1982 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 32nd Parliament

Hansard

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

( Hansard )

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1982

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

7253 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

An Act to Regulate Smoking in Public Places (Bill M203). Mrs. Wallace

Introduction and first reading –– 7253

Oral Questions

Exclusion of Prince George land from ALR.

Hon. Mr. Hewitt replies –– 7253

Mr. Lea

Mr. Barrett

Hon. Mr. Heinrich replies

Tabling Documents

Report under the Legislative Procedure Review Act.

Mr. Speaker –– 7255

Education (Interim) Finance Act (Bill 27). Second reading.

Mr. Howard –– 7255

Mr. Cocke –– 7257

Mr. Brummet –– 7258

Mr. King –– 7262

Mr. Skelly –– 7263

Mr. Mitchell –– 7265

Ms. Sanford –– 7266

Mr. Barber –– 7267

Mrs. Dailly –– 7271

Hon. Mr. Smith –– 7274

Division –– 7276

Tabling Documents

Universities Council of British Columbia funding recommendations, 1982.

Hon. Mr. McGeer –– 7276

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28, 1982

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: With us in the

House today is a large group of 70 students from the Fraser Valley

Christian High School, with their teacher Mr. Pullman. I would ask the

House to bid them welcome.

MRS. WALLACE: In the

Speaker's gallery today I have a young guest, Karen Malec, who is

visiting from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, on the student exchange

program. She is accompanied by Mr. Stan Creelman. While in Lake

Cowichan Karen is staying at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Creelman. Mrs.

Creelman works at the high-school library; Mr. Creelman is a former

member of the school board. I ask the House to welcome Karen and Mr.

Creelman.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I ask the members of the

assembly to bid a very cordial welcome to Mr. Rogan, British Consul

General, situated in Vancouver, and Mr. Arthur Davies, deputy head of

the department of the Ministry of Trade dealing with economic and

commercial relations with North America; also Miss Vivian Hughes, who

occupies a similar position in the North American department of the

Foreign and Commonwealth office. They are visiting today in the

precinct.

MR. MACDONALD: In the gallery and in the

precincts are students from Gladstone Secondary School — precocious

students, every one of them, from Vancouver East.

MRS. DAILLY: I notice in the press gallery today a former member of the the press gallery, Mr. Lloyd Mackey, who is now publisher of Burnaby Today .

MR. GABELMANN:

I ask the House to welcome a group of students from Southgate Junior

Secondary School in Campbell River, together with some exchange

students from eastern Canada.

MR. MITCHELL: Mr.

Speaker, I'd ask the House to join with me in welcoming two young

ladies who met while members of the Canada World Youth on a four-month

visit to Mali, Africa. They were giving out some of the B.C. buttons

that I managed to scrounge from the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr.

Wolfe) and my good friend, the member for Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem), and

I'd like to thank them both. The two, who are in the gallery, are

Cynthia Balaberda of Winnipeg and my daughter, Erin.

Introduction of Bills

AN ACT TO REGULATE SMOKING IN PUBLIC PLACES

a motion by Mrs. Wallace, Bill M203,

An Act to Regulate Smoking in

Public Places, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed

on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the

House after today.

Oral Questions

EXCLUSION OF PRINCE GEORGE LAND FROM ALR

HON. MR. HEWITT: Today I want to respond to the question raised yesterday

by the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea). He asked the Minister of Agriculture

a question regarding land that was excluded from the agricultural land reserve

in the Prince George area. Then he said: "I'm talking about land described

as in district lot 2014, Cariboo district, within the city of Prince George

— application No. 122-N-80-110112." As that is rather a lengthy

application number, I wanted to assure myself that I was responding to the proper

application. Since that time I have done that, because I wanted to make sure

that the member for Prince Rupert had all the facts. Although he had the whole

file, I'm sure he wanted all the facts as well from me.

The

Environment and Land Use Committee heard the appeal, which was by Mr.

Darrell W. Roberts, on behalf of Mr. Ted Moffat et al, under

section

13(2) of the Agricultural Land Commission Act, and regarding those

lands that I described within lot 2014, Cariboo district. The Land

Commission determined that they would allow the appeal for the

exclusion of 132.3 acres from the agricultural land reserve. That

advice has gone to the Land Commission and they will be dealing with it

as of May 5, I understand. So I guess, Mr. Member, if I were to hold

you to your comments, the land has technically not yet been excluded.

Because

the question has been raised, the land is vacant and in its natural

state; the rural zoning in the particular area is single-family

dwelling of either two or five acres, depending on the service

available. The municipality of Prince George supports the request for

exclusion. The land in question is a strip of land between a

residential subdivision on one side and the Fraser River on the other.

These, and the small size emplacement of the parcel, are factors which

could negate any potential for intensified agricultural use of the

area, plus the fact that agricultural use could well be incompatible

with the surrounding residential area.

Mr. Speaker, I could provide you with a map showing urbanization adjacent to the property.

Finally,

the topography of the land is somewhat of a restriction, as it is

rolling land and in more than one place very steeply sloped.

Now,

Mr. Speaker, I'm attempting to respond to the member for Prince Rupert,

who comes from a non-agricultural area. I want him to know the

rationale behind the decision of the Environment and Land Use

Committee, and I would be prepared to answer any further questions he

may have, if I have the material with me today.

MRS. WALLACE:

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, on occasion, when a minister has had

the courtesy to give a lengthy reply after question period, you have

excluded that time from question period. Inasmuch as this minister

started before the question period had really begun, I wonder whether

you would be good enough to exclude that rather lengthy answer from the

question period time.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members,

questions taken on notice in question period would normally have taken

the time of question period for an answer. That has been the general

guideline. The times that are excluded from question period are those

times when the Speaker interrupts on a point of order. That time is

usually not taken out of question period. There have been times when a

minister files rather than reads the answer, but that is at the

discretion of the minister.

MR. HOWARD: Further to

the point of order you've just dealt with, Your Honour on other

occasions has ruled just the opposite of what you are now saying. I

respectfully submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that the three to four minutes

taken by the minister should not be included in question period,

because Your Honour has ruled otherwise before.

[ Page 7254 ]

MR. SPEAKER:

Order, please. Questions taken on notice in question period are

answered at some time subsequent to that. It is the practice of the

House that the time is taken out of question period, and I so rule.

MR. LEA:

Mr. Speaker, you were good enough, not too long ago, to give us a list

of things that we can or cannot ask during oral question period. It

says: "A question oral or written must not ask what advice a minister

proposes to give the Crown, but may ask what advice he has given." With

that ruling in mind, I'd like to ask the Minister of Agriculture what

advice he gave ELUC in regard to the 132 acres in Prince George.

HON. MR. HEWITT:

The decision on an appeal is a decision of the committee, and that

decision has been made public. Whether or not I gave advice to the

committee or participated is irrelevant to the decision.

MR. LEA:

The Minister of Agriculture has now informed the House that what advice

he gives as Minister of Agriculture to the committee charged with

looking after land is irrelevant, which suggests that the minister may

be irrelevant.

MR. SPEAKER: The member has a question?

MR. LEA:

Yes. I think it is up to the House to decide whether or not it's

irrelevant. It's in order, and again I'd like to ask the minister what

advice he, as Minister of Agriculture, gave that committee in regard to

these 132 acres. If he doesn't care to answer, we know that's a

different question; but I'm perfectly in order and I'd like to ask the

minister again.

HON. MR. HEWITT: Mr. Speaker, I don't

sit on appeals, as a member of the Environment and Land Use Committee,

to give advice. I am there to hear the evidence and, along with my

colleagues, make a decision whether to exclude or not exclude

agricultural land, either to allow the appeal or deny the appeal.

MR. BARRETT:

I want to thank the minister for giving us a description of the land —

that it is rolling and has steep banks. We are now informed that

agricultural land that is rolling is not agricultural land, depending

on your point of view. I ask the minister this question: what was the

recommendation of the Agricultural Land Commission itself as to the

removal of this land? What was the recommendation of the experts — the

people who are not politicians, who are appointed by this government to

that commission — on this land?

HON. MR. HEWITT: I

could give the Agricultural Land Commission's comments, but I am sure

if the Leader of the Opposition asked the member for Prince Rupert, who

has a copy of the complete file, he could get it from him just as

easily.

MR. BARRETT: If I intended to ask the member

for Prince Rupert a question, I would do so. I have asked the minister

directly, through you, Mr. Speaker: can he inform this House what the

recommendation of the Land Commission was? This commission was

appointed by this government to have no political role, but to give

technical and professional advice based on their expertise. What was

their recommendation regarding this land?

HON. MR. HEWITT:

In responding, I would advise the Leader of the Opposition that the

Agricultural Land Commission acts within its mandate, which is to

concern itself with the agricultural capability of the land and not

other land uses. As the Leader of the Opposition knows, the Environment

and Land Use Committee deals with a wider mandate.

To answer

his question, the comments that were made were as follows. A report

from the Ministry of Agriculture by the field-crop specialists and

horticulturists found that the subject property has soil suitability

for various types of crops, including strawberries, potatoes, cabbages,

carrots and other vegetables. Adjoining properties were also found to

have a similar suitability. I'm not sure where those properties are

because on one side, of course, is urbanization — the subdivision — and

on the other side is the Fraser River. There is some vacant Crown land

to the south and there is a flat terrace to the north of the subject

property.

The report also noted the cost and returns of

these types of agricultural crops in other regions of the province —

not necessarily in the Prince George area, with the cold winters they

might have, since figures for the Prince George area were not

available. They were indicating that with those types of crops you

could generate sufficient revenue to cover your costs of operation, but

the Land Commission could not provide us with figures related to the

Prince George area. I guess you could say they somewhat qualified their

comments by that remark.

MR. HOWARD: Oh, it's their fault.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, what the minister is telling us is that....

HON. MR. HEWITT: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. We have two members standing.

HON. MR. HEWITT:

On a point of order, the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) said: "Oh, it's

their fault." He tends to imply that it's the Land Commission's fault

that this has come out, or that I am pointing the finger at them. I

want the record to show....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. That is not a point of order, hon. member.

HON. MR. HEWITT: I'm just correcting him, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: That's not a point of order.

The hon. Leader of the Opposition proceeds.

MR. BARRETT:

What the minister has said — and I ask him to agree or to deny it — is

that there is no technical evidence on file anywhere that disputes that

this is not agricultural land, but that he has made a political

decision to remove it, for political purposes, from the agricultural

land reserve.

MR. SPEAKER: Was there a question there?

MR. LEA:

Will the Minister of Labour confirm that his campaign funds in the 1979

election received moneys from members of the Moffat family in Prince

George?

[ Page 7255 ]

HON. MR. HEINRICH: Mr. Speaker, I question very much whether that question is in order.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. members, if we ask a question, we expect an answer. Please proceed.

HON. MR. HEINRICH:

I have no idea who contributed funds to my campaign. Every effort is

made by me and by those with whom I work to ensure that that knowledge

is never communicated.

MR. LEA: I have a

supplementary question. The Minister of Labour has been quoted as

saying he didn't go to anyone asking one way or the other about this

132 acres in Prince George. He didn't take any position at all. I

wonder if the minister can then explain to this House and the people of

Prince George why he wanted to be an MLA. One hundred and thirty-two

acres of agricultural land was taken out of his own community, and he

has no position.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

Interjections.

