2008 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 38th Parliament

HANSARD

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

official report of

Debates of the

Legislative Assembly

(hansard)

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Afternoon Sitting

Volume 37, Number 6

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Page

Introductions by Members

Statements (Standing Order 25 b )

Port Alice

C. Trevena

Education funding in Surrey

D. Hayer

Community social services workers

J. McGinn

Richmond Olympic Oval

O. Ilich

Literacy initiatives in Malahat–Juan de Fuca area

J. Horgan

Olympic Games countdown events

J. Rustad

Oral Questions

Impact of Olympic security costs on utility and transit rates

C. James

Hon. C. Hansen

J. Horgan

B.C. Hydro and ICBC purchase of Olympic Games tickets

H. Bains

Hon. C. Hansen

Accountability for Olympic Games costs

H. Bains

Hon. C. Hansen

M. Farnworth

Hon. C. Hansen

Rural agency stores and government liquor retail policies

C. Wyse

Hon. R. Coleman

C. Trevena

R. Austin

Government support for forest workers

N. Macdonald

Hon. P. Bell

B. Simpson

Reports from Committees

Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services, report for the fourth session of the 38th parliament

R. Hawes

Second Reading of Bills

Finance Statutes (Deficit Authorization and Debt Elimination) Amendment Act, 2009 (Bill 48) (continued)

R. Fleming

R. Sultan

J. Kwan

D. Hayer

M. Farnworth

Hon. C. Hansen

Committee of the Whole House

Finance Statutes (Deficit Authorization and Debt Elimination) Amendment Act, 2009 (Bill 48)

B. Ralston

Hon. C. Hansen

M. Farnworth

Report and Third Reading of Bills

Finance Statutes (Deficit Authorization and Debt Elimination) Amendment Act, 2009 (Bill 48)

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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The House met at 1:33 p.m.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Introductions by Members

N. Macdonald: It gives me great pleasure to introduce some representatives from rural agency stores. These are the small stores that serve our communities. We have Annette and Tim Brause from Scotch Creek in the Shuswap. We have Gerry Myers, again from the Shuswap, and we have Brad Davies from Sorrento in the Shuswap. I ask the House to join me in making them feel welcome here.

Hon. J. McIntyre: Today in the members' gallery we have a very special visitor from Bangladesh. His Excellency A.M. Yakub Ali, the High Commissioner of Bangladesh to Canada, is making his first official visit to British Columbia. He's accompanied by Vancouver resident Dr. Matiul Alam, who is a professor, a master of educational technology, at UBC. I'll have the pleasure of meeting with His Excellency later this afternoon for what I'm sure will be a very productive meeting. So please join me in giving our visitors a very, very warm welcome.

S. Fraser: Visiting us today in the gallery are representatives from the Sechelt First Nation. Today we have Chief Garry Feschuk. We have Coun. Tom Paul; and we have Coun. Wesley Jeffries, Coun. Jordan Louie, Coun. Robert Joe and their administrator Jasmine Paul. Would you all please help me make them feel very welcome.

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R. Lee: In the gallery today we have four visitors: from Shenzhen, Guangdong, Xin Fan; from Vancouver, Tina Quan; from Richmond, Hanna Peng; and from Burnaby, Andrew Wang. Mr. Fan is an entrepreneur in the environmental industry, especially in sewage treatment. Would the House please join me to make them welcome.

C. Wyse: It is indeed my pleasure today to welcome Ted Hlokoff from Anahim Lake. He has come to join us here in the Legislature. It will take Ted a total of three days to be here to watch the business done here in the Legislature. Ted is a rural agency store owner.

Likewise, I'd like to introduce Ian Kangas of Adams Lake, who has also joined us here today. I'd ask the House to make both of these gentlemen most welcome.

Hon. I. Black: I would like the House to help me welcome 26 of our finest public servants in the House today. We've got representatives from the workplace technology services division of my ministry who have come to see exactly what we do in this great building. Please make them feel welcome.

J. Horgan: I join with the Minister of Labour in welcoming two constituents of mine from his ministry. Sandy Carmichael is here from Langford — downtown Langford, that is — and Andrea Gibbs from Sooke. Would the House please make both of them welcome and thank them for their service to British Columbia.

D. Hayer: It gives me great pleasure to introduce 66 grade 5 students visiting here from Surrey Christian School, which is in my riding of Surrey-Tynehead. They're here with their teachers — Miss Allison Penner, Miss Janice MacDonald and Miss Jackie Hofstede — as well as 14 volunteers. I met them outside. They have three classes here. Would the House please make them very welcome. And thank you to the parents for coming over and joining the students.

B. Simpson: I would like to recognize Mr. Trent Leggett who is in the House. Mr. Leggett is from Williams Lake and owns the Mountain View store. Now, I understand that the member for Cariboo South taught Mr. Leggett. Notwithstanding that, he turned out to be a fine citizen and entrepreneur in the Williams Lake area. Mr. Leggett is part of the rural agency store delegation here to seek fairness from the government. I'd like the House to make them feel welcome.

Mr. Speaker: Does the member for Cariboo South wish him to withdraw that mark? [Laughter.]

Hon. M. de Jong: In the gallery today the chief councillor of the Sechelt First Nation, Mr. Garry Feschuk, is here. I hope all members will make him feel welcome.

R. Austin: On behalf of my colleague the member for North Coast, I would like to introduce Craig and Elaine Widsten. They're with the Shearwater Marine group who provide services through rural agency stores in Denny Island and Bella Bella. Would the House join me in making them most welcome.

R. Hawes: In the gallery today is Mr. Rob Thiessen of the Hope for Freedom Society. They provide just absolutely first-class drug and alcohol addiction recovery services in the Tri-Cities area. Could the House please make Rob welcome.

C. Trevena: I, too, would like to ask the House to make welcome some people who are here to discuss the issue of rural agency stores. John Guy from Saturna Island and Daniel Kim from Galiano Island are in the gallery to watch proceedings and to discuss the issue later on.

