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 )

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1982

Morning Sitting

[ Page

8101 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Municipal Affairs estimates. (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm)

On vote 63: minister's office (continued) –– 8101

Mr. Barber Mr. Lorimer Mr. Davis Mr. Gabelmann Mr. Macdonald

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 1982

The House met at 9:30 a.m.

MR. SPEAKER: Before we proceed, on last Friday, June 4,

1982, the hon. member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) sought to move

adjournment of the House pursuant to standing order 35 to discuss a

matter of urgent public importance, namely continuing levels of high

unemployment within the province. The member's statement, which clearly

identified the matter as being of a continuing nature, negates the

essential degree of urgency required by the standing order. I would

refer hon. members to my previous decisions given the same day, June 4,

and again April 8 and May 7 of this session.

Orders of the Day

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Davidson in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS

(continued)

On vote 63: minister's office, $205,621.

MR. BARBER:

As promised yesterday, I would advise the committee by reading into the

record a previously unpublished document that indicates a broken

promise, a failed policy and a betrayal of a commitment made to the

Islands Trust of British Columbia. On March 26, 1982, the minister

wrote to the chairman of the Islands Trust as follows:

"Dear Mr. Rich:

"Thank

you very much for your letter concerning the comments on the land use

act made by Derek DeBiasio, my policy coordinator, at the Islands Trust

council meeting of March 6, 1982. Mr. DeBiasio's statement that the

Islands Trust will be considered to be a regional district for the

purpose of the land use act is correct. The Islands Trust would not be

empowered to prepare and adopt a regional plan; it would only have the

authority to prepare and adopt settlement plans.

would expect that an Islands Trust staff representative would be placed

on the regional resource management committee that will be preparing

the provincial plan that includes the Trust area. Several changes have

been made in the proposal since the release of a discussion paper in

September 1980. It was decided that to be equitable, Trust elected

representatives should be placed on the same footing with respect to

land-use planning authority as other elected local government

representatives throughout the province.

"Sincerely,

"W.N. Vander Zalm,

"Minister."

Well, on April 15, as the result of resolution at the Islands Trust, the following

letter was sent in reply. I make this public today with the consent of its author.

This was signed by the chairman of the Islands Trust, Mr. Rich.

"Dear Mr. Minister:

"We are in receipt of your letter of March 26 indicating

that the regional planning aspects of the land use act will apply to the Islands

Trust. Your statement in this regard concerns the Trust considerably: first,

because the Trust had been led to believe by

yourself and your officials that the Trust's functions would not be

affected by the land use act; and, second, because of the potential

consequences of regional planning under the land use act. It is very

disturbing to find that the Trust has been misled in this matter.

Whether this was by design or oversight is unimportant at this time.

"However,

the facts are that you advised the Trust by letter of November 29,

1980, that the Trust would continue to exercise essentially the same

planning responsibilities as it does now. This advice was confirmed in

February 1981 and November 1981 at meetings between yourself and

trustees and further confirmed by the statements of your deputy

minister at the December 1981 meeting of the Islands Trust council.

These assurances were, in turn, passed to local trustees and the

general public of the Trust area at various meetings over the past

year. The result has been complacency on the part of the trustees and

lack of concern about legislation which, should it apply to the Trust

area, may be extremely undesirable.

"As we

understand it now, enactment of the land use act would provide that

regional planning for the Trust area will be the responsibility of a

committee of provincial government civil servants rather than the

Islands Trust. This committee will prepare a regional planning

statement and, within the terms of the regional planning statement, the

local authority — in our case the local Trust committee — may prepare

settlement plans and decide on zoning and subdivision matters. Thus,

although local Trust committees retain their responsibilities under the

land use act, the exercise of these responsibilities may be constrained

by policies expressed in the regional planning statement.

"Since

a local community plan could not be in conflict with the regional

planning statement, a situation could arise where types of land use

were imposed on an area by the provincial government, when otherwise

the activities would be unacceptable to the residents and users of the

area. For example, if a regional planning statement indicated that

certain commercial activities were suitable for some part of the

region, the local community plan could not prohibit the activities and,

inevitably, the activities, which might well be against the wishes of

the residents and elected officials. would be permitted. Similarly the

provincial planning statement could effectively impose resource

development, industry, energy and transportation corridors. tourism or

parks, without local concurrence or even effective input.

"The

Trust's objection to this process is not simply that local authority is

being restricted: it is also the means by which it is being restricted.

The provincial plans will be prepared by civil servants, who are not

accountable to the people of the region. Public hearings and public

input will not be required. Civil servants, by virtue of their position

and their own accountability, are notoriously unresponsive to public

concern. Thus, even though hearings may be held, their effectiveness

would likely be limited.

[ Page 8102 ]

"As you are aware, the Islands Trust has been preparing

a regional plan for the past three years. The preparation of this plan has involved

extensive input from elected representatives, consultation with provincial government

ministries and a number of public meetings, with more scheduled. The goal of

this plan is to fulfill the object of the Islands Trust Act: 'To preserve

and protect the Trust area and its unique amenities and environment for the

benefit of the residents of the Trust area and of the province generally.'

Under the land use act, this plan would be reduced to a policy statement, legally

without status and subordinate to a provincial planning statement.

"In

summary, the trust believes that the regional planning provisions of

the land use act are regressive, removing power from people affected

and placing it in the hands of a bureaucracy. The Trust believes that

expediency is no substitute for democracy, and requests that the

regional planning provisions of the land use act not apply to the Trust

area, as we were previously assured.

"Thank you for your consideration.

"Sincerely,

"John Rich, chairman."

don't propose to debate the land use act, Mr. Chairman. That would not

be in order. What we do raise is the betrayal; what we do observe is

the broken promise; what we do condemn is the misleading of the Islands

Trust by the minister and his representatives. This misleading of a

democratically elected group in the province of British Columbia is

unacceptable and deceitful, and it is typical of Social Credit. It is

typical because we've seen them do this time and again with other

agencies and organizations in the province of British Columbia. In this

case, they're doing it to the Islands Trust.

There is a

double tragedy here. The first is the one I've already mentioned: this

kind of policy deceit is unacceptable as a statement of provincial

priority. The second tragedy is that it will continue to undermine an

area of most rare and special beauty in this province. The Islands

Trust was established by the first New Democrat administration. It was

done so in an admittedly conservative attempt to guarantee, safeguard

and protect, for generations to come, this special beauty in British

Columbia. No one in their right mind wants the Gulf Islands to end up

looking like the minister's former municipality. No one wants row

housing, shopping marts, fancy highways and major economic development.

This would be totally unacceptable in the Gulf Islands. They don't want

it, and the current plan they're developing makes that clear.

The

Islands Trust is a place of rare and special beauty that must be

protected. The protection requires unique measures, unique strength and

the consolidation of gains achieved to date. The betrayal that Mr. Rich

refers to in his letter is a betrayal, fundamentally, of intelligent

and thoughtful planning among the Gulf Islands. What terrifies them is,

first, that they have been misled by the minister. That's bad enough.

Secondly, and far worse, is that the planning to date to guarantee the

integrity of the Gulf Islands has been fundamentally subverted, in

their view, by the imposition, as the minister would have it, of

judgments made in a bureaucrat's office in Victoria, with a

bureaucrat's sense of local priority being as much as they may get out

of it.

The first New Democrat administration was proud to

have created the Islands Trust. We were proud to have taken that step

into the future and proud to have been able to give the residents of

the Gulf Islands an opportunity to preserve their unique way of life

and the wonderful and particular environment they enjoy. Fifty years

from now, the Gulf Islands, if preserved as they are in their current

state, will prove to be one of the most stunning recreational

opportunities available for the people of greater Vancouver and greater

Victoria. Fifty years from now the population on the lower southern

Vancouver Island will be in excess of one million persons. In greater

Vancouver it will be approximately four to four-and-a-quarter million

persons. If we had our wits about us, we would start turning Crown land

in the Gulf Islands into a series of regional land and marine parks.

Land parks and underwater parks would prove to be, 50 years from now,

for the benefit of the millions who will live on the lower Island and

in the lower mainland, one of the most astonishing contributions that

any earlier generation could have made to their happiness. If we have

the guts and if we have the vision, we will allow the Gulf Islands to

be preserved in their current state so that 50 years from now the

system of marine and land parks which could be created among the Gulf

Islands from within our current holdings, and the way of life that can

preserved and protected as it currently is, will turn out to be the

most magnificent gift that one generation might make to another.

Imagine,

Mr. Chairman, what it would be like 50 years from now for a family,

taking advantage of what will no doubt be the marine technology of the

day, to be able to move from their homes in downtown Vancouver, Surrey,

Richmond or North Vancouver and spend a day at a major regional park on

one of the Gulf Islands — spend a day at that park enjoying the

facilities that would be provided for them and return at night by the

same rapid marine transport. They would be able to walk back into time,

so to speak. They would be able to walk into what it was like living in

the late part of the twentieth century when they themselves lived in

the middle of the twenty-first. They would be able to return to a way

of life which would otherwise be lost in North America. They would be

able to allow their children to see this for themselves. They would be

able to remember it themselves, were they of the age to do so. They

would be able to see a green and special place preserved forever. They

will be able to see these green and special places preserved forever if

we allow the Islands Trust to exercise its authority, to exercise the

care and caution necessary to protect the islands from the kind of

crazed development that we've seen ruin so many other beautiful parts

of this province. That mania for development which exists in other

rapidly growing areas of British Columbia surely has to be rejected

among the Gulf Islands.

There are two acts of betrayal

implicit in the correspondence we have now made public. The first is

that the Trust feels it has been misled. That is a deceit which is not

acceptable. But secondly, in the long run far more devastating and far

more intolerable is the way in which the planning purposes of the

Islands Trust, which include preservation of this rare chain of islands

for now and well into the future, are being undermined and subverted.

personally take a very conservative approach to development on the Gulf

Islands. I would see these islands largely retained as they are now,

forever. Of course, the individual facilities would be upgraded and the

individual homes would continue to be improved. That much is only

[ Page

8103 ]

rational. But to allow major development on any of the islands for any purpose

is totally unacceptable, in my view. To allow major development of any sort

— especially of the sort that has so disturbed and diseased other parts of this

province — would be totally unacceptable.