[Mr. Speaker rose.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Perhaps we can continue with an orderly question period.

[Mr. Speaker resumed his seat.]

MR. LEA:

Why does the minister want to be an MLA if he has no position on 132

acres of agricultural land in his own community? I think people in

Prince George would very much like to have the answer to that. I would

also like the minister to tell me to the best of his knowledge whether

the member for Prince George South (Mr. Strachan) had anything to do

with this 132 acres and whether the member for Prince George South made

any representation to him, to a fellow cabinet minister or ELUC with

regard to excluding this 132 acres of land in Prince George.

MR. HOWARD:

Mr. Speaker, I rise pursuant to standing order 35 to ask leave to make

a motion for the adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing

a definite matter of urgent public importance.

MR. SPEAKER: Please state the matter briefly, hon. member.

MR. HOWARD: That matter being the threat against the Vancouver Province contained in Motion 21 standing in today's Orders of the Day and the refusal of the government to call that motion.

MR. SPEAKER: We'll consider the matter and report to the House.

Mr. Speaker tabled a report under the Legislative Procedure Review Act.

MR. COCKE:

On a point of order, 24 hours ago I asked leave to enter a debate on

health care and I indicated that it was an emergency situation. Mr.

Speaker, have you ruled on that yet?

MR. SPEAKER: The ruling will be reported to the House as soon as it has been prepared.

Orders of the Day

HON. MR. GARDOM: Leave to proceed to public bills and orders is requested.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Adjourned debate on Bill 27.

EDUCATION (INTERIM) FINANCE ACT

(continued)

MR. HOWARD:

Mr. Speaker, I rise to make a few comments about the bill and to put

forward some thoughts as to how it will adversely affect the whole

northern region of the province of British Columbia. But before I do

that, I want to touch upon what in my view is the single most important

aspect of the bill. I wouldn't dignify it by calling it a principle of

the bill, but it's a provision within it.

Dictators become

dictators through a variety of processes. One is by the overthrow of

established government, as happened in Chile with the Pinochet coup

against the elected government of Salvador Allende; another is the

process of demagogic exploitation of situations — witness Adolf

Hitler's rise to power; and the third method of becoming a dictator or

having dictatorial powers — perhaps one can cite and identify Prime

Minister Trudeau as reaching that position — is by intellectual and

political prowess. Before us now is the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr.

Smith), who is seeking to attain dictatorial powers and dictatorial

authority by the process of parliamentary democracy.

One can

expect certain courses of action from those who become dictators out of

a power trip or an overthrow or military activity, and almost be

prepared for it. But I want to submit that the dictator with the worst

potential for abuse of fundamental rights is the one who attains that

position thinking that he knows better than anybody else — the one who

is the so-called do-gooder, the one who in his rationalization feels

that nobody else has an opinion worth expressing or worth listening to.

That's been reflected in the type of overbearing arrogance that we

receive from time to time from the Prime Minister of Canada. It's the

same type of overbearing arrogance inherent and contained within this

particular bill, which gives to the Minister of Education — and it is

he who seeks to attain that authority and that power — the right to be

overbearing, haughty and supercilious, to be careless about other

people's opinions — especially school boards. He's nodding his head in

assent that he's seeking to have that dictatorial authority and

dictatorial power.

Mr. Speaker, in a political democracy we

should not, by any stretch of the imagination, assume that one

individual has more brains than any other. We should not assume,

because the minister seeks to deal with a question of a division of

taxation authority, that he should take along with it the dictatorial

authority and the dictatorial power to be the single individual in the

province to make determinations about school budgets.

[ Page 7256 ]

The

Minister of Education has just slunk out the door, unable and unwilling

to listen to the debate that's taking place. I don't care about my own

self; he can disregard my views if he feels like it. But I think that's

an insult on his part to the Legislative Assembly. Oh, he's back again.

Welcome back, Mr. Minister — through you, Mr. Speaker. He did the same

thing three or four times yesterday.

I want to draw some

comparisons between the Prime Minister of Canada — who has a level of

appreciation in this country that fluctuates and is currently at a very

low ebb as far as western Canada is concerned; who, even by his own

admission, is arrogant...

Interjection.

MR.HOWARD: ...and who is a Liberal — and the Minister of Education.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Trudeau's is about as low as the NDP. Did you see the vote in Saskatchewan? It's about the same.

MR. HOWARD: I can't hear the interruptions from the Minister of Municipal Affairs.

MR. SPEAKER:

Order, please. I will ask the hon. Minister of Municipal Affairs not to

interrupt the member who has the floor, and I would encourage the

member who has the floor to recall that the administrative

responsibilities of the minister are in order for debate under his

estimates, but in second reading of Bill 27 they are out of order.

MR. HOWARD:

As I said at the beginning, I don't see any principle in the point I am

seeking to discover; it is an unprincipled position being put forward.

The minister is coming to the House and is asking the House to give him

supreme authority over school budgets. I am seeking to draw

comparisons, because we have in this land another person who has that

kind of supreme authority and we detest it, as I think we should detest

the request of the minister in this regard.

We have the

Prime Minister of Canada, who has a bachelor of arts degree, and we

have the Minister of Education, who also has a bachelor of arts degree.

We have the Prime Minister of Canada also having obtained a master of

arts, and we have the Minister of Education equally the possessor of an

MA. We have the Prime Minister of Canada the holder of a doctorate in

law, and so does the Minister of Education. Both of them are QCs.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The member is out of order. Please proceed.

MR. HOWARD:

The Minister of Education was a lecturer in law, I understand, at a

university here. The Prime Minister of Canada fell in the same

category. I am only trying to show the similarities between these two

individuals and to point out that part of the reason we are in

difficulty in Canada is that the Prime Minister of Canada has the same

arrogant attitude as does this Minister of Education in seeking to have

those powers. That is all I am trying to do.

Let me put

forward a viewpoint that is my own but is so beautifully phrased by

another individual, Dr. Ling from Kitimat, whom the minister met last

week and who is a member of the school board in Kitimat. Dr. Ling has

some very thoughtful expressions to put forward which I agree with

completely. I only put them forward to indicate that others, who are in

elected positions on school boards, have this kind of view. Dr. Ling

says that one of the principles of our democratic system of government

is local public control of education, exercised through a local board

of elected trustees who are accountable to the electorate. This

principle, says Dr. Ling, is challenged with the proposed education

finance formula of the Social Credit government. The real objective,

however, said Dr. Ling, is centralized control of education. That, I

think, is the essence of what we are talking about. The bill seeks to

make the minister a superpower over anybody else, to enable him to make

determinations not only about financing matters but also about what the

curriculum will be, about what the children will be taught and about

all other aspects of the relationship between school boards who are,

locally elected and local residents, attuned to the needs of the

localities and communities within which they operate and are elected.

The minister seeks to remove that completely and, basically, to destroy

the value that school boards have, a value that has been built up over

a very long period of time. The process of that will do nothing other

than injure and impair the potential education our kids in this

province will receive, all because the minister and government are

engaged in some blind rush towards centralizing power and authority in

their own hands.

I submit to you that it will injure the

northern part of the province even more so than other parts. That case

has been put to the minister. While the conditions prevalent in one

school district vis-à-vis another in the north may vary in their

intensity, fundamentally school districts in the northern part of this

province are faced with expenses above and beyond expenses of school

districts in the southern part of the province.

Snow

clearing is a very simple one to examine. It's something that a school

district in the area the minister comes from is of no problem, but in

the northern part of the province it is a problem. In the Kitimat

School District, for argument's sake, for the first three months of

this calendar year they had to spend $43,600 on contract snow clearing.

That's only the contractual part to people outside the school district.

In addition to that, they had to pay for something in excess of 1,200

man-hours to their own employees of the school district for matters

such as snow removal.

The grounds are damaged in the winter.

Repair costs are higher. Grounds and equipment are damaged by snow,

snow removal and spring breakup. These are costs which are not felt by

school districts in the lower mainland. Outdoor facilities are not

usable in the wintertime. As a consequence, school districts in the

north have to employ larger amounts of money to provide indoor

gymnasiums and other facilities for the students. Heating costs are

higher. The further north one goes in the wintertime, the longer the

nights, the shorter the day, the greater the cold and the more the

heating costs. These are facts the minister seems to be unaware of,

living in the relative seclusion and gentleness of Oak Bay. It's

something he would be well advised to pay attention to insofar as

northern school districts are concerned.

Transportation of

kids to and from school is a greater cost. In School District 88 in

Terrace that ranges in distance — just on one side of Terrace up to

Hazelton — of up to about 100 miles, and further north to cover

communities like Kitsault as well. All of these provide a school

district with the necessity

[ Page

7257 ]

of funding additional costs for transportation to

get kids back and forth to school. We've got kids in School District 88

that travel 40 to 50 miles one way by bus to get to school, and 40 to

50 miles back again after school is over. That's an additional cost not

borne by municipalities further South.

Even the very simple

question of finding everything that a school district has to relate to

being in the lower mainland is an additional cost. Shortly after the

minister made the announcement about his new financing formula, he

asked to have the board chairman, superintendent of schools and the

secretary treasurer from each school district come to Richmond, I

believe it was, and listen to the minister and his departmental

officials explain this. School District 80, for example, felt they were

unable to afford sending three people. They sent two, but that cost

that school district an extra $800 just to come down to listen to the

minister and his department officials explain what was going on with

respect to that announcement of his. It didn't cost people from school

districts in the Surrey area, Langley area or the Lower Fraser Valley

area $400 to $500 per person to get to that meeting in Richmond, but it

cost school districts in the north that extra money.

There

are other cost factors as well which make it most inappropriate for the

minister to seek to want: (1) this type of arbitrary division; and

(2) the dictatorial powers to enforce his will upon school districts. In

the north we'll suffer more financially as a result of the formula and

the arbitrariness and universality of it. In addition to that, the

children's — our future generation's — education is going to suffer.

That's not only my own view. Let me close with a quotation again from

Dr. Ling's

article which appeared in the Kitimat News-Advertiser

on April 13: "So much is at stake. Education will not be the same in

the future. Educational services will suffer; our children will

suffer." A declaration of that sort should be sufficient attraction for

the minister to pull back the bill, rewrite it, and not bring this

indignity further into play.

MR. COCKE: When I saw

the minister's statement and press release some weeks ago that the

provincial government was going to pick up 75 percent of school costs,

I thought that maybe something was happening here; then we begin to

find out just how they are going to do it. They have robbed

municipalities of their commercial base, and in so doing they indicate

that they are picking up 75 percent. It is further centralization in

every respect, particularly when you read

section 57. If Joseph Stalin

were still alive, he would be proud of the Social Credit government

we've got in British Columbia right now. It is the most centralist bill

I've ever seen go through this House, and I've seen some pretty bad

stuff since these people have been government. It is entirely the

Stalinist principle: keep all the power central, and give none of the

power back to the people. School boards have been totally misused.

School boards have been totally ignored. What say do the parents, the

school boards or other people in school districts have any longer in

school matters? None. It's the most ridiculous, reprehensible thing I

have ever encountered in terms of school financing and running the

school system.