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G. Gentner: In the gallery today are some of Delta's finest school students. In particular, I'd like to introduce to the gallery, from the Delview Secondary School, Principal Don Younger, Sylvia Showler and Maureen and 31 grade 11 students. And now that I have the ear of the minister, this school certainly needs some new gym equipment.

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Statements

(Standing Order 25

b) port alice

C. Trevena: When you drive down the road approaching Port Alice, your breath is literally taken away by the beauty and majesty of its location. On the shores of Neroutsos Inlet the small community stretches along the base of the hillside. Turning right before you get to the village, you come to Jeune Landing, a Western Forest Products site, and if you go through the village, you end up at the mill, which was built more than 90 years ago.

Four years ago the mill was closed, the previous owners taking equipment and, along with it, the pensions of the workers. It has now reopened, largely thanks to the hard work, commitment and belief of the community, led by former mayor Larry Pepper and the CEP local. Unfortunately, it is struggling, like all of the forest sector, and Western around Port Alice is likely down until April.

Port Alice is a community that has taken its knocks and continues to do so. The hospital was downgraded to a health centre but is still vital since the village is home to heavy industry. The community continues a longstanding fight with VIHA to get a permanent doctor. At present the locum comes in every two weeks, and as one person said to me: "You just have to time your heart attack."

There's always a question of whether the arena will remain open, and the village is using all avenues to get funding to replace the roof on the community centre, a building vital for maintaining the sense of belonging, ownership and community. It's the school gym, the library, the meeting room, the evacuation centre — the true community centre.

The latest pitch is to Towns for Tomorrow. Luckily, Sea View School is very active, and it received a fabulous classroom makeover last year in a national competition. I invite anybody to go and see it. It's remarkable. The village is diversifying. It's working on building a marina. A resort is going to be built, and retirees and second homeowners continue to drive across Highway 30 over to the west coast.

Port Alice is a community with strength and with resilience, a community determined to survive. Like other small communities across the north Island, the people who live there are rooted and committed to the community and want to ensure their communities live beyond this recession.

education funding in surrey

D. Hayer: Education is the key to our future, and Surrey residents are benefiting from the emphasis our government has placed on British Columbia being the best educated in Canada, if not the world. The facts speak for themselves in Surrey. Since 2001 we have completed over 31 school capital projects in Surrey, worth $171 million — including the new schools, renovations and seismic upgrades — with even more to come.

We now have ten StrongStart B.C. early learning centres in Surrey to support the youngest learners. For all those Surrey students who want to go for higher learning, we have the world-class trades and technology centre in Cloverdale and a magnificent new university campus at Simon Fraser University. Just a few months ago we also announced the upgrading of Kwantlen University College to the full degree-granting Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Surrey residents, Surrey parents, students and PACs of Fraser Heights are very excited about it, and they look forward to more services as we keep protecting education funding. They can access early learning opportunities from kindergarten to K-to-12 and post-secondary programs such as trades training and university degrees without having to leave home.

Even with the downturn in the economy, our government is continuing to protect and make sure education is a priority, and today education funding from K-to-12 is at an all-time high at $5.67 billion, a 23 percent increase since 2001 despite being approximately 50,000 fewer students in the system.

My constituents also are happy to see that we have the highest funding for post-secondary education we have ever received, and they're looking forward to government providing good education and good funding to education so their kids can be successful, stay at home and continue providing good jobs and good education opportunities and good citizens for the future.

community social services workers

J. McGinn: I rise today to recognize the important contributions that community social service workers make to this province. Since 2008 more than 20 municipal councils across B.C. joined with community social service workers to ask that March be made community social service awareness month.

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Often we don't recognize the important work done by our community social service workers. This work includes providing employment and housing supports for people with developmental disabilities, support for women and children who are victims of violence, specialized services for immigrants and first nations families, and child care, to name a few.

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The people working in these areas are the backbone of our community. These are the people who look after our most vulnerable populations and work to ensure that we have a caring, compassionate and just society. People like Cherie Dobbie, an infant development consultant with Sunrise Resources for Early Childhood Development. She works with families to ensure that children who are at risk of developmental delays have the services and care they deserve.

People like Angela McDougall and the staff and volunteers at battered women's support services. As they enter their 30th year this year, they are proud to know that they serve over 8,000 women a year who are survivors of domestic violence.

Individuals like Bunny LeBlanc, team leader on intake and investigation at the Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services, one of the largest urban aboriginal child services organizations in Canada. They work to protect some of British Columbia's most vulnerable children and ensure they get care that's integrated into aboriginal communities.

In my experience working in the community social service sector, I've met some of the most passionate and dedicated individuals who have made an immeasurable impact in people's lives. We should be proud that the province of British Columbia contains such phenomenal, dedicated social service workers.

I just hope that all the members here today will join me to designate March as Community Social Services Month.

RICHMOND OLYMPIC OVAL

O. Ilich: Today marks exactly one year to the start of the Olympic Games, and tonight my municipality of Richmond is celebrating at the Olympic Oval. The oval was opened to the public on December 12 last year, exactly 14 months before the opening of the games. Already 70,000 people have visited the oval, or they've skated on the Olympic ice, or they've used the fitness facilities.

The oval is one of the most impressive indoor competition venues for the games, and I was delighted to see the CBC broadcasting nationally from the oval last night. It looked great on television.

A wide range of green building innovations have been incorporated into the oval. The massive roof structure has over one million board feet of pine beetle wood incorporated into it. The stormwater management system also captures rainwater from the enormous roof, and it's used for toilet flushing and irrigation. There are other green innovations as well.

For my community of Richmond, this extraordinary facility is anticipated to be a keystone of sport and wellness going into the future. Richmond already takes pride in having the longest life expectancy and the lowest obesity rates in Canada, thanks in part to active lifestyles and excellent parks and recreation programs.

Given the community vitality, the oval was primarily designed for legacy use while delivering on all of the Olympic venue specifications. Following the games, the oval will transform into a multi-sport and wellness complex to service sport organizations and provide the greater Vancouver area with a facility for sport medicine, sport science, healthy living promotion and injury rehabilitation.

