long did it take you to work

through Treaty 8?" I assumed that it would be two, three or five years, but

it took 17 years with a framework to achieve a treaty.

[1605]

How can we

possibly expect, without a framework, to achieve a treaty in a year or two or

three or five? This referendum is going to establish a framework for us, and

that's exactly what we need in order to move this treaty process

further. I'm confident that if we work hard on this treaty process and frame the

questions appropriately, we will move ahead with this negotiation. It's

absolutely critical….

Deputy

Speaker: Thank you, member.

P. Bell:

Thank you very much.

Deputy

Speaker: Your time's expired. Thank you very much.

H. Long:

I rise today to speak on the Speech from the Throne. You could have let the

last member continue on if he so wished, believe me.

You know,

after reading the Speech from the Throne and going over the ten points, there's

so many things here that come to light that the last government did not do. I

think that on May 16, when they voted in a new government, a new parliament and

a new era for B.C., they voted in a government that had a vision — a vision

for the future, a vision for the many things that have been brought up by many

members today and will be in the future.

We can't

but look back on what's happened to this province over the years. I think it's

been heard many, many times before. We look at the wasted millions in fast

ferries. We look at the investment in business where they knew they were going

to lose the money and put it in anyhow. They put our health care at risk. They

spent the money in places it should never have been spent, and they put our

health care at risk, our schools at risk and many other things in this province

at risk, with disregard for the people of British Columbia.

One of the

things that bothers me the most is when they talk about them being on labour's

side or involved in labour and the union executive. I think they forgot to

mention that the average working person in British Columbia is looking for a

good life too. They're looking for something. This government isn't just going

to give it to business. They're not bringing in tax relief just for business.

They're bringing it in for every working person.

For ten

years they had an opportunity to repair and get the union movement on line and

to settle the contracts, but they neglected. They held off until a Liberal

government was elected and foisted that upon a new government, and they now

stand to criticize here in this House, day after day, what they have done in the

past and about the new government and what they're going to do in the future.

Well, we will look after that in the future. Our government has a plan. They

know how to look after it. Each member in this House, all 77, will help with a

solution to those problems we have here today.

I'm not mistaken, I think our debt now is about $35 billion or close to $35

billion. A previous speaker brought it up that if the interest on the debt was a

ministry, according to that speaker, it would be the third-largest in British

Columbia — just to pay the debt. So you can see that when they run us into

debt, take us to the depths, we pay in the end and the people suffer.

Education

is probably one of the most important because without education, without

teaching our

[ Page 292 ]

children, without having that available to our children, they cannot achieve

in the future the high-paying jobs and the new industries needed to drive this

system. Every one of our children deserves a good education.

I believe

that both private and public education is key. I think our funding of private

education is essential to get a different way of thinking within our province. I

think the public system works very, very well, but I do believe that with a

private system to augment the public system, the kids get a different way of

looking at life. They get a different idea about how things are in life. They

get a different perspective on exactly what's expected of them. They share that

between them when they get into university, and they have a better understanding

of other people's needs and what it is their cultures are about as well.

[1610]

Health in

this province, as we all know, is at a critical point. I come from a part of the

province that is fairly isolated. It's not a long distance on the Sunshine Coast

or to Powell River. In that distance we have ferries where we have a real tough

time of getting to the points where we are serviced by Vancouver or Vancouver

Island. These areas historically haven't had to travel to and from the main

centres, and it's important to understand that we have to bring those services

back to our communities, where they can get them on time.

That

happened recently with a dialysis machine in Powell River. I talked to a lady

and her husband this morning who were on it, and they're very grateful that it's

there. For the last two years he's been travelling into Vancouver, and it's

been very taxing on him. His health is not as good today as it should be because

of his travelling, which our health care system basically dictated at the time.

I'm not

trying to put down Vancouver and the big areas, because they have their own set

of problems. I just want the people of the main areas to understand that the

small communities have a different perspective; they suffer a different set of

problems than most of the main cities have. If we asked the people in Vancouver

to come to Powell River for dialysis, it just wouldn't happen. Under the health

care system I think it's essential that we look after that and that we treat

everybody equally.

