1983 Legislative Session: 1st Session, 33rd Parliament

Hansard

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

( Hansard )

WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1983

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

133 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Industrial Development Act Amendment Act, 1983 (Bill M202). Mr. Howard.

Introduction and first reading –– 133

Oral Questions

Duties of Doug Heal. Mr. Hanson –– 133

Jesco Financial Services contract. Mr. Macdonald –– 134

Rentalsman's office. Mr. Blencoe –– 134

Hospital user fees in Quesnel. Mrs. Dailly –– 134

Removal of Spetifore land from ALR. Hon. Mr. Schroeder replies –– 135

Throne speech debate

Ms. Sanford –– 135

Hon. Mr. Brummet –– 139

Mr. Lea –– 143

Hon. Mr. Smith –– 147

Mr. Lauk –– 149

Mr. Reynolds –– 154

Division –– 157

The House met at 2:05 p.m.

Prayers.

MR. VEITCH: In the gallery this afternoon is the bursar of

one of Vancouver Island's fine vocational technical institutions,

Camosun College, Mr. Beryl Hastings. I would ask this House to bid him

welcome.

MR. HANSON: Last evening, at 8:18 p.m., the second member for

Victoria and his wife Victoria Blencoe gave birth to a child. I would

like you to join me in welcoming this new young son.

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I would ask the House to welcome a young

Richmond resident who is in the gallery today to watch the proceedings,

Mr. Joshua Chamberlain.

MR. REYNOLDS: Mr. Speaker, in your gallery this afternoon are

Mrs. Frieda Smith and Miss Elsie Hager, who have been very active in

the federal political scene with the Conservative Party for years. I

would ask this House to welcome them.

MR. GABELMANN: I would like the House to join me in welcoming two people from the ferry workers' union, Mr. Eric Payne and Mr. Roger Carter.

HON. MR. McGEER: If you have a very sharp eye, Mr. Speaker,

you will detect in my lapel a button for the World University Games now

being held in Edmonton. A number of our athletes have been extremely

successful so far in winning medals for Canada; others are still in

competition. I'm sure that the Legislative Assembly would want to wish

all of our athletes participating in those university games well, and

to know that many of them have held athletic scholarships from this

Legislative Assembly of British Columbia.

MR. PELTON: In the members' gallery this afternoon are two

very good friends of mine, Mayor Danny Sharpe and alderman Arvo Lige

from the beautiful municipality of Pitt Meadows. I would ask the House

to welcome them.

HON. MR. RICHMOND: In the Speaker's gallery today are Mr. and

Mrs. Irwin Van Vorst of Osoyoos and their son Warren and daughter

Michele. Michele is the winner of the "Hands Across the Border" essay

contest, and is here as a guest of the Ministry of Tourism. On behalf

of the member for Okanagan South (Hon. Mr. Bennett) and myself, I would

ask the House to make them welcome.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Seated in the gallery today with my wife and her

father, who I have had the opportunity to introduce at a previous occasion,

are a couple more visiting Australians: good friends of mine from Sydney, Australia,

Dick and Audrey Webster. Mr. and Mrs. Webster are on the tail end of a world

trip, and I want to tell you that they left the best until the last. They're

very impressed with British Columbia, and they think that Vancouver, while not

as nice as Sydney, is certainly up to Sydney's standard. I hope the House

will give them a warm welcome.

MR. KEMPF: In the gallery with us this afternoon are two good

friends of my great secretary, Ina Ludtke — Margaret and Christine

McDonald. I would ask the House to make them welcome.

MR. CAMPBELL: We have in the House today four people from

Vernon of the great constituency of Okanagan North, David, Merna,

Aileen and Al King. Would you give a good welcome to them, please.

Introduction of Bills

On a motion by Mr. Howard, Bill M 202, Industrial Development Act

Amendment Act, 1983, introduced, read a first time and ordered to be

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

the House after today.

Oral Questions

DUTIES OF DOUGLAS HEAL

MR. HANSON: I'd like to address a question to the Premier

with respect to restraint coming from the cabinet orders-in-council,

namely Mr. Heal's recent pay increase. Can the Premier advise the House

why the government gave its chief image-maker, Mr. Douglas Heal, a pay

increase of more than $10,000 — an 18 percent increase per annum by a

cabinet order of June 16?

HON. MR. BENNETT: I would propose that this question normally

be given to the minister responsible for information, the Provincial

Secretary (Hon. Mr. Chabot). But I think if the member has been aware,

Mr. Heal's duties and responsibilities have been greatly expanded.

MR. HANSON: Mr. Speaker, I draw to the attention of the

Premier that his signature is on the order. Surely he would like to be

informed of what the matter is. Would the Premier advise the House in

detail of the scope of Mr. Heal's new duties?

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, that might elicit a rather lengthy

response. Quite possibly it might be a question better placed on the

order paper. Members who ask questions which are rather open-ended have

very little reason for debate if the question carries on. I would

remind the member of that. Possibly he could reduce the scope of the

question or rephrase it, or if the Premier wishes to answer....

MR. HANSON: What are Mr. Heal's new duties?

HON. MR. BENNETT: Well, Mr. Speaker, as the member is

probably aware, because it has received a great deal of attention from

those who report the goings on in the government and what's happening,

Mr. Heal's responsibilities now are to coordinate the information

services of government to effect great savings for the people; to be

able to coordinate and bring together the number of people with a view

to reducing the number of people needed to provide information, with a

view to reducing the number of publications, with a view to getting

more efficiency. The member was quite correct in prefacing his first

question by saying that this was a restraint measure. He's absolutely

right.

[ Page 134 ]

MR. HANSON: Mr. Speaker, the Premier has put his signature on

three orders-in-council recently for pay reclassifications for Mr.

Bailey, Mr. Tozer and Mr. Heal. Has the Premier decided to refer this

whole matter to Mr. Peck in the compensation stabilization program?

[2:15]

HON. MR. BENNETT: Mr. Peck is quite able to review any

appointment made in government. As you know, Mr. Peck has already

commented on the other appointments.

MR. HANSON: Is the Premier then advising all other ministries

that they can reclassify upward to the tune of $10,000 per annum at

their own discretion, separate and apart from any restraint program? Is

that what you're saying to the other ministers?

HON. MR. BENNETT: No. You've already asked me about my own

office and one other ministry because of the fact that I sign all

orders-in-council. So you've already started embarking on other

ministries.

MR. HANSON: Mr. Speaker, the Premier advised me last week

that Norman Spector had the authority in his office to develop a

$100,000 severance package for himself without even referring to you.

Will you then invite the Auditor-General to come in and review the

auditing procedures in your office?

HON. MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, I did not advise the member that the other day.

JESCO FINANCIAL SERVICES CONTRACT

MR. MACDONALD: I have a question for the Attorney-General,

Mr. Speaker. His department has had a contract with Jesco Financial

Services to engage Mr. Ian Jessiman on the civil side in the

department, and he flies back between Winnipeg to Victoria for his

duties. Has that contract been extended effective July 1, or any other

date?

HON. MR. SMITH: I will give the member a long answer to his

question, but the short answer is that there's been no extension to

that contract during my term. The contract is still running and has

some time to run. I can give the details of the duration of it to the

member, and I will do so.

MR. MACDONALD: A supplementary question. Does the public of

British Columbia pay the flying expenses, or any part of them, for Mr.

Jessiman so he can do his business in Winnipeg and his business at a

figure of $5,400 a month paid to his company? Do we pay travel expenses

too?

HON. MR. SMITH: I would think not, but I will review the

contract, as I said, and I'll inform the member. As I recall the

contract, it gives the other party the right to spend a certain amount

of time, for business purposes, in Winnipeg, but he does that at his

own expense, including travel.

MR. MACDONALD: Since the Attorney-General doesn't know too

much about it and I don't know too much about it, will you table the

contract in this House? It's public business. Will you give that

undertaking now?

Interjection.

MR. MACDONALD: Has the Attorney-General decided to table that contract in this House?

HON. MR. SMITH: No, but he's decided to give a prompt response to your question upon perusing the contract.

RENTALSMAN'S OFFICE

MR. BLENCOE: My question is for the Minister of Consumer and

Corporate Affairs. Can the minister confirm that the rentalsman, Mr.

Jim Patterson, has been recalled urgently from vacation leave to attend

a meeting in Vancouver tomorrow, that meeting to be chaired by the

Deputy Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs?

HON. MR. HEWITT: First of all, Mr. Speaker, I want to

congratulate the member for Victoria on the birth of his son. Secondly,

no, I can't confirm that.

MR. BLENCOE: On a supplementary to the same minister, can the

minister confirm that the substance of that meeting or any subsequent

meeting is to inform Mr. Patterson that the government has decided to

withdraw all protection against unjustified rent increases from B.C.

tenants?

MR. SPEAKER: The question, hon. member, may or may not be answered by the minister.

HOSPITAL USER FEES IN QUESNEL

MRS. DAILLY: I have a question to the Minister of Health. In

view of the report that the hospital in Quesnel is now asking and

demanding cash in advance for the full length of projected hospital

stays, could the minister advise this House whether he agrees with this

requirement of prepayment for hospital user fees?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I don't know of the report. Nonetheless,

the hospitals are autonomous bodies and have a duty to manage their

affairs, including their financial affairs. I've had no complaints from

anyone with respect to this prepayment requirement, and I have had no

information provided to me from anyone who objects to it.

The hospitals have an opportunity and a responsibility in their

financial affairs, and if they deem it necessary to seek some

prepayment — I don't know whether it's for the entire stay — it may be

to their advantage in limiting any bad debts. I don't know whether it

would be causing a hardship on any individuals, but the hospitals, to a

very large degree, have autonomy. I'd have to find out what negative

effect it may be causing before we would determine if it were a policy

we would support.

MRS. DAILLY: In view of the fact that the minister was on a

CBC morning program commenting on the hospital administrator in

Quesnel's rationalization for the imposition of these fees, would he

confirm that he was not aware of this?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, for many years I have not presumed CBC to be a reliable source of information.

MRS. DAILLY: Mr. Speaker, the minister followed the administrator and commented on what the administrator in

[ Page

135 ]

Quesnel had said, so I would say that there is

something here that isn't quite coming together. I would like to ask a

supplementary to the minister. You still have not answered my basic

question: are you in favour of prepayment of hospital user fees?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, I can't be responsible for the

production of a CBC program. If they had an interview with the

administrator on, that's their decision to make. I was not privy to it.

I did not hear that interview, and I was only speaking with the

broadcaster, not the administrator.

If it is to better serve the need of the hospital, with respect to

limiting bad debts, I would think that we may agree with the hospitals

that they utilize that method of fiscal management, if it is to their

advantage and does not create unnecessary hardship for citizens of the

province.

MRS. DAILLY: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that the minister is

not concerned, then, about this imposition, but I would also like to

ask him this: is he not aware that the hospital administrator did

suggest that the reason for the imposition was because of lack of

government financing, not their bad debts?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, no, I am not aware that the

administrator of that hospital has made contact with the ministry at

all. What private conversation or public conversation he may have had

with the CBC broadcaster is not determining policy in the ministry or

at the hospital, presumably.