Other Olympic legacies in Richmond include a 2010 arts and cultural program designed to create ongoing legacies for local arts and culture groups. This has led to the first annual Richmond Winter Festival of the Arts, which began February 1 and runs until March 15. It's going to become an annual event, giving increased profile to the arts. All in all, we're very proud in Richmond of the oval.

Mr. Speaker: Just to remind you, Members. They are two-minute statements.

LITERACY INITIATIVES IN

MALAHAT–JUAN DE FUCA AREA

J. Horgan: It's two minutes for me, hon. Speaker.

I want to bring to the attention of members two positive literacy initiatives in my community, the first involving students at Hans Helgesen Elementary in Metchosin. On January 23, World Literacy Day, students at the school joined with students across Canada in hopes of being entered in the Guinness Book of World Records . Their goal was to be part of the record for the most children reading with an adult in multiple locations. Interesting category.

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Teachers in classrooms across the country began the simultaneous read at 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. Hans Helgesen had 136 students participate. I want to congratulate the principal, Julia Sahota, and all the staff, students and parents that are participating in this possible world record. Our local numbers will be sent to the literacy foundation, along with the numbers from more than 1,000 other locations across Canada.

The second literacy success story involves an old friend and mentor from my youth. Since 2005 the Sooke Lionesses have been supporting literacy at Port Renfrew Elementary. It all started when my friend, retired district principal George Gurney, drove Lionesses and former teachers Jean Whiffan and Jean Conway, retired district primary supervisor Bev Lenahan and author Julie Lawson to Port Renfrew to deliver 26 children's books written by Ms. Lawson, herself a former teacher at John Muir Elementary in my district.

The donation was gratefully received by Principal Ruman McArthur, the staff at the school and the very excited students. In return, Julie was presented with drawings from the students, and George got to make a

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rare trip to Port Renfrew that did not include returning with a couple of salmon or two.

From that beginning, the Lionesses have continued the tradition of delivering new books every December. Weather and — listen up, Minister of Transportation — road washouts permitting, students, teachers and Lionesses enjoy the opportunity to share in the joy of reading. Two great examples, hon. Speaker and members of this House, of literacy in action in Malahat–Juan de Fuca.

OLYMPIC GAMES COUNTDOWN EVENTS

J. Rustad: Today is an exciting day for the people of B.C. Communities big and small, right across this province, are celebrating. Today we mark the one-year countdown of the 2010 Winter Games, one year until we take the world stage and show them what it means to be British Columbians.

Northern communities are also celebrating this historic milestone and showing off their B.C. spirit, from Prince Rupert through to Dawson Creek. For example, in my constituency, Vanderhoof residents are enjoying a fun week of festivities at this year's Nechako Valley Winterfest. With family activities, including a curling bonspiel, hockey tournaments, sleigh rides, movie night and many more events than I have time to mention, our community is showcasing its own Olympic spirit.

As part of the winterfest, our very own Olympian, Tuppy Collard, who competed in the biathlon at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, is visiting three elementary schools in Vanderhoof and will talk about her Olympic experience. Tuppy has not only proudly represented our province and our country, but she has been instrumental in giving back to her community and fostering our local Olympic spirit. She is a fantastic example of the north's contribution to the Olympic spirit.

B.C.'s rural communities are home to a rich diversity of culture, heritage and traditions. This is exactly what our games will be representing to the world next year. Winterfest and all of the one-year-countdown events are a great way to kick off the 2010 games celebrations that demonstrate not only the spirit of B.C. but the spirit of our rural communities. I encourage all British Columbians to enjoy their local countdown festivities as the excitement for the 2010 games builds.

Oral Questions

impact of olympIC SECURITY

COSTS on utility and transit rates

C. James: Can the Energy Minister tell this House how much extra B.C. Hydro is paying or will pay to cover Olympic security costs? And will those costs be passed on to ratepayers?

Hon. C. Hansen: Today is an exciting day in British Columbia.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. C. Hansen: Today is one of those days when we have the eyes of the world on British Columbia. The Today show is broadcasting out of New York. Actually, they're broadcasting from Whistler through New York to their North American audience. CBC is broadcasting nationally all across Canada.

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What they're seeing is the excitement in British Columbia. They're seeing the excitement of the countdown to the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

I find it so sad that the Leader of the Opposition and her opposition colleagues cannot for just one day join in the celebration. Instead, they continue to bash the Olympics. It's very regrettable.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Leader of the Opposition has a supplemental.

C. James: Unlike this government, I believe you can actually stand up for taxpayers and support the Olympics. Both of those are possible.

As we know….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Just take your seat for a second.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Proceed.

C. James: This government has shown over and over and over again that they can't be trusted to come clean on Olympic costs. We hear it again from the minister. Last year Hydro said security costs will add at least $7 million. They applied for a rate increase of up to 7.5 percent, in part to cover those security costs.

Again, my question is to the Energy Minister. How much more will British Columbians pay to turn on their lights to cover security costs that this minister still won't come clean on?

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Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Continue, minister.

Hon. C. Hansen: I'm sure that the NDP are the type of people that go to a two-year-old's birthday party and douse the candles.

We saw the excitement with the unveiling of the torch today. We saw the excitement in the eyes of the public in Whistler this morning when they couldn't wait to be photographed with it, to touch it, just to be near the Olympic torch or anything that's associated with the games.

This is a time for us to celebrate. This is a time for us all to stand up and celebrate the huge success of the Olympic Games that is in the making. It's time for the opposition to get on board and join with British Columbians in celebrating this tremendous day in the eyes of the world.

Mr. Speaker: The Leader of the Opposition has a further supplemental.

C. James: I'll tell this minister and every member on that side what it's time for. It's time for this government to come clean on the real cost of the Olympics for British Columbians.

In its submission to BCUC, Hydro said they're not alone in having to look at additional costs. TransLink, Telus, Terasen, B.C. Transmission Corporation — all in the same boat, all of them saying their customers are going to have to pay millions for security costs that VANOC and the government won't cover. I remind the minister that it was his Premier who was famous for saying: "There's only one taxpayer."