Mr. Speaker, I want to give you the example of New Westminster School District

40. For the last two or three years we have paid 100 percent of our school costs

from our local tax base; over and above that, we have contributed to the rest

of the province.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Did you hear about Saskatchewan?

MR. COCKE: Did you hear about B.C., Bill? We'd like to see an election right now, baby. You guys would be down the tube.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's irrelevant to the debate.

MR. COCKE:

It is rather irrelevant to the debate, but he encouraged me to say

that. I made that same statement yesterday, and the Premier and the

minister of science and technology acknowledged what I said. We would

love to see one right now.

New Westminster School District

40 has an assessment base of $261.6 million, of which $156 million is

commercial and $105.1 million is residential; therefore 59.8 percent is

commercial and 40.3 percent is residential. What's going to happen?

Well, I'll tell you. We're in worse shape than we were when we were

helping to finance the rest of the province. We're not going to be

helped by this new formula. Our residential taxes are going up $50 this

year for education alone.

MR. BRUMMET: Good. It's time you paid your share.

MR. COCKE:

"Good," that member said. "About time." Well, Mr. Speaker, let me tell

you, his district is getting robbed worse than ours, and he's not even

getting off his fat seat and getting up here and telling the minister

what he thinks of it. That's the member for North Peace River (Mr.

Brummet), just in case Hansard didn't notice who it was. The

member for North Peace River says "good," when he sees that New

Westminster is being robbed; but I'm telling you that his area is being

robbed even worse, and he's not even getting up and saying a word about

it.

Well, Mr. Speaker, we are not only very tired of

carrying the load that we have for the funding of the school system,

but we're also becoming extremely tired with the dictatorial powers of

the Ministry of Education. I'm not at all sure whether this minister

even understands what he is doing. I give him that much credit: there

is some doubt whether he knows what he's doing. But somebody — and he's

responsible — has placed the whole school system in this province in

jeopardy.

The financing and the centralization, Mr. Speaker,

are more than we can bear. I have to go home and listen to more of what

the parents in New Westminster have to say, and what the school board

has to say about this act, and it is not pleasant at all.

We're

at a stage in the discussion of this bill where the minister could very

easily pull it, go back to cabinet, discuss the gravity of what he has

done and what he is in the process of doing, and come back with an

entirely new look at the whole question of school financing in B.C.

He's

using the heavy hand to totally control the school system. He should

have sent a thank-you note to all the school boards in British

Columbia, saying: "Thanks for all that work that you've done over the

years, but you're no longer needed. I'm going to run everything from

Victoria, as this government likes to do with everything." That's not

good enough, Mr. Speaker.

When that party first ran in 1975, remember what their emblem was? It was a seagull flying though the air and

[ Page 7258 ]

talking

about decentralization and freedom. We have more centralization in the

short period of time that these people have been government than we had

in all of the days of W.A.C. Bennett. He kept a fairly tight rein on

things, but nothing like this lack of the democratic process that we

have now.

What has the minister done for himself? Whoever

his advisers are who talked him into this, what have they done? They've

even said that the Regulation Act does not apply. They are giving him a

free hand to do anything he wants — and the member for North Peace

River isn't speaking on the bill. For heaven's sake, where is the

conscience of the back bench of the Social Credit Party? If they don't

speak now, Mr. Speaker, let them forever hold their peace; they have

their consciences to live with. Let them once more read this bill. And

I ask the minister to read this bill once more, to think about where

he's taking education, and pull the bill. Hoist it; go back to cabinet;

tell them you were wrong and come back with a decent piece of

legislation that we can all support.

Right now, Mr. Speaker,

I guarantee there will not be a member of the opposition who will

support this bill. And I will further guarantee this: there will be

members of the back bench and even members of the cabinet who will be

so reluctant on the vote of this bill that it's going to be the hardest

thing they ever did in their life. It's going to be difficult, Mr.

Speaker, but let their consciences guide them.

I ask that

this bill be withdrawn until such time as the minister has had a good

chance to think about what he is doing to education in B.C. I will not

support this bill, Mr. Speaker.

MR. BRUMMET: Mr.

Speaker, until yesterday I had not planned to get involved in the

discussion on this bill, because really what we're dealing with here is

a strictly political discussion. I know this is a political place.

Because I am reluctant to get involved in this partisan political issue

over education, then I'm accused over and over again of taking no

interest in education. I don't think anything could be further from the

truth, Mr. Speaker. I have a genuine interest in education, because I

spent 28 years in the field. I do not have a partisan political

interest in education, and really that is all that those members have

offered.

The member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) stated

moments ago that he would guarantee that every member of the opposition

would vote against this bill. What a surprise!

MR. SPEAKER: Now to the principle of the bill.

MR. BRUMMET:

I support the basic principle of this bill. I am not entirely happy

with everything that it does specifically to the people in my

constituency. However, I will not accept that I have done nothing

simply because I have not got involved in a partisan political debate.

I have spent all of my life trying to achieve things. I did not spend

my life as a member of a debating society, as though that is what

accomplishes things.

I have been working. I have met with

each of my school districts; I have discussed exactly what it does to

their particular situation. I have talked to the minister. I have met

with ministry officials. I have been collecting all the facts possible.

see this business of what the opposition is saying, that the minister

is taking control; that he has not put the specific figures into this

bill; that he has left room to make decisions.

They see that

as a negative thing, but then of course they see everything as a

negative thing. I see that as a very positive thing in this bill,

because it does allow the minister the flexibility....

MR. COCKE: To do anything he wants.

MR. BRUMMET:

Yes, if you like, it allows the minister to do anything he wants.

However, I'll tell you something: this minister and this government are

accountable to the people of this province. I don't think he's

accountable to the opposition's negative things. He's accountable, as

is this government, to the taxpayers and the people of this province.

Any decisions that are made will be held accountable. I have great

faith that the people of this province will hold us accountable and

will hold the opposition accountable. Now you don't seem to think that

that is the case, Mr. Member, but they will. What we're talking about

here in this....

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER:

Order, please. May I ask the Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Hewitt)

and the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) not to disrupt the

proceedings of the House.

MR. BRUMMET: Mr. Speaker, I

see a great deal of necessary flexibility in this bill. I have been

working with my school districts and with my boards to try to come up

with solutions to the specific problems. I find it rather interesting

that sometime in December, when the assessments went up greatly in the

metropolitan areas, the opposition had concern about how the existing

formula really hurt the people who chose to live in the metropolitan

areas, who chose to live in much more expensive houses and in much more

favourable circumstances than the people in our northern ridings. They

were quite upset with how much those people were going to pay. It's

rather interesting now to see the members of the opposition showing

their great concern for the northern ridings, because all of a sudden

there may be a few votes there.

They prey on

dissatisfaction, Mr. Member, and certainly there is dissatisfaction

whenever any of us feel that we're paying more than our fair share. So

at one point they are saying that the metropolitan areas.... The member

for New Westminster just said it a few minutes ago, about subsidizing

the rest of the province. Nothing could be further from the truth. You

know something, Mr. Speaker, I didn't hear any of these members in the

opposition defending the Fort Nelson situation, when the tax collected

in the Fort Nelson district was considerably above the total

educational costs in those districts. At that time they were concerned

with theirs; isn't it amazing how concerned they now are with our

ridings? What was their first reaction? Automatic attack before the

facts were out — encouraged by those members of the opposition.

guess you could say they never disregard problems, because in any

problem there may possibly be a vote. They foster discontent. They even

promote it. They say: "Now look, it's strictly political. Economics has

nothing to do with it." Of course, that is great politics, but it does

very little to resolve any problems.

Some of our

backbenchers have been working diligently to try to resolve some

problems instead of to define them. We have definition of problem after

definition of problem, but it

[ Page 7259 ]

does

very little to resolve them. We're not capitalizing on dissatisfaction

or on discontentment; we're looking for solutions, and I think there is

a solution in this bill. There is the basic principle of restraint and

there is an attempt at equalization. I'm quite prepared to discuss that

the intent did not come out quite as it should have because of the

calculation, a point that is overlooked time and time and time again in

this province. We look at averages, and those average figures,

particularly in unique circumstances, are meaningless. But the

decisions are based on average figures because that makes more sense.

For

instance, I wonder if the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) knows

this, to get away from the averages. If you take the standard

three-bedroom home of about 1,100 square feet on a representative lot

in any community in this province, and then find out from its

assessment authorities what the assessment value is, you will find that

that standard home in Fort Nelson pays about twice the school taxes as

that same home in the metropolitan area. The averages don't show that.

We have a lot of above-standard homes in the metropolitan area, and we

have a lot of below-standard, so the average is brought down. Mill

rates are attached to those assessments, and when you have that lower

assessment, you have to have a higher mill rate to raise a comparable

amount of money. In the larger communities, in the metropolitan areas,

you have that higher assessment, so you can afford a lower mill rate.

So that standard house is double taxed in those rural areas. We've gone

to great pains to point that out to the ministry people, because it was

missed in dealing with averages. We have done a lot of work on that.

This

bill deals with asking for some responsible behaviour generally across

this province. You cannot just keep talking to the taxpayers or taking

from the taxpayers whatever is going to be spent on the basis of the

decisions of government. The taxpayers have to pay the bill.

The

opposition has said a great deal about the fact that the provincial

government is now going to be paying about 75 percent of the tax bill

in general, with those anomalies that I referred to earlier. But what

they hesitate to point out is that for years they have suggested that

75 percent of the revenue should come from the province to pay for

educational programs. If 75 percent financial contribution under Social

Credit means 75 percent control, I would suggest that 75 percent

contribution from any government means 75 percent control. So what

really are we arguing here? That it's bad for one side to do it after

the other sides have done it? Are we kidding the people when we say:

"Now we'll pay 100 percent of the cost, but you can keep your entire

tax base"? That's the kind of ridiculous conclusion or inference that

is made, and it just doesn't add up.

AN HON. MEMBER: They've still got to pay.

MR. BRUMMET: Yes, they pay in one way or another.

am concerned about this. What is meant by local autonomy? Local

autonomy seems to be that decision-making is at the local level. Should

that local autonomy then include also the raising of all the funds at

the local level? I recall — and I was in the educational system at the

time — when we had local referenda on operating expenses for school

districts. Many of those were turned down despite our finest sales

pitches, saying: "Look, this is something that we need. This is

something that is worthwhile. It will only cost you a little bit." In

many places those referenda were turned down, because at that point we

allowed the taxpayers to make the decisions. And it was difficult to

budget, to plan. So I will accept the change made that was that we do

not have a referendum on every decision that has to be made about

public spending. I can accept that, because from year to year you never

knew where you were. I was on some of the budget committees in the

school district when the taxpayers said: "No, you can only have so

much." We spent a lot of time working on just how to live with that,

because we didn't have the option of saying to somebody: "Well, let's

just run a big deficit and then somebody will pay the tab."

This

is basically what is being said by this government restraint program in

this bill. It says that we have to act responsibly. If we simply say,

"Here's what we think you should do, but if it happens to cost you

twice as much as what's available, don't worry about it, the government

will pick it up," we do not let people know that the government is them

when it comes to finances. They are the government of this province

when it comes to paying the bills. All we do in government is skim a

little off the top to handle it and give back what we take from them.