MRS. DAILLY: A further supplementary. Is the Minister of

Health not concerned that one of the hospitals under his jurisdiction

as Minister of Health is creating an atmosphere of extreme trauma for

people who enter the hospital and who do not have the money yet are

told they must pay before they can be accepted? Does this not concern

the Minister of Health?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, I would be concerned if any

action by any hospital is causing extreme trauma. I would also be very

appreciative of receiving any information that would support that claim.

MRS. DAILLY: Is the minister telling this House that if a

hospital decides to impose these fees he does not consider, without

waiting for a report on it, that this would cause trauma to someone on

any occasion?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I think I would at least like to have some

of the information and perhaps some reports as to what effect this is

having on any person. I am not going to presume that being asked to pay

a $7.50 per diem for four days is going to result in a person suffering

extreme trauma.

MRS. DAILLY: I have a final supplementary. I don't think the

minister quite understands that someone could arrive in a hospital and

be told that they cannot enter unless they have the money now. Is the

minister accepting that kind of policy now being implemented in this

province?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: I guess we're developing a hypothetical situation

now, since the member has not produced any information that supports her argument

that this is occurring. If the member has any information about a person having

been denied service in a hospital in British Columbia because they are unable

to prepay their per diem rate and therefore having suffered from extreme trauma,

I would be very interested in seeing that information; otherwise, it's hypothetical.

MRS. DAILLY: I want to ask the minister again whether he is

not concerned about the traumatic conditions being created in hospitals

in B.C. by the question being asked of ill patients when they enter:

"Have you the money to pay the prepayment for your fee?"

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr. Speaker, I am not prepared to accept

from the member for Burnaby North that extreme trauma is being created

in hospitals because of what she presumes is occurring in some

hospital, be it Quesnel or elsewhere. If extreme trauma is occurring

because of actions taken by persons within some hospitals, we'd be very

pleased to review it. The information has not been provided to me in

any form. I repeat: a broadcast on CBC does not constitute, in my mind,

evidence of extreme trauma being created.

MRS. DAILLY: Would the minister assure this House that he

will look into the matter of the present situation in the hospital in.

Quesnel. where these prepayments are being charged? Would he report

back to the House on it?

HON. MR. NIELSEN: Mr, Speaker, I would be most pleased to respond to any case the member identifies — in some detail, I hope.

REMOVAL OF SPETIFORE

LAND FROM ALR

HON. MR. SCHROEDER: Mr. Speaker, in the question period just

before today's I took as notice a question, the operative part of which

is: "Has the government decided to rescind order-in-council 3381?" The

answer is no.

Orders of the Day

SPEECH FROM THE THRONE

(continued debate)

MS. SANFORD: Mr. Speaker, this is the first opportunity that

I've had to add my congratulations on your election as Speaker of this

Legislature. It's also the first opportunity that I've had to add my

congratulations to those of the other members to the Deputy Speaker on

his appointment to his new position.

Mr. Speaker, you’re getting a great deal of publicity these days.

This is more publicity than I have known any other Speaker to obtain in

recent years. Now usually Speakers do not get quoted in the papers, and

usually Speakers do not have the opportunity to be heard on the radio,

and usually Speakers do not meet with reporters in the offices of their

chambers. So this is really quite an unusual occurrence that we have

seen here, Mr. Speaker. We know that Speakers generally do not like

that kind of publicity and do not seek it.

[ Page 136 ]

[2:30]

MR SPEAKER: Order, please. I must caution the member that the current

course the member is pursuing is somewhat out of order in regard to the standards

and traditions of this chamber.

MS. SANFORD: Oh, well, now that's a very interesting comment

coming from Mr. Speaker this afternoon. I am simply referring to the

usual conduct of members in this Legislature, which I think is quite

acceptable during a throne speech debate. I see nothing wrong with it.

I don't know why you should be objecting, Mr. Speaker.

Over the years we have found we know very little about the

constituencies represented by Speakers of this Legislature. Very rarely

do we hear anything about the hospital problems in the constituency of

Delta; nor do we hear about Human Resources problems or ICBC problems

that people might face in the constituency of Delta. But this issue,

which relates first of all to the removal of land from the agricultural

land reserve, and then to a decision by an elected body — namely the

Greater Vancouver Regional District, which does not wish to rezone that

land at this point for development — is of such import to the MLA for

Delta that he has felt he must change his usual course and comment on a

land deal within his own constituency. He has broken tradition. He has

spoken his mind, and he certainly left very little doubt of his

feelings about a decision of the GVRD respecting the development of

that particular land. For the information of those in the gallery, that

land used to be the Spetifore farm.

MR. REID: It used to be. It won't be farmed again.

MS. SANFORD: It won't be farmed again. I see.

This particular land was once the Spetifore farm, a potato farm out

in the Delta area. It was removed by cabinet from the agricultural land

reserve and now, some two years later, this land is proposed for the

development of a massive housing development and for some parkland. An

order-in-council was passed in 1981, removing that land from the ALR.

The order-in-council stated that the land would be removed from the ALR

and could be developed, with the provision that some of it be set aside

for housing and parkland, that proper diking be done, etc. Now that the

GVRD has decided the land will not be used for development — they have

turned down the rezoning request — it seems to me this government has

the duty to cancel that order-in-council passed in 1981 in order to

restore the land to the ALR, where it belongs. That land is good

farmland.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Have you ever been out there to look at it?

MS. SANFORD: I have read the reports of the soils experts, Mr. Minister.

They know far more than I do about soils and the capabilities of soils to produce

food. Obviously the Speaker has said he has no faith in the decision of the

agrologists on this; no faith in the decision of the soils specialists; no faith

in the government-appointed Land Commission, which said: "Leave the land

in the ALR, because it is capable of producing food." This Speaker has

said that the land indeed should be developed. He supports his friend the developer

in an attempt to have housing put on that land. At the same time, he also tells

us that he somehow feels the Premier and his cabinet colleagues are somewhat

superior to other elected bodies, such as the GVRD, and that they should be

overruled and the decision changed to let the development go ahead.

We know there is a tremendous amount of money to be made in that

particular development. We know, when you have housing that is going to

serve some 10,000 people, there are people who stand to make millions

on this particular development. We know the speculators and developers,

just can't wait to get started on developing that agricultural land for

housing purposes. I support the GVRD and the decision it made the other

day to turn down this application at this point.

Interjection.

MS. SANFORD: I'm sorry, I didn't hear that, Mr. Minister.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The hon. member for Comox has the floor and should be allowed to continue uninterrupted.

MS. SANFORD: I was disappointed at the end of question period

to hear the response of the Minister of Agriculture and Food (Hon. Mr.

Schroeder) when he said that the government has decided that they're

not going to rescind that order-in-council. That certainly is an issue

that we will be pursuing further during the debate on the Ministry of

Agriculture and Food's estimated expenditures later on.

With respect to the direction that has been outlined in the throne

speech itself, I have a great number of concerns. I think that this

government has embarked on a direction that certainly alarms a lot of

people in this province, and those of us who sit on this side of the

Legislature. I think that the actions and the direction that the

government points to in its throne speech show a particularly

short-sighted attitude on the part of those people who are elected to

govern this province. It's really tunnel vision, because it's those

people who are at the bottom end of the income scale in this province

who are the ones who are hardest hit by the direction and actions of

this particular government.

We heard the other day from the MLA for Coquitlam-Moody (Mr. Rose),

who pointed out to the Legislature that in this country today 20

percent of the population shares 43 percent of the total wealth of the

country. We also found out that 20 percent of the population share only

4 percent of the total income of Canada. He pointed out that this was

an unfair situation, and a situation which has not changed, even after

a number of government programs have been introduced over the years,

such as UIC, old age pensions, medicare, and hospitalization — aside

from the user fees that this government wants to charge the people of

the province. What it means is that you have a tunnel-vision approach

in terms of the directions that the government is taking in cutting

services left, right and centre, tied in with a callous attitude

towards the people. They obviously have no concern about the fact that

20 percent of the population shares only 4 percent of the income, and

they're the ones that are going to be hardest hit by the kind of cuts

that these people are embarked upon. You tie that in with callousness

and arrogance — the kind of arrogance displayed by that Premier, which

we've never seen in this province before — and it's the people of the

province who are going to be suffering over the next few

[ Page 137 ]

years with the kind of right-wing direction that this government has taken. They're going to be suffering.

I would like to give you a couple of examples of the kind of cuts

that we have already seen. In the city of Courtenay, we've just

recently had the closure of an alcohol treatment centre for women. That

alcohol treatment centre was closed because of lack of government

funding. That centre treated many women on Vancouver Island who needed

alcohol treatment programs in order to take their place back in

society. I happen to know one person in particular who successfully

went through that alcohol treatment program in Courtenay. As a result,

her family is now able to cope and is prevented from having to call on

all kinds of other resources in this province, such as those provided

through the Attorney-General's ministry for juvenile delinquents and

the health services for mental health problems that develop. The family

of this particular person who went through that particular alcohol

treatment program successfully is now doing extremely well, thanks to

the money that was made available at that time in order to ensure that

that family could be held together. That program has now been

cancelled. The doors of that treatment centre have been shut. What this

means, Mr. Speaker, is that through the tunnel vision of that

particular government, the cost to the taxpayers down the road for the

other families of those people who will no longer receive treatment at

that centre are going to be building up to the extent where we are

going to face higher and higher costs down the road because of the

immediate actions of this government in its right-wing approach to

economics.

What they do not see is that for every service cut that they are

making at this point, it is going to cost us more money down the road.

The Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) this morning

talked about the NDP and their desire to pay counsellors to assist

young people who were suffering from various mental disorders or

breakdowns in personality for one reason or another. She said at that

time that they cannot afford to pay that kind of money to provide

counsellors to ensure that there are alcohol treatment centres and that

these various services are provided.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

It's fine, Mr. Speaker, if you have the money with which to buy the

various services that you might need. It's fine if you are a woman who

is facing a divorce and has to go to court and has enough money to pay

for a lawyer to ensure that she gets a decent deal out of the whole

thing. Then it's fine, but most of those women who are facing a divorce

do not have any money and they don't have any legal representation. As

a result they fall even further down in that 20 percent who are already

sharing 4 percent of the income.

[2:45]

The comments that I hear around this chamber on the government side,

Mr. Speaker, are indeed frightening. I hear the second member for

Surrey (Mr. Reid) talking about privatizing the hospitals. He does not

want any government involvement at all in the delivery of hospital

services in this province. He has said that time and time again. I hear

those comments day after day from this particular seat. This morning I

heard the first member for Surrey (Mrs. Johnston) applauding the fact

that perhaps the rentalsman's office will be done away with. She was

applauding it. Does she not have any of those people who are in that 20

percent who are sharing 4 percent of the income of this province and

who need the services of a rentalsman because they do not have the

money to go to court when they have a problem with their particular

landlord? If you don't have the rentalsman, that's going to be their

alternative. There is no legal aid for them. Does that first member for

Surrey not understand that the rentalsman's office in this province

provides a service to try to keep these various difficulties that

develop between landlord and tenant out of court? I don't think she

understands that, Mr. Speaker. Based on what I've heard. I don’t think

that most of the newly elected members to this Legislature have any

understanding at all of the 20 percent of the people within their

constituencies that they are supposed to represent in this House who

currently are sharing only 4 percent of the total income. Those are the

people who need the services in health. Those are the ones that don't

want to prepay their hospital bills when they go in, because they don't

have the money. Those are the ones who need the services of a

rentalsman. Many of them are the ones who need the services of a

counsellor in the Attorney-General's ministry because of the

difficulties that the young people in that family are having with the

law. Those are the people who need alcohol treatment centres.