Will the minister end this charade and tell us how many different ways this government is going to dip into taxpayers' pockets to pay for security costs?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. C. Hansen: In 365 days from today we will have 250,000 visitors from around the world. We'll see about 8,000 athletes and officials, and we'll see about 10,000 journalists coming to British Columbia.

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I can assure the member that the RCMP and the federal government are doing a first-class job in developing a security plan that will make sure that those hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to British Columbia are going to be able to enjoy the best Winter Olympics ever, knowing that they're safe and secure in British Columbia and knowing that they can celebrate along with the other 4.4 million British Columbians who will be celebrating one of the greatest events that will ever happen in the history of British Columbia.

J. Horgan: Terasen Gas has been given the green light to ding ratepayers to pay for security costs.

Interjection.

Mr. Speaker: Member.

J. Horgan: B.C. Hydro has been given the green light to ding their ratepayers for security costs. We're told that the B.C. Transmission Corporation, Telus, TransLink, and other utilities in British Columbia are all looking at increased costs to pay for the Olympic Games security challenges.

This is a very simple question to the minister. When everybody goes home, when the venues' lights go out, how much will British Columbians have to pay to turn on their lights, to make a phone call or to take a bus, to pay for your security costs? How much is it going to be?

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members. Members.

Minister.

Hon. C. Hansen: It's obvious. We know that the Leader of the Opposition did not support the games from day one. She claims today that she supports it, and yet what we hear from the NDP and the Leader of the Opposition is "Bash the Olympics" one day, "Bash the Olympics" the next day.

I can tell the opposition members that this side of the House supports the Olympic Games. We support the athletes. We support the communities that are celebrating throughout British Columbia today, and we're going to join with the world as we celebrate 365 days from today when we enjoy the opening ceremonies of what will be the world's best winter Olympic Games ever in the history of….

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

J. Horgan: As much as we are always delighted to see the Minister of Finance and his gold-plated pompoms, standing up being supportive of the Olympics and being concerned about cost to taxpayers are not mutually exclusive. We on this side of the House are trying to get an answer from that minister about what the true costs are going to be.

So 365 days to go until the world comes to British Columbia. When are you going to tell British Columbians what it's going to cost to hold the big party? When are you going to come clean, be honest with taxpayers? How much is it going to cost to turn on the lights? How

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much for a bus ride? How much for a phone call? You're responsible. Answer the question.

Hon. C. Hansen: I will tell you who will feel like partying in British Columbia, and it's the thousands of workers who are going to be employed because of the fact that we're holding the Olympic Games. It will be all British Columbians that will be able to party and celebrate the fact that we have economic stimulus as a direct result of the games to the tune of about $10 billion.

I can tell you that every one of us on this side of the House are going to be celebrating and feel like partying because this is going to be the best Olympics ever, and I'll tell you that I personally will be partying when the Canadian men's and women's hockey teams bring home gold.

B.C. HYDRO AND ICBC PURCHASE

of olympic games tickets

H. Bains: It seems that there is a hidden Olympic cost in every corner of this government, and they don't end with security costs alone. Here are a couple of other examples. B.C. Hydro and ICBC are also using ratepayers' money to buy their own pool of prime tickets: men's hockey final, best skating events, all top-notch.

Between these two Crown corporations, they have all ordered almost 4,000 of these tickets for their executives and high-end customers, but they refuse to tell us how many of those tickets are being issued to them and how much it would be costing those ratepayers.

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To the minister: will the minister tell us today how many of these tickets have been bought by B.C. Hydro and ICBC and at what cost to the ratepayers?

Hon. C. Hansen: I must say that the opposition critic is showing a considerable amount of hypocrisy today. While he stands up…. While he's outside in the foyer this morning trying to get his picture taken with children who are celebrating the Olympics, he comes in this House on the day of the 365-day countdown and bashes the Olympics. This is an opposition party that doesn't appreciate the fact that the world is watching us.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Minister, just take your seat.

Members. Members.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. C. Hansen: The world is excited about the Olympics. We are excited about the Olympics. It's about time that the NDP got on board and got excited about the Olympics as well.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

accountability for

olympic games costs

H. Bains: This is a pathetic display of non-accountability and irresponsibility by this minister. The performance of this minister for the last few days clearly shows that everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else. No one is being held accountable to the taxpayers.

B.C. Liberals point to the federal Tories. Yesterday the federal minister said: "Don't look at me. I never endorsed $175 million." VANOC tells the utilities that they're on their own. In all of this there's one person who counts: the taxpayer. The taxpayer is getting the runaround from the Liberal government right here.

Again to the minister. He can't stall any longer. Will he promise the taxpayers that when the final security budget is made public every cost borne by the taxpayers will be included in that budget?

Hon. C. Hansen: As I indicated yesterday, it is the federal government, through the RCMP, that has responsibility for the security plan and the security budget overall. So I refer the member back to the answers from previous days where this was canvassed.

But I can tell you what will be part of that accountability: the benefits that flow from the Olympics, where we talk about billions of dollars of economic activity. We talk about the dollars that visitors will be spending in our restaurants and on our taxis and in our hotels and travelling around the province to see what a wonderful province that British Columbia is.

The benefits that are going to flow from the TV exposure that we're getting today on NBC, being broadcast across the United States, CBC, CTV, Global Television…. All of the networks are broadcasting what a fabulous place British Columbia is, and that will be part of the huge and considerable legacy that we will have for British Columbia once the games are over.

OLYMPIC GAMES TICKETS

M. Farnworth: Well, the minister couldn't answer the question, but I can answer it for him. ICBC has purchased 2,261 tickets to the Olympics, including events such as the gold-medal hockey finals, curling finals — all the primo events.

My question is to the minister responsible for ICBC. Given the statements that have come from the Minister of Finance and others that…. You know, when every British Columbian should be able to enjoy the games, doesn't he believe it's appropriate that any tickets bought by ICBC, particularly to gold-medal events such as the men's hockey final, should go to British Columbians

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who otherwise wouldn't be able to attend the games and not to corporate executives?