Really, we have to tell people that they are the government.

Many

of the decisions that are being made now about the cutbacks and where

the cutbacks are to be made are being made at the local level. So there

is that local autonomy. It is human nature to say: "Look, we need more

money." In my own personal financing, as long as I can get more money

or have more money on hand, I find that I spend more. It's only when I

find that I've run out of money that I quit spending money. This is

basically what's happening here. In other words, we're facing a reality.

Let

me suggest this: there is an awful lot of criticism about the fact that

administrators at the school district level do not have autonomy, that

the teachers do not have autonomy. Mr. Speaker, administrators in the

schools have always had a great deal of autonomy if they chose to

exercise it. If you want to get off the hook for every decision you

make, you go to the blue book or some other book to ask for that

decision. I spent many years as a teacher in the classroom. I had very

good local autonomy. I was handed a textbook and a guideline, say, for

teaching mathematics. I didn't spend much of my time, as many people

do, saying: "I've been restricted. I've got to teach from page 1 to

page 300 and I've got to follow all these hoops and so on." I looked at

that program and I thought I would teach mathematics, and where the

pages fitted, I used it. Where the pages of the textbook or the

workbook didn't fit, I just went ahead and taught mathematics. And I

was challenged. They said: "Look, you're not following the program."

The

way I acquired local autonomy was by saying that I would stake my job

and my reputation. "If you want to test those students at the end of

the year to see how they do in mathematics and they fall down, then you

have a right to say that my way does not work." But when we're willing

— any of us.... There are many teachers in that system who go ahead and

teach. They don't feel that restricted by guidelines. In the first page

of any guideline from the curriculum department it says that the book

shall not be treated as the prescription but as a guideline. People

then treat it as a prescription because it's much safer to work within

a prescription, and away they go. When you get outside of that

prescription, Mr. Speaker, you have to take some chances. The people

who are willing to take some chances are the ones who have complete and

full autonomy in the educational system.

[ Page 7260 ]

We've

had members say that this finance bill, this restraint program, is

going to damage our society. I cannot accept that. I think that the

more we take away people from doing things for themselves, the more we

damage our society, and Lord knows, we've done enough damage.

lot has been said about quality education. When we hear from the

members of the opposition, it seems that quality education has a direct

correlation with the amount of money you spend on it. I cannot accept

that. You can spend all the money you like, and it does not guarantee

you quality education. Let me give you a couple of examples, again,

from my personal experience. When we had to cut back in the school

system because the taxpayers turned down the referendum, we looked at a

number of things. We had to cut out some workbooks and a lot of

duplicating of paper in the school system. It resulted in many of the

students no longer filling in blanks in the workbooks and no longer

just underlining the correct word on a work paper. The teacher was

using the blackboard. The chalk was much cheaper than all this paper

and workbooks, and the students wrote answers. They didn't have words

to underline. I suggest that we did not lose quality of education, but,

in fact, we improved it.

As a previous member of the

teaching profession and still a great advocate of the teaching system —

because I know that there are many good teachers in this province — I

was very upset when their federation pushed for and when arbitration

boards awarded teachers the right to be paid for noon-hour supervision

or any part of it. We had ridiculous situations; teachers were taking

20 minutes each at noon hour and getting $90 among three of them for

supervising children — a job I always considered part of the teaching

job. I have said so publicly, and I know I have teachers who are mad at

me.

As teachers, we can't talk about educating the whole

child and our concern about the whole person and then say: "Let's give

it to less professional people during that free time between 12 o'clock

and 1 o'clock. That is a very significant philosophical point, if you

like. Some people in this profession are trying to make good teachers

into hourly workers. You cannot be concerned about children and

education in this province if it only works between 9 o'clock and 12

o'clock, and 1 o'clock and 3 o'clock. In my opinion you cannot do that.

I'm suggesting that if we toss out some of those insidious things that

have crept into the educational system by saying that we care more if

we get paid more and are paid for the extras.... If we can eliminate

some of that thinking, we can do a better job in education than we can

by simply pumping more money into it.

Let me give you

another analogy about special education. I know it's important. I know

the minister has allowed for special consideration for special

education, because the people with the greatest needs should be the

ones that deserve the greatest consideration. Using a little hyperbole

to make the point, I'm going to suggest this: when I first started

teaching, we had complete integration and we had mainstreaming, partly

because we didn't have any other choice. We had the students in those

classes and we were involved. We tried to incorporate them. We didn't

do the excellent job that some of the special-education specialists are

doing with them, but we included them.

Then we found that we

might be able to do a better job in education if we screened out some

of these people who needed the most help and dealt with them in a

specialized way. I was in favour of that and supported that. What I

found though was that because that helped, we then kept tightening the

screen. We got more people at the specialized level to keep moving the

screen closer together, so we kept screening out more and more of these

people. We could theoretically end up with at least 50 percent of the

students out of the regular situation in special situations. That

helped them, but it also separated them, Mr. Speaker, and it left less

attention for the rest. We've done a fairly good job with special

education, but I think we're probably around to the point now where

we've got to hire special coordinators to assimilate these pupils back

into the same situation. We have spent a lot of time and money taking

them out, and now we're talking about spending more money to mainstream

them back in. So we've gone full cycle. I'm not saying it was all bad —

there were some good things — but I think we've got hung up on our own

cleverness. We knew exactly how to deal with problems by separating

them, and the last thing we should have been doing is separating kids

out of that situation, because now we found that the best thing is to

assimilate them and to deal with them in there.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

talked about having to have all this money, etc. Mr. Speaker, when I

first started teaching my first assignment was in a small country

school with 48 pupils in three grades — grades 4, 5 and 6. It was a

horribly difficult assignment, but I learned a great deal from that,

and there were other teachers in the same boat. I learned that you

couldn't do everything; you couldn't give every pupil an assignment and

then correct it. No matter how many hours a day I worked, I could not

deal with that; I could not have pupils write paragraphs or essays and

correct every one of them. There just wasn't time in addition to

preparing the lessons. In self-defence, because I was a very

inexperienced teacher at the time, I allowed the pupils to help each

other a great deal, and that was a valuable lesson which I kept even

when I had smaller classes: if the pupils are helping to teach each

other and to learn from each other, you can do a fairly good job of

quality education even in difficult circumstances.

Nowhere

would I ever want to go back to three grades and 48 pupils in one

classroom. If I hadn't been young and enthusiastic, it probably would

have killed me. However, I did learn some valuable lessons from that.

When I talk about special education, I know a little bit about what I'm

speaking of. In addition to being an administrator, for three years I

took a special-education group of teenagers. Incidentally, it did not

fit into the guidebooks from the ministry. It was the occupational

program, and we had to have at least 500 pupils in the school. I was

stuck — I only had 50 in the secondary grades — but I was allowed so

many teachers. Anyway, we worked it out. I had local autonomy by

convincing the people that it would be a better situation if I took a

group of students who were going nowhere in the regular program and

were making it difficult for everybody. Maybe it sounds as if I'm

contradicting myself by saying here I was segregating. I segregated

them but worked them back in.

Mr. Speaker, those students

did very well academically, and part of it, I think, was because we had

to scrounge. We could get the programs, but we didn't get the bucks. We

had to scrounge for books, for reading material, for almost anything we

needed. I think our budget for extra items was $15, and with that $15

we started and we scrounged and we managed to get a workshop, we

managed to get sewing machines, and an awful lot was done. I thought I

was helping

[ Page 7261 ]

them

just with the vocational skills, but when they started doing that,

their reading skills, their math skills, their social studies skills

and everything else improved. I wish I knew exactly what I had done,

because it would be nice to write a book and say that this will work,

but I don't think it will work in every circumstance, Mr. Speaker. That

situation worked in that particular system at that time.

great deal came about because we had to learn to help ourselves. I

think we've taken far too much of that away. We've tried to put in

front of them whatever is necessary, and we've got to the point in many

cases, Mr. Speaker, where in order to teach pupils to write we give

them a paragraph or an essay on a sheet of paper, and we say:

"Underline the good parts." Then years later we wonder why they cannot

write. Because we've got so much available, they don't need to write;

all they have to do is put check marks. I'm exaggerating to a point.

There are a lot of good teachers who are still asking students to write

or to correctly write down the math question before they try to solve

it, rather than have it all on a printed worksheet, just filling in the

answers underneath. You can get the answers from the answer book. I

used to stay to students: "If you want to copy the answers from the

answer book, here, you've got it. You won't learn anything, and you

might fool me for a while." The students didn't violate that.

I'll

go back to one other thing in school. We talk about gymnasiums and

playgrounds and other things. We didn't have the money for a softball

diamond or a soccer field, so we mooched a disc and a harrow from a

local farmer, who roughed up the field; we got rakes and the kids raked

the schoolground, and then they had a softball diamond and a soccer

field. We wouldn't want our children to have to do that to have playing

facilities nowadays. But I can tell you one thing, Mr. Speaker: nobody

in that community ever ran a car across those kids' schoolgrounds. I

didn't have to police it; no authorities had to police it. If anybody

had run a car over all their work, they would have killed them — you

know I'm exaggerating there. It was theirs; they had input. They made a

contribution, and they valued it that much more. We have taken a great

deal of that away from people. We provide things, then we provide the

policing and maintenance to fix it up after others have.... Students do

not have a vested interest — their labour, their efforts — in what

they've accomplished, so it's not their concern if somebody destroys

it. That's the government's problem — government at any level, if you

like. We have done the same thing with the teachers in our educational

system. I feel it has happened very gradually, but it's been

accelerating in recent years, and it's very insidious. It's been

creeping in. We have convinced more and more teachers that if education

isn't going well it's the fault of not enough money from government.

That is not true.

I'm not saying that we should starve the

educational system. I'm simply saying that money in itself is not the

answer. I've always found that when the idea itself is very good,

generally the money will flow. We've almost reached the point where

they say: "Give us the money, and we'll come up with a good idea." It's

difficult. It wouldn't be so bad if we had a magic pot to take this out

of, and say: "Here, whatever you need, go to it." But we don't have a

magic pot. The only pot we have is the taxpayers and the resource

industries of this province, and we need to get the revenue from them.

Speaking

of the resource industries, because this government is continuing to

spend money on what have been so glibly labelled megaprojects, they've

been condemned. It's said they're not interested in people. They're not

interested in education and the students in this province because they

spend money on industrial development. To use an analogy, I'm going to

suggest that if any municipality in this province simply said, "Give us

your money, dear taxpayers. We are not going to create an industrial

park. We are not going to spend any money on trying to attract industry

to this town. We are simply going to give you the best streets and the

best schools and the best scenery and the best trees and the best

parks, but we're not going to spend any money on industrial parks or

industrial development," it would be terrific. Unfortunately we've

deluded people into thinking: "The more we get, the greater it is."

What we have to realize is that in a very short time that municipality

wouldn't have any use for those facilities. The people would not be

there because the jobs would not be there because the revenue would not

be there, and they couldn't maintain those facilities.

For

every $100 million spent in developing B.C. Place, northeast coal and

so on, I wish there was another $100 million available for education,

health services and so on. We're finding that this government has put a

priority on that; they've put all the money into it that they can. But

I cannot and will not support the principle that we should take all the

money that we have and all the money that we can borrow and create

facilities and programs and educational opportunities, or whatever, for

our people, and disregard the fact that in the future, to maintain

those and keep them up, we've got to have some sources of revenue.