Right here in Victoria the funding has now been discontinued for an

organization called SAVA, which is the Sexual Abuse Victims Anonymous.

They've now had to discontinue their services because the government

does not think that these services are important enough. Yet we hear

the Minister of Human Resources this morning bragging about the kind of

money they are pouring into places like B.C. Place, Transpo and all of

these things, which is okay, but for heaven's sake provide the services

for the people who need them.

When you cut out legal aid you present problems for those people who

are in the bottom 20 percent of income levels. You cut back on services

such as alcohol treatment, those who are victims of sexual abuse, and

those who, for instance, are attempting to fund group homes and prevent

the kind of expenditures that society will have to face in the future

when these people end up in jails — like the organization in Richmond.

Those are the people who right now are going to be suffering even more

under this government and the approach that it is taking. Not only

that, Mr. Speaker, but it's going to cost us all more in the long run.

and I think they know it.

The other thing is that it's all done in the name of restraint. But

restraint is not the Premier's objective. We know that. He knows that.

The government knows that, and even the backbenchers know that.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: You just squeaked in by your teeth, didn't you?

MS. SANFORD: You tried hard, didn't you" You weren't very

successful, were you? You should have come to my constituency more

often and I would have gotten a bigger majority, Mr. Minister.

Mr. Speaker, restraint is not the Premier's objective. It certainly

is not, or we wouldn't be hearing about the kinds of increases in

salaries that we've heard about since this government was re-elected.

We wouldn't hear about the appointments and the increase in salary of

somebody like Doug Heal. We hear that Doug Heal now has new

responsibilities. I would venture that all of those people who work in

Human Resources who have been faced with the kinds of caseloads they

have had to face over the last two years also have

[ Page 138 ]

increased responsibilities and an increased

workload. They're not getting an 18 percent increase at all. So it's

the privileged few, and it helps if you're sort of a detached relative.

Then you're okay as far this government is concerned. This restraint is

not restraint; it's scapegoating. Most of us know that. It's the public

service workers and those who need services who are being scapegoated

in this province.

Now we have the Prime Minister. You know, Mr. Speaker, I think we're

going to have a federal election pretty soon, because we had the Prime

Minister on TV going through the same kind of restraint dialogue with

the people of Canada. They know that the word "restraint" is popular

with the public, and he was going through the same kind of restraint

dialogue that the Premier went through just prior to the election. It's

not restraint. I think the critics of the Prime Minister's speech were

quite correct when they pointed out that the 6 and 5, as it had been

applied to the public service, did not make the difference in terms of

bringing down inflation. Even the Finance ministers from Ontario and

Saskatchewan meeting with the federal Minister of Finance within the

last few days are saying that unemployment is a much bigger issue in

this country today than is that 6-and-5 program. That's the area in

which we should be working. That comes from the ministers of finance of

the provinces of Ontario and Saskatchewan.

MR. CAMPBELL: Job creation is our program.

MS. SANFORD: Job creation! Good grief, they just got out of a job creation program. What on earth are they talking about?

You know, Mr. Speaker, even if the Premier's response that restraint

is the answer is genuine on his part, it is totally inept and

inappropriate. We've been through this before. We've seen what R.B.

Bennett did during the time that we had an economic recession which is

very similar to today's. We know what happened at that time. So even if

he were genuine in assuming that restraint is going to solve any

economic problems, then he's completely wrong. It's totally inept to

assume that we're going to solve any of the economic problems through

that restraint program. But it is politically popular, and I think that

the Prime Minister of Canada is reading the same polls that the Premier

read prior to this last election.

But it's not an economic approach at all, it's not a genuine

approach, I don't think, to the economic problems, but it is, rather

ruthless and vindictive. It's an attack on all those victims and

workers and the users of the various services of the province — the

low-income people. Those are the ones who are paying. The reason

inflation has come down in this country is that we've had tens of

thousands of people who have been unable to find work. They're the ones

who have paid the price, and they're the ones who have brought down

inflation in this country at this point. So why are they using this

approach? Why are they busy cutting services? In my view, it's to pay

off the high-rollers of the corporate world. That's what it's all

about. I was not at all surprised, on opening day, when this government

turned down the request by the House Leader for the opposition to

include a special legislative committee to deal with ethics in banking.

Their interest is in protecting those high-rollers, and they obviously

don't have any interest in those people who are most adversely affected

by the policies and the direction in which they have embarked.

The government believes in the trickle-down theory: that if

everybody has lots of money at the top, it'll trickle down and those

people who are sharing the 4 percent at the bottom will somehow manage

to do okay. They say, let the corporate sector do as it pleases; give

it as much assistance as you can. It doesn't matter too much about

environmental concerns, like Buttle Lake and some of the other issues

that we've had to put up with over the years as a result of decisions

based on that philosophy. Regardless of any other adverse impact that

it might have, let them make maximum profits here, this group says. It

doesn't matter whether they take their money.... They can do exactly as

they see fit with their money: they can invest it overseas, or do

whatever they like, while our people here go without work. That's what

happens.

Creating jobs is not the objective of the corporate world. We have

the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy), who is

responsible for that employment development committee, saying: "Oh,

well, we'll get out of EBAP now; that employment-bridging assistance

program is no longer needed. We'll have the corporate people take over

and they can provide all of the work." But the Minister of Human

Resources should know that the corporate world is not interested in

providing work. Their interest is in making profits. If they can change

the machinery, bring in all of the automation and all the new

technological change that's available to them, they will do that

without one consideration for those people who are left without work.

But the government feels that it has no responsibility in that

direction at all.

I've had telegrams from an organization in Parksville, an outreach

program funded by the federal government which has worked very hard

over the last few years trying to ensure that at least some of the

people in the Parksville area are able to get some employment. They

were sending telegrams expressing their dismay at the attitude of the

provincial government here cancelling out on EBAP. Here we have a

chance to bring in $3 of federal money for every $1 that the province

puts up in order to provide some work for the people in B.C., and the

provincial government cancels out, even though just prior to that we

had the Minister of Human Resources, acting in her capacity as chairman

of that employment development program, pleading with the federal

government to ensure that EBAP was continued here in B.C. And then,

much to the surprise of the federal Minister of Labour, suddenly the

provincial government ducks out, because they don't feel that putting

people to work is important enough to put up $1 for every $3 that the

federal government puts up.

[3:00]

The most tragic victims of this kind of attitude are the young,

because they are the ones who can't find employment, who need the

experience and work, who have the energy, who can make the contribution

to society, and they are out there for the most part sitting at home in

front of their TVs because there is no work for them. What a tragic

waste of our young people! I think that the best investment the

government can make is in people. Cancelling out on all of these

programs, including EBAP, is not making an investment in people.

It's my view, also, Mr. Speaker, that when there is serious economic

recession it is the duty of government to ensure that those people who

can least protect themselves against that downturn in the economy are

the ones who are protected by government through the provision and, if

necessary, the expansion of services. This government takes the

opposite viewpoint and approach and very much adopts the

[ Page 139 ]

philosophy of Ronald Reagan in his approach to the problems of the United States.

We've had some hints that the government wishes to make some changes

in labour legislation. They made some reference in the throne speech to

the industrial relations in the province. I just want to add my word of

caution to that of Bill Hamilton and a number of others in the

corporate world, as well as those people who know labour legislation

through the B.C. Federation of Labour, that any move in this direction

must be made very, very carefully. It must be made with consultation

and in such a way that the Labour Code remains intact, and that the

changes that are brought about will not lead to the kind of chaos that

many people out there are predicting will happen if the government

proceeds with the suggestions that have come from some people,

including the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. Michael). If you have

people who are able to decertify at the drop of a hat, I can assure

this House that we will have chaos on the labour scene in this

province. I hope that the government has more sense than to adopt that

approach.

In the throne speech, Mr. Speaker, we have reference, at one point,

to highways and bridges. I think Annacis Island is mentioned, and the

Coquihalla Pass, and coal-mining roads in the Elk Valley, and the Laird

Highway. I'm very pleased that the Minister of Highways (Hon. A.

Fraser) is here, because I would point out to him that I'm sure he

didn't have an opportunity to put into the throne speech the reference

to the bypass route between Parksville and Campbell River on Vancouver

Island which is so desperately needed. It's not that the minister

doesn't know about this problem, or that the minister has not had this

particular issue brought to his attention before, because he's had it

brought to his attention many, many times. The minister knows that the

present Island Highway route is one of the most dangerous in North

America; he has as much as said so in this Legislature. While we had

signs go up before the election talking about great highway improvement

projects.... We had those signs; oh my, they were all over the place.

AN HON. MEMBER: Nice signs.

MS. SANFORD: Nice signs, you're right. Too bad they didn't

represent a bypass route, because the only thing that is going to

happen along that island Highway is that we're getting some widening

and a couple of left-hand turns, I understand, but no money for a

bypass route, and no mention of a bypass route between Parksville and

Campbell River. That is very much overdue. We have references to all

kinds of other roads and bridges in the province, but somehow or other

the minister.... I'm sure he will correct that when the estimates come

up, and he will tell the House that it was just an oversight in the

throne speech and that the Island Highway bypass route is going to go

ahead this year.

How much time do I have? Four minutes? I'm glad to see the Premier's back in the House.

MR. CAMPBELL: Four minutes early.

MS. SANFORD: Yes, four minutes early. It's too bad, because I

have a little comment that I would like to make about the Premier and

the arrogance that he has displayed, particularly with the appointment

of Mr. Tozer, bypassing all the regular procedures that have been

developed by government for I don't know how many years, The Premier

decided that he would bypass all those and appoint a detached relative,

a somewhat distant relative by the name of Mr. Tozer, to the position

of government agent. We've had the Prime Minister of the country show

his disdain for the people with his one-fingered salute that we have

come to expect from him on a number of occasions, and I would submit

that the appointment of Mr. Tozer at this time is the Premier's one

fingered salute to the people of this province. That certainly is the

way I would view it. He has ignored all the procedures. He has gone

ahead and made this appointment without any reference whatsoever to the

civil service. The guy hasn’t written any tests, he hasn't had any

interview. He has simply been appointed because he is a detached

relative. I am opposed to that kind of action, and I'm opposed to the

kind of arrogance the Premier has displayed in connection with that

appointment.

One last thing. This morning the second member for Victoria (Mr.

Blencoe) referred to a study on the attitudes of young people, and the

fact that so many young people these days are very depressed and feel

they don't have any future beyond the age of 25. With the international

situation one can well understand why young people are feeling so

disgruntled and depressed about the situation at this point. I would

just like to say that I hope all those people, such as the 80,000 who

turned out for the disarmament walk in Vancouver, continue the kind of

work they are doing, continue to demonstrate their concern about the

future of mankind. We want to give our young people some hope, and it

is this kind of action, this kind of demonstration by people concerned

about that issue, that is going to give them that kind of hope.

HON. MR. BRUMMET: It's certainly a pleasure to take my place

in this debate; to congratulate you on your election to this

responsible position, as well as Mr. Speaker, and to welcome the other

members who were successful in returning to the House. I would also

like to thank the constituency of North Peace River, those people who

again asked me to represent their interests here with the government.