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I think each of us, certainly, on this side of the House knows, because we went on line trying to get tickets with very, very limited success. I know I was certainly disappointed I didn't get the ones that I would have liked to have. But there's been a huge demand for tickets from around the world, and we know that they've been a huge sellout.

Actually, VANOC is now projecting that they're going to receive more revenue than they otherwise would have from ticket sales. That's part of the success of the games and part of what will make this the best games ever.

RURAL AGENCY STORES and

government liquor retail policies

C. Wyse: Rural agency stores provide access to food, toiletries and liquor to residents in our province's smallest communities and the tourists that visit them, but these stores are not being treated fairly by this government. Since 2003 the Campbell government has progressively reduced the price that private liquor stores pay for liquor. They now get a 16 percent discount as well as assistance with their operating costs. Rural agency stores have had their discount frozen at 10 percent for 24 years and get little assistance with their operating costs.

What these operators want to know is: when will this government provide rural agency stores with the same discount rate and assistance with operating costs paid for the private liquor stores?

Hon. R. Coleman: Government has recently made changes to reduce the costs to improve the services to rural agency stores across B.C. by providing free freight, increasing product availability and improving reporting. Government has also recently completed a review of these stores in conjunction with their association, which is under review by the Liquor Distribution Branch.

On the second part of the question, rural agency stores have liquor and grocery stores and confectionery stores and sell dry goods as well. They are not liquor stores. This is an add-on to their business, and at this time, there is no review of the discount to rural agency stores taking place.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

C. Wyse: The agency stores are looking to be treated with the same treatment that this government gives to the private liquor stores. Private liquor stores have donated almost $250,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party. The group representing private liquor stores, called ABLE, not only donates to the B.C. Liberals but is presently sponsoring advertisements supporting the Liberals. Is this why private liquor stores receive such a sweetheart deal from the Liberals?

Hon. R. Coleman: I guess the first piece of history was that those guys on the other side of the House actually opposed rural agency stores when they came into place in the first place. So they don't actually support the whole concept.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Hon. R. Coleman: These are not liquor stores. These are rural stores that are general stores that sell groceries and what have you. I'd like know if the member is advocating against the wishes of the BCGEU and other people in society that we should be putting liquor in grocery stores around the province of British Columbia.

This is an add-on that's given to rural communities to their business. It is not them being exclusive as liquor stores, and that's why they're treated differently, hon. Member.

C. Trevena: I think that if the minister spoke to people who ran the rural agency stores, he'd understand that yes, they know they're not liquor stores, but they are effectively carrying out government business on behalf of the government but at a cost to themselves. They often lose money by running these liquor agencies.

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Private liquor stores receive a 16 percent discount and get help with operating costs. The rural agency stores, which are government licensed, get fixed prices and get a 10 percent discount. That hurts wherever they are, whether it's the Sointula co-op or the Heriot Bay store or the store in Sayward — wherever they're trying to run these stores.

Maybe the minister can answer for me the question which was posed to me by the manager of the co-op on Hornby Island, who asked quite directly: "Who lobbied the government on behalf of the private stores to get them such a good deal?"

Hon. R. Coleman: I'll repeat for the member that these are not liquor stores. These are general stores that have an add-on to their business, and they can have it

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voluntarily. They don't have to take the licence if they don't want it. By reducing and giving free freight and doing some efficiencies, we have actually saved about a million dollars to rural agency stores in the last year.

With regards to some changes we have, we have a report in front of us that we're looking at. But they are treated differently because they are not full-line liquor stores, as liquor stores are. Private or government liquor stores cannot sell groceries, cannot sell confectionery and cannot sell dry goods. That's why the difference.

So in rural B.C. they have an add-on to their business by rural agency stores. They get a 10 percent discount, and we work on efficiencies to get their freight to them as efficiently as possible.

R. Austin: In essence, they are an extension of government liquor stores. What the minister here is saying is that if they are too small a business and they don't have the big connections and they don't have the money to donate to the B.C. Liberals, then they don't get a fair shake in this province.

It's because of this government's policies that rural agency stores sometimes take a loss on the liquor that they offer. This means they have to charge more for the necessities like food and toiletries that people in these tiny communities rely on. Why is this government against these hard-working small business owners getting the same deal that their friends and donors get?

Hon. R. Coleman: That's absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense. To make that type of parallel and try and drive that party line when you as an opposition and as a government opposed rural agency stores to begin with in the province of British Columbia and, in addition to that, made no changes in efficiencies whatsoever in the ten years you were government with regards to them….

We've improved the efficiencies. We're giving them free freight. We're working with them on the report that we have before government, and we'll find other solutions for them as we go forward. But the fact of the matter is that they are not going to be treated like a liquor store when they are not a liquor store.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

FOR FOREST WORKERS

N. Macdonald: Almost every one of the province's sawmills and pulp mills are either completely shut down or operating on reduced shifts. At the truck loggers convention this January, the Premier claimed he was going to get the federal government to extend EI benefits for a full year. We got a mere five-week extension, and that's it.

What is the government going to do to help the thousands of forest workers who are now running out of EI benefits?

Hon. P. Bell: This government has been working hard through a series of initiatives to support the industry not just in the short term but over the long term. The member opposite should recognize that in his community, a lot of the work that has gone on has yielded direct benefit to the Cedar operation. In fact, if the softwood lumber hadn't been dealt with in the way it was with the high-value cap, there's a very good chance that Downie Cedar would not be operating today in that member's community.

Mr. Speaker: The member has a supplemental.

N. Macdonald: The question was on the immediate support for 20,000 workers who have lost their jobs and are losing their EI.

Look, there is a rally of laid-off forest workers tomorrow in Prince George, so the minister can attend and give that sort of an answer to workers there and see the reception he gets. We know for sure he won't go near it.

Not only did the Premier fail to get extensions to EI; he still has not put one penny of provincial money towards supporting B.C. forest workers and forest-dependent communities — not one penny. The community development trust is entirely federal money.