There

is no chain of islands on this whole continent like the Gulf Islands.

They cannot be found anywhere else. On the west coast of North America

they are utterly unique. The closest equivalent may be the Queen

Charlottes, but for obvious reasons of distance and climate, they are

no practical equivalent at all, beautiful as they are. Logging

interests have done their usual work on the Queen Charlottes, and we

see the results. That is another controversy. But on the Gulf Islands,

fortunately, we have been able to protect something so stunningly

special that to undermine the planning and the human priorities of the

people of those islands is to do them a profound disservice.

reiterate, we were proud to have created the Islands Trust, and I am

proud to have a colleague like Jim Lorimer who had the foresight and

the political courage to create this Trust against the greedy

opposition of the day, which would have seen development proceed apace,

in the usual foolish way that it does, ruining all the beautiful things

in this province. I am proud to be associated with Mr. Lorimer, and we

are proud to continue to support the Islands Trust. In order to do so,

though, we need to continue to be able to find ways to give them the

special authority they need to protect this special way of life.

The

letter I have just read into the record is evidence that this

government simply doesn't care about the human, environmental and

recreational future of the Gulf Islands. This government seems not to

imagine what it could be like 50 years from now to create this system

of great regional land and marine parks on and among the Gulf Islands.

They seem not to imagine what a wonder could be achieved if we protect

these islands now. They don't imagine it, and that is deeply

regrettable. They don't imagine it because apparently they don't care

to take the trouble to think in these terms. That is even worse. But

the final insult is to betray the Islands Trust itself, as this

government has done in the correspondence I just read into the record.

That betrayal and that failure of vision is unacceptable to this

opposition.

I guarantee to the residents of the Gulf Islands

that when the New Democratic Party is returned to office at the next

provincial election, we will restate, reinforce and re-empower the

Islands Trust and the people of the islands themselves to save forever

the unique and delightful way of life they have earned on the Gulf

Islands of British Columbia.

MR. LORIMER: First I'd

like to welcome the staff of the minister who are sitting with him. I

want to express the appreciation I have for those people who worked

diligently for our administration and are continuing to do so at

present. They are trying to keep the minister out of trouble. They are

doing their best. It is a difficult task, and I wish them well in their

efforts.

One of the major problems this minister has with the municipalities is his

inability to deal with them in a cooperative manner. He wants to be in conflict.

I know he talks about the fact that I was booed at a UBCM convention. That is

correct; I was. There were a few Social Credit aldermen, led by the table of

Surrey, at that convention who did do that dastardly deed. The mayor of Surrey

at that time was still looking for his roots. He had just had his picture taken

with Pierre Trudeau, because he was the candidate for the Liberals at that time.

I won’t mention any names. He didn't know whether he was a Conservative,

Liberal or Social Credit. He did exercise his lungs at that occasion. I'd

like to advise the minister that there have been far better people than Social

Credit aldermen who have booed me over the years. In the following year, 1976,

I was honoured by UBCM in making me a life member of that organization. That

is a compliment I sincerely appreciate, which I have cherished over the years.

There's no question that the administration of the New Democratic Party

and the local governments in that period had a very high degree of cooperation.

colleague from Victoria mentioned the monsters that are controlling

transit in this province. It's probably a four-legged monster: the

Metro Operating Company, the regional districts, the UTA and the

Ministry of Municipal Affairs. The purpose of having this sort of

loosely knit, non-organizational approach to transit is that the

chances are that nothing will happen. For seven years this has worked

reasonably well. There have been some pluses. I want to compliment the

minister and other groups involved for the purchase and replacement of

trolleys in Vancouver. This was a good and much needed move. After I've

said that, I find it very difficult to find anything else to compliment

the minister on over the history of Social Credit in the field of

transit since that time.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Try, Jim.

MR. LORIMER: All right, I'll try a little harder.

appears to me that there have been improvements in Victoria in the

Western Community. There have been increases in the number of vehicles,

and there have been some increases in scheduling and new runs, which I

should have mentioned but neglected to do so. There are two things that

I think have been well done. You're going to stretch me if you ask for

any more, because I can't think of any.

The Greater

Vancouver Regional District took this minister seriously when they were

given authority to be partners in the transit operations of the

province. They went right ahead, drew plans, and did this and that.

They had real planning done for a conventional transit system for that

particular area. The costs were basically in. Everything was pretty

well ready to go when, unfortunately, the minister took a trip to Los

Angeles. He went to Bush Gardens and saw a monorail there, so he came

back and said: "Look, we can put a monorail into the Greater Vancouver

Regional District, and we'll resolve all these problems." They were

going to have a monorail system for moving people in the greater

Vancouver area. The debate on this kept on for a year, a year and a

half or two years. That held up the transit program for that period of

time. He was eventually convinced that that monorail system would not

satisfy the needs of the Vancouver area.

The next step was a

breakfast he had in Vancouver after he was treated to some tours of the

Kingston plant of the Urban Development Corporation. At that time he

announced they were going ahead with the ALRT, and that was some months

ago. He said this would be the real answer to transit needs in the

Greater Vancouver Regional District. The ALRT system may work. It may

work well. I don't know whether or not it will work under operational

needs, but the minister doesn't know either. No one knows, because it's

never been tried. It's an untried system.

[ Page 8104 ]

The

minister will say that if there are any overruns and so on, there are

guarantees. I suggest to the minister that what is guaranteed and what

is not guaranteed is debatable; any decision could be made in court as

to whether or not breakdowns and so on are guarantees. In any event,

even with the guarantees, if the service does break down, the transit

rider is left at the bus stop. That is the problem with taking a new

technology on an urban system.

Over the years a number of

new systems have been tried. In Morgantown, West Virginia they had what

they called the Personal Rapid Transit System, the costs of which more

than tripled after it was in place so as to correct the problems of the

new technology, creating a very expensive system for Morgantown.

Another example is France, where a new system was tried. France is now

convinced that they are going back to, and remaining with, the

conventional light rail systems. In San Francisco, another example, the

costs of making the BART system work more than doubled the original

estimate of the system. It took years to correct the BART system. Sure

enough, it's a very fine system, but it's new technology; we're going

to be faced with the same problems with the ALRT system.

San Diego, Edmonton, Calgary, conventional systems have been put in and

they basically have had no problems since start-up time in making

corrections, or no operational problems with reference to those

systems. We're going to gamble on a system that's never been tried, one

that no one except the minister wants; a system that's never been

proven; a system that is more expensive than the conventional proven

systems; a system that will not carry the number of passengers that

will be required and that will undoubtedly cost far more than is even

estimated at this particular time.

The calculations indicate

that the cost of carrying a bus passenger in the Greater Vancouver

Regional District is, at the present time, around $1.50. It is

estimated that the ALRT, when it opens in 1986, will cost at least $10

a passenger. That will be the cost when you consider the interest

rates, the carrying charge, and so on, of the ALRT debt. I suggest that

the cost will be approximately $10 a ride when it opens — not the fare,

but the cost to the system.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That's your suggestion.

MR. LORIMER: That's right.

MR. KEMP: Your mathematics.

MR. LORIMER: No, not strictly mine, but I will be able to show that it is roughly the probable cost.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who worked it out?

MR. LORIMER: The member for North Peace River.

AN HON. MEMBER: Then it could be right.

MR. LORIMER: That's right. That's what I'm trying to say.

Now

the guaranteed performance on start-up date is 4,000 passengers per

hour. After two years this would increase to 7,500 passengers per hour;

the contract calls for 7,500 per hour in the initial stages. What is

required, according to the reports from the Greater Vancouver Regional

District, on opening day is 11,000 passengers per hour. It will require

20,000 passengers per hour at the turn of the century. It will be a

rapidly increasing situation. What this system will provide will

probably be maximized by around 7,500 passengers.

My colleague has asked if I will allow him to make an introduction.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Is it agreed that the member for Mackenzie can make an introduction?

Leave granted.

MR. LOCKSTEAD:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I wish to thank my colleague who presently

has the floor for allowing me to make this introduction. It gives me a

great deal of pleasure to introduce 15 students, accompanied by their

teacher, from beautiful Gibsons. I ask the House to join me in

welcoming them.

MR. LORIMER: What we may have here is

a system — because I don't think anything will really come of this

project of this government.... What is being planned is a system which

is going to be inadequate to supply the services needed today, let

alone a system which has very limited abilities to expand and provide

the needs of moving people in the Greater Vancouver Regional District

in the years to come. It is a system that will be of very little value

to the province, considering the values that could have been had if

they'd used a conventional system. The cost of a conventional system as

compared to this system is much cheaper, especially when you consider

the risk area. The likelihood of cost overruns on new technology has to

be taken into some consideration.

I suggest that what you do

when you develop a system for any community is decide first of all what

the needs of that community are, what services are required, and then

you proceed to determine what is needed. After you've decided all these

matters, you take a look at the hardware and decide what hardware is

required for the servicing of this particular area. What has happened

in this case is that the hardware was picked out first by the minister.

Now it is up to the regional district and the other agencies to try to

determine how they can fit a service into that particular hardware. The

whole thing has been done backwards. It is because the minister wanted

to get $60 million from the federal government to assist in

construction of a transit system for British Columbia.

MR. BARBER: He wanted a monorail once.

MR. LORIMER:

Yes, he wanted a monorail. I mentioned that. He couldn't get $60

million for it. In my opinion he is spending substantially more than

$60 million here and will be receiving $60 million from the federal

government. He dictated the hardware and left the regional district

with the problem of trying to figure out how that hardware could be

used to service the needs of the greater Vancouver area. I suggest that

the carrying charges of the ALRT alone will probably be about $100 for

every man, woman and child in the Greater Vancouver Regional District

through taxation, through fares, through their gasoline tax and so on.