I might point out, Mr. Speaker, that with all the complaints from

some of the members opposite, the constituency of North Peace River was

probably one of the hardest hit in the province as a result of the

recession. Because of its dependence on the oil and gas industry

and on products that have to be marketed elsewhere, they have been hard

hit and are hurting. There are many vacancies and many businesses have

shut down. I would like to point out that despite that situation, those

people went up there of their own volition to try to make a living

under the free enterprise system, and as badly as those people are

hurting in my constituency, overwhelmingly they reject socialism as a

far greater evil. From past experience they realize that at least under

the free enterprise system they have some hope. They saw what happened

under socialism. During a period of buoyant world economy and good

times, they were hit even worse during that short period of socialism

than during this worldwide recession.

So they know where they can put their faith. Their hope lies in the

free enterprise system. The situation there could have been much worse

had it not been that some of the industries and their employees took a

responsible position. They did everything possible to keep in operation

whatever sawmills, businesses and industries they could. For instance,

Canfor operated at a loss for a considerable time; so did Peace Woods,

Tackama and Fort Nelson Forest Industries. We just heard the previous

speaker, the member for Comox (Ms.

[ Page 140 ]

Sanford) say that these industries are strictly

interested in a profit. Had they been, they would have shut down a year

ago; they kept going at great losses, because they too hoped the market

would recover. I think we owe a debt of gratitude to those people and

their workers who put out a little bit more, who were willing not to

make excessive demands to keep those companies alive. We owe a great

deal to those people and those industries who, despite the losses they

were suffering, and who could have cut their losses, instead took the

responsible action and tried to keep those constituents working. That

involved hundreds of people.

Some of the people in my area look to the government for help too,

and there are many who did get jobs as a result of the employment

development fund. I might point out that last year the rural

gasification program did create quite a few jobs and put about $1.4

million into the economy there in difficult times. Again this helps the

ancillary and the other industries. The ultimate benefit was that the

people who were paying $200 to $250 a month for their oil heating bills

are now paying $70 to $90 a month on some of those farms. Those people

are grateful for the help that was provided to them. I would hope that

whatever possible will be done to extend that program, because it

wouldn't take that much in relative terms. One less convention centre

in Victoria would probably do the whole rural gasification program in

our area.

I have a difficult time bleeding for more provincial government

money, which comes from the taxpayers throughout this province who are

producing, to try to create more tourist attractions for the Victoria

area when the taxpayers of this province already fund the parliament

buildings — which are a great attraction — the Provincial Museum and

many of these other things which attract tourists here. The taxpayers

are already paying that shot, and these few members have the audacity

to scream for more when people in other parts, where the money and the

revenue is produced to keep this place going.... I would say I'm

startled by what some of these members complain about when you see the

businesses as busy as they are here, and comparatively when you see the

producing areas and the businesses that are shut down.

[3:15]

The second member for Victoria (Mr. Blencoe) mentioned this morning

something about the people here in Victoria knowing how to vote, and

they voted for the NDP with a 60 percent majority. I suppose those

figures are correct. But I can't help but point out some of the things

that the member mentioned. There are a lot of retired seniors in the

area, and that party went out during the election campaign with a

deliberate scare campaign and told seniors that this government would

not care about them. This government has done more for seniors than any

other government in this country. They tried to buy those votes with

scare tactics. They went out and told the government employees that if

they became government they would make sure that they got whatever wage

increases they wanted and that there would be absolutely no cuts in

government. It was a completely unrealistic promise that nobody could

have lived up to in these times, yet they promised that to buy those

votes. I guess they got a lot of those votes. Even their leader

circulated a letter to the B.C. Teacher's Federation — and there are a

lot of people involved in education in Victoria — and that letter said:

"If we are elected, we will restore all cutbacks in education." In

other words, they would return all the wage increases and all of the

money that had been taken out of education to provide other services.

In other words: "Vote for us, and we'll promise you the sky." At no

time did they say where they were going to get this money. Even in all

the speeches that I've heard here, I have not heard that other magic

side of the story. Where were you going to get the money to do all the

things that you promised you were going to be doing? I guess you could

say that the NDP has creative programs: they create illusions, false

impressions, negative attitudes and they would create debt by the

truckload if they had the opportunity. So that's creativity.

The member for Comox was just talking about jobs.

MS. SANFORD: Look who's talking. Some $14 billion in provincial debt.

HON. MR. BRUMMET: Let's talk about this borrowing in relation

to the job creation program that you promised during the election

campaign. You were going to borrow $500 million to create 50,000 jobs

in this province. If you take a little bit of simple arithmetic and you

divide that $500 million by 50,000, you have about $5,000 per job. That

would be what? With about half of that money for supplies and

equipment, you would end up with approximately two months' worth of

work for about 100,000 people. I believe the 100,000 figure is the one

I wanted to use for the $5,000 per job. You would have approximately

$5,000 for 100,000 people and so you would have....

Interjections.

HON. MR. BRUMMET: I'm nervous with the wrath that's coming at

me. I think I now have the figures correct. The figures would be about

$5,000 per job. Take half of that for supplies and equipment, which is

not an unrealistic assumption, and you would have $2,500 left per job,

which at say $1, 250 per month, for a rough calculation, leaves you

about two months' work for 100,000 people. That's great. At which point

the $500 million is gone; it has been expended.

Now where were they going to get that $500 million from? They were

going to borrow it against future revenues from the B.C. Petroleum

Corporation, and their leader said that the B.C. Petroleum Corporation

had taken in, in the last ten years, some $1.3 billion in revenue for

the province. I am assuming that his figures were correct; I think

they're pretty close. So that works out to $130 million per year on an

average. If you took that $500 million, they had to borrow it against

future revenue, and even if you amortized that over ten years at the

best possible deal you could get, 10 percent — a low interest rate —

you'd have to be paying back about $50 million a year in interest

charges, and if you paid $50 million a year on the principle that's

$100 million out of the average of $130 million per year. So the

government revenue is left with $30 million for all the social

services, all the other programs, instead of the $130 million a year

that the government was taking in under this system. And they call that

a fancy scheme. I think some of the people in this province may not

have worked out those exact figures, but they could work out that

concept. And where would they have gotten the next $500 million for the

next two months' work?

So that is the illusion that these people are creating — that if you

keep borrowing and borrowing to create some jobs, somehow or other you

are going to have more people working. Mr. Speaker, I would contend

that in the long run you will have a lot fewer people working, because

as you have to

[ Page 141 ]

pay back that $500 million and the next $500

million and so on, you are going to have to tax out of existence the

industries that are producing revenues to the government in this

province. So the only way that you can create those jobs is to avoid

that false illusion that they try to create that somehow government —

not taxpayers, not the taxpaying industries in this province, but

government — can continue to create jobs. It's a short-term cop-out.

It's a short-term solution. It's not a responsible answer to what we

need in this province.

We have the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) again saying that

industries are interested in a profit. I've already dealt partially

with that. Would you like to suggest that industries in this province

or anywhere in this world will continue to keep operating with their

objective being to suffer losses? If those industries don't operate,

then we don't have jobs. So you need an industry to create a job, and

often they need a factory. I might draw an analogy with something like

B.C. Place. It seems to me there is resentment: "You shouldn't spend

the money on buildings like B.C. Place; you should give it to the

people instead." It's a great theory. It might last up to six months,

but then you run out of money and you don't have a source to replenish

it with. You talk about creating jobs. B.C. Place created the

construction jobs, B.C. Place will continue the operating jobs and

something like B.C. Place will continue to bring people into this

province and will create a need for service industry jobs. So that is

where jobs are created — by building a factory. You are saying: "Tear

down the factories, don't build any factories, don't build any

industries, but keep providing jobs." That could be true in any

situation. How can you possibly keep creating jobs if you don't have a

source of revenue? You cannot do this. It's an illusion. It's a

short-term promise that cannot be fulfilled. Lord knows the federal

government has been trying to prove it, and is doing quite well if it

does prove it.

[Mr. Kempf in the chair.]

However, Mr. Speaker, you have changed. The throne speech — I knew

you might call me to order, so I thought I'd better refer to the throne

speech — does honestly and realistically identify a situation which

must be recognized in this province — in other words, the recession

that we are facing, the difficult times. I think it outlines, as well,

the directions which must be taken to manage our economy. These are not

easy answers. They are difficult answers, much more difficult than the

short-term easy cop-out of government spending to solve the problem. It

doesn't work. So what we're talking about is a more difficult route but

a much more responsible route that will benefit everybody far more in

the long run.

MR. REID: That's good government.

HON. MR. BRUMMET: Mr. Speaker, that's responsible government.

You cannot spend your way out of a recession. I think you have to

manage your way out of it, and that is what we are attempting to do.

It's rather interesting, too, that the member for Comox also said

that — I made a note of this — restraint is popular with the people.

She spent almost all of her speech attacking government restraint, but

"restraint is popular with the people." Are you suggesting, Madam

Member, that we should ignore the people? Or perhaps the people have

spoken out that silent majority that we don't often hear from has

spoken out.

We've heard all kinds of suggestions about what you would spend on

this, what you would spend on that, and somehow or other you don't

expect the people of this province to be intelligent enough to connect

the fact that as government spends more, those people — the taxpayers —

have to provide more. So that's one reality — where the funds come from

— that they never face up to.

Oh, there's much material here. Mr. Speaker, it was rather

interesting reading in some of the campaign literature for the NDP that

most of their campaign theme seemed to be "defeat the present

government" rather than "elect us." Why would you not want to stand up

and say "elect us, " rather than using your usual negative approach of

"defeat the present government"? So in other words, again it points out

what these people are against rather than what they are for.

MR. LAUK: They voted for your positive campaign. It was very refreshingly positive, wasn't it, Barney?

HON. MR. BRUMMET: At least I think we can say that we did not

get elected on false pretences. We did not tell the people things that

we could not do. We said to them: "Times are tough; we're going to have

to continue with restraint. We're all going to have to bite the bullet,

and this is what will have to be done in this province." They voted for

us by a considerable majority. And you notice that you promised them

all the things that you might spend, and you promised them that we were

bad guys, and they still voted for us because I believe they are

intelligent enough to realize that....

MR. LAUK: Did you condone your TV ads, Barney?

HON. MR. BRUMMET: I never had time to watch TV during the election campaign: I was busy on the campaign trail. I usually work during elections.

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, the people in my area also, I think, voted very

strongly in favour of free enterprise because they had seen the 1972-75

period in B.C. history and the national energy program; they have seen

just how helpful government intervention is. As you know, just a few

years ago we were promised by the federal government that nationalizing

the oil industry would be the solution; it would help to keep oil and

gas prices down. It would help us. Now, since the national energy

program has gone in, I defy anybody to see how those prices have stayed

down. Instead of that, what we have is an additional tax for Canadian

ownership, and that tax is imposed on us to buy service stations across

a good part of the country. The sellers must have been smiling all the

way to the bank when they saw the federal government come up with that.

So what was supposed to be great what was supposed to assure our

supply, what was supposed to keep our prices down, has done nothing but

the opposite. These people have seen what government intervention would

do. Instead of allowing the free market system — or the private

enterprise system — to work, they saw what had happened to them because

of the nationalization policies, and here was the NDP promising to take

over more, to do more things, to help more people without ever saying

here they were going to get the funds to do it.