[1420]

My question is this. Will the government commit today to match all federal contributions to the community development trust so that more forest workers and their families can be helped through this very difficult time?

Hon. P. Bell: In fact, the province has been doing a great job delivering the resources the federal government…. And listen to this: 1,700 forest workers have been bridged to early retirement; 500 workers have been offered retraining packages. There's been $17.25 million set aside for tuition assistance for forest workers.

In fact, we've delivered over and over and over again, and for that member to stand up opposite is absolutely hypocritical. He knows how challenging this industry is.

In 1998 B.C. had just 47 percent of the total Canadian lumber shipments into the United States. Today it's 58 percent. Our industry is leading the world in very difficult times.

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

B. Simpson: Every penny that the minister just mentioned is federal money. That's the point. We're asking for the province to match that money. This minister has no credibility on this file whatsoever.

Last September this Minister of Forests made the following prediction about the forest industry: "I think the worst is over. It's unlikely that you're going to see any

[ Page 13697 ]

more significant mill closures at this point." Oops. We've seen nothing but mill closures since. Last October he stood in Quesnel, and he told the chamber of commerce that there will be no mill closures in Quesnel. In fact, he was so sure of himself, he said that the sky would not fall "because I'm going to hold up the sky" — a direct quote from this minister.

Ever since then we've had nothing but mill closure announcements in the Cariboo, most of which are indefinite closures, leaving those workers facing uncertainty. My question to the minister is this. There is a forest worker meeting for all the laid-off forest workers in Quesnel next week. Will the minister clear his calendar, come to that meeting, tell them why he let the sky fall and why this government will not support those workers in their time of need?

Hon. P. Bell: I think it's always noteworthy to look at some of the comments that the opposition critic has made over a period of time. It's useful to have the insight into what forest policy under that regime must look like.

As reported in….

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

Minister, just take your seat.

Members.

Continue, Minister.

Hon. P. Bell: I encourage the opposition to sit back because this may take a little while.

I can tell you that it's reported in Opinion 250 . Recently the opposition critic is quoted as saying: "The pulp industry is dead." Is that the member opposite's vision? In Hansard in this very House he said: "In everything I read on the pulp industry, it's not viable in British Columbia."

I'll tell you what we've done. We've worked with each and every pulp operation in this province to make sure they're viable. In fact we just gave a detailed tax reduction for school taxes across the pulp industry that translates into $25 million a year. This government cares about the forest industry. It's reacting; it's delivering — whether it's China, whether it's Mongolia, whether it's the United States. We're going to support this industry.

[End of question period.]

Interjections.

Mr. Speaker: Members.

We're just going to wait a second while they….

Members.

[1425]

Reports from Committees

R. Hawes: I have the honour to present the report of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for the fourth session of the 38th parliament. This report summarizes our annual review of the budgets of the independent officers of the Legislative Assembly.

I move that the report be taken as read and received.

Motion approved.

Orders of the Day

Hon. M. de Jong: I call continued second reading debate on Bill 48.

Second Reading of Bills

Finance Statutes (Deficit

Authorization and Debt Elimination)

Amendment Act, 2009

(continued)

R. Fleming: I'm pleased to rise to respond to Bill 48, the Deficit Authorization Act, today. I was looking forward to hearing more from my colleague from North Thompson — but I guess he concluded his statements before we adjourned earlier today — because I wanted to direct his attention….

He had said a number of things to the member for Cowichan-Ladysmith about his government's so-called prudent financial management record, and I wanted to direct the member for North Thompson's attention to his own government's copies of their consolidated revenue statements, because we've heard the Premier. We've heard other members of the government talk about how personally painful it is to return to deficits, having produced the largest deficits in B.C.'s history in 2002 and 2003, to be returning to that today, in this year.

I want to direct that member's attention to a note in the consolidated revenue statements of his government just issued last summer — last July, as a matter of fact. There's a note in that set of statements that shows that under this government, in one year, the long-term contractual obligations — debt, in other words — that this government has entered into….

This is where the public-private partnerships and other agreements would be situated — in a tiny little note with no graphs, no explanations of what obligations are what and what the value of them are, because that's openness and transparency under this government.

[K. Whittred in the chair.]

[ Page 13698 ]

In that note it does disclose that the long-term contractual obligations of this government increased by $30 billion year over year, that there are $52 billion of long-term contractual obligations that this government has signed our grandchildren on to repay, because many of these agreements, when it comes to public-private partnerships, as that member will know, are 30 to 40 years in duration. That's debt and obligation that those generations will have to pay.

So I want that on the record. I want the member to have an opportunity to go and read that note, because apparently it has escaped him in the past. And when he claims that the B.C. Liberals are in favour of borrowing instead of direct debt, I want him to know that what his government has done is, in fact, oblige us mainly to private capital markets that are now evidently unstable in many parts of the world. The Olympic village fiasco comes to mind in this regard. His government has bound us in 40-year contracts in many instances to these hedge funds and to these private financial market organizations that are now having so much difficulty surviving.

On Bill 48. I recognize that the bill's title runs a little longer. It contains parentheses in there, words like "statutes" and "amendments." But I think when it comes to the vernacular, as the public understands this bill, it should really be truthfully called the "deficits when we need them" act, because contrary to all the posturing done by the Premier and this government, that's what this means. That's what it stands for.

When you come into the Legislature, reconvene it, move the throne speech back, extend the session as this government has done this week, it's their escape clause from their own law. And there are lots of laws that this government has broken. This is one of them. There are other laws — I'll get to them later in my remarks — that they've continued to break.

[1430]

I see that the member who I would wish to remind won't be able to hear it, but the education act that guarantees class composition and class-size limits…. We just had confirmation that for the third year in a row — and it's only a three-year-old bill — that law was broken. As far as children in 10,000 classrooms across British Columbia, that law means nothing. And this law, only four years after it was passed — one business cycle after it was passed — means nothing, because the province is returning to deficit. That's why we're here.

I think what I lament is that this bill is not about fixing that legislation. It's actually a mini-bailout, in its own right, of the bill's flaws. It's a bill that seeks to prop up the fiction that beneath the government's unlimited economic hubris, the belief that the B.C. Liberals actually have divine counter-cyclical powers, because that's what underlines the original legislation….