When it

comes to the private sector and the economy and the jobs they create, I think

we've got to look at many areas. I think we've already looked at some of the

taxation areas that free up the industries, free up the small businesses, free

up industry up to invest their money, to look at a new era where they can invest,

where they can create jobs and where they can create the employment that is

needed. Our communities have suffered immensely in this province because of the

forest industry downturn in the pulp and paper industry and so on.

In my area

I have two pulp mills. Both have suffered big losses in jobs, and in that

process the logging has gone down, as well, because of the Forest Practices Code

and many others. It's good to see that the Forest Practices Code is being

reorganized and revamped so the loggers and the companies can take the

responsibility to do the logging. The responsibility of this government is just

to watch, to make sure that if they do break the rules — and they're held

liable for breaking the rules — then they will be taken to task. They will pay

the price. At least they understand that they have the right to go out and do

their jobs without having to be watched day and night by some. I was going to

say some bureaucrat — and it's probably true — who is out there to

regulate their every move.

I look here

and see where it comes down to our safer streets and our policing, and I've got

to admit that in my community and in most of our communities on the Sunshine

Coast and Powell River they're fairly isolated. We do have just a fantastic

policing system both in Powell River and on the Sunshine Coast. Even though we

are a couple of officers short, they do try and look after the people there. We

have a very low crime rate, I think, compared to most of the cities in British

Columbia.

There

are a couple of areas up in the peninsula that do have a problem, one of them

being in Pender Harbour, where there is no police presence. They have to come

from Sechelt, and I think that community would like to have a policeman

stationed there, even if he worked in Sechelt but was stationed there, lived

there and travelled back and forth. I think I can work for my community in the

future on this issue. I look forward to my government working with me.

[1615]

Better

services for children and families and first nations — a huge area. I

have 12 of my own grandchildren, and I look at what they're needing, where my

family has come from, how big it's grown. I look at all the other families, and

I've run into many families that are not as fortunate as mine, that need

services. They need people to help them, and government is there not as much to

help them but to facilitate them in gaining their worth in society. These children should be looked after. They have to be looked after. We have a

huge responsibility to the children of this province.

We have a number of first nations

in my riding. The two main

ones are, in Powell River, the Sliammon band and, on the Sunshine Coast, the

Sechelts. The Sechelts are the first self-governing band in Canada, and down the

road I think they're looking forward, even though they pulled out of the treaty

with the NDP, to being back to negotiate a treaty. I look forward to helping

facilitate that with our government in the future, and I think they look forward

to it as well. The Sliammon have already signed an AIP, and I'm hoping they will

ratify it and get on with the process.

I do not

think the native people are totally afraid of what we talk about on the

referendum, because it's not a referendum of yes or no. It's just to bring

forward the things that everybody in B.C. wants to negotiate into a treaty

agreement with the first nations people of B.C. I think that through our tenure,

the native people will find it better in the future than they have ever found it

before to settle some of these treaties.

[ Page 293 ]

When they

talk about the New Era document we promised during the election, I look

back on some of the things we've accomplished already and what we have promised

to do. I think that's the difference between the previous government and the

Liberal government today. We all know that very

seldom do you ever vote a government into office. You vote governments out of

office.

That is the

way it has happened over the years. It happens this time that they voted a

government out that was the worst in B.C., and I think they voted in one of the

best governments B.C. has ever seen in the history of this province, which will

stand up — is standing up — and will do what it says it will do. That's a

breath of fresh air. I was here once before, and some of the things we said we

were going to do didn't happen. I never want to see that happen again. This is a

great program, and I think it should be followed through. I know our government

will.

A lot of

the other speakers have hit on things of great interest to me, and I think one

of the things that is predominant in B.C. is an aging population. We have

throughout the whole of B.C. this aging population and seniors. I think our

seniors have to be dealt with in a fair and equitable way. I know that in

Sechelt, for instance, we have one of the highest senior populations in all of

British Columbia. The one community has a seniors population of 22 percent.