[3:30]

Just as one example of the type of thing we get from them,

[ Page 142 ]

this business that the coal markets are dead, that

coal won't sell..... These are the theorists, these are the economic

experts, who tell us that. I don't know, somehow or other I'm far more

inclined to listen to the people who are willing to put up $10 million

for a feasibility study — the people who are still asking for rights to

mine coal in this province at a development cost, and who are willing

to spend $10 million or $15 million just for initial studies in order

to go ahead. These people are putting money — not ideas — forth;

they're putting money as well as ideas forth, and surely they must have

information as good as that of the theorists who say that coal won't

sell, that the world is going down. If you look at the figures of

southeast coal over the past years, they have gone up every year. We

need those jobs, and we need that revenue in order to....

AN HON. MEMBER: You're giving it away.

HON. MR. BRUMMET: That's the other theory that they espouse:

you should not sell our products at what the buyers will pay; you

should leave it in the ground. There are only two ways that you can

avoid that market situation. One of them is to take more money from the

taxpayers and subsidize the production at this end, which sounds great.

It sounds like you're helping your own people. You subsidize it. The

other thing is to try and somehow or other force people to pay more

than they are willing to pay, and they don't. People sort of decide

that they will only pay so much for a product, and so you've got to....

You can't sell products if there are no buyers.

MR. LAUK: If I offered you $5 for your house, would you sell it?

HON. MR. BRUMMET: No way. I wouldn't sell it to you for

anything. But I would suggest that perhaps what the banker across the

hall there is trying to suggest is that if houses are all selling for

$5, to use his ludicrous example, then we should not build or sell

houses for less than $10 when nobody is paying more than $5. So I

suppose your analogy is correct.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

I would like to point out some of our achievements, even during

these difficult times. The B.C. home program received considerable

support, even though some people said that it wouldn't work. Some $40

million went out to some 50,000 applicants in this province in a

six-month period. It was handled quite efficiently. That was $40

million that went into the economy that the people in effect have

borrowed from the government and are willing to pay back, because they

got a helping hand. They didn't get a handout, and that's what the

people in this province really want. We carried on the program of

housing for seniors, even during these difficult times. We carried on

the program and came out with more.

For the disabled we managed to issue a number of land dispositions

and land developments. People out there must have faith in the future

because they have picked up these lots, built on them, and are carrying

on.

We had that accelerated highway program; we had student employment

programs. Health care and Human Resources carried on, plus projects

like B.C. Place, northeast coal, southeast coal, railway work, and the

development of Prince Rupert. All of these things have gone on.

I know there's the theory, "Well, government is putting some money

into that," but what the opposition seldom mentions is that for the

dollars we are putting into that, there's $3 to $5 to $10 more coming

from the private sector to create those jobs and those industries which

are going to be ongoing industries. Again, one of the members said

something about us turning down.... They said we wouldn't spend $1 in

order to get $3 of federal money. Well, that money runs out — it

doesn't create those industries that we need; it creates short-term

jobs. I think it might be a far better investment for government to

spend $1, along with $5 from the private sector, in order to have these

people create ongoing jobs that will also generate ongoing revenue to

the government. We are willing to work with the partners in industry,

labour and education. We like to encourage people to use their skills;

mention has been made of the TRAC program, which allows more people to

become trained and skilled.

I think we have to maintain good relations with our trading

partners. There seems to be a theory afloat among some people that you

can somehow or other market your, goods to other countries but you

don't have to buy anything back. That does not make for international

trade. If you do not buy anything from other countries, they do not buy

from you. So we have to keep trading with other countries.

There's been a lot of criticism about some of our jobs going out of

the province. But to use one example, if the Japanese were not

interested in buying our coal for whatever reason, then there wouldn't

be the other thousands of jobs in this province as a result of that.

There may be some jobs going out of the province, but because of that

we get thousands of jobs here that would not have happened without that

international trade. I think we have to recognize that as well.

I'd like to touch on one thing before closing. I suppose it is

somewhat of a remote connection, but the first member for Victoria (Mr.

Hanson) was talking about the tragedy of young people and the mental

concerns, the suicides, which in relative terms are really quite small;

nevertheless, he made quite a point of it. I suppose I'm relating

somewhat to my background in education. Where do these attitudes of

hopelessness and despair come from? They come from people like you who

go out and preach doom and gloom, who say that the world is coming to

an end, the sky is falling and so on. No wonder these people have no

hope! When people say: "Look, it could be better tomorrow, there's a

better day around the corner", and so on, then people are not as

inclined to despair and gloom. So you actually contribute with that

negative, attacking attitude, constantly against every bad thing in

society. You point it out and put it completely out of proportion, and

say that the world is bad because two people are bad. I went through

this over and over again in the school system. As a school principal of

some 600 pupils I saw 20 kids in my office time and again, but there

were 580 that I didn't see because they were behaving themselves and

doing a good job. You people would concentrate on those 20 and say that

is what the school is like, instead of what the 580 are like.

I could maybe draw the analogy that is sometimes used in meetings

and conferences, where the speaker puts a large sheet of paper on the

wall, puts a black dot in the middle of it, and asks one person after

another: "What do you see?" One after another those people will say:

"Oh, I see a black dot." That's about the style of the NDP. They don't

see the large

[ Page 143 ]

white sheet of paper that's also on that wall; they

constantly see that black dot. That's all they focus on, to the point

where they get.... Well, they've got blinders on. That's typical of the

NDP. They focus on any small black dot and try to expand it as though

that's all that is on that wall. Really there's a large white sheet of

paper on that wall, but they don't see that. There are a lot of good

things going on in this province, and they will look for a gloomy spot

somewhere and try to build it into something as though that is

representative of our society.

I think there is a great future in this province. The potential is

here, but we do have to develop it. We have to develop some of our

resource industries, and we can do that and maintain a suitable

environment. There are those who would try to tell us that at the rate

we are going the world is going to end within 20 years, or something of

that nature; that we're going to destroy ourselves. I've heard that for

a number of years. What I see happening, and what I've seen happening

in my lifetime, is a great improvement in our lifestyle, environment,

living conditions; in the social services that are provided to people;

in our health and education systems. All of these have certainly

improved immensely even since I first went into education, at the same

time as the negative, carping critics are saying things are getting

worse, things are getting gloomy. They just keep harping on that black

spot and never see the large white sheet of paper — the good things

that are going on in this world.

With our resources and people in this province, and the fact that

every time we run into a problem and solve it, whether it be social,

housing, environment or industrial, we have made progress; we're

further ahead and better off than before we started. So I do not accept

the fact that we have to look at the doom and gloom and the negative

critics. For many years I have been fond of the expression: "What did

the critics ever build?" When you look around this province, what did

they build? Would they have developed the northeast coal, B.C. Place,

the railways, the farming country, the logging industry? No, they would

not have done that. It's the people who had a dream and were willing to

put their money where their theories were, willing to go out and try to

create those jobs. We wouldn't have nearly the jobs.... Again, they

focus on the jobs that we don't have in this province, and they will

focus constantly and forever on the 14 or 15 percent who are unemployed

in this province. What about the other 85 percent who are employed, to

whom we are saying as a government: "Will you people accept some

restraint? Will you help out the 14 or 15 percent who aren't employed?"

Those are the 85 percent of the people in this province who are working

when 15 percent are unemployed. I think we do have to focus on that. I

think we have to remember that we can build on what we have, rather

than constantly attacking for what we do not have.

There are many golden opportunities in this province. The resources,

the people and the skills are there. We need to develop more of them,

and we can and will. But we certainly will not develop this province if

we take a leaf out of the socialists' book and say: "Take the money

away from those developers and give it to the government so that the

government can spread it around." They forget that that source runs out

if you do not deal with it.

I could go on and mention a number of other things, However, I think

I'll conclude with a quotation that I think typifies the difference

between the socialists and the people on this side, the

free-enterprisers.

MR. LAUK: Who said it?

HON. MR. BRUMMET: Author unknown. I made it up.

[3:45]

That quotation goes something like this: "You see things as they are

and you ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not." That

is, I think, the typical difference. You keep asking why this, why

that; on this side of the House there have been dreams, these dreams

have been put into practice and these dreams have developed this

province. When someone said to W.A.C. Bennett, "You can't dam the Peace

River, " he said: "Why not?" Let me tell you, thank goodness we didn't

have those negative people in power then, who would have said: "Why dam

it? You can't do it. It's too difficult." What would we have had

without that electricity program? A lot of industries would not have

developed if those people had not looked at something, had a dream and

said why not.

I would think that the development at Prince Rupert is probably

pretty important to that member — one of the carping critics — at least

in speeches up there. The development at Prince Rupert would not have

happened, because when they had the opportunity their members kept

saying: "Why do it?" This side said: "Why not? It can be done. Why not

do it?" That is why Prince Rupert is a lot better off — not because of

that member's party's views, but because of the people on this side of

the House who have made that happen. These things have happened.

Let us keep dreaming, because those who dare to dream and also take

some action to put it into effect are certainly going to do a lot more

for this world than the people who are the prophets of doom and gloom

and the critics who say nothing can be done and attack everything that

shouldn't be done. With that I will conclude.

MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker. It is a pleasure to be here. I had a

few doubts for a while, but it is a pleasure to be back here. I know

I'm honoured to be here. I'd like to thank both you and the people of

Prince Rupert for allowing me to be here and to speak.

The member who has just taken his place pointed out that the

opposition tends to be critical at times, and he feels that it's wrong

to do that, that the opposition should always be positive and always

endorse, sight unseen, government programs.

Interjection.

MR. LEA: No, thanks.

I think he's right. I think that there is a time for criticism from

the opposition — constructive and negative — and I also think there's a

time for praise and credit where that's due. I would like to hand out

some of that praise before I carry on with the throne speech debate.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

I'd like to talk about two projects: B.C. Stadium and ALRT. My party

has been critical of both projects. We were critical of the stadium. We

were critical of where it would be and the time schedule. We were

critical of the traffic approaches. But after listening to that

criticism and to our suggestions, the government made its decision; and

that's as it should be. The stadium is there where it is as it is, and

it's a

[ Page 144 ]

magnificent, beautiful building. Every British Columbian is and should be proud of that building.

The ALRT is a fact of life. It may not be the system we would have

implemented had we been government, but that isn't to say it's going to

fall apart at the seams, although there is some indication that may be

happening just a little bit. The system is there. It's the system we're

going to have in this province. I think the only criticisms you're

going to get from now on from this side of the House will be about the

details of finishing it. But as a concept it's too far down the track

to pull an emergency stop on the project. We should only offer

criticism about how to complete it as we see it from this side.

Interjection.

MR. LEA: The system that's there; the member is absolutely

correct. Only time will tell whether the system chosen by government

was the best system. That's the way history seems to be. You can take a

look at the Deas Tunnel. At the time there was criticism from our side

of the House about the Deas Tunnel.

AN HON. MEMBER: Wrong again!

MR. LEA: Not necessarily. But we'll never know whether or not

the Deas Tunnel was the proper decision to make at that time, because

we only have the Deas Tunnel to look at.

We're at the beginning of a new parliament. I think it's probably

important in each new parliament during the throne speech that we talk

a little bit about the reasons we were sent here: why we were sent, the

job we have to do, how we should make those decisions and on what

basis. We are here in two capacities. We're here to represent the

people, but we're also here as representatives of the people. It's the

latter that we have to base our decisions on. We can only make

decisions based on our own experience and knowledge. On any given issue

it is impossible to go to the constituents whom you represent and have

a referendum to see whether your decision about how you're going to

vote in here is going to be one that represents the minority or the

majority. The representative democratic system calls for us to use our

own wisdom. It calls for us to use our own knowledge and experience.