Interjection.

R. Fleming: The Minister of Health says it's true, so I don't know why we're here this week. I guess the cycle returned. Maybe we're not really here at all.

The Liberal law, as it was originally drafted, commands deficits to go away, and it expects the economy to listen to the law. But the real world doesn't work that way, and that's why we're here.

I've given the very concept of this bill a little bit of thought over the last week. We didn't see the bill until Monday, but we have had an opportunity — all of us in British Columbia — for many, many months to contemplate that the government would have to go in exactly the direction it is going this week. We've looked at the context of the legislation in terms of every other industrialized country which started a mature discussion with its population and with opinion leaders many, many months ago, in as many as five fiscal quarters ago.

We have the International Monetary Fund; we have business analysts. Everyone was predicting the inevitability. Some people were trumpeting the desirability — even the Prime Minister of Canada, an unlikely convert — of this many months ago. But this government, almost alone in the world, denied that this jurisdiction was at any risk of running a deficit.

The Minister of Finance, in B.C. Business Magazine , the issue of January 7, 2009 — like a month ago — was quoted saying: "With responsible fiscal management, there's no reason this province should ever go back into deficit." The Premier made the same arguments repeatedly. They argued a position of B.C. exceptionalism — that global winds touching other areas of the world would not touch our shores. They sounded exactly like John McCain did in the U.S. presidential election, who throughout — right through to November — said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. He was in absolute denial, just as this government has been.

They didn't respond. They saw no need to. The attitude was that there's nothing in need of rescuing here in British Columbia. Keep shopping. Go about your business. But meanwhile the signs were all around. The entire world, specifically the private sector economy, lost some $57 trillion in the latter half of 2008. Now, that must have been a pretty good clue that the fundamentals weren't strong in our new global economy. That should have sparked some action from this government, but it didn't. The Minister of Finance and the Premier maintained their line.

Maybe there were other clues that the Premier and the Minister of Finance should have seen. I specifically reference the headlines in our British Columbia papers of record. I want to cite a few headlines and the dates of these headlines.

[1435]

Let me just read a few. "Canada's Housing Bubble to Burst," September 2008. "Commodity Index Drops; Global Sell-off Continues," September 2008. "Global

[ Page 13699 ]

Crisis Ends Plan for B.C. Pulp Mill," October 2008. "Stocks Plunge Despite Government Efforts," October 2008. "Ontario and B.C. See Surge in EI Recipients," November 2008. "Provincial Economies to Shrink in 2009," December 2008. Those are the headlines of the newspapers that presumably the Minister of Finance and the Premier have access to and read.

All the while, while the discussion in the mainstream of society and in our newspapers and the media was about the reality that was upon us, the Finance Minister and the Premier were telling British Columbians something different, and something that was incorrect. They know it's incorrect now; they've admitted it.

For all of 2008 the B.C. Liberals actually ordered their bureaucracy to be only optimistic and to prepare to do what it takes to not have a deficit under any circumstances, even as growth levels were predicted to reach zero. Maybe that's why there was no fight for jobs from the Premier or for resource communities. Maybe that's why there's been no action at all coming from British Columbia to unlock the credit crunch that's gripping small and medium-sized businesses.

While all this turmoil was going on, the Premier actually cancelled the fall session of the Legislature. This is while the world was talking about the meltdown of the global financial sector. Nothing to do here in this Legislature under those circumstances.

Then he realized he actually had to do something. More importantly, he had to be seen to do something. So we did, in the end — after it was cancelled — come back to this place for five days in November. And to do what? We were here to debate a vague package, and members will remember that it was centred around a fake property tax freeze that played on people's common misunderstandings of how assessments and municipal taxes actually work.

I've read the papers as of last week, and locally, municipalities are talking about 4, 6 or 8 percent tax increases. Vancouver is staring at a 10 percent tax increase for its ratepayers from the failure of the Olympic village fiasco. Those are the kinds of pressures that are in our municipal level of government, and it exposes that the centrepiece of that package that we were here for five days in November to debate isn't working. It was designed to show that there was a tax freeze when in fact there's no such thing.

The Premier's plan, up until recently, and the orders within government were the old Herbert Hoover line. When you've got a contracting economy and when there are signs of danger all around, cut public spending. Hold the line. That was the temptation and the direction that came from this government, because that's what they know how to do best. That's what they did for their entire first term, and that's what they've continued in many ministries in the second mandate.

There must be a fascinating paper trail of bureaucratic hoop-jumping of draconian austerity plans that were drafted up for ministries and agencies of the Crown and other fruitless exercises that they probably had their deputy ministers performing, and their senior managers. It must have resembled some kind of Charlie Chaplin film, seeing them run around with that right up until February.

The diktat was: "Obey the orders from up on high. Avoid deficits at any cost." This is ideology at work. But then that all changed, and that's why we're here again. It changed on Groundhog Day, as we remember last week. That's when everything suddenly changed. That was the day this government poked its head out of the hole, looked around and said, "Things are bad," and, to its bureaucracy, said: "We can't do these cuts."

Maybe the Premier had an epiphany. Many he joined the pragmatic global consensus that we're seeing from the U.S. administration and other world leaders. Maybe he joined that consensus that exists, which advised that cuts under these circumstances would be the worst thing possible — would make a recession deeper, longer, worse and more painful.

Maybe he joined that consensus, or maybe he realized that that plan, if pursued to the fullest extent, would cost him the election, because undoubtedly it would have. British Columbians would have been irate. I think that is the more likely motivator for this 180-degree U-turn. It's not every day, after all…. It's only every six months or so that B.C. Liberals renounce what amount to articles of political faith, and in this case an

article of political faith that for this Premier he has held dear for 15 years.

[1440]

But what is underpinning this bill is still a sham. It's a component of a broader hoax the B.C. Liberals are playing British Columbians for. The bill, in effect, says: "I mean what I say on deficits. I mean what I say on deficits until I stop meaning what I say." That's what the bill says. In other words, this is not really the deficit authorization act. It's the "I was kidding; I was just kidding" act.