They have a

great seniors centre, and they're very, very active in what they want and how

they want to see it done. I'm hoping to have the minister who works with seniors

come to my riding and sit down with these seniors, because I think they can give

us a lot of insight into some of the problems we have and how we can solve them

from a seniors' point of view — not just from a government point of view but

from how the seniors see them and what they see. I think we'll be pleasantly

surprised to find out they have a more objective way of looking at it than what

we may think today.

We talk

about kids and sports and talk about the new sports in schools and how to keep

them physically fit. I think we've all seen what's happening on television and

radio, and we hear about children and obese children, and what it's going to

cost us in the future when it comes down to our health care. I think it's really

important that kids have sports in schools, in their home, in their whole

communities. This is what will give them the physical fitness that will carry

them the rest of their lives.

[1620]

If we let

our children at the ages of five, six and seven become obese and not active, we

are going to pay the price when they become adults, believe me, because

that's where the health care system will falter again. It will be the second

wave. I think it's important that we really push the physical fitness of the

children and the people of this province. I guess that goes for all of us, and

I'd better take my own advice and start doing something myself.

On an

ongoing basis I have people come to my office with compensation problems. It

behooves me to see some of the cases come in that are being denied the right to

get a decent living. I could understand it if someone comes in and they can't

figure out what's wrong with that person. I had a man come in who's a

shake-blocker, and one of the blocks came out of a sling while in flight in a

helicopter and hit him on the head. He just about didn't make it to start

with. They did a lobotomy and had to take some of his brain out. He applies for

compensation, he goes through it, and then we ask him why he's wanting

compensation. Then later on, to take away his licence because he wasn't competent

enough to drive and still deny him compensation doesn't make any sense.

So we've

really got to look at this compensation problem. I know it can be abused, but I

also know there are a lot of legitimate people out there who are suffering

because of our whole system. It's good to see what our government has done with

the board at compensation. I hope they bring in people that understand and don't

just build dynasties on a job at people's expense.

I'm kind of

running out of things to say right now. I'm not a guy that says a lot of things,

but I wouldn't mind going back to talk about deregulation. The Deregulation

ministry, I think, is one of the most important for our government, because

business and the working people…. I've had more people that are just ordinary

citizens, working joes, who are fed up with the red tape they have to go through

with governments at all levels — municipal, regional, provincial, federal.

They're fed up with the red tape, fed up with having to jump through hoops that

should never be there.

I hope that

the Minister for Deregulation takes a hard look at what business is going

through and how he can streamline it so this province can get on with doing the

job it has to do and this government can do what it has to do without having a

lot of regulations and red tape in the face of business, holding it up.

I think

that the long term for this province is the best in Canada. We are coming from

one of the worst positions in the history of British Columbia and probably…. I

can't say for sure, but it must be close to the first- or second-worst position

of any province in Canada.

We've seen

what's happened in Newfoundland over the years when it went into its exploration

of oil and gas in the North Sea. Now it is a have province, not a have-not

province. I think we have to look at where we're going to get our wealth from in

the future. The only place we can get our wealth in the future is from business, the industries and the workers who provide the tax dollars to drive

the system in the future. I do believe that the oil and gas industry is one area

that we can look forward to, to get the funds so that we can have the necessary

health care in the future. I also think hydroelectric power is another.

Going way

back, W.A.C. Bennett had a vision for this province, and he went ahead and did

it. Probably the last time a government had a real vision was back in W.A.C.

Bennett's time, rather than today. Now another government has a vision for the

future, and I

[ Page 294 ]

think we've got an opportunity to grasp it and run with it. But we're still

living off his vision back in the fifties, for heaven's sake, and it's petering

out. Now we've got to have a new vision, a new way. We've got to have a new

system and a new era to drive the system.