Those sources of revenue are going to be our coal projects, our B.C.

Place and so on.

We had the ridiculous situation years ago

when the Social Credit government decided, finally and at last, to

build roads into the northern and isolated communities. I heard the

argument over and over again: why waste money on roads? Spend it on

people. It's a good thing that government at that time did not listen,

because if they hadn't built those roads and provided those links with

the resource-producing areas of this province, we would not have....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps the hon. member could relate to the bill before us, the Education (Interim) Finance Act.

MR. BRUMMET:

I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker, I thought I was, because we're on this

restraint program. I could say a great deal more. I realize, because of

this political forum, anything you say — any item — can be taken out of

context and then used. But that's the risk you take, and I'm quite

willing to accept that.

I'd like to say one other thing. Well, perhaps it's not related to the bill, so perhaps I'll leave that part out.

general, I would like to suggest that we would not need to cut a single

teacher or a single program out of our schools under the restraint

program if we accepted some very basic considerations to get us out of

the straitjacket of thinking that we've got ourselves into. For

instance, in the educational system at least 75 percent of the budget

is taken up in payroll — employee wages, benefits, etc. If even a small

percentage reduction in that payroll were accepted by individuals, a

considerable amount would be left in that budget. Again, I mention that

the payroll is at least 75 percent of the school budget. It varies from

district to district.

We have taught our people to say that everything is government's responsibility, rather than any individual's re-

[ Page 7262 ]

sponsibility.

So we have absolved ourselves of individual responsibility, because we

can always put the blame on government, forgetting that government is

us. All of us, collectively, are the government of this province,

regardless of which party is sitting on which side of the House. We

would not need to lose any of those programs. If we moderated some of

those salary increases and considered some restructuring.... There are

places in the system, in any system, where instead of the pyramid — at

the top are the highest paid and at the bottom, where the greatest

portion of the pyramid is, are the people who deliver the services....

We put too much emphasis up at the top where we have those people in

the decision-making position of recommending where the cuts should be

made. They're recommending that the cuts not be made at their level.

They want them made down at that other level. Those are the people who

are being attacked. That's where the programs have to be cut. They

don't need to be cut. I think we have to assume some individual

responsibility as well as government responsibility.

I've

said that on several occasions now in this House, and I think this bill

is responsible in the sense that it says: "We must exercise some

restraint." I have, as I said before, a lot of arguments about some

individual effects that it has on the metropolitan areas as compared to

the rural areas. Those I will deal with in the best form — in a

positive way.

MS. BROWN: I ask leave of the House to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MS. BROWN:

Seated in the gallery is a group of students from Burnaby South Senior

Secondary School. They're accompanied by their teacher, Heather Mitten.

I wonder if the House would join me in bidding them welcome.

MR. KING:

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the last speaker, and

quite frankly I'm sorry that he feels that the opposition's objection

to this particular bill that's before the House is strictly a political

matter. I would hope to disabuse him of that idea before I finish my

remarks, but before I get to that point, I'm not sure whether the

member has read the bill or not, because the main portion of the bill

which the opposition is objecting to is that

section that deprives

local school boards of a tax base that they have had historically. It's

not that they're asking for something new; it's simply that they are

being deprived, through this bill, of the right to tax commercial and

industrial developments within the community that the board represents.

So to that extent it's the theft of taxation power by the provincial

government away from the local school boards. I can imagine the cries

of anguish from the provincial government if the federal government

were to intrude into any of the areas of provincial jurisdiction with

respect to taxation. The member over there seems to feel it's just fine

for the provincial government to come in with their hands out and make

the big tax grab away from the locally elected municipal school boards

throughout the province.

I got a charge out of the member

who just sat down. I don't want to take him out of context, because

that member is a bit accident prone, Mr. Speaker, but he did say, and

the record will show, that one of the most insidious things that has

crept into the system is the right for school teachers to have a lunch

and get paid for it. Now isn't that terribly insidious, Mr. Speaker? I

wonder if the member would like to share the plush parliamentary

cafeteria, which is subsidized at taxpayer's expense and enjoyed by all

members of this House, with other workers in the province of British

Columbia. I wonder how he can justify his patronage of that facility in

these buildings while referring to a teacher's right to a paid lunch as

an insidious thing. Where's the consistency? That's sounds a bit

hypocritical to me.

I want to say that my main concerns

about the removal of this local taxation are similar to those outlined

by my colleague from Skeena (Mr. Howard) when he talked about the high

cost involved in a whole variety of matters which are more or less

peculiar to rural communities in the province of British Columbia. We

in Revelstoke have an average snowfall of around 150 inches. The cost

of snow removal in that school district to our municipal council is a

matter which is unique and peculiar to that community. It's a matter

which imposes a higher cost on that school district than it does in an

area like the Fraser Valley, for instance. That's obvious. I think even

a former high school principal can understand that equation. We have

some higher costs and now the commercial taxation base, which assisted

us in offering a similar standard of services to those of other areas

of the province, and provided for some special programs in the school

system, is being eroded by this tax grab by the provincial government.

were promised by the Social Credit government some many years ago that

the Columbia River Treaty dams that were within the school district

would be taxed for local school taxation purposes, which would have

brought a great additional source of revenue to the three school

districts involved in that particular area. The government has reneged

on that promise, depriving those school districts of a source of

revenue that should have been available to them. They are not satisfied

with removing that source of revenue; under this bill they are deprived

of the right to earn revenue from other industrial and commercial

developments in the community.

The member says it's

political. Mr. Speaker, I have two letters here, one from School

District 19 at Revelstoke and one from School District 89 in the

Shuswap district. I want to read what they say. The member asked what

local autonomy means. Here's what it means to the boards of these two

school districts which I have mentioned. From the secretary treasurer

of School District 19 in Revelstoke:

"The

Board of School Trustees of School District 19, having been advised

that the Minister of Municipal Affairs is proposing a county system of

local government, inform the Premier, the cabinet and the local MLA

that this board believes that any system of local government, county or

otherwise, must adhere to the following principles so that the

sovereign rights of parents to control the education of their children

locally and directly is protected."

School District 89 at

Salmon Arm passed this resolution: "The public school system must be

governed by people locally elected for the specific and sole task of

governing the schools and having taxing authority for that purpose."

The member suggests this is political — that the opposition is playing

games. Well, Mr. Speaker, maybe that member doesn't know who the

chairman of School District 89 is. I want to tell him who that man is:

Mr. C.C. (Cliff) Michael, chairman of the board, who is the announced

candidate for the Social Credit nomination in my riding. Now if the

Social

[ Page 7263 ]

Credit

chairman of School District 89 interprets autonomy as being the right

of local people to guide and to be responsible for the education of

their children and to have taxing authority, it should be pretty clear

that people involved in the education system throughout the length and

breadth of the province, not only the opposition, are very concerned

about the centralist tax grab that this bill constitutes. That's the

issue.

Perhaps the Social Credit sitting MLAs, those who are

elected to the back bench, should start having a chat with some of the

people they have elected or are proposing to nominate throughout the

province, so there could be some consistency in the policy that they

are advocating for the administration of our school system.

my colleagues have said, it's a centralist grab for control by the

Minister of Education, it is anti-democratic, and it's going to erode

the opportunity for equality of education between the rural, less

densely populated areas of the province as opposed to North Vancouver

and Oak Bay, where the minister comes from, where there's high-density

residential population and a tax base can be maintained from that

source. Once again he is discriminating against the smaller rural

communities throughout the length and breadth of the province of

British Columbia, and I oppose that very strongly, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SKELLY:

It's a pleasure to take my place in this debate on behalf of the

citizens of Port Alberni. Before I go into the principle of the bill,

maybe I should outline some of the problems that the people of Port

Alberni are facing at the moment, while the minister is leaving the

chamber.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

As you know, Port Alberni is

almost entirely based on the recovery of forest resources and the

manufacture of timber by MacMillan Bloedel Ltd. It's essentially a

company town. As the problem in the worldwide market for lumber and

forest products has developed, Port Alberni has suffered relatively

more than most other communities in the province of British Columbia.

Thousands of people are out of work as a result of mill shutdowns and

curtailments in the harvesting operations in the forest industry.

People on apprenticeship programs have been laid off or terminated and,

after years of effort in learning their trade, have no hope that in the

future they will be returned to the apprenticeship programs. Many

people have been told that they cannot expect ever to be hired back in

their jobs again. In some cases, Mr. Speaker, we're talking about

people with 5, 10, 15 and 20 years seniority in the same operation.

a community that's always been proud of the contribution that it has

given to this province in the form of resource wealth and the labour

that people can apply to the resources of British Columbia to produce

wealth for this province, they've always had that pride in their

labour, enterprise and creativity and have never stinted in making the

wealth produced available to the people of the province. But they have

to wonder, when legislation comes down like this, just what kind of

thanks they get when times are tough. When they're crushed down,

probably more than most other people in the province — certainly more

than people in the highly developed urban areas — and when those who

work in the forest resource industry and the forest manufacturing

industry suffer, then nothing goes out to them.

It's

interesting to read in the throne speeches in this province over the

ten years that I've been a member of this Legislative Assembly that we

always recognize the contributions of those in the forest industry who

have given their all to contribute to the economy in this province. We

hear about H.R. MacMillan; we hear about the forest giants who have

carved industry out of the hinterland of this province; and we hear

very little on a day-to-day basis about those people who go out into

the forest, cut down the trees, buck the logs and bring the material

back to the factory. Their injuries, their deaths, don't really make

too much of an impression; their suffering doesn't make much of an

impression when it comes to writing the glowing reports in the throne

speech.

Morale in Port Alberni is low at this time, Mr.

Speaker. When you wonder why people on this side feel negative about

the economy of British Columbia, take a visit to Port Alberni. Take a

look at some of the mills that are shut down. Take a look at some of

the homes in which those forest industry workers were living. They are

now having some difficulty and some uncertainty about whether they'll

keep those homes for the near future, whether they're going to have

jobs to go back to, and whether they'll have boats and cars. There's no

certainty as to whether they will be working in the future and whether

they will be able to provide for their children some of the assets that

their labour has produced over the years.

And then what

happens, Mr. Speaker, when the government starts talking about

restraint, and it's a question of upon whom this restraint is going to

be imposed? Port Alberni, with all of its layoffs, with thousands of

people on the streets — thousands of people who have had the dignity to

work for their income for 5, 10, 15 and 20 years for the same company,

who have had the opportunity to produce that wealth I was talking about

for all of the citizens of British Columbia.... Now that they're down,

the government takes another kick at them in the form of higher taxes:

property taxes have gone up; assessments have increased 90 percent and

beyond 100 percent; Hydro rates have gone up by 30 percent. What effect

does that have on people whose income has been slashed down to a third

or a fourth or even less of their previous income, an income which they

now get from sources such as unemployment insurance or welfare?

The

one thing that can be called the growth sector in Port Alberni now is

the Ministry of Human Resources, which has had to hire additional staff

in order to look after the loggers and the millworkers who now have no

other source of income, having been out of work for something like 18

months to two years.