Interjection.

R. Fleming: Here's the problem I face, because the Minister of Health is asking me my voting intentions. He's asking my voting intentions.

Here's the problem I face on this bill. At a practical level, I will probably have to vote in favour of it, because the government screwed up. It's operating under flawed legislation that gives it no room to manoeuvre under the situation that we're encountering in the world economy. This legislation doesn't fit reality, so all of us are going to have to take a hard look at this and look at the amendments as proposed, flawed as they are.

In other words, what we have to decide…. This is the difficult part for me. If this doesn't pass, then this government will end up punishing British Columbians brutally again.

[ Page 13700 ]

Can you imagine the scenario if they tried to hold the line on deficits — the scenario that they held until February? I know the scenarios exist. I know they were produced by ministries and deputy ministers, so they did look at it. The Treasury Board obviously got pretty spooked about what that would look like.

But pass or fail, this bill isn't really part of the solution. It's a part of the problem, and let me explain what I mean.

In 2000 the then NDP government passed Bill 28, which was the Balanced Budget Act. In short, that bill said that government should not run deficits unless there are significant and unforeseen revenue declines or in the case of an emergency — kind of like today. That was the original legislation.

Back then the B.C. Liberals opposed that bill, not perhaps because they thought the bill was actually flawed in and of itself, but because they said that you couldn't trust the government. They said that when you trust the government, all the legislation in the world won't make them more accountable.

Indeed, the Premier was in full rhetorical flight back then. Indeed, he bizarrely and somewhat badly, maybe even offensively, drew a historical analogy to that government bill. The Premier, then opposition leader, said: "We've seen these pieces of paper before. It kind of reminds me of Neville Chamberlain. 'I have in my hand a piece of paper. It will guarantee peace in our time.' We didn't have peace. Having a piece of paper in your hand does not guarantee balanced budgets." Oh, those are stirring words, stirring words indeed.

We know what's happened in the interim. The B.C. Liberals were then elected. They promised a brave new era of budgeting to be ushered in. They promised that the deficit dragon can be slain by law forever, and they put it in that law. Deficits would never again rear their ugly head. "B.C. will never slip back into the red," is in effect what that law that we're amending today said. And the fact that we're amending it…. Go back and contrast the fanfare that that government introduced it with. None of it means anything.

Except for 2002 and 2003…

Interjection.

R. Fleming: That's what I meant.

…which were the record years for the biggest deficits ever in British Columbia history, this bill came after a billion-dollar surplus. Here we are. We're debating the "just kidding" act, the law that cannot be obeyed because it does not fit the reality of how economies and societies work in today's global market system.

We're listening to the Finance Minister — he'll close remarks, I assume, shortly in this debate — say with a straight face: "We were serious when we outlawed deficits. Really, we were. We're sad that we have to break our own law. It really hurts us that we're rewriting a law that we refuse to obey, and that's a respectful way to treat British Columbians."

Finally, I think what the Finance Minister will say, maybe in a couple hours, is: "Trust me when I tell you that I'll outlaw deficits again in 2011. Just give me an out, and I'll make them illegal again." That's what he's going to say.

[1445]

That's the real problem with this bill. It insults the intelligence of British Columbians, and it lowers the honesty of political debate in this province. It's part of a political culture that this government has fostered. It seeks to avoid meaningful discussion and debate. It instead relies on pretty empty rhetoric. I pointed to the Premier's — then opposition leader — remarks, and I think that says it all.

I could spend hours, actually, repeating pious, self-righteous quotes from the Premier and the Finance Minister on this legislation and the antecedent before it, but what's the point? I would, though, with some indulgence, like to refer to one, I think, very, very prescient comment from the Premier when he was opposition leader and opposing Bill 28 so many years ago. He said: "It's amazing how rewriting laws can work for a government that doesn't really care about the law."

You couldn't put the shoe on the other foot any better than that. It pretty much sums up how this Premier and this Finance Minister approach governance in B.C. They make empty promises. They discard them when they become too inconvenient or too tired.

Let me give you a few examples of how that dynamic has worked in B.C. In 2001 the B.C. Liberals committed to making B.C. the most open and accountable government in Canada. Openness was the watchword of this government. They would make decisions in plain sight. They'd even hold public cabinet meetings because they had nothing to hide.

The reality? Well, let's look at an independent report that was issued not long ago, which said that this government had all but destroyed the spirit and intent of freedom-of-information legislation, so much so that British Columbia is considered one of the least open governments in Canada. Of course, open cabinet meetings are long gone. Perhaps they only existed in the first place so that the Liberal government could award production contracts to their friends.

They won't disclose any details, and they hope the public won't notice. They won't tell them how massive

[ Page 13701 ]

this year's taxpayer-funded advertising campaign is. They could, but they know full well that audited statements of spending on government feel-good puffery advertising is not going to be available to the taxpayer to scrutinize until July — two months after the election is over.

They could disclose it now. They could actually tell us how much they're spending. In fact, the opposition asked for just that in November, and the Finance Minister said: "No way. No how."

Here's another example of government saying one thing and doing another. Remember in 2001 we had the commitment to a fixed calendar for the House? That's a great idea. It meant we would have predictable sessions. We'd have orderly business. We'd try and run this place with some common sense and order that worked for both sides of the House.

Fast-forward a few years, and that promise has been tossed to the curb as well. Why? I think it's pretty simple. Having a session is sometimes really inconvenient for the government. It forces government to answer questions. This government doesn't like to answer questions, as we saw just a half hour ago.

Here's another example of saying one thing and doing another. You'll recall in 2001 that the Liberals committed themselves to repealing gag laws and allowing everyone to participate fully in elections. That's a nice idea. People were all in favour of it.

Let's jump ahead to 2008. The Liberals face a competitive election, so what do they do? They impose an even more restrictive gag law on third-party advertising that they committed to get rid of in the first place.

It's so cynical. They waited until the eve of the 2009 election to drop this legislation in this House