The

minister has said, in favour of this ALRT system, that it provides a

better level of service at lower operating costs. That is something

that no one knows. It is debatable at this point, but we don't know if

it will supply any service. We

[ Page 8105 ]

don't

know if it will work, and we don't know what the costs are going to be,

because we don't know if the costs are going to be as indicated by the

minister or whether cost overruns are going to come in due to the fact

that the system needs a great amount of retooling and reworking after

it starts operating for real in the Vancouver area. So we don't know

whether that is factual or not.

His second claim is that the

ALRT will likely carry 25,000 people per hour in each direction. Well,

we know that's false; it won't carry that many. If it carries 7,500 an

hour it will be doing about its limit. That could increase slightly,

but it's nowhere in the area of 25,000 people per hour in each

direction, as stated by the minister.

The third thing is

that the ALRT can be elevated, so the minister said; and that statement

is true. It basically has to be elevated. It has to run on its own

cement track and will be elevated. This is one reason he says there are

no level crossings. One of the reasons for the extra expense on the

ALRT system is the fact that it is a raised system.

The next

thing he has mentioned is that ALRT can be used in the Dunsmuir Tunnel,

whereas the conventional system cannot. The conventional system can be

used with some alterations to the tunnel; there is no real problem for

the conventional system to use that particular tunnel.

The

next statement he makes is that the ALRT is somehow more Canadian than

the conventional system. Now the motor of this ALRT is the LIM, a

German motor. The power inventor was British, the computer system is

American, and UTDC has been working with American technicians in the

United States on the development of the system. So the system isn't

Canadian; its head office is in Ontario — it's Canadian to that extent

— but the components of the system are not Canadian. I've had a variety

of estimates that from 40 percent to 60 percent of the ingredients of

the system will be non-Canadian.

Now conversely, the

conventional system is not Canadian as far as invention is concerned,

but it can be manufactured in any Canadian city by licence from any of

the manufacturers and developers. So no matter what system you use, if

you want to build your own vehicles, it can be done here. It can be

done anywhere, so there is no problem in making the conventional system

more Canadian than the ALRT.

The other point regarding the

ALRT is the question of its ugliness. In my opinion, it destroys the

beauty of the cities with cement columns every 30 metres or so along

the streets. It will be a blight on the appearance of the city of

Vancouver.

MR. KEMPF: Traffic jams.

MR. LORIMER:

Well, the member for Omineca says there will be traffic jams, and I'm

not arguing that point at all; I think you're probably right on that. I

want to mark that down so people know that the member for Omineca was

right. However, there are a number of ways of beating traffic jams.

This one we're talking about at the moment is only one of them, and I

say a less efficient one than other conventional, tried methods could

be if put into place.

There is a big argument now over the

question of whether the system should go underground at Commercial and

Broadway. Well, I don't know how big an issue that is; I don't think

the system will get as far as Commercial and Broadway under this

administration. However, it would appear to me that in areas of this

sort some accommodation should be made for the needs of the local

communities. Some five years ago we had planned to go underground with

the regular transit at that particular intersection. I think the needs

are probably greater now than they were then. My opinion is that it

should go underground, but I don't have any of the latest cost figures

on that particular project. What I am saying is there should be

cooperation in this area to determine whether the desires of the city

of Vancouver can be met in a quiet manner without arguing about it in

the press, There's no question that the only reason we're stuck with

the ALRT system is the $60 million grant that could be obtained from

the federal government. It's my opinion that the $60 million will be

spent and there'll still be more money to be spent than would have been

necessary in putting in a conventional system in the city of Vancouver.

The

problem here is that it's almost getting too late to change this

system. It's my hope that the minister will hold back on his efforts on

transit and do nothing further at the present time, so when there's a

new administration it'll not be too late to scrap the ALRT system and

put in a regular system. The longer this goes ahead the more difficult

it'll be to put in a proper system for transit in the Greater Vancouver

Regional District.

My colleague mentioned the problems with

the Islands Trust. I am concerned that the minister is not in the least

bit sympathetic with the principles of the Islands Trust. He's not

sympathetic with the need to allow the local people to basically

administer and look after their own affairs. I would hope that the

minister would take another look at the situation on the Gulf Islands.

He should beef up the Islands Trust, rather than cut into the authority

of the Islands Trust, and give them a little more authority. He might

even consider having the Islands Trust set up as a separate district

altogether, away from the Capital Regional District and the Greater

Vancouver Regional District. Maybe he should take a look at that, I

don't know. But I think the problems that may be there could be

resolved by giving those islands more authority to look after their own

affairs.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman, in

response to the member who has just spoken, the member for

Burnaby-Willingdon, let me assure him and the House that this

government has no intention of holding back on the provision of much

needed transit in Greater Vancouver. To suggest we hold back and go

back to where we were during the years of the NDP, when little if

anything happened except more studies and travels to various countries

to look at different systems, and at best the acquisition of some old

buses from Saskatoon.... The fact that the NDP there was successful in

selling the NDP here some vehicles they no longer had any use for will

not be acceptable. We're moving ahead, we'll have light rapid transit

and we'll have a commuter train. We're moving ahead like no other place

in North America, and all members in the House should be proud of the

tremendous progress being made by this government.

Mr.

Chairman, the member began by saying that not much had happened. Well,

either he's not really being honest with us, or he's just not been

awake enough to see what progress is being made. We have new services

in place in 12 small communities throughout the province. That's the

expansion in just a couple of years. We have a custom transit service

which is moving ahead at a tremendous pace. The budget this year for

custom transit services, providing transportation for the handicapped,

is $5 million, which is the equivalent of the whole of the budget for

all transit during the last year of the NDP administration. That's for

custom transit

[ Page 8106 ]

only.

We have the ALRT system proceeding, and it's being built, incidentally,

not only for Vancouver but also for Scarborough, Ontario; Detroit,

Michigan; London, England; Malaysia and Toronto. These are other areas

that have only in recent months decided to proceed with the same ALRT

approach — a Canadian concept for which British Columbia is getting

much of the credit.

We have acquired 120 new vehicles in the

last year, which the hon. member must realize is more than all of the

vehicles purchased during the whole of the NDP administration. We have

a commuter rail scheduled for June, 1983, from Port Coquitlam into

Vancouver. It's something that many governments have talked about, but

it's happening. The progress that is being made in transit throughout

the province, especially in greater Vancouver, is something that all of

us, regardless of where we sit if we're honest in the House, should be

extremely proud of and should be telling all the people about. We've

had tremendous progress.

Mr. Chairman, I don't want to take

away from those members who wish to make some contribution to what

might be done in the ministry with respect to such programs as transit,

which we're very involved with, so I'll be brief in commenting on the

remarks made by the member about the ALRT system having been copied on

some travel experience I had at Bush Gardens, I think he said, in Los

Angeles. I don't know where Bush Gardens is. I never went to L.A. to

look at any monorail system. As usual, it's a bit of information that

was just picked out of the air. It's not accurate. As I said, I don't

recall ever having gone to L.A. or any place in California with respect

to commuter trains or monorails.

We've had tremendous

progress, we'll be continuing with tremendous progress, and we do not

intend to put a hold on the provision of transit in British Columbia

anyway.

MR. LORIMER: I just have a few remarks to

make, Mr. Chairman. He talks about the financing done by the provincial

government in the 1972-75 era. Of course, transit was looked after by

Hydro at that time, so you have to look at both the costs of transit

from the Hydro point of view and from the provincial point of view. The

minister is trying to compare apples and oranges.

The other

matter is the question of the vehicles purchased by this

administration. He said that 120 new vehicles have been purchased over

a period of seven years. I don't know what that comes to — under 20

vehicles a year, which is a terrible disgrace. In a period of three

years we increased the stock of transit vehicles from around 350 to

about 750. That's an average of over 100 vehicles a year.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That was 120 vehicles for one year. They were all new vehicles, not used.

MR. LORIMER:

On two different occasions we purchased 200 new vehicles in a year.

You're talking about 120. Mr. Minister, if you're trying to compare the

transit period of 1972-75 to the period of 1976 to present day, the

comparisons are not very favourable to the latter period. I'm surprised

that you might start trying to compare figures.

The commuter

system on the CPR line was being actively proceeded with in

negotiations with the CPR in 1975. It would have been in operation by

1976. The cheapest form for movement of people would be that system.

What do we do? Seven years down the road he's coming up and saying that

we're going to have a commuter service to Haney, Mission and so on.

It's seven years late. Your colleague from Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem)

could have been taking that commuter service to Vancouver seven years

ago if there hadn't been a change in administration.

The

record in transit, unfortunately, of this administration is about on a

par with that of the Social Credit administration prior to 1972.

They're very similar. Nothing is going to happen in transit as far as

putting a line out to Burnaby, New Westminster and so on, by this

administration for a great number of years. They will be pressured into

it eventually, but until that pressure becomes very strong there will

be lots of talk and announcements, they'll turn sod and there will be

headlines in the papers, but as for the person who wants to travel on

public transit, he's going to have a long wait.

MR. DAVIS:

If the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer) has a headline, it's

this: it will cost $10 for each passenger to ride on the new ALRT

system.

MR. LORIMER: I said the cost per ride would be $10, not that the passenger would pay $10.

MR. DAVIS:

I think the hon. member is confirming what I said: it will cost the

public, if not the individual passenger, $10 for each rider on the new

ALRT system. He's out by a factor of roughly 12. He's only using

traffic one way, so you take the $10 and cut it in half to get two-way

traffic. Secondly, he's using a carrying capacity for the system which

is roughly one-third of what it actually is; so there's another divisor

of three. Finally, he's talking in inflated dollars, dollars that will

buy half as much five years from now. So you've got factors of 3, 2 and

2, which when multiplied make 12. Take his $10 figure and divide it by

12 and you come out around 80 cents. That's roughly where we are now.

That's the kind of figuring you have to do if you take submissions of

the kind he made this morning. The cost would be 80 cents per passenger

half a dozen years from now, with the system running at capacity. We

have to use inflated figures in terms of estimating what the budget

will be to complete the system at least to New Westminster, and

probably to Surrey, by that time.