It's amazing how the electoral system sorts that all out.

In this parliament, this House, this Legislature we not only come

from every geographic area of the province, but we come from every walk

of life. In here we have trade unionists, lawyers, engineers,

everybody. We truly are representative of British Columbia in this

chamber. We're different in some ways, but in some respects we're very

much alike. I don't believe there is anyone in this House who does not

have the best interests of British Columbia in his heart and mind. I

think we're all here to work for a better British Columbia, so we have

that in common. We probably also agree that the democratic system is

the best system. We probably also agree that the British parliamentary

system is the best way to govern ourselves under a democracy.

The throne speech deals with three main themes: it deals with what

is "desirable" and "essential"; it deals with the words "cooperation"

and "team"; and it deals with the need for restraint. I'd like to take

each of those topics dealt with in the throne speech and take a look at

them. A little earlier I mentioned that we are here to vote on our own

conscience and wisdom. In my speech I intend to prove that if you are

here to vote your conscience and not always to party loyalty, you will

have to vote with us on this side of the House when it comes to the

throne speech.

Let's take the terms "essential" and "desirable." They're big words,

but what do they really mean? "Desirable" means that you want something

but may not necessarily need it. I think everyone would agree with

that. "Essential" probably means that you want it and need it at the

same time. One is "want" and one is "need." Let's take a look at a

number of items mentioned by members opposite and in the throne speech.

Let's take a took at education. All through the ages of civilization

all great thinkers have said that in order to have a democracy that

works you must have an educated people — not only how to build things,

but you also have to understand where we come from. You have to

understand the system that we live under. In school that's probably

called a liberal education. All of the great thinkers through history —

whether they have been conservative or liberal, whether it was Adam

Smith, David Hume or Thomas Jefferson — agree with us that you have to

be well-educated in the liberal side of education in order to be a good

citizen. An educated citizen is a good citizen, and a good citizen is

an educated citizen, or democracy doesn't work.

The difference between us on this side of the House and that side of

the House is that we believe that in a civilized society your needs and

your desires change from what they were when living in a primitive

society. Needs in a civilized society are quite different than in a

primitive society. The basic needs are, I suppose, food, shelter and

clothing. But in a civilized society, where you want to be democratic

and have a system that works for everyone, there are other needs —

other than food, shelter and clothing. I've mentioned one in education.

You need to be well educated. A good liberal education is needed in

order to be a good citizen. On this side of the House, Mr. Speaker, we

feel that that's essential. On the other side of the House they feel

it's only desirable. That's a difference of values, I suppose.

Health care. No one's going to deny that when there's less money

coming into the government coffers you may have to cut back on health

care. But in a democracy shouldn't everyone have equal access to what's

left of the health care system? And yet this government is saying: what

about user fees? The minute you apply user fees in the health care

system, you are making that system more accessible for some than for

others. We on this side of the House feel that it's essential that

everyone have equal access to health care. On the other side of the

House they feel it's only desirable.

Legal services, what civilization has ever come up with a theory

that there should be inequality under the law? The hallmark of every

civilization is that all citizens have equality under the law,

regardless of whether they're rich or poor, black or white, Christian

or Jew — it doesn't matter: equal access to the law. But, Mr. Speaker,

we see a government that is cutting back on legal services, meaning

that there are people in this province who are going to court facing

criminal charges without the benefit of legal counsel. We believe in a

civilized society. It is essential to have legal counsel when you go to

court on criminal charges. The other side feels it's merely desirable.

And to top it all off, they're talking about transferring the

jurisdiction for civil rights to the courts. Isn't it ironic that they

cut the funding for citizens to have legal counsel, and then they

transfer your civil rights to the courts?

[ Page 145 ]

Yes, there is a difference between that side and

this. We define "essential" and "desirable" in different ways. We are

not a primitive society, we are a democratic society, And we have

different needs than the primitive. They aren't just desirable, they

are essential, or we no longer have a higher society. We will revert

back to the primitive. And that thin line between primitive and

democratic is very fine indeed.

[4:00]

Mr. Speaker, it's a matter of priorities. The hon. minister asked

where we would get the money to make these essential things in fact

true. I think both sides of the House had better own up to the fact

that the economic levers that are available to us as a province are

different than they are at the federal level. We only have certain

powers when it comes to economics in the province, and they're really

quite simple. We only have the power to tax and the power to spend the

money. That's the only power we have. Or we have power to borrow, and

spend the money. But we don't have power over interest rates; we don't

have power over tariffs; we don't have power over a number of things

that are vitally important to running your own economy. So we can only

do what we can do, and all we can do is raise money through taxation

and borrowing, and spend that money. A provincial government can only

be judged on where and how they raise that money, and on what and on

whom they spend that money. They ask: "Where are we going to get the

money?" Well, we have different priorities — different priorities of

taxation, different priorities of spending. We don't agree with

government spending on advertising and cutbacks in health care. We

don't agree with government spending on Whistler and cutbacks in legal

aid, or government spending on jobs for the boys and cutbacks in

silviculture. It's a matter of priorities, Mr. Speaker.

Cooperation is a big word. It's a word that the throne speech uses a

number of times. It's a word I heard a new member using repeatedly this

morning — cooperation. It's a new word for these conservatives. Here we

are in hard times. What is the government, in the throne speech, asking

us and the people of British Columbia to do? They are asking us to join

a team. That implies orderliness, Mr. Speaker, because a team without

orderliness is a team that has very little, if any, chance of having

any success. So they want us to join a team. They want us to be orderly

and they want us to join that team with a spirit of cooperation.

Because we are in hard times they want us to cooperate on that orderly

team in order to get the economy going again.

Where are the conservatives on the other side of the House, Mr.

Speaker? Why aren't they telling us: "Here's our conservative message.

We're in hard times. We want the citizens of this province not to

cooperate with one another but we want them to compete with one another

more than they've ever done, to get us out of this recession and to get

the economy going." No, the buzzword is cooperation.

Simply, what they are asking us to do, Mr. Speaker, is to have a

cooperative commonwealth. They've got two C's; they've just left out

the F. Yet on the other side of the House, they say: "You fuzzy-headed

NDPers, don't you know that your philosophy is evil?" The spirit of

cooperation has been the hallmark of this party for 50 years, but when

they're in hard times — when they need the people to be with them —

they ask for cooperation from the people, Mr. Speaker, because they

know that in hard times competition amongst people isn't going to get

us anywhere. They know that.

You might ask, Mr. Speaker, why it is then that the throne speech

asks the people of this province to adopt the theories and the policies

of the social democrats, and yet the social democrats in the House

won't vote for the throne speech. I think that's a fair question. It

lies in why they are asking us to join the team, what they're asking us

to cooperate to do. Mr. Speaker, they are asking us to cooperate with

them on that team to destroy medicare. The answer is no. They are

asking us to cooperate with them to stop the silviculture program. The

answer is no. They are asking us to cooperate with them and to join the

team to make sure that people in this province go to court without a

lawyer. The answer is no. They are asking us to cooperate with them to

move the jurisdiction of civil rights from the Human Rights Commission

into the courts. The answer is "No, we will not cooperate for those

reasons." You use the buzzwords of the social democrats because you've

taken your polls and you've found out through taking those polls that

people do have a spirit of cooperation, that they do want to cooperate;

hence the buzzwords. But do they want to cooperate in ruining some of

the essential services that government supplies — essential if you are

civilized, desirable if you are not?

During the election campaign the Premier labelled us the New

Democratic Party and others — the coalition of dissent. Dissent means

to withhold assent or to differ in opinion. Mr. Speaker, we do both. On

this throne speech we do withhold our assent and we do differ in

opinion. That is the difference between this side of the House and the

other. We are co-operators. It is the very basis of our party, and at

one time was the basis of yours. That was when they were Social Credit,

Mr. Speaker — before they were Conservatives. At one time Social Credit

looked upon the Conservatives as evil, but no more. At one time the

Social Credit was willing to take on the banking system. Now they won't

even vote to have an investigation into the banking system — not since

the Social Credit have become Conservatives.

What about restraint, the item that's sprinkled throughout the

throne speech? People want it, they say. But do they want it at the

price of being civilized, I doubt that. I mentioned that "desirable"

and "essential" are big words. "Need” and "want" may have been better.

When we're talking about restraint, we're talking about a very complex

thing – the economy of British Columbia or of Canada. It has become a

very complicated issue to academics and others. But is it really? I

grew up in this province on a mixed farm. I guess that's what you'd

call it, because we had a logging operation and a sawmill, we raised

some cattle, we had an orchard and we grew some wheat and produce.

There were farms throughout the valley.

I think if you take a look at economics, you have to look at it in a

simpler way, and I'm quite capable of that. What if you had 200 people

living on that mixed farm, and they owned that farm collectively, such

as we citizens of B.C. own this province. Say, on that farm, that every

four to five years we had an election and voted a committee of our

fellow residents on the farm to be our government. Let's imagine that

this farm is a little different than the one that I grew up on or the

farms of the rest of you who grew up on farms. On this farm we run it

exactly through our committee the way we would run this province. The

sawmill itself could be fee-simple land, privately owned land. It could

be a sawmill owned by a family, not necessarily by the collective. We

could be selling all sorts of things. The economy is good and we're

selling pigs so we're living high on the hog. We're selling our orchard

produce, vegetables, lumber and the logging operation's going good.

Everything is fine and we've got markets

[ Page 146 ]

for our produce. The committee that we've elected to look after our farm collectively, our government....

HON. MR. HEWITT: A state family, is that what you're trying to say?

MR. LEA: No, I'm describing democracy in the province of British Columbia, Mr. Minister. You may not recognize it.

Mr. Speaker, everything has been going fine, we can sell everything, money

is coming in and the committee said: "Look, as a service to the citizens

of the farm, why don't we start up a dispensary? We may as well have a little

hospital on the farm to serve the people." That's public service, though,

not the private service of the sawmill that operates out on the back of the

farm. "Maybe we should also start a schoolhouse because probably they'd

be better citizens of the farm if they had an education." So this committee

that we've elected on the farm starts up a number of public services for

the citizens of the farm. Then, all of a sudden, the places that we've been

selling our produce from the farm to aren't buying at such a big rate any

more....

Interjection.

MR. LEA: That's the reason, he says, that's exactly the reason.

So because we're not selling as many pigs, we're not selling as much

lumber and revenue is down, we have to practise restraint on the farm.

Now the government would have us believe that if we were to put

restraint on the dispensary and on the schoolhouse, somehow or other

we'd start selling more pigs and lumber. Just the fact that we cut down

on spending in the schoolhouse is going to make our markets better and

our economy is going to grow — fragile as it is they say. If we were to

cut down on spending for education, the dispensary and all of those

things that the committee is supplying to us, then everything's going

to be fine.

No one has denied that when the revenue is coming in at a slower

pace, you probably can't live as high off the hog as you did when

revenues were great. But as a fair committee, don't you have to make

sure that everyone is under restraint — not just the people in the

schoolhouse and in the dispensary, but wouldn't everybody on the farm

have to take a little bit of a cut? Wouldn't the profit from the

sawmill have to go down just a little or the profit from the pig-farmer

on the farm?