[1625]

I look

forward to working with each and every one of the members here in this House,

and with everybody — the unions and the working people and the communities of

this province — to make sure…. They all have the good of the province at

heart as well, and we've got to know that it's not just us alone in this House.

It's the whole people, our communities, our mayors and our councils and all

other governments. They want the same thing, and I think it's time. Giving a leadership role, which our Premier has given, and a new vision, a new

era, I think we can all get together and turn this province around. It may take

some time, but I think we will again have the best province in Canada and that

it will be the best province for many, many years.

Locke: Like the minister from Fort Langley–Aldergrove, I also live in a

great area of the province. We have a beautiful urban forest, great shopping and

recreational facilities, so it's a great place to raise a family.

It is my

privilege to rise to speak to the throne speech. I am so proud to be part of a

team that means what it says and delivers. My government is committed to doing

what it said it would do, and we are well on our way to completing the 90-day

agenda. Many thanks to all the cabinet ministers and caucus members, and special

thanks to our Premier.

You know,

the news just keeps getting better and better. We have seen an increase of 4.4

percent in average housing prices in Surrey, where I live. That's a positive

sign for the people, that they are feeling confident once again. They're

confident for two reasons: firstly, because they have more money in their

pockets since the government reduced personal income tax by 25 percent; and

secondly, because the NDP cloud has been removed from our fair province.

The NDP

would have you believe that it's about class warfare. It's about business or

working people. I want to talk about small business. I come from the small

business sector, and I know hundreds of small business men and women that put

everything on the line for their business. They are working people. They work

18-hour days, they risk their homes, they virtually have to give up their family

life, and they risk their futures, as few of them have pensions to fall back on.

They are the backbone of this province. I know how hard small business people

work and their risks. I know their work, because my father was a small business

man who lost his small business. I know how devastating that is for a family and

that many never recover from that devastation.

Tragically,

too many people in British Columbia lost their business, partially due to

complete and utter incompetence by the NDP government, a government that

squandered a decade. The nineties were positive for every other jurisdiction in

North America but, sadly, not for British Columbia.

background is in tourism and hospitality. I know how hard men and women that run

neighbourhood pubs, cabarets, motels, hotels, restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts,

campgrounds and all the tourist attractions work to run their businesses and

make them successful. They are great people who didn't deserve to have their own

government sabotage their success. Sadly, the NDP treated them and all small

business with disdain and encumbered them with red tape, taxes and uncertainty.

Add to that the left and right hand of government bureaucracies being at

cross-purposes to one another. Business didn't have a chance. They were tinkered

with, manipulated, bullied, and their future was destabilized. Business had no

certainty.

A wise man

once said that capital is cowardly and will not go where it is not wanted. B.C.

in the nineties was given no certainty to create jobs, to expand businesses and

to plan business. Capital just said goodbye to B.C., because it wasn't wanted.

[1630]

I am so

happy those days are gone — gone forever. There is no doubt that the black

days for B.C. are over, and B.C. is open for business once again. The B.C.

Liberal government proves every day that it is committed to this province — to

everyone in this province — making it a better place to live, work and play,

and a better place to do business. Rebuilding our province is critical if we are

to have the society we all want to live in. I am so proud to be a part of the

future of British Columbia — a new era for business and families, for seniors

and students. We all have to work together to make our province return to what

it was, what it can be and what it will be.

Visser: Mr. Speaker, I haven't had the opportunity to congratulate you on

the ascent to your chair. Thank you for taking the position, and I look forward

to your deliberations over our debates in the next three years.

I need to

start by talking to an injustice that was perpetrated in this House a little

earlier by the member for Fort Langley–Aldergrove. The birthplace of British

Columbia is not Fort Langley or somewhere. It is indeed Tahsis, which is in my

riding, where Captain Cook met with Chief Maquinna in — gosh, I meant to

remember this year — 17-something. I want the record to reflect that the

injustice was handled here for the people of Tahsis.

Like many

of my colleagues in this House, we've come to government with some very high

expectations. We have high expectations of the leadership of our party. We have

high expectations of each other. Most of all we have high expectations