The hon. member for

Burnaby-Willingdon still appears to favour the German system, which has

been installed in Edmonton and is now operating in Calgary; in other

words, go the way the Alberta administration has gone and buy a

conventional system — excellent for its type — in Europe. Have the cars

and the electronics shipped in from Europe. Have the construction done,

of course, in the Vancouver area; but everything else is bought not

only outside of British Columbia but outside of Canada. Go

conventional; don't take any chances; don't have a B.C. content in

terms of manufacturing; play it safe; don't go automated. Also, if one

is to follow his remarks word by word — carefully, anyway — run at

street level; don't go underground to avoid level crossings; certainly

don't go elevated, because that adds to the cost.

If we're

to compare both the German system — conventional light rapid transit —

and the ALRT system, which is under construction in greater Vancouver,

at ground level they cost roughly the same amount. Elevate them both,

grade-separate them — in other words, don't get them confused with the

traffic, cars, trucks, trains — and they cost roughly the same. Why do

they cost roughly the same? It's because the tracks are identical. The

guideways, elevated or

[ Page 8107 ]

not,

are identical. Over 50 percent — more like 60 percent — of the cost is

for right-of-way; conventional or unconventional, 50 percent of the

cost is the same. The cars are very little different. Substantially

there's no difference in the cars or in the cost of installing the

wiring. So you get down to the essential difference: that's simply the

motor. In each vehicle the motor is in fact different. That's all. If

you look only at motors, they're 2 percent or 3 percent of the total

cost. So the difference is only 2 percent or 3 percent, if there is a

difference in cost between the motor systems.

There is no

substantial difference in cost between the conventional system that has

been installed in Edmonton and Calgary and the unconventional system

which we are buying, the Canadian system, admittedly with technology

from all over the world — a technology which has been well-tried and

well-developed in various spheres by others in other parts of the world

— assembled in Canada, for the first time, by a Crown corporation in

Ontario. It has now been under development for half a dozen years. By

the time we're operating in 1986 it will have had at least ten years'

testing — incidentally, up to two years of operation in the greater

Toronto area and perhaps as much as a year in downtown Detroit. It will

be a system that will have been well-tested and will indeed have been

operational for some time before our larger 12-mile — perhaps as much

as 16-mile — system will be carrying passengers in 1986.

terms of capital costs, these lightweight systems — the system that has

been installed in Edmonton and Calgary and is now being installed in

Vancouver — are less than half the capital cost of the heavyweight

systems such as they have in the London underground, in Toronto, in

Montreal and in the BART system. These are lightweight systems and are

less than half the capital cost.

One reason they have a good

payout in terms of capacity is that these trains can be run more

frequently than the heavyweight systems. Being automated, our system

will be able to run as frequently as one train with as many as eight

cars every two minutes. The Toronto underground at rush hour apparently

runs every two minutes. The Toronto underground people are convinced

that the only way for them to go for their extensions is to go

automated and use precisely the system we are installing. That will

allow them to have even shorter headways — in other words, perhaps as

frequently as a minute between trains at rush hour. If that comes

about, our carrying capacity will be greater than that of the present

Toronto underground — the heavyweight system.

In any case,

the capacity is substantial — roughly two thirds of that of a

heavyweight system if the trains run on similar schedules. If they can

run more frequently, the capacities are comparable with heavyweight

systems which are at least twice as expensive to build and — because

ours is automated — much more expensive to operate. We have chosen an

interesting system. We have chosen one which is cost-effective and one

which should not do any violence to our fare system in terms of what is

charged on the buses and what is charged on SeaBus. It will be the same

rate, and you can obtain transfers between these several modes. It will

be part of a bigger system that will carry people much more rapidly,

without any holdup from the surface traffic in the high-density traffic

areas of the lower mainland, beginning in 1986.

The hon.

member is skeptical about a start. He said there will be more

sod-turnings and so on. Well, a lot of sod has been turned in the last

two months since the sod-turning at the western end of Terminal Avenue.

We will have just over a kilometre of line in place and operating this

time next year. The guideway will be up by November for all to see down

Terminal Avenue. A station will also be built. Two cars will be

delivered very early next year and they will be running as a

demonstration line. Anyone can ride on it during business hours. The

public will be invited to comment on the seat layouts and various other

features of this novel system. They will see that it is very quiet —

virtually a silent system. They will see that while it does intrude

visually on the surroundings, it is not nearly as offensive as many of

the systems which have been elevated around the world over considerable

distances. I know that many people still tend to think of the Chicago

elevated or even the Seattle monorail as typical of elevated systems. I

think they will be be agreeably surprised by this much lighter-weight

design and particularly by the smooth ride, the lack of noise and the

certainty of the operation. The two cars will be automated, as the main

system will eventually be. They will come sliding into the station and

take off again just as elevators do in office buildings. The experience

won't be any different; it will be just as predictable and just as

smooth.

The hon. member for Burnaby-Willingdon was certainly

skeptical as to whether this system will reach Commercial Drive and out

into Burnaby. You'll see within the next 12 months that sod is

beginning to be turned in Burnaby, and there's some work in New

Westminster.

There's been a lot of cooperation. There's been

a lot of coming and going, many discussions with the city councils,

mayors and aldermen in New Westminster, in Burnaby, in Vancouver

itself. The planners in each of those municipalities are happy with the

way things are going. The engineers are certainly happy. Staffs are now

really enthusiastic about ALRT. There have been concerns about the

exact locations of stations — indeed, the location of the centre line

of the ALRT in various places. We've moved some of the stations from

the sites initially indicated by the GVRD as desirable, in order to

meet the planning requirements of the various municipalities. We've

moved the centre line in some places. But overall, Mr. Chairman, we

have not incurred any increase in costs. We have not had to increase

our overall estimates of expenditure — in fact, we have some net

overall savings in prospect because of these various changes.

of this moment there's really only one stretch in the entire 12 miles

of the line, from downtown Vancouver to downtown New Westminster, which

is in any measure in dispute, and that's some four blocks along

Commercial Drive; that's Commercial Drive south of the railway cut, the

Great Northern cut. There's a healthy difference of opinion, although

the majority favour an elevated line. When I say majority, I include

the planners of the city of Vancouver. I include the engineering staff

of the city of Vancouver. They all endorse an elevated line down an

east lane, parallel to those four blocks on Commercial Drive. They are

opposed to a tunnel. They don't see any point in it; they certainly

don't think it's cost effective; they think it would be highly

disruptive of the businesses in that area. A majority of the council

favour an elevated line, so to leave the impression — and I know this

is an impression still in some quarters — that the city of Vancouver is

opposed to an elevated line down along that

section of Commercial is

wrong.

The city has had an opportunity to pay the additional

costs of a tunnel, has not been able to come up with the money and has

never really put this issue to council, because

[ Page 8108 ]

would fail in the council chamber, let alone fail otherwise. They would

have to have a plebiscite that would certainly fail. They are not going

to risk that; they are not going to risk that embarrassment. They've

tried to load it onto the provincial government, and the province

rightly has said: "This is an extra." I was going to say it's

gold-plating; it's not that — tunnelling can hardly be gold-plating.

It's simply an unnecessary expenditure. It's one we can no longer make

in any case, because to tunnel now would be to delay the completion of

the entire system. We couldn't make the January 1, 1986, deadline. We

might miss it by up to a year, and if you can imagine a system which,

by then, has cost $500 million or $600 million simply sitting idle for

a year at, let's say, 15 percent interest.... That's the kind of cost

we would encounter now if we were to change our minds, to put up the

additional money for digging that short tunnel, and have it dictate the

timing of the operation of this system. So it's a $90 million nightmare

in terms of interest charges alone now, let alone the additional $20

million or $30 million cost of a tunnel. It's out of the question. That

kind of money would buy a couple of hundred beds at the Vancouver

General forever. It would certainly, alternatively, put the system

across the Fraser River well into Surrey or into the Coquitlam area.

it's out of the question from an economic point of view. It's

impossible from a timing point of view for the city of Vancouver, or a

minority of the aldermen in the city of Vancouver, to continue to talk

about this as if it's a possibility. It's nonsense, both from a

financial point of view — certainly from a timing point of view — and

from a crass political point of view, because they don't even speak for

a majority of the council itself.

So we're under

construction. We've got a good Canadian system with a high B.C.

content. If you include the construction, all of which has to be done

here anyway, the B.C. content is of the order of 75 percent. If we'd

bought the German system, the B.C. content would have been more like 50

percent. Indeed, if the system really takes off — and it's already now

sold to the city of Detroit — it may well sell in other parts of the

world, especially if we have it on time and operating for Expo '86.

We've got business not just for the motors we're building in the

Toronto area and in Detroit but for other parts of the world. So

perhaps we've got a substantial manufacturing export industry in the

making here as well. I think it's a challenge, but the chances of real

difficulties, especially by the time we bring the system into

operation, are remote. It's going to be novel; it's going to be the

talk of the transit world for a few years. We're the leaders for a

moment in time at least. We're on the wave of the future, rather than

buying offshore a system of a type which has been installed for a good

part of the last hundred years.

One of the things wrong with

public transportation is that it's been so old-fashioned, so

conventional, so tied up with traffic problems and so capital-intensive

that it has not been quite feasible to get people out of their cars and

into public transit. We're going to be doing it in British Columbia.

We're going to be doing it with Canadian-assembled technology, if it

isn't totally Canadian technology. We're going to be doing it in a

cost-efficient way, on budget and on time. I think this is an

accomplishment of which we'll all be proud. Perhaps the opposition

demurs or has to strike attitudes as if it's demurring now. In the end,

they will be applauding the system. There's no way if, God forbid, they

were ever to be the party in power in this province that they would

turn the clock back.

They'd soon be boasting about it as the

finest system in the world; a Canadian system; a system with a large

B.C. content. We were the first, and we have the best. That's the kind

of description which I'm sure increasingly they, as well as us, will be

attaching to ALRT and rapid transit in the lower mainland.