But no, the government took another poll. They found out that the

people wanted restraint, that they wanted to cooperate in order to

build a better economy, and that there were some bigots out there. They

directed their government programs and propaganda not to cooperation or

a better life for British Columbia, but towards bigots — an

unforgivable act. What would we do as citizens of my imaginary farm if

the committee we had elected to look after our common interests did

that? On a farm it's a little easier. There are 200 people on my farm,

so everybody would be pretty much informed as to what's going on. It's

small and efficient enough that the word would get around. That

committee wouldn't last very long; they'd be voted out of office at the

next election. If that committee started taking some of our common

money to pay for advertising to convince the other members of the farm

that they were right, that committee wouldn't last very long either.

That's what this government has done. This government has taken

advantage of the fact that we are living in a complex society. They're

taking advantage of the fact that the medium is the message. Do you

know what the power of the Big Blue Machine was, Mr. Speaker? It wasn't

what happened from the time the election was called; it was what

happened before the, election was called. I think even the Social

Crediters were surprised at their victory.

[4:15]

People who watch the news every night and take an interest in public

affairs and have the education to be able to do that had made up their

minds quite a while ago, for whatever reason, that they were going to

vote either NDP or Social Credit. That advertising wasn't going after

NDPers, and it wasn't going after Social Crediters. That advertising

wasn't going after the people who watch the news and keep up on public

affairs. That advertising was placed in the station break on "Three's

Company, " for the most vulnerable members of our society. In between

the station breaks in "Tic Tac Dough" — that's who they were aiming at.

They didn't care whether their own members thought it was horrible that

they spend taxpayer's money for partisan purposes. They didn't care

that we thought it. They didn't care that the informed people were

against it. They were going after the ill-informed. I think the Social

Credit were as surprised as we were at the results of the Blue Machine.

The question is one of morality.

The new members in this House have to face an anguish that I suppose

we've all faced. It's the anguish of voting your conscience or voting

party loyalty. It is anguish for us, because we not only come here as

citizens and as representatives of citizens, we come here representing

political parties. If those new members can stand up and say that the

things that I've named in my speech in terms of education, health care

and legal aid are not essential to a free democratic society, then I

don't think they're being true to themselves. They have an opportunity

to be true to themselves and the citizens of this province. In a very

short while, we'll know whether they're true to that or true to the

political party they serve.

I haven't heard one of them defend these cuts. One after another,

almost as if they're disquieted, they get up and proclaim: "I am a

conservative. The conservative philosophy is best." But they don't

defend the specifics. It's just riot enough to stand up and say, "I'm a

New Democrat, " or, "I'm a Socred." You should have defended this

throne speech. In my opinion, that task would have been impossible, and

that's why the the members opposite didn't try — because it would have

been impossible to defend the specifics. That's why they stood up and

said things like: "Less government is good government. No government is

excellent government." The only one over there that I heard speak about

anything except the conservative claptrap was the member for Dewdney

(Mr. Pelton), who got up and brought with him his conscience, his

wisdom, his humour and his background as a British Columbia citizen

and, I suspect, a Social Crediter as opposed to a conservative. We will

see how far that conscience takes him at the end of today. Will he vote

for the primitive or for the civilized? Will he vote to send people to

court without a lawyer? Will he vote to educate people in the trades

but not in the liberal arts? Time will tell. But, Mr. Speaker, yes we

do withhold our assent, and we do differ in opinion, and we will be

voting against this throne speech.

[ Page 147 ]

HON. MR. SMITH: Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to rise

here today to speak in the throne debate and to observe the formalities

of adding to the many congratulations to you and to your Speaker; also,

to congratulate very sincerely the members for Vancouver South (Mr. R.

Fraser) and for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. Michael) for their excellent

addresses in reply to the Speech from the Throne. Both maiden speeches

were good; they were heartfelt, simple and clear. I enjoyed them very

much.

I also congratulate other new members in this House who spoke —

members from both sides. As they say at the track, all of them broke

their maidens very well. I thought that in the last week or so we had a

good quality of oratory here — some direct personal comments and

philosophy. I think it was an absolutely superb experience to sit here

and listen to new members speaking in this place. I should also observe

some absent former members who are not with us — some voluntarily and

some involuntarily. I have affection, regardless of the side of the

House that they sat on, for all of them. I think the three on the other

side that are gone involuntarily were all highly decent men. I miss

them on a personal note, I might add, not on a political note. We have

two on our side, too, whom we miss, but they made the decision.

I would like to say that our caucus has been enriched by the

addition of new members. We have a great deal of vitality and energy in

that caucus, and I think that's superb. I would observe as well that we

have two additions from Ottawa whom I welcome here; one is from West

Vancouver Howe Sound, and the other is the new member for the Fraser

Valley, Both are welcomed to this House, and it should be an addition.

It's traditional that we talk about past elections in this House,

particularly in the throne speech. I am going to try and confine myself

to the election that we just went through and not go back, as is

characteristic, to the elections of 1966, 1969, 1972, 1975, and 1979.

MS. SANFORD: Didn't you like McGeer's speech?

HON. MR. SMITH: I think the Minister of Universities, Science

and Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) does that one better than I can,

so I am going to confine myself to a recent election, because about all

I can remember in elections are recent ones. Having worked for a

federal party for many years that wasn't too successful in winning

elections.... I always felt that I attended more wakes than anyone in

the western world besides Harold Stassen. So I try and think of recent

elections and ones that I was involved in.

This election was a victory against all odds and against all

predictions. It was very difficult after it was all over — victory was

very sweet — to find any of the predictors who really believed that we

were going to lose. They all had hedged their bets, they told us, and

they all really had known all along that we were going to win this

election. I don't think that I met more than two or three of the

predictors who actually didn't make the point that they knew all along

that we were going to win.

Why did we win this election? We won the election basically because

people understood that this party offered the best hope for recovery in

this province and for the creation of real long-term jobs. That was the

mandate, and that's why we won. We won because we had a superior

leader, a much better team, and good candidates. There were many other

reasons as well. We won because we had good campaign organization, and

we had the superb assistance of Patrick Kinsella, whom I fully

acknowledge with great pride. We won because the Premier did a

first-rate job, not just for four years but also during that campaign.

[Mr. Pelton in the chair.]

But the mandate was recovery and how you bring about recovery. I

think the interesting thing about the election is that we had a pretty

clear philosophical difference as to how the recovery should take place

and how jobs should be created. That issue was joined in a

straightforward way, and the opposition put forward their antidotes for

recovery and we put forward ours. People believed that there was a

better chance with us, that we could create those jobs by stimulating

the private sector, that that would create permanent jobs and not the

kind of make-work project jobs that the gentlemen opposite were

proposing during the campaign.

I guess I knew that that message was getting across. You always

distrust what you hear as a candidate during a campaign, but I guess I

knew that that message was really getting across when I was at the

doorstep and ran into a number of people — oh, about a dozen or so in a

row — some of whom would advise me that they were members of a

particular trade union and that maybe they weren't in the habit of

voting for my party, but they were going to. do so this time. They were

going to do so because they felt that there was a better chance to

create jobs and to maintain employment with us than there was with the

NDP's policy of creating public-sector jobs, borrowing money and trying

to create jobs that municipalities and other levels of government....

Somebody observed earlier in this debate — I think it was the member

for Kootenay (Mr. Segarty) — that their solutions were reminiscent of

Eleanor Roosevelt and went back to the days of Herbert Hoover.

Certainly the main solution for stimulating the economy was a rather

tired Rooseveltian New Deal one applied to the eighties. I guess people

thought that it just wasn't going to work and that you couldn't take

some pass-through taxing agency like the Petroleum Corporation and

expect to borrow money on the credit of the Petroleum Corporation and

increase the debt. It would not create any long-term jobs, with $500

million being borrowed, but would just add more debt burden. I don't

think that that approach did them any good.

Of course, one thing that the election campaign did was to induce

the gentlemen opposite to actually lay out a few things that they would

do if they became government. For four years they seldom did that, but

during the campaign they started to lay it out, and they laid out the

job creation scheme. One of the next things they laid out — which I

remember with some pleasure and amusement — was the brand-new mining

policy.

Interjection.

HON. MR. SMITH: Well, it was the blue, pin-stripe suit policy

that was laid out, and it was a kiss-and-make-up-with

the-mining-industry policy. "Now we're going to be sympathetic," they

said. "We're going to be sympathetic to the needs of the mining

industry, we're going to do things to help them, we're going to

encourage them and we've got a few little proposals for doing that. But

we're going to encourage them and we're going to be supportive." It

really sounded very good. The Leader of the Opposition put on his best

[ Page 148 ]

conservative tie, and he looked very moderate and

corporate, and everybody thought, my gosh, maybe there's been a reform

in mining policy.

[4:30]

But, lo and behold, they had a candidate in Omineca with the

unfortunate name of Kanary and he had a different policy. He had the

red-flannel underwear policy. He had the real policy, the policy of how

they were going to help mining. That was that they were going to set up

corporations that would control the means of production, control the

marketing and control the distribution of all the products from the

mine. They would sell for us in the markets and they would do all the

things that the private sector, after all, couldn't do as well as big

government could do. That policy of Mr. Kanary's proved a little bit

embarrassing to them, and he was put in his cage for the rest of the

campaign, poor fellow, and they had some difficulty with the

credibility of the rest of their newfound mining policy. I don't think

that the mining industry believed that their conversion was anything

more than a deathbed repentance, and not one that would seriously help

their industry.

That was one of the first sort of turning points in the campaign.

That was about the second week, and I began to feel considerably more

heartened about that stage. Then, of course, at about the midpoint in

the campaign the famous speech about how the restraint program was

going to be dismantled was made. First of all, it was going to be

dismantled, and then it was just going to be readjusted and adapted,

and then maybe it wasn't going to be dismantled at all. But it didn't

matter because the damage was done. I think people said at that stage:

"Well, gosh, if the only solution these guys have got for the economy

is to take away the restraint program which seems to be working and

setting a good example — if that's what they're going to do — we don't

trust them." I think it was downhill all the way from there.

MR. LEA: Don't keep us in suspense. Who won?

HON. MR. SMITH: Oh, yes, the result. That's right. As

underdogs and written off by all the pollsters and polemicists and

publicists, we won the campaign and, indeed, won it very handily. I'm

not going to rub that one in for the next four years. This is the only

day I'm going to do that.

I would also like to thank my campaign manager and my work team of

some 600 for their efforts in my riding. It was a good campaign and a

clean campaign, and I enjoyed it.

Now to get on to the magnificent throne speech and the observations

made in it, which, I notice, have been characterized by the opposition

as being buzzwords. There was other praise that we were borrowing

Reaganomic expressions and that we're captive of the intellectual

brains trust at the Fraser Institute. I took a lot of this as very high

praise. I think institutions such as the Fraser Institute are coming

into their own. They are extremely useful.

MR. LEA: Who funds them, do you know?

HON. MR. SMITH: They're funded by concerned citizens, not by

Commonwealth societies in Nanaimo. Concerned citizens fund them, as

well as small business.