They were kicked again with higher

medical plan premiums, because after they lose their employment, of

course, the employer no longer contributes, and they end up paying on

their own. There are higher insurance premiums; higher licence fees;

higher gas taxes; higher cigarette, alcohol and tobacco taxes — and on

top of that we get this bill.

It was announced last week

that the hospital in Port Alberni is going to be cut back by half a

million dollars on its current budget. What is it going to mean? It's

going to mean a loss of 30 jobs, a lessening of service through that

hospital — services desperately needed by the people in Port Alberni,

whether they work or not.

They received a kick from the

budget speech when they finally figured out that unconditional grants

to the municipalities, even after the other grants had been rolled in,

will result in a loss to that municipality of over $400,000 in

[ Page 7264 ]

provincial grants. There will be higher taxes inevitably, and a lowering of the services provided by the municipality.

The

final blow was when the minister announced that $300,000 would have to

be trimmed from a school board budget that was already trimmed to the

bone, and that it was going to require staff layoffs this year and in

the coming year. Twenty-eight teachers will be gone as a result of the

minister's decision, 18 support staff will be gone as a result of the

minister's decision, 43 temporary teachers have been informed this

month that their services will no longer be required in Port Alberni as

a result of the minister's decision, and five community schools will be

shut down as a result of the minister's decision. It's those five

schools, more than anything else in Port Alberni, that have drawn the

anger of the people of Port Alberni away from the school board and

directly onto that minister and this government, because those schools

in Port Alberni were what we thought the school system was all about.

lot of people, especially on the other side, criticize the public

school system for being too big, for not providing the kind of

individual services that some students require and for not serving the

student on an individual one-to-one basis. But Port Alberni had the

best of both worlds. It had a community school concept based on small

schools in community areas that provided that kind of one-to-one

education. It provided that kind of innovation and imagination and

involved the parents in those schools so that the students were known

to every parent and the teachers were known to every parent. Everybody

knew the aims and objectives of those individual schools. It was a

system you could really understand and get your hands on and get a

grasp of.

As a result of the minister's decree, in one

stroke those schools were shut down. Twenty-five hundred parents have

signed a petition asking the minister to change his mind. At the B.C.

Teachers Federation annual general meeting a few weeks ago, the

president of the Alberni District Teachers Association approached the

minister. He explained the problems in Port Alberni and the minister at

that time agreed that the measures appeared to be too harsh. He

promised to look into it and report back to the president of the

Alberni District Teachers Association, which he did not do.

Yesterday

those schools were officially closed by the school board, and as of the

end of June those community schools will no longer be operating. The

kids that went to those schools — including my kids — will now be

forced into larger schools where they'll have less teacher attention

and where programs will be curtailed because for logistic reasons they

don't offer the variety of programs in larger schools that they could

offer in the community schools. Port Alberni will have lost a unique

type of education that the school board spent years in developing and

perfecting — a type of education that was unique in those schools and

that the school trustees, parents and students were uniquely proud of.

Now that pride is gone, because, of course, with a stroke of the pen,

the minister wiped out that community-school system.

What

kind of priorities does this government have? Why would the minister

insist on wiping out a system of education that people were proud of

and that parents were willing to cooperate in and provide hundreds and

thousands of volunteer hours of their time?

The member for North Peace River (Mr. Brummet) talked about paying teachers

for supervision at lunch-hour. In these schools, the parents were so excited

about the way their children were being educated that they provided that volunteer

support at lunch-time. They provided volunteer support in the classroom. My

wife provided music instruction, because the board wasn't able to finance

music teachers. Parents contributed to that type of school system and it was

unique for Port Alberni — in fact it was unique for a number of areas of the

province. With a stroke of a pen the minister killed it.

The

schools are going to be moth-balled at a cost to the taxpayers of Port

Alberni. The lights are going to be kept on and the furnaces are going

to be kept going and the windows are going to be boarded up. That's not

going to stop the vandalism. The money invested by the taxpayers of

this province and the people of Port Alberni.... They'll be able to

drive by those schools and watch that investment being destroyed. Worst

of all is the investment in that type of education that will be very

difficult to replace, if ever. The minister has destroyed, without any

thought whatsoever and as carelessly as you can sign a piece of paper,

an important and unique educational system in Port Alberni which can

never be replaced. Certainly he will never attempt to replace it.

Why

are these things being destroyed? Why does the government have the kind

of priorities that it has in these issues?We look at the television. We

look at the newspapers and listen to the radios and hear the government

telling us to get the B.C. spirit. Is this the spirit? Crush the type

of education system that you have. Is this the spirit? Shut down the

hospitals and cancel the services which they provide. Is this the

spirit? Deprive municipalities of the services they've been providing.

Is that the spirit?

And where is all the money going? I

remember 1975, when the Premier was telling us that the government can

do nothing with the wealth of this province; that it's all one big pie;

that it's a choice of either the government taking more of the pie or

the people getting more. It is a big pie, and certain people are

getting more of it than certain others. The megaproject in downtown

Vancouver — $1.7 billion. The northeast coal project, with its brand

new schools, brand new townsites, brand new elementary schools, brand

new public services, brand new highways, brand new railways, brand new

transmission lines. Yet the people in the rural areas of this province,

in the resource areas, who have been producing the wealth of this

province for year after year — before your time, Mr. Speaker — are

being deprived day by day, bled day by day, denied the services that

they have a right to day by day, in order to feed those megaprojects

that are being put together by this government, a government trapped

into the same kind of megaproject mentality that trapped the

Liberal-dominated coalition prior to 1952; trapped into supporting the

urban ridings exclusively, the wealthy urban ridings, because of their

Liberal-dominated Social Credit government.

Look at who is

in the inner circle of this government — not you, Mr. Speaker, but the

other ones. Look at who is in the inner circle. When the member from

West Vancouver broke party ranks to join the party over there, and when

the members for Point Grey broke ranks to joined the party over there,

the Socreds didn't absorb them; the Liberals took over what used to be

the Social Credit Party and brought with them that mentality of

dragging the resource wealth, stealing the resource wealth from the

rural areas of the province and expending it in Vancouver and in

megaprojects in northeast coal. People in areas like Port Alberni are

being robbed of services, robbed of schools, robbed of municipal

functions,

[ Page 7265 ]

robbed of health services so that those Liberal-dominated Socreds can invest the money in two specific areas of the province.

The

wealth can be divided in a fairer and more distributive way. In the

middle of an economic recession, the things you do not cut are those

things that are going to be the building blocks for future generations

of children: the education, health services and basic municipal

services that people require in order to go to work on a healthy and

well-educated basis from day to day. Those people are the ones who are

going to apply their imagination, industry and initiative to bring this

economic recession to an end. It's not going to be done by

megaprojects, which are part of the problem.

If this

government truly believes in exercising restraint, they should exercise

some restraint in the cutthroat way they've treated school districts

throughout the province. They should exercise some restraint in the

cutthroat way they've handled hospital budgets throughout the province.

They should exercise some restraint in the cutthroat way they've

handled municipalities throughout the province and provide those people

with the basic means for ensuring our economic recovery, rather than

bleeding them blind in order to build monuments in Vancouver and in the

northeast coal sector. Those projects will come, and they can come over

a period of time; we don't have to build them all at once so that they

will be monuments right there for the next election. We could build

them over time and make sure that the wealth of this province is

distributed more fairly to the people who have produced it.

certainly intend to vote against this bill. I think it distributes

money in the wrong way, I think it's evidence of a government that has

distorted priorities, and I cannot in good conscience support the bill.

MR. MITCHELL:

I would like to join with my colleagues in expressing my disgust with

this bill and go over a few of the facts that I feel are important,

facts that maybe have been missed. For the benefit of the House I'm not

going to repeat many of the valid arguments that were put forward by my

colleagues, arguments that fit my constituency every bit as well as

theirs.

I do have some very deep fears. The main fear that

I'm worried about is the lack of democracy, the centralization within

the ministry of directives that can be given to a school board. School

boards are elected, and they are one of the grassroots organizations

within our democracy. The parents, the taxpayers know what type of

school budget the community can afford, they know what type of programs

are needed, and they know additional facts that no bureaucracy within

Victoria can — centralized as it is, burdened down with the work

that.... They have to look after the detailed directions that a school

board must embark on when they're elected. This bill has a

section that

gives the minister the power to set directives in secret. How do we in

the opposition and people in the school board know that equal

educational opportunity throughout the province will be given to each

and every child that is born here, each and every child that goes to

school, when the open discussion that happens in local school boards,

the open input that is received from the taxpayers, from the parents,

from the teachers and the school, can be made null and void by some

directive of some bureaucrat somewhere in the bureaucracy? This fear is

held not only by me and my colleagues but also by many people out in

the communities.

We look at it in detail as we go through

the bill. It is an awesome bill. The power that is vested in that

minister is so awesome. He's a personal friend of mine of long

acquaintance, and I have a great respect for him as an individual. But

it is not laid down that he will be the member responsible for these

decisions: it lies with the Minister of Education, and as you know, the

life of a Minister of Education in this province is many times

short-lived. The long-term planning, the long-term responsibility of

that person is not laid down. It changes with the political winds; it

changes with the fighting within cabinet as to who is going to get the

plums of a cabinet appointment. Although this minister is a very

broad-minded person, a person with a lot of background in the

community.... It's interesting to note that when he was in a different

position, when he was with the UBCM as mayor of Oak Bay, he had one

position. Now that he's sitting as the Minister of Education — under

the direction of the cabinet, under the direction of the 31 Social

Credit MLAs — he has a different position. This is what I fear; it

becomes a political decision. The decision must rest back in the

community, it must rest with the elected school boards, and that is the

decision that I'm worried about.

Another major thing in this

bill that I find, if you like, terrifying is the confiscation — the

word has been used — of the industrial and commercial base from the

school district and transferal into the hands of the provincial

government. For those who have studied history — I know the minister

has.... When they brought in the income tax, it was going to be for a

short period; it was going to be to help fight World War 1, and we've

had the income tax ever since. Although the minister assures us that

this bill is only for two years, I feel that once the province gets

hold of the industrial and commercial tax base for assessments, it will

be a lot harder to get that back out of the province's hands than it is

at present. Although it says it's for two years, it is not something

that I really believe is the long-range intention of this government.

my own riding they are going to take 44.4 percent of the assessment

base of the Sooke School District. My riding covers both Sooke and

Victoria School Districts. The total assessed value at the present time

for the Sooke School District is $194,511,575. Of this, the province is

attempting by this bill to confiscate the assessed base of $86,294,101.

Once this money is taken and it goes into the provincial general

revenue, we as taxpayers, MLAs and parents are not guaranteed that it

will be returned to our ridings or school districts. It will go into

the political whims of the government.

The major press

announcement when this particular new financial policy was brought out

said that it was going to guarantee 75 percent of the school budget.

We've listened to this. We've studied the breakdown they've laid out

and how they're going to arrive at that. That figure of 75 percent was

taken out of the McMath report — the report the NDP have been fighting

for — which said we must guarantee to the school districts 75 percent

of the school costs. It has been our policy. If the government is now

going to accept our policy, we're all for it as long as it's done in a

fair manner.