MR. LORIMER:

I'll only need one minute, Mr. Chairman. I don't really want to

elaborate on an answer to the hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour

(Mr. Davis), except to say that he is employed by the government to

sell this particular system. He has to be very keen on this particular

system. I'm sure that deep down in his heart he'd rather see another

system here than what he has to try to sell.

He mentioned a

number of things that I had said which I didn't really say. He said

that I was opposed to any elevation of transit. Of course I'm not. With

a conventional system, you can elevate wherever you want. If you want

to elevate over or under a street, whatever you want to do, you can do

it with a conventional system. They do that in all the cities in Europe.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Name one.

MR. LORIMER:

Frankfurt has them all over the place, under and over. You were there.

You saw them and rode them. There's no question about the capability of

this to occur if you so desire. You can do it initially or later on if

the need arises.

The level crossing deal is normally

controlled by lights which are tied in with the other street lights.

It's a question of a stoplight as far as the street traffic is

concerned for a matter of 25 or 30 seconds. It's nothing like a normal

traffic light. The driving public are used to this sort of thing, so I

don't think it's a big deal at all. What we've had here in transit is

three years of plenty from 1972-75, and now we're faced with seven

years of famine. That sums up the transit history over the last ten

years.

MR. GABELMANN: It's been an interesting and

important discussion, Mr. Chairman, but I'm going to shift gears, if I

may, from what is probably the single biggest issue in the estimates

debate for the minister. I want to talk about some issues that are

pretty significant to people in my constituency. They're small in this

context, but just as important to the individuals concerned. I have six

specific issues.

The first of those is that I want to say

thank you to the minister for something. We in Campbell River, as in a

number of other communities in this province, have a public bus system

now that, quite frankly, works very well. In that community we were

very fortunate in that we had an immense amount of snow the first week

it went into service, and people had to use it, and because they had to

use it that first week they got used to it. It has a very high

ridership — among the highest, I think, in the province — and it is

fulfilling a need that is quite evident. I think it's a good service,

and I think that should be said. I have a lot of critical things to say

about the government on many occasions, but I think when something good

happens, it's important to acknowledge that.

[Mr. Richmond in the chair.]

while we have a good system in the community in terms of public

transit, the rest of North Island is concerned about what might happen

to the other very good public bus

[ Page 8109 ]

service,

the PCL. The minister was at a meeting in Campbell River, and he knows

that the service provided by the public bus company — our company, his,

of all of us in British Columbia — is widely used and accepted and

absolutely essential to the lives of people who live in isolated

communities, particularly in the northern parts of Vancouver Island. I

think it's probably true throughout the Island, but people who live in

communities like Port McNeill or Woss rely absolutely on that public

bus service. I know the minister knows what my feeling is, and that is

that the existing service must be maintained. It must not be sold off

to Greyhound or to any other private operator, because, quite frankly,

they would not continue the same level of service. Just as public

transit is essential in the city of Vancouver — in the metropolitan

region of the lower mainland — it is essential in the more isolated

areas of our province. I just urge the minister to make sure that he

does not proceed with any plans he might have had to sell off that

existing bus service.

The third thing I want to say is that

there is a problem in local government in terms of a sense of local

decision-making within regional districts when it comes to islands that

are part of electoral areas, and I want to talk just very briefly about

this. The regional districts are established in a way that in some

cases they have an entire island — for example, Quadra Island — as one

electoral area; in other cases they have a group of islands which are

in one electoral area. In either case, voters on those islands are able

to elect a representative to go to the regional board to make decisions

for that island. There is an intense feeling on the part of residents

of those islands that their desires and their wishes are not listened

to as a result, really, of there not being an effective ward system.

Interjection.

MR. GABELMANN:

No, there is no comparison at all between local government on Cortes

Island and the ward system in Kitsilano; they are as different as

apples and oranges. And for the minister to try to say that what I'm

saying is a justification for his particular point of view in the city

of Vancouver is totally wrong in fact. I think it's grasping at straws,

because he has very little else to grasp at in terms of trying to

support his ludicrous position on the Vancouver ward-system proposal.

What I want to try to talk about, Mr. Chairman, is that what happens

for people on these islands is not true in the rest of a regional

district in which you have electoral areas. I happen to live in one

electoral area in the regional district of Comox-Strathcona, and I do

not have a sense of frustration that is akin at all to the sense of

frustration I would have if I lived on one of the islands that is in

another electoral district. The idea of electoral districts within

regional districts is sound and appropriate, but some mechanisms need

to be found to make sure that the wishes of islands residents — and I'm

thinking particularly of the two regional districts in my riding,

Comox-Strathcona and Mount Waddington.... There must be some way of

providing more local government to those islands within the regional

district, because islanders are a unique kind of people. They often

move to those places because they want a different kind of lifestyle.

They have chosen to do that. They put up with a great number of

inconveniences in terms of public services, health care, education,

transportation and a whole variety of things, and they're prepared to

put up with those kinds of inadequacies in service.

But what

they want in exchange, which I think is a fair request, is more control

over decisions that affect development. growth and general public

policy on those particular islands. The way in which the regional

districts now operate does not leave the people on those islands with

that sense of confidence. That's not the case, however, in the other

wards — the minister wants me to use that word — that exist in the

regional districts. There is not that sense of lack of power that the

islanders feel. The electoral district of Quinsam is not much different

from the electoral district of Oyster River in Comox-Strathcona, in the

sense that it's part of one continuum. It's all part of the suburbs, if

you will, of Campbell River and is therefore not at all similar or akin

to another electoral district that includes one island.

all of the thinking and monkeying around that the minister is doing

with local government, I hope that, instead of moving in the direction

of more control in Victoria, he will in fact move in the direction of

more control at the local ward level, the local electoral district

level, particularly where those local electoral districts have a unique

kind of boundary, a boundary of water, which means they are an island.

Some very serious concern and consideration needs to be given to that.

The

fourth point I want to raise this morning relates to the community of

Nimpkish. This is a difficult one to deal with because it's not simple;

it's a very complicated question. We have here, in every sense of the

word, a community, one that has existed for decades in the Nimpkish

Valley, alongside Nimpkish Lake. It has existed as a logging camp but

also as a community, and it's been a combination of both. Two thirds of

the community sits on Crown land that has been alienated by being

placed within a TFL; one-third is owned privately by the company

involved, Canadian Forest Products. The company has decided to close

the camp, and therefore the community, although not immediately.

They're doing it on a phasing-out basis. They're not telling anybody

yet that they have to leave, but as they leave the houses are torn

down. At a time when we have a great housing crisis, when costs are out

of line and we're alienating forest land in other communities in North

Island in order to put people into new homes; I find it strange that at

the same time we're burning and tearing down existing houses,

particularly when there's a strong desire on the part of the residents

to maintain that community, to maintain their homes and their

lifestyle. It may be — and I acknowledge this — that it's uneconomic to

maintain that community, but I haven't yet seen enough evidence to

prove that to me. There are costs to the company that are out of line;

if the current method of providing power, for example, was continued in

that community, it would be too costly. However, I think there is

enough evidence to suggest some doubt about whether or not the

community can be economically viable initially as an improvement

district under the Municipal Affairs ministry. It would be a simple

process. It does not require the consent of the company, in the sense

that much of the community exists on public land even though it's in

the TFL. There's some suggestion that if the company doesn't want to

sell its land to the improvement district the project can't go ahead;

but that's not so, because two-thirds of the land involved is public

land.

I'm not saying that any one of us could say

categorically that the community must be maintained. I don't want to

recommend to people that they maintain the community if their

individual costs are such that they can't survive, or if the costs to

the regional district are such that it's out of line. I

[ Page 8110 ]

wouldn't

ever recommend that. But I don't know that we've got enough information

to suggest that the community should be closed down, and until that

definitive and definite information is received and discussed with the

local residents, I don't think CanFor should be allowed to continue

tearing down existing homes in that community. Some decision will have

to be made very quickly, and it will have to be made with the full

involvement and consent of the people who live there. They are

reasonable people and will not want to pay outlandish costs for

services if in fact that would be the result of establishing a

community and improvement district there.

I urge the minister to proceed with haste in this issue, but also with full consultation with the local community group.

The

fifth issue relates to the question of industrial taxpayers of a large

size. I'm thinking particularly of Utah Mines outside of Port Hardy,

who are included in the District of Port Hardy for tax purposes. It was

a funny boundary, designed to make sure that their taxes would go into

the district in which most of the workers would be living. We have a

unique situation there in that a community which lies halfway between

Port Hardy and the mine is not a beneficiary of the taxes from the

mine, yet many people who work in the mine live in that community — the

community of Coal Harbour. They get no tax benefit and are in the

middle of a very expensive sewer and water project, as the minister

knows. I won't describe it any other way at the moment, but it is a

pretty complicated, costly and unfortunate situation. One thing that

might assist that community would be if they too could share in some

part of the tax revenue from that particular mine. I say that because I

think that would be a fair distribution. Some small portion of the

revenue from the mine would be a fair recognition that Coal Harbour

serves as a community which services that mine as well.

The

final point I want to make is a rather technical one, I guess. I don't

understand why it is that when an alderman is elected to council and

then perhaps sits on the regional district.... If that person is a

staff person and receives a salary, he or she is allowed to continue to

earn their salary. But if that person is a worker on wages, they cannot

be reimbursed for lost time. That seems to me to be a very unfair

situation. I am thinking particularly of one case in Port Alice where a

man who works in the pulpmill there sits on the council of Port Alice

and is often a delegate to the regional district. He cannot claim wages

for his lost time, yet other people who work for the company but

receive salary are not docked their salary in the way the guy working

for wages is docked, in effect. I think that is a very serious

impediment in the system. In effect it denies working people the same

opportunity to sit on council or on the regional board. I think that is

something that should be dealt with by the minister. It is quite

obviously an unfair situation.