I think the throne speech spells out a pretty clear direction: that

since this election we have a mandate to move towards what I would call

the right part of the centre spectrum, which is what we're doing. As I

see it now, we are a moderate, centrist, conservative administration,

in every sense of the word. We have a mandate to try to stimulate the

economy, which is what we're doing. We have a mandate to stay away from

putting additional burdens onto the taxpayer, by trying to keep taxes

down or reducing them. That is being done, not just in the sense of not

increasing taxes but also in the sense of changing some of the burdens

by bringing in the variable mill rate and allowing municipalities and

local governments to do things to assist a class of taxpayers who

perhaps have not been assisted in the past — that is, the small

businessman. The direction of the throne speech is towards the

stimulation of private business and job creation by that route, not by

massive public-sector spending.

I think the throne speech and the direction of this government will

probably be one of more decentralization; that there will be an

approach towards less government and a streamlining of the way we, do

business, the modernization of some of our techniques and, of course,

some privatization, and also some pruning of boards and commissions,

all of which I think are long overdue. I think the growth of government

over the last 10 or 12 years is something that has to be laid at the

door of both administrations. With revenues down in today's economy,

the public expects us to take direct and immediate steps to ensure that

that growth does not continue. That's what the throne speech postulates

and anticipates, and it is the direction in which we are moving.

I think also that one of the other mandates from the election was a

mandate approving some of the major projects in this province that this

government conceived and has gone ahead with with a great deal of verve

and foresight. Northeast coal is one. It's probably the only energy

megaproject in Canada that is active and going ahead right now. It's

important not only because it's creating a townsite and employment at

Tumbler Ridge, but also because it's opening up a whole new part of the

province and developing new opportunities in the north. The railway

spur line is being constructed; the track to Prince Rupert is being

widened; tremendous bounties are flowing into the port of Prince Rupert

because of additional grain facilities. It is hoped that with the

addition of an LNG plant Prince Rupert will in the future become a

major North American port — as a result of the government's initiatives

in the northwest. That's tremendously important, because it's symbolic

to the north. It's really a continuation of the kinds of policies the

government has pursued since 1976. The former Social Credit government

of W.A.C. Bennett drew his strength from northern development and from

opening up undeveloped parts of this province through the late fifties

and sixties. An imaginative kind of development thrust is what has

really characterized Social Credit in this province in the very best

sense of the party, and that's really what we've returned to.

With Expo '86 and B.C. Place in Vancouver you really have the

civilizing of the life of our major city. The advantages that are going

to flow from those projects and from the development that will surround

the stadium at B.C. Place during the next 10 or 15 years and the

commercial spin-offs that will flow from Expo '86 are going to be

enormous. When I am in other parts of the country, talking to people in

Toronto and Montreal, they cannot imagine how we could create a dome

here for about $125 million — under budget and early. They are

particularly envious in Montreal about the way in which the dome

proceeded.

[ Page 149 ]

I think we have a mandate as well to assert a very strong position

on behalf of this province in federal-provincial negotiations of all

kinds. We're trying to achieve what it has taken years to achieve in

the Crow bill changes, by supporting those changes. I'm supportive of

what the federal government is endeavouring to do by reforming the Crow

rate. I think it absolutely monstrous and antiquated that you can mail

a letter from Swift Current to Vancouver for less money than you can

send a bushel of grain. The difference, of course, is that you know

that the bushel of grain will arrive six months earlier than the letter

— they both go for about the same price.

MR. LAUK: The Tories are against you on that.

HON. MR. SMITH: Some of the Tories are, some are not. I think

what you should be asking yourself, on the opposite side of the House,

is how on earth your party can be in favour of clinging to the Crow

when clinging to the Crow is going to hurt the very people who have

supported you in federal and provincial ridings in this province. It's

going to cost jobs and greatly injure the ability of a number of our

raw processing industries to compete and to transport their products on

any competitive basis, because they can't do so as long as not just the

passage of grain but also the uneconomic distribution and movement of

grain are being subsidized by that 1897 policy.

[Mr, Strachan in the chair.]

The New Democratic federal members from this province have voted in

support of a continuation of the old Crow rate, and I take it that that

is the position as well of the provincial party. I've never heard

anything different.

The New Democratic Party had a gathering — a spiritual reunion — in

Regina last week, and I know some of the members opposite attended. I

hope that at that meeting they did more business behind closed doors

than was reported in the press. In the reports in the press it did not

appear that they dealt with many of their divisions and dilemmas — they

were papered over. While the Leader of the Opposition in this House

apparently made a rousing and good speech — and I wish him well on a

personal basis — they have a number of national as well as provincial

problems that they have not begun to resolve or think through. They'll

have four years to do that, and during those four years it may well be

that we'll hear more.

I'd like to say a few things about social services and the treatment

of social services in the throne speech. Also as a result of the

election, I think the mandate and commitment of the government is

clear: that is, to maintain and make more efficient essential social

services; to try and get better value for the major services that we

now provide — not to dismantle our health care, human resources,

justice or education systems, but to endeavour to make them function

more efficiently. I believe very conscientiously that we can do this.

The answers to all the problems in the social service field are not the

answers that the gentlemen opposite always give us, which is to shovel

more money out of a truck. Reorganization and a number of efficiencies

can be brought to the delivery of social services.

[4:45]

I have the honour now to head a new ministry – the Ministry of the

Attorney-General — which had a budget of approximately $350 million

last year. It also has approximately 5,000 employees, most of whom work

in the fields of corrections, police or court services. It's a

far-flung, complicated ministry, but it provides excellent basic

services across this province. In carrying out the duties of minister

in this department, I will endeavour to be fair. I will also go out and

look first hand at problems in institutions. Having had a bit of

experience in the justice field for about 17 years. I’m not hampered by

quite as much learning as I had to do when I became Minister of Energy,

Mines and Petroleum Resources; I knew little about that subject or

about natural gas. The justice field still requires, I think, a great

deal of identification with the people working in it, and requires a

minister who gets out to see how it functions, not a minister who just

stays in his office. Not liking very much remaining in offices and

doing paperwork, I intend to be out a great deal.

I congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, for listening to all our deliberations, and commend the throne speech to you.

MR. LAUK: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: I'll get to that. This is the first time they've

started heckling me before I could congratulate the Speaker's

elevation. I congratulate the member for Prince George South (Mr.

Strachan), who has that quiet reserve and even-handedness in the chair.

I know there are a number of concerned people in his constituency with

serious issues; they bring them to your attention and you hesitate, as

always, to bring them out in the House. That should be a good example

for the Speaker of the House. It apparently hasn't been so far.

Nevertheless, I congratulate you and the Speaker on his elevation.

I want to talk a little bit about democracy, because I have heard a

number of speeches that left me a little concerned about the state of

democracy. We've come a long way since — the Attorney-General should

know this — Runnymede. In 1215, I think it was. That's a long time ago.

Where is Magna Carta now that we really need her? The member for Delta

(Hon. Mr. Davidson), Speaker of the House, has been making speeches

outside of the House, attacking, with his rapier thrust wit, the GVRD

and Derrick Humphreys, mayor of West Vancouver. B.C. Hydro has cut off

his hydro because they feel he's a commie or a pinko. May Brown and

Marguerite Ford are having nervous breakdowns. They were on the phone

the other day, saying: "Gary, for goodness' sake, tell them we're not

commies."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order' Perhaps we could return to the throne speech debate.

MR. LAUK: I want to compliment the Attorney-General on his

usually thoughtful approach to debate in this House, and then depart

from that myself. But I want to congratulate him. As a member of the

bar, I'm pleased that he was appointed Attorney-General. I would have

hopes that a New Democrat would have been in that seat: however, if one

is not to be, then the member for Oak Bay-Gordon Head is worthy of that

position. I know that he will apply himself with heart and commitment

and with a sense of justice of that motto over the law school which he

and I attended. I won't give you the Latin because I can't remember it

all, but it says: "Let right be done though the heavens fall." I think

when that....

[ Page 150 ]

MR. LEA: Turkey-Lurkey.

MR. LAUK: The Panco debate will take place a little later.

I think when that phrase was given to the law and to our

parliamentary system, "though the heavens may fall" referred just as

much to no matter who is affected by that but also that political

considerations must be set aside in the administration of justice, and

right must then be done.

I was confused at a number of things that happened since the last

time we met, albeit with some different faces. There's been government

by decree. For 700, 800, 900 years it's been the relentless evolution

of the British parliamentary system that the House of Commons — the

Legislature — will vote on supply. It was a way in which we could limit

the absolute power of the monarch, who is now a constitutional monarchy

represented by the executive council. That was the way in which we

could preserve the very life-blood of the democratic system and

preserve that basic tenet in the Magna Carta of "no taxation without

representation." That representation is on both sides of the

Legislature.

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: The Attorney-General said: "That was the Boston Tea

Party." He obviously has not read the Magna Carta. He said earlier in

his speech, to be honest, that he could only recall back to May 5. I

can understand that 1215 is going back a little further than that, as I

understand it.

I notice that the second member for Vancouver–Little Mountain (Mr.

Mowat) is not in the chamber. I wanted to comment on something he said

in his debate on the throne speech, which I thought by and large was

all right. But then he attacked the mayor of the city of Vancouver — as

the Speaker of the House has attacked the GVRD — and as you know, one

does not do that kind of thing. Even ordinary members of the House

should not attack other levels of government. There are forums in our

structure for doing that. If the member for Vancouver–Little Mountain

wanted to attack the mayor of the city of Vancouver, he should have

done two things: firstly, he should have not mis-stated facts upon

which he based that attack — he should have done more research; and

secondly, there are forums to which he has access in which to launch

such an attack. He said the mayor was against the stadium. This is the

limited kind of recollection we're suffering from in this chamber. I

want to remind the hon. members that when Mike Harcourt was an

alderman, he argued that the site of the stadium should be where it is

today. He supported the promotion of the stadium and didn't have a

critical word for it. I had differing views from time to time, but it

should be pointed out that in this chamber honour demands that when you

make that kind of critique, you be correct and you go to the trouble of

doing the research. I know the member for Vancouver–Little Mountain was

around. Was he not reading the newspapers then, or does his memory,

very much like the Attorney-General's, only go back to May 5? I can

imagine....

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: Yes, and the mayor himself has been dragging interested people

from British Columbia around the countryside to see if we can't get a major

league baseball franchise, which would he a great addition to our great city

of Vancouver. Everyone I know supports that. So I think it's a little sad

that in the maiden speech of the hon. member he would launch such an attack

on the city of Vancouver and the people of Vancouver. The mayor of the city

of Vancouver was elected by a very large majority of the people — even in the

constituency of the hon. member. It's a very unfortunate thing, but I am

going to have to go to his constituency and tell some of the folks there that

he's been conducting sneak attacks on the mayor of the city of Vancouver

here in this chamber.

The reading for today, Mr. Speaker, occurred to me, and I had to dig this out of the library. I read it some years ago: In Defence of Politics ,

by Bernard Krick. It's in the library. I recommend it heartily to all

of you who can read. Page 16 has a few comments about the kind of thing

that we have been witnessing in this chamber in the last few days,

particularly from the first minister. It's one thing to win an election

— and we can all speculate about why or who and what the mandate means

and so on, but the "X" is the final answer and we all have to live by

that, except for the contestants in Maillardville-Coquitlam who are

hoping that the "X" is not the final answer. That is one thing. But to

display an arrogance and a contempt for the democratic process to the

extent of showing that contempt fo