The original report said this money was to come

from general revenue from the natural resources of our province. This

is not the way this bill lays it out. It is not laid out at all. They

are taking the assessment money of the industrial and commercial base

and then are giving it back. This, as the critic for our party said, is

a shell game. We, as elected people, can't sit back and play these

petty little political shell

[ Page 7266 ]

games

and expect that our credibility will remain what it is. Many of us have

fought to develop credibility. When governments who are supposed to be

the leaders of the educational system are playing these games with the

school board, what are the impressions people will have of what's going

on? They'd laugh at us.

Another part that really bothers me is the power that is given to the Minister

of Finance, where he has the power to define such things as: "What are

equal payments? What is a monthly payment?" The reason I say I have that

fear is the experience I had when I was trying to help the farmers in my community

who were trying to establish a simple little tractor called the Bobcat. The

Bobcat was used in the farming community on turkey farms, hog farms, etc. For

some unknown reason the Minister of Finance decided that a Bobcat was not a

farm vehicle. He decided that for farm-vehicle status it had to have two larger

wheels at the back, and because the Bobcat only had four wheels all the same

size it was not a farm vehicle or tractor. No one ever told the farmers that

the Bobcat was not a farm vehicle or tractor. They were using it. The particular

vehicle had been designed by a turkey farmer to work within the agricultural

industry. But for some unknown reason, in the middle of everything, the Minister

of Finance decided that no longer would a Bobcat be a farm vehicle, and they

would have to pay sales tax. I've noticed, with the information we brought

to this minister and House, that they have brought in some amendments to farm-vehicle

classifications. We will see how they interpret Bobcats.

When

a Ministry of Finance can take this

interpretation of a farm vehicle,

what can they do with an equal payment or monthly payments? That has to

be laid down in the statute. There has to be better input from the

community. The reason I'm worried about this power of the Minister of

Finance is that nowhere in the bill does it say they should guarantee

75 percent of the school costs. If this is the important part of this

bill, if this is the part that made the headlines throughout the

province of British Columbia — that the new financial act for education

was going to guarantee 75 percent of the approved school costs — then

it should be in the bill so the members of the school boards and the

officials can do their planning in advance, knowing where they stand.

At the present time they don't. This gets to the position that we in

the opposition and those on the school boards who have come to

us.... The problem that has arisen — and it's arising every day in

the school board offices — is because of the foot-dragging of this

government and because this government wouldn't take the advice of the

opposition.

Last fall we said to keep the House in session

to deal with the legislation that is needed, to deal with the bills

that are going to affect the communities that we represent. The

government decided to shut down the House and go home. And what's

happening? Because this House was not called back at the time when it

should have been, school boards out in the community are borrowing

money to pay the running expenses of their school district. The Sooke

School District, which is part of my riding, is borrowing around $2

million a month to finance the running of the schools: to pay the wages

and the upkeep. They're borrowing this money out on the open market at

usury rates. Granted, they get prime rate plus, but at the same time

the province is sitting on this money. At the same time they are

investing this money; they are using it to balance their budget. The

day-to-day operation of the school districts is being hindered day by

day. Here we are approaching May, and in nearly five months....

Before they get any money it will be five, six, seven or eight months

of having to borrow money at usury rates to operate the school

districts.

This money will not come out of the grants given

by this government. It will be put back on to the taxes of the local

community; it will be put back on to the taxes of the homeowner. The

taxes that should have gone to education to provide school buses, night

school, opportunities for children from rural areas to come in and

visit the parliament buildings and the museums, are going to be wasted

and will go into the hands of the financial people who are making money

because this government would not accept the recommendation that we

debated all night: to get to work, to prepare legislation, to prepare

bills and to make the presentations. That should have taken place last

fall, so that when we got to January 1 the school districts could have

gotten their money and known what they were going to have, known how to

do their planning, instead of having to go out on a monthly basis and

borrow, like they do in Sooke School District, $2 million a month.

This

is wrong. It all lands on the government side of the House, because

they will not face the economic facts that affect every one of us in

the community — the school boards, the people who are working, the

taxpayers. Instead, they play games. They travel all around in jets.

They waste time at the Legislature, they waste the time of the elected

people and, more importantly, they waste the taxpayers' money by

frittering it away because they haven't got a program or any planning

even to run the Legislature, let alone to run the province.

closing, Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote against the bill because it is

not sound for the community. It's costing the taxpayers a lot of money.

It is a makeshift bill. As the minister says: "It's only going to be

there for two years." It's only going to be there for less than two

years if they call an election. It's going to set a bad precedent in

the meantime, because they are confiscating the industrial assessment

base of this province.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, I too have a few brief comments that I would like to make with respect to the bill that is under discussion.

I'm

really sorry that the minister is not here; I know mention has been

made several times of the minister's absence during this debate. I do

have some fairly specific issues that apply to the constituency of

Comox, and not to most other parts of the province. I hope I don't have

to raise them again during committee stage, but I assume that I'll have

to if the minister does not arrive.

I am opposed to the grab

for authority which this bill represents. First of all, it is typical

of the kind of grabbing that the government has been involved in for

the last few years: usurping more and more authority and power unto

themselves and having less and less rest in the hands of locally

elected people. This bill is certainly indicative of that general trend.

The

other thing is that there is absolutely no guarantee in this bill of

what the minister indicated was going to happen. He said in a press

release that there would be a division of the financing for the schools

of the province of 60 percent handled through the province directly, 35

percent cost-shared and 5 percent at the local level. But lo and behold

there is nothing in the bill that indicates that that finance formula

[ Page 7267 ]

announced

by the minister is indeed going to happen. I know there are school

districts and school boards in the province that are most concerned

about the fact that it's not in writing. They've come to expect that if

it is not in writing from this government, they must really question

whether or not what the minister has indicated in a press release is

really what's going to happen. When I spoke to some of the school board

members in our area they were certainly concerned about the fact that

the finance formula announced is not in the bill. The only thing that's

included in the bill is the fact that they are going to usurp the

authority for collecting the taxes for commercial and industrial

assessments in this province and that the local school boards would no

longer have that authority. There is nothing to say that the finance

formula that has been announced is indeed going to be followed. I think

the bill provides no guarantees whatsoever on that basis.

Like

many other members of this Legislature, I would like to raise just a

couple of issues with respect to how this program is going to affect

the school boards and school districts I represent in the constituency

of Comox. So many of the moves of this government make no economic

sense whatsoever. I think the fact that they are applying this formula

at this time means that it's going to cost more money in the long run

to the taxpayers of the province. This happens time and time again.

For

instance, one of the school boards in my area was going to hire an

energy conservation officer to cut down on the energy costs to the

school board. There is no doubt that this is becoming an increasingly

large bill in the school districts of the province. This was an

education officer who was going to cut the costs to the school district

because of the fact that he would be able — based on what has been

happening in other school districts in the province — to cut down on

the fuel bill for School District 71. But because of this kind of

legislation, they are not going to be able to hire that conservation

officer and, as a result, will be burning up more fuel and increasing

the cost to the taxpayer. As a matter of fact, in other school

districts they have found that the cost of hiring this conservation

officer was paid for more than four times. They saved over four times

the amount that it cost in salary to this energy conservation officer.

But because of this they cannot even lay out that initial funding for

an energy conservation officer. I know we have had many examples of the

kind of cutbacks that are taking place. That is just one other one.

Elementary counsellors to assist students with grave emotional problems

in the school districts, too, are going to be cut back because of this

bill.

There is one particular problem I wanted to raise with

the minister. As I said, I am very sorry that he is not here. I had

hoped that he might arrive so that he would be able to answer my

question on this. I hope he is listening somewhere in the buildings.

There is a particular situation that exists within my constituency.

Because so many of the students are living on Department of National

Defence properties, the parents do not pay any taxes to the provincial

and the province of B.C. back on August 25, 1972, which came up with a

formula to provide for the federal government to pay to the provincial

government, and the provincial government in turn to pay to the school

boards affected, the amount of money contained in the formula to pay

for the costs of the education of those students who are living on

Department of National Defence property. This agreement is still in

existence even though the basic finance formula has changed. What

this means is that the government has proceeded with this legislation

prior to altering the agreement with the federal government with

respect to the funding for students who are living on DND property.

The

formula needs to be changed if, in fact, we are going to obtain the

same amount of money from the federal government for these students.

The school board in the constituency of Comox, for instance, does not

know whether they're going to receive the same amount of money they

received last year or whether they are going to receive a lesser amount

of money based on the current formula. There's no indication whatsoever

that these talks have even started with the federal government. There's

no indication of when the talks might be completed or any agreement

reached if, in fact, they are able to reach an agreement with the

federal government. And it means one of two things: the school district

in Comox, particularly, and others as well — North Island is another

one that's affected by the DND property at Holberg — do not know

whether they are going to have their amount of money through this

agreement reduced substantially because of this new formula where the

provincial government takes up the commercial and the industrial tax

for school purposes or whether the provincial government will, in fact,

ensure that those moneys are forthcoming to the school districts and

hence subsidize the federal government, because that's what they will,

in effect, be doing.

If the federal government pays much

less because of the existing formula that's been arrived at with the

federal and provincial governments, then the province of British

Columbia will probably end up subsidizing Trudeau. I don't think that

at this stage this government is prepared to subsidize Trudeau's

federal government, but because of the fact they have done nothing

about altering the formula and we don't know when those discussions are

going to take place or when any new agreement is going to be reached, I

assume that the province of British Columbia, because of this bill,

will be subsidizing the federal government or the local school

districts in those areas that are affected will be subsidizing the

federal government.

I would like to know from the minister

when he will be meeting with the federal government in order to change

the formula that now exists for those students who are sons and

daughters of the armed services personnel and living on DND property.

School District 71 is going to be affected, because the formula has not

been renegotiated. What guarantee is there that School District 71 is

going to receive the nearly $1,400 per student that it received in the

past? I'm wondering if the minister would answer those questions for me

during the windup of the debate.

MR. BARBER: It's

nice to see the minister back in his seat. He was absent for most of

the last 20 minutes and I wonder where he'll be in the next 20 minutes.

MR. REE: You weren't here the last 20 minutes. How would you know?

MR. BARBER: Who was that? Was that you? Do you have the floor?

Mr.

Speaker, the official opposition will vote against this bill because it

is a money grab by Social Credit. We will vote against this bill

because it is a power grab by Social Credit. We will vote against this

bill because it is an assault on quality education engineered by Social

Credit.

[ Page 7268 ]

Let

me discuss the first part. This is a money grab of massive proportions;

this is a money grab which sees the province of British Columbia, as

they put it, "assume responsibility for" nearly $850 million worth of

revenues that previously were the responsibility of local government.

As one of my colleagues said earlier in this debate, when a thief goes

to your home and takes your purse, you could, I suppose, describe it as

an act of a person assuming responsibility for the contents of your

wallet. This is what Social Credit has done in this instance. They are

assuming responsibility for the contents of the wallets that previously

were the responsibility of locally and democratically elected school

boards.