MR. MACDONALD: I trust

and expect that the minister will answer the remarks of the member for

North Island in due course. Do you want to answer now and then I'll

resume?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: We recognize there is a

problem with respect to regional districts, particularly the electoral

areas. Certainly there is a common complaint from all areas of the

province. People very often find that they really don't have a say in

the decisions made about them or for them at the regional district

level in that the only person they can really get at if they don't like

the decisions is the electoral area director. It could be that he was

in the minority or that he was on their side but the power of the board

decided otherwise. We need to look at the whole of the regional

district concept, the representation in the regional district and how

people vote on planning matters or other such things affecting the

lives of people. We are doing this through the Municipal Act Review

Committee. The UBCM, as you are aware, is very involved. They are

consulting with regional districts and municipalities in all parts of

British Columbia as well. So it is being addressed. Hopefully there

will be something made public in September that will give residents

everywhere an opportunity to become involved in the discussion.

The

matter of Nimpkish is a difficult one. Only a few days ago we had a

meeting here in Victoria with the electoral area director for the

Nimpkish area, the chairman and other members of the Mount Waddington

regional board and representatives — Mr. Gail and Mr. Bentley — of

Canadian Forest Products. It was thoroughly discussed. As the member

stated, it is a very difficult problem. CanFor has pretty well

determined that they would like to see the development take place at

Woss at opposed to Nimpkish. They are naturally worried about the

tremendous ongoing expense in running the community of Nimpkish. They

are allowing people to gradually find alternate accommodation. They are

not pushing anyone. They have assured us that they will continue on

that course. However, there comes a point, I am sure, when the

remaining numbers will be such that it is terribly uneconomic, at which

time I don't know exactly what they might do. It is reasonable to

assume that it wouldn't last forever, so it is a problem.

have also, in discussing it with the regional district, assured them

that we would see a plan developed for the Nimpkish Valley to determine

where the growth is, how the growth will go in the future, and

hopefully to address the question of people being able to purchase

their own lot. Everyone is now living on leased or rented lots. It's

not a good situation for people who love the Nimpkish Valley and who

probably want to live the rest of their lives there, but who want

something they can call their own. That needs to be addressed. It will

be addressed. We are holding discussions with the regional district on

it now.

Coal Harbour. We've had real difficulty with the

sewer problem there. It's unfortunate that the sewer and water programs

developed as they did — especially the water program, of course,

because they can't find the most appropriate and best source without

spending huge gobs of money. I realize that the area of Coal Harbour

provides accommodation for a lot of people who work at the mine, just

as Port Hardy does. But as I see it, the only way that could ever

really be resolved would be for Coal Harbour to incorporate and work

out some agreement between Port Hardy and the mine for tax sharing,

such as was done in the Elk Valley or, alternatively, for Coal Harbour

to join Port Hardy in a district municipality and thereby obtain their

sharing. All of these are sort of wishful thinking, I guess, but they

are really the only solutions, as I see it, and that isn't much help.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

MR. MACDONALD:

Mr. Chairman, I'm coming back to the minister in relation to transit,

ALRT, vertical air rights, the Olma brothers.... Now you stop clapping.

The moment I said Olma brothers, the minister stopped clapping. I think

he knows what I'm talking about.

[ Page 8111 ]

don't think your security is good on the ALRT system. I think you're

allowing the usual thing that accompanies some public projects under

Social Credit in this province to happen, which means ripoffs by

private developers. I think the minister is naive about it. I want to

give one example of what I'm talking about in some detail, and hope

that the thing isn't happening on this kind of a scale throughout the

rest of the alignment for the ALRT. The area I'm referring to.... I

wonder if the minister can guess what it is. I think he can.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Which one?

MR. MACDONALD: Terminal and Main in Vancouver; ALRT station; big planned development.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Beautiful.

MR. MACDONALD:

Yes, the development may be good. You go to Montreal and you see that

over their metro stations they have hotels — sometimes commercial,

sometimes residential and sometimes recreational development. It's

good. It's hard, maybe, on the outlying areas, which lose some of their

commercial business to these developing new centres, but the touch of

the magic wand which makes station sites on rapid transit lucrative

real estate is from the public. They create tremendous real estate

value. The minister is creating those real estate values, and not

recovering for the public what he should. Those air rights should

remain in the public domain.

Let me tell you about Main and

Terminal. It was in December 1980 that the provincial government

announced that they were in favour of the Ontario system and that the

UTA would be going ahead with light rapid transit. At that point, as if

they were good socialists, the Premier and the hon. minister opposite

publicly announced that ALRT might help pay for itself through the sale

of air rights along the route, leasing transit station space. I don't

agree with that statement, but it's better than nothing. I think the

public should retain equity in the air rights and lease them out for

development so the flippers and speculators and — as inevitably happens

in these cases — friends of the Social Credit government don't reap the

benefit that should go to the public.

Anyway, they were

thinking about the problem. They estimated that approximately one

million square metres — not square feet — of commercial development

could occur within the ALRT station areas under the present plans.

That's not unlikely, because anybody who's travelled throughout the

rest of the world — Frankfurt, Montreal, Toronto — knows what can

happen in these lucrative real estate areas.

On January 21,

1981, the GVRD report was released, which argued for the revenue from

the sale of air rights to come back into the transit system; other

statements were made to the same effect, but nothing too much was

happening. Then the pace of events quickened mysteriously. On April 25,

1981, the federal government promised $60 million towards the

construction of ALRT, as I call it — I'm the only one who does. Ten

days later, on May 5, 1981, businessman Don Docksteader purchased 3.7

acres of land on the northwest corner of the Main and Terminal

intersection for $3 million from Ocean Construction Supplies Ltd. I've

got the legal description here, but I won't give it to the House. The

assessment at the time that Docksteader paid $3 million was $2.1

million, so he was paying $900,000 over the supposed market price. But

he was not to suffer by reason of his purchase, because on May 14....

It's funny how a property that laid dormant all these years, with Ocean

Cement using it as a construction site, suddenly becomes very

attractive. It's hot stuff on the real estate market.

MR. SKELLY: Another miracle.

MR. MACDONALD:

Not of the loaves and fishes, but a miracle of the Olma brothers, who,

incidentally — and I put it on the record: they were the ones who, on

May 14, took it off the hands of Docksteader within nine days for

$4,165,000; they put a mortgage of $4.1 million on it right away....

No, the reported sale was $4.9 million, and they mortgaged it right

away. I've noticed that the banks are very generous to flippers and

speculators in real estate, far more so sometimes than they are to

good, thriving industrial businesses throughout the province of British

Columbia. After nine days Docksteader walks off with $1.9 million in

his pocket. That was a result of taking advantage of public rights. Why

did the Olma brothers, Bob and Jerry, pay such an incredible price

increase for the land at the northwest comer of Main and Terminal? Why

would they shell out $4.9 million? Was there a leak, Mr. Minister, in

your security? Were they roadrunners who somehow knew where the new

transit station was to be? Did they have second sight? Did they know

that it wasn't going to be placed in the logical position on the east

side of Main, where the CNR station is and where there's a lot of

public land — which could have been the ALRT alignment? It's very

strange. The Olma brothers know this government as they know the lines

on their hands. They were the ones who got the neighbourhood pub in

north Kennedy, after beating out an earlier applicant who didn't know

they had applied, and who threw in a political appeal to the minister

at the time. the now Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Nielsen). They are

the ones who got, from B.C. Hydro, land by their shopping centre under

the transmission lines in North Delta for $67,000. Hydro was bilked. It

gave them immense leverage in terms of additional parking and in the

development they could make of their shopping centre.

The

Olmas have been assisted, particularly in the neighbourhood pub

application, by the member for Delta (Mr. Davidson). They are

fund-raisers for the Social Credit Party. They are strong supporters.

They take out ads in the White Rock News

and things of that kind to extol what they say are virtues of the

Social Credit Party. What virtues they espy in that group escapes me.

But that's who they are. They come in, flippers and speculators that

they are, and pay $4.9 million for this site, and before long they have

an agreement from the minister — it doesn't take too long. That was May

15. Nine days after the Docksteader purchase, the Olma brothers formed

their company, O&K Tract Development Ltd: directors Gerald Olma,

Robert Olma and four other names representing the K in the company,

just businessmen. I do not recognize them either as friends or enemies

so I'm not going to bother putting their names on the record. The next

development was May 29 when the Premier and Bill Davis signed the ALRT

agreement. The alignments were then coming to the public notice because

there was mention at that time of a route along Main Street — not

necessarily the northwest comer but a route along Main Street.

On June 2, 1981 the hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis), who had nothing to do with the sale

[ Page 8112 ]

and purchase of this, came into the picture, but the deed had largely been done. He is an expediter of the ALRT project.

September 1981 the UTA began negotiating with O&K for the use of

their land. The hon. member for North Vancouver–Seymour knows about

this. I am not criticizing that hon. member. If this is to be the

station....

AN HON. MEMBER: What was the date?

MR. MACDONALD:

The negotiations began in September 1981. The hon. member is helping

UTA and putting a lot of effort in there without remuneration, as far

as I can see, and that is praiseworthy. If the boys already have the

station site then the horse has escaped from the barn by that time. It

is very hard to recover much, particularly when they are as influential

as these particular developers are.

We pass on to January

25, 1982, when the minister announced that the UTA had made an

agreement with the boys — O&K — to build the Main Street transit

station on their land. Those developers had faith — because they had

paid $4.9 million for the site and given Docksteader a profit of $1.9

million — that the provincial government would come along with its

magic wand to endow their property as a transit station. Their faith

was rewarded.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Why didn't you buy it?

MR. MACDONALD:

Why didn't I buy it? If I did I'd do it in Ontario or Tanzania or

somewhere. I don't think MLAs should be involved in public business

that's close to government in the province of B.C. Some of them are.

The member for Delta (Hon. Mr. Davidson) is the worst example.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: I am saying that, and I'll back it up if necessary. It shouldn't happen, and it is happening.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I will ask the member to make reference to the administrative actions of the Ministry of Municipal Affairs.

MR. MACDONALD: All right, I'll come back.