This is a money grab of awesome proportion, the

clear purpose and distinct intent of which is to help finance the vast

welfare schemes for the Japanese steel industry, which have been

proposed so sadly by the Minister of Industry and Small Business

Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) in the last two and three years. It

will go to finance the vast welfare schemes for international travellers

who come to Transpo '86. It will go to provide funds for the other

welfare schemes that have been endlessly put forward by Social Credit

since they resumed office, when their regime began six years ago. The

purpose of grabbing $850 million through this bill is to subsidize the

welfare schemes that Social Credit has put together for its friends in

business over the last six years.

If the purpose were to

assist education, they could surely do it in some other way. They

could, for instance, offer school boards greater, rather than fewer,

revenues. They could offer school boards greater claim on assets,

rather than a lesser claim on fewer assets. They could do any number of

things, including directly increasing the moneys available through the

provincial purse for local purposes. But no, Mr. Speaker, they do none

of these things. Instead, through this bill, a money grab of colossal

proportions, they intend, as they put it, to assume responsibility for

— or as others might put it, pinch — $850 million that formerly was the

responsibility and made available to the benefit of local school

districts.

We oppose this bill because it is a colossal

money grab and it cannot be justified. Secondly, we oppose this bill

because it is a power grab. From now on the Minister of Education will

personally have the power to set school board budgets.

Interjections.

MR. BARBER:

"Good," one of the backward members in the back bench opposite says.

Well, it may be good from the standard and from the point of view of

people who are not fundamentally committed to the democratic process.

But it is not good from the point of view of those who do believe in

local freedom, local choice, local autonomy and local responsibility.

The members opposite say "good," and they do so at least in a moment

of rare candour. The candour reveals their hand and the hand is the

heavy hand of state government imposing its will from Victoria on local

school boards across British Columbia.

We in the New

Democratic Party believe in local government, local autonomy and local

freedom. We believe in the principle of school boards. We believe that

they must be granted the authority to set and determine their own

budgets, and to rise or fall according to the view of the local

electors. But the government says "good," when we describe it as a

power grab by a Minister of Education who will now have the personal

authority to set budgets for school boards. One of the dangers of this

is that he was not elected to do so. The Minister of Education was not

elected to any school board in this province. He should not presume he

has the right to act on behalf of those school boards in setting local

school board budgets. He has neither the business nor the skill to do

so. He apparently has the inclination to do so, but this is

understandable because he is a Socred. Because he is a Socred, power

grab; because he is a Socred, centralism is a fundamental tenet of his

philosophy, if philosophy is the word for this.

We oppose

the bill because it is a money grab; we oppose the bill because it is a

power grab. In regard to grabbing power away from local government and

centralizing it in Victoria, this at least is a pattern consistent with

what the coalition opposite has done since they assumed authority. May

I remind you briefly, Mr. Speaker, by way of allusion, that the

government which proposes the power grab in this bill is the same

government that put forward the Financial Control Act, the purpose of

which was to grab power from regional governments, local governments,

hospital boards, water boards and any number of other civic

authorities. The same government of opportunists that put forward the

grab implicit in the Financial Control Act now puts forward this bill.

They do so in the unspoken name of centralism. The government that

assumed provincial authority over the direction of regional colleges by

changing fundamentally the structure and makeup of those boards did so

in the unnamed interest of centralism. The government that took over

regional colleges now proposes to take over school boards. That is the

second example of the dangerous trend towards centralism for which

Social Credit is responsible.

The same government of

opportunists shut down resource boards all across British Columbia.

These were locally elected, freely chosen groups of citizens who wished

to volunteer their time to help upgrade and rehumanize the delivery of

social and health services in British Columbia. The government that

centralized resource boards and denied freedom of choice at the local

level is the government that now presents this bill today. That's the

third but not the last example of the heavy hand of state centralism

under Social Credit.

There is a fourth example. This is the

government that has cut back profoundly on the role and the

responsibilities of justice councils. These justice councils were

created during our administration to help advise upon and shape the

direction of the delivery of the criminal justice system in the

province of British Columbia, and to give other advice on other topics

as well. The heavy hand of state centralism under Social Credit has

significantly cut back the role and the responsibility of justice

councils and will one day — sooner rather than later — cut them out

altogether. That's the fourth example of state centralism under Social

Credit.

Mr. Speaker, there is a fifth example, and it tells

us once again why we must oppose this bill — it is a power grab. When

we were in office we set up an Alcohol and Drug Commission, the purpose

of which was to keep government at arm's length from the role and the

responsibility of a representative group of persons interested in and

knowledgeable about the field of alcohol and drug abuse in British

Columbia. This government has once again shut down that body of

detached and disinterested opinion and has incorporated it within the

public service and within the political bureaucracies that this

coalition opposite established. The government that shut down the

valuable arm's-length, non-

[ Page 7269 ]

partisan

advice and role of the Alcohol and Drug Commission now proposes to shut

down many of the responsibilities of school boards.

There is

a sixth example, Mr. Speaker. You may recall Bill 42 some years ago, in

which for the first time in the history of this province the Minister

of Municipal Affairs gave himself the personal authority to write and

to rewrite any municipal bylaw in British Columbia. Never before in the

field of local government had we seen such a heavy hand of state

centralism as we saw in that bill — I'll get to the Land Use Act itself

in a minute. Nonetheless, we see in that sixth example once more the

pattern of state control which Social Credit has always imposed on

local governments that were once free, that were once autonomous and

that were once responsible, but under Social Credit are no longer.

This

is the government which has emasculated the Agricultural Land

Commission in British Columbia. This is a commission that was

established, once again, to give non-partisan, disinterested advice to

the government of the day. This is the commission which has been taken

over by Social Credit, and whose role and work has been prostituted for

the political gain of Social Credit and its friends, which pattern we

now see replicated here today in the bill we're currently debating. The

government that has for all practical purposes shut down the

independence and responsibilities of the Land Commission now proposes

to do the same to school boards. We oppose this bill for the same

reason we opposed the seven previous instances of a massive power grab

by the government opposite.

Mr. Speaker, we oppose this bill

because of attempts to put into the office of one man, elected by no

school board electors across this province, the power to decide what

their school boards may or may not spend money on. This is a power to

which he is not entitled. This is an authority which he is not

competent to use. That's a level of jurisdiction which no other

Minister of Education in all of Canada has. He is, in our view,

therefore not entitled to ask for it and most certainly not entitled

to receive it.

There are a couple of other examples I wish

to offer for a moment in regard to the clear proof, over the six years

this group has been in power, of the pattern of their intent — and the

pattern of their unhappy achievement — to impose the heavy hand of

Social Credit from Victoria on local institutions that once upon a time

were free, independent and responsible to their own electors. This is

the government which has assumed for itself authority over the

lotteries. This is the government which has now denied to local

institutions — the charitable groups, the non-profit societies, the

churches — the opportunity to act freely and independently and to make

a profit for the charitable purposes they represent. This government is

now in the process of shutting that down too and once more imposing the

heavy hand of state centralism on them. The innocent, the harmless and

the worthwhile community groups that used to be able to exercise some

kind of independence and make a bit of money for their good purposes

have now been told by Social Credit that they will lose that authority

and have been denied that independence and have to exist for one year

on a promise of charity from Social Credit. They don't want charity;

they want freedom. They don't want charity; they want the right to

earn. They don't want charity; they want the right to be independent

and free agents of the popular will. Just like school boards.

MR. SPEAKER:

Order, please, hon. member. In debating the principle of Bill 27,

certainly the citing of examples would be in order. But to debate the

merits of the example itself is out of order. I trust the member will

keep his remarks relevant to the principle of the bill itself.

MR. BARBER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I completely agree.

Let

me give two final examples. This government is also the author of the

Land Use Act, which I shall not debate other than to indicate that it

is an attempt to place local government in political receivership

across British Columbia. That debate is for another day.

have illustrated nine. Let me move to the tenth example of the heavy

hand of state centralism that Social Credit has always imposed on local

institutions that used to be free, independent and responsible. Let me

briefly rename them. We have seen the Financial Control Act, and we

know what that means. We see what they did to regional colleges, and we

know what that implies. We know that they shut down resource boards in

order to deny and kill local democracy. We know what they are doing to

justice councils. We know what they have done to the Alcohol and Drug

Commission, and we know what they did in Bill 42, some years back, in

regard to local governments. We most certainly know what they have done

to the Agricultural Land Commission, and we know what they have done to

the Lottery Fund and the political purposes to which that fund has been

put in an absolutely politically corrupt way. We know what the Land Use

Act does, and today we see what the educational finance act itself does.

This

bill puts school districts into political receivership. It makes them

wards of the Minister of Education. We are supposed to believe that

when the wardship ends, two or three years from now — if we are to

believe anything of the sort, and we are skeptical — somehow school

boards will once again be allowed to be responsible for their own

affairs. Frankly, we don't believe the minister. The pattern through

the ten examples I've cited is so powerful and overwhelming in its

consistency that we predict that two years from now this government

will be back asking for an extension of these emergency powers and

asking, once more, that this Legislature allow the Minister of

Education personally to exercise the authority formerly exercised by

school districts in the establishment of their budgets.

oppose this bill because it is a money grab. We oppose the bill because

it is a power grab. We also oppose the bill because it will damage —

perhaps irreparably — the quality of education that young people would

otherwise receive.

Let me read into the record a couple of

telegrams we received today. The first is from a Mr. Wylie, president

of the Vancouver Island West Teachers Association. He says in his

telegram:

GOVERNMENT SPENDING CUTS TO HAVE TREMENDOUS NEGATIVE IMPACT ON

EDUCATION IN VANCOUVER ISLAND WEST SCHOOL DISTRICT. THIS UNDER-PRIVILEGED DISTRICT

TO REMAIN UNDER-PRIVILEGED IN TERMS OF EQUIPMENT, RESOURCES, FIELD TRIPS. SPECIAL

EDUCATION PROGRAMS AND CULTURAL ACTIVITIES. HAD TO CUT A VARIETY OF NECESSARY

PROGRAMS DESIGNED TO ACHIEVE EQUAL EDUCATION. CUTS DANGEROUSLY NEGATE ABILITY

TO DELIVER EQUAL EDUCATION IN WIDELY DISPERSED AND ISOLATED SCHOOLS IN A DISTRICT

WITH HIGH BUSINESS COSTS. NEW FINANCE FORMULA ON DISTRICT PROMOTES:

(1) HIGH

TAXES ON

[ Page 7270 ]

EQUAL EDUCATION,

(2) DISTRICT SECOND TO LAST POOREST OF ALL DISTRICTS,

(3) GOVERNMENT REMOVES RICH INDUSTRIAL TAX BASE LEAVES US DESTITUTE.

(4) FEW

RESIDENTIAL UNITS TO RAISE HIGH FORMULA EVOKED SHARE. URGE YOU TO QUASH BILLS

27 AND 28.

Professional

teachers in the field, most of whom we respect — even the occasional

former principal; former for good reasons — have told us that they,

like us, don't believe the assurances of the minister that the

additional programs, more than just the three hours, will in fact be

guaranteed funding and will be guaranteed an opportunity to continue at

all. We also don't believe the assurance that two years from now local

governments will be given back their power. It is the pattern of

power-grabbing regimes that once they have grabbed power they never

give it up. It is the pattern here in British Columbia under Social

Credit. It is the pattern under other right-wing regimes across North

America.

As of today's date, the Kimbe