What

was the agreement that was signed? The UTA got the station for a

dollar. The station is to be part of a 650,000 square-foot hotel,

retail and commercial complex. The UTA — in return for making the

station a part of the O&K development and assigning their rights

around the station to O&K — would receive two dollars for every

square foot of private commercial development on the O&K lands. The

UTA estimates this would bring $1.3 million back to them. Let's all

clap about that. Docksteader, whoever he is, got $1.9 million — more

than the almost three million people of the province of British

Columbia — and the minister claps. He thinks that's great: $1.3 million

coming back to three million people and Docksteader already, in an

early flipping thing, gets $1.9 million. How much are the Olma brothers

going to make? You are now in partnership with them.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Who cares?

MR. MACDONALD:

The money comes out of the public pocket and you've given away a

franchise of rights. "Who cares," says the minister. What's a million?

I'll

tell you who cares. One guy who cares is George Puil, an alderman with

Social Credit proclivities on the city council of the city of

Vancouver, who termed the deal "rotten and unethical." He certainly

cares more than the minister.

Now we go on, Mr. Chairman, to

the point that we now have..... Oh, my gosh, I'm too loud for the

learned Speaker. He can always retreat to his sanctum sanctorum. I'm

guilty of waking some people up, Mr. Chairman. I shouldn't do that.

It's kind of early in the morning.

The provincial government

are now in a form of partnership with the Olma brothers and their

O&K company. The reason they're in partnership is that the larger

the commercial development at that station site, the more UTA gets back

at $2 a square foot, which is a very small portion of the commercial

value of this development. Now you're in partnership. The hon. member

for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis) recognized that, because he's

quoted as saying that he wanted the UTA not only to be happy but to

have a stake in getting more square footage. The UTA gets crumbs and

the developers get croissants. Later he said: "We're for them getting

more square footage. We've got a financial interest in getting more

square footage."

Okay, from the public point of view, we're

getting something back, but we are now in partnership to see that the

O&K company gets maximum development on that site. I suppose the

whole thing could be run off the rails by the Vancouver city council,

but I don't believe they can stop the minister. I know the approval of

the plan still has to go before the Vancouver city council. The Olma

brothers, who paid that money, obviously don't think council's going to

or can stop them. The minister doesn't think they can be stopped. The

member for North Vancouver–Seymour doesn't think they can be stopped,

and says that this deal is a trend-setter and is going to set a

precedent for other station developments along the route. Well, heaven

help the public of this province if this is a trend-setter.

Mr.

Minister, what you Social Crediters do not understand is that when a

real estate speculator or flipper like Docksteader or the Olma brothers

make profit out of a public development, the public finally pays. They

might pay it by going into one of the hotel rooms 50 years from now;

they might pay it in the price of the goods in a sort of inflationary

way, but there is no money that comes from outside. When these people

rip off, the public pays. I can't get that through the heads of Social

Crediters.

MS. SANFORD: They don't understand.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I understand socialism.

MR. MACDONALD:

You understand, eh? Because Social Credit seems to believe that you

print money or it comes from somewhere, and if you let these friends or

these people like the Olma brothers get these public franchises and get

rich on them, it's not hurting any other people. Of course it's hurting

other people.

You could have paid for this whole ALRT line,

Mr. Minister, if you had kept the air rights and the commercial

development rights, which are created by the public, in the public

domain and leased out. We are talking about millions of dollars here.

There is the necessity to protect neighbourhoods like Commercial Drive

and further south. The money is important so that that ALRT or whatever

system is put in will respect residential and commercial areas. So why

not

[ Page 8113 ]

take advantage of what could be done with proper planning in the interests of the people of the province?

I say, Mr. Chairman, that the minister has been very negligent in

allowing this kind of thing to happen. I say there is something wrong

with his security, because it seems perfectly obvious, to anyone

looking at the facts, that these people knew where the station was

going to be before the public knew. I'm not saying the minister

personally has anything to do with that, but obviously they knew; you

don't shell out money suddenly for a station site unless you know

something. Speculation in this area is something that costs the public

very dearly indeed.

Perhaps the minister will be kind enough

to answer me and tell us how great that $1.3 million is that the UTA

will get back. Perhaps he'll say this is a trend-setter for the rest of

the stations. I sure as heck hope it is not; I haven't investigated any

other potential station sites. But there has been a leak, Mr. Minister,

and you ought to tighten up your security and investigate this thing.

You still have time to put the station on the other side of Main

Street, which is federal public land. I don't think that would hold up

the ALRT. Dealing with the federal government? I'd rather deal with the

federal government than with the Olma brothers — to the

Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams) who is signing his mail and

smiling with difficulty for this time of the morning. I leave it at

that. It is an example that shouldn't be allowed to repeat itself. It

seems to me that it is favouritism, once again, to friends of the

government.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Just in brief

response, the impression being created by the hon. member is that

somehow there is some ripoff, some mysterious wrongdoing.

MS. SANFORD: There certainly is.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM:

I suppose those assumptions, as expressed in the House, are intended to

create an impression. We are not unaccustomed to that in the House, as

the hon. member who just spoke is well aware. The same thing was done

to Mr. Vogel. These sorts of things do happen.

MR. MACDONALD: I'm not an impressionist painter. I give detail.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM:

You label people, you create impressions, you make them out to be

crooks. Possibly that is a style with the socialists. I am beginning to

believe it is very much a style with the socialists. It could well be

that one of the parties made a good deal on the purchase or it may be

too that the other party paid far too much. If that party paid far too

much and they're into a mortgage company or the bank at 18 or 20

percent, possibly today they are wishing they hadn't purchased it. Who

knows? I can't say, but the second member for Vancouver East makes no

reference to that. He only makes out that there is a ripoff. The land

was designated as a station location when I was still a member of the

Greater Vancouver Regional District, seven or eight years ago. It was

designated as a station location in all of its studies. Anyone here,

anyone anywhere, looking at those studies could have seen that it

intended to be a station location. One of those studies that designate

it as a station location, the hon. member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr.

Lorimer) will agree, was done during the time the NDP was government.

Anyone could have seen it in that study, picked up on it or made some

moves to acquire the land.

It's been in the GVRD studies and

it's been a station location for, I think, seven years. The ownership

of the site was investigated, and the opportunity to purchase was

seriously considered, both by the city of Vancouver and the UTA. But

the cost was considered prohibitive.

MR. MACDONALD: How much?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't know what the cost was, but the city of Vancouver decided it was too expensive to purchase.

What

do you do? Are the socialists suggesting that you just take it away

from people? If somebody owns it or has owned it, and they want a

particular price, and it's too much, you have a choice not to purchase.

Is the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) suggesting that government —

whatever the government — should simply move in and take it from

people? I think that's their suggestion.

MR. MACDONALD: You have expropriation powers, of course.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: So you agree you would take the property from the people.

The

property is still zoned for industrial purposes. The land required for

the station was sold to the UTA for $1. No mention has been made of

that by the second member for Vancouver East.

MR. MACDONALD: Not the land.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: He's now shaking his head. He says: "No, no, it's not true." It is true.

MR. MACDONALD: I didn't say that.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM:

The land was sold to the UTA for $1. Furthermore, they will pay $2 per

square foot for every square foot of development that takes place on

that land.

So you see, when the whole story is told, it's

considerably different from the little bits and pieces and the

impression the opposition tries to leave that somehow, any time and

every time somebody makes a profit.... Perhaps it isn't that somebody

bought cheap or sold for too much or somebody paid too much. It is a

ripoff. I am very happy, and I wish there were a whole lot of people

making profits in British Columbia and Canada today, because somebody's

got to pay the taxes. Frankly, the more people make a profit the more

taxes will be available to whatever government wherever. I realize that

perhaps this was a sale which was unusual in that it was made very

shortly after the first purchase. I realize that it would appear there

was a considerable profit made. I don't know all the details. All I

know is that the land that was purchased and sold had been designated

as a station site for possibly as long as seven years.

When

I said, "Why didn't you buy it?" across the floor here I was perhaps

being somewhat facetious, but what I meant to say was that it was

really available for anyone to purchase who wanted to gamble those

sorts of dollars. Somehow I would suspect — maybe with the economic

circumstance being what it is in the country today — that the

[ Page 8114 ]

purchaser

could very well be glad to sell it for what it paid for it so many

months ago. This could well be, I don't know. They made a deal. Grown

people in a free country made a decision, and that is their decision to

make. Why should government step in and say, "You can't do this," or

"You can't do that," and "It is thus because we say so because we're

the government"? Hopefully that is still foreign to us in British

Columbia and Canada, and hopefully that will remain foreign to British

Columbia and Canada because we will hopefully continue to be a free

country.

MR. MACDONALD: The land couldn't have been

designated for an ALRT station before December 1980, because there was

no announcement from the government that there was to be rapid transit;

a lot of speeches and promises.

Surely under that minister,

the public could have done as well as Docksteader acquiring that land.

You say that at the time Docksteader got it, it was going to be a

station. Why wouldn't you pay what he paid? That would have been a heck

of a good deal for the people of the province of British Columbia.

Interjection.

MR. MACDONALD:

What did Docksteader pay? He paid $3 million. I think that's

overpriced. I think he was expecting that he would be able to turn the

thing over very quickly. Usually when you sell again in nine days, the

guys you're selling to are part of the purchase that you made.

mentioned the expropriation powers. You have them. You've sought to

expand them. You've made speeches to that effect. It's a commercial

area. You're not taking somebody's home. You're protecting the public

and future generations by bringing into the public domain the land that

makes it possible for the public to have the benefit of the air rights.

There's nothing wrong with that. Apart from all the business I

mentioned earlier, the minister was very careless in not acquiring that

land and other station sites for the public. You could make a heck of a

dent toward the payment for the ALRT if the public had those rights,

and not some private developer who slipped in there.

The

minister also said that they sold the land for $1. I don't think they

sold the land to UTA for $1. They sold UTA the rights to use it as a

station, the right-of-way, not as a freehold. I'm just correcting the

minister on a minor point.

The basic point is that once

again the speculators take advantage of the government. You don't move

in first. You say that you know where the station is going to be. For

heaven's sake, why didn't you move in and protect the public? Why are

they faster on the draw than you? Why are they allowed to be faster

than you in getting hold of these valuable rights? I think they could

only have done that and spent that kind of money if they had had second

sight.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I suppose that you could

argue that whenever the government proposes anything, be it a road, a

public building or whatever has some impact in the community, somehow

the government should acquire all the land on either side or all

around. If that's the sort of thing you want to do, I suppose it's a

matter of how far you proceed with that. You could end up with the

state owning all the land or at least all the land that has any worth.

that's your philosophy, then I can appreciate that sort of argument.

Let me say, however, that it probably has been tried in a lot of

eastern European countries, but it hasn't worked in those countries

either. Not only has it been tried in a lot of eastern European

countries where it hasn't worked, it was tried by the NDP when they

purchased the land in North Vancouver with taxpayers' dollars for $20

million, and then found immediately after they had purchased it that

another government had some other ideas about the land and said much of

it must be park. I was on the regional district at the time, and I

recall the debate that took place between the then Minister of

Municipal Affairs, the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer), the

city of North Vancouver and the regional district. That city said it

wanted much of that for park purposes. The $20 million NDP purchase

turned out to be a $12 million loss for the taxpayers of British

Columbia, because it had to be disposed of at $8 million.

Mr.

Member, even though the socialist philosophies and theories may sound

good, in practice they don't always work. They didn't work in Poland;

they didn't work in Hungary; they didn't work in Czechoslovakia; they

didn't work in Romania; they haven't worked in Russia; they haven't

worked in China; and they didn't work in British Columbia for the short

while that the socialists had some control here. Socialist philosophy

may sound reasonably okay in theory, and unfortunately, time and time

again a lot of people everywhere in the world are duped by this

socialist philosophy. It isn't going to work. It's proven that it

hasn't worked, it didn't work in eastern Europe, and it didn't work in

British Columbia. It won't work and I hope it may never be tried again.

MR. MACDONALD:

I don't know why this minister is not the Premier. He's a demagogue who

makes some of the others look very amateurish. Talking about eastern

Europe! Come on, Mr. Minister. We're not talking about that. Let's talk

about somewhere closer to home. What about Holland or Germany? Here is

an example of what I'm talking about in a free democratic society that

doesn't give things away to political favourites but protects the

people. You go down one of the autobahns in Germany and you come to a

rest-stop. The rest-stop is owned by the highways system, and then on

that they allow private enterprise to flourish. There are concessions

for restaurants, hotels, bowling and so forth.

AN HON. MEMBER: Bowling?

MR. MACDONALD: Whatever it is. Never mind the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Wolfe) and his big gamblers and all that.

The

result is that the highways system gets a good lease and a lot of small

businessmen make a good living in a private enterprise way with their

leases on that kind of public land.

You don't know what I'm

talking about. You talk about Hungary and Russia and all that, but all

the while you keep giving it away. Every time you give away something

like a public right, who is it you give it away to? Somebody who has

contributed to your own campaign funds. You sit there and say you don't

know it, eh? You know the Olma brothers as well as you know me, and you

know they are big Socreds. You can't be so naive as to not know what

was happening at that station.

Interjection.

MR. MACDONALD: Let me hear what the former Attorney-General is saying.

[ Page 8115 ]

Interjection.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I will ask the hon. government House Leader (Hon. Mr. Gardom) to come to order.

MR. MACDONALD: I think he should withdraw that. You say what you like about me so long as you don't tell the truth.

MR. CHAIRMAN:

I would remind all members of the committee that imputation of

dishonourable motive is unparliamentary and would have to be censured

by the Chair.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't know the

Olma brothers that well. That is true. I have seen them and I

understand they are very successful business people. Frankly, I would

suspect that most successful people could be supportive of Social

Credit. I don't fault them for that. If, because some people have

succeeded in business, they are therefore supportive of the free

enterprise system which has made it possible for them to be successful

in business, I don't fault them for that. I have been reasonably

successful in business myself, and maybe that's one of the reasons I

sit here day after day being denied the sunshine outside. It is because

I am scared of socialism — and that's fine.

MR. LORIMER: It's been said many times that this minister tells the truth half of the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Did you make any reference to another hon. member? I'm very serious when I ask this.

MR. LORIMER: Yes, I said that the minister told the truth half of the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN:

I will have to ask you to withdraw that, please, if it's an imputation

of dishonourable motive. The Chair doesn't wish to engage in semantics;

I would just ask you to withdraw it, if you had any suggestion of

imputing dishonourable motive to another member.

MR. LORIMER: I would certainly withdraw the statement that he tells the truth half of the time.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Would you care to state it as an unqualified withdrawal.

MR. LORIMER: Certainly I will.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much.

MR. LORIMER:

I want to make two corrections to the minister's statements, first on

the marine park in North Vancouver. The property acquired by the

province in North Vancouver was purchased for a number of reasons. It

was announced at the time that there would be a marine park for the

benefit of those people on the North Shore; it was also to be the

station for the SeaBus area, and a number of other things. This land

was purchased for a comprehensive development in arrangement with the

city of North Vancouver. What happened to the land after the election

of 1975 I will take no responsibility for; that is strictly within the

jurisdiction of the present administration. Whether they gave the land

away, wasted it, or whatever they did, it's up to them to answer for

it, not our administration.

Another thing the minister said

was that everybody knew where the stations were going to be on the line

through Vancouver, Burnaby and New Westminster, because the GVRD had

prepared the plans. The GVRD were not involved in transit during that

period of 1972-75, except in an advisory position. At that time we had

a Bureau of Transit Services, which looked after transit planning for

the province of British Columbia. We didn't have a four-headed monster

to look after transit. The Bureau of Transit Services had made no

decision, and I as minister had made no decision on where any of the

stations were going to be, because we were going to pick up the land

for the stations for the benefit of the people of British Columbia. We

weren't going to give it away to our friends. We were going to pick it

up in the name of the province of British Columbia — for the

development and profits to be made from properties close to stations.

So on both counts the minister was somewhat careless with the truth in

his statements.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm sorry, the hon.

member can advise the House that someone has been incorrect, but any

imputation of a dishonourable motive.... Would the member please

withdraw the last statement.

MR. LORIMER: I can see nothing wrong with being careless with the truth, except when it's habit-forming.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chair finds that unparliamentary.

MR. LORIMER: If the Chairman finds it unparliamentary, I will be happy to withdraw.

MR. DAVIS:

In building the ALRT system, certain lands have to be assembled. We're

fortunate in that most of the right-of-way is already owned by the

Crown, through B.C. Hydro, and that other parts of the right-of-way are

owned by the Crown, through B.C. Place, or have been acquired from the

railway companies — for example, the Dunsmuir Tunnel under downtown

Vancouver. But there are land problems where the centre line is being

changed, and more particularly where stations are being located. The

stations are being located in close consultation with the

municipalities concerned — initially Vancouver, Burnaby and New

Westminster. In the last analysis, they really decide where the station

is — 100 yards this way, even a half mile that way. At the specific

request of Burnaby we've located two stations at different locations

than those originally indicated in consensus studies that were done by

the GVRD, by the UTA or jointly.

The debate is focused on a

particular station location on the so-called O&K Tract property.

That's a good part of a block in front of the CNR station on Terminal

Avenue. Everyone in the real estate business who has paid any attention

whatsoever to rapid transit has known that the rapid transit line would

run along Terminal Avenue. They knew also that it had to turn at a

right angle from Terminal Avenue and run along Columbia Street; those

are the two streets that side on this particular property. If you're

cutting a corner at all, going from Terminal to Columbia or from

Columbia to Terminal, you go across this particular property. In other

words, anyone who thought rapid transit was going to go ahead knew that

[ Page 8116 ]

this was a property with some value. Anyway, it did change hands several times.

would like to point out that if anyone made a killing — anyone at all —

it's Don Docksteader, not the Olma brothers. They're, so to speak,

holding the can now; they've got the property.

The value of

that property rests entirely, I would say, with the zoning which the

city of Vancouver may or may not confer on the property. It is zoned

industrial, and as long as it is zoned industrial they can't go up more

than two storeys on that property. We are going to cut across that

property now because we've been able to negotiate a right-of-way across

it for $1. In the negotiation it was agreed that if they got a

development going there, they would pay us $2 for every square foot

they were allowed to develop. So the ALRT system — public

transportation on the lower mainland — benefits in two ways. One is

that it gets a right-of-way for $1 across a property so it can cut a

corner rather than a sharp right angle. Secondly, to the extent that

this property redevelops, three will be a contribution to the rapid

transit system.

Alternatively, it is possible that the

station could have been out on the street, either on Terminal Avenue or

on Columbia. The consensus was that the station would be either across

the road from this property on Columbia or across the road on Terminal

facing this property. It was a matter of yards. It was known for years

to be a matter of yards as to where that station would be located.

Whether the station is more valuable on the property, on the sidewalk

or halfway across the street is debatable. But for reasons really known

only to the Olma brothers, they entered into an agreement with the ALRT

engineers to give us a right-of-way across the property.

have never met the Olma brothers. I wouldn't know them if I met them. I

perhaps have met Don Docksteader. I don't know Don Docksteader. I don't

pretend to know what the background was in any personal or financial

sense. But we didn't buy that property.

We may have to buy

other properties. We may have to buy properties at other station

locations. It looks like we'll have to buy a large amount of property

around Commercial Drive to locate what may be the second busiest

station on the system. In the first instance we asked the municipality

to buy the property. The city of Vancouver has not shown any

inclination so far to use its heritage fund to buy any of these

properties. If we have to buy property, we'll sell it off again after

we've put in the station and the infrastructure. That is the sequence.

far as this particular property is concerned — the so-called Olma

brothers property, the O&K Tract property — they will only make

money if they get zoning. If they get a development which the city

allows, and the city controls, they get a development which is

beneficial to them.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moved adjournment of the House.

The House adjourned at 12:04 p.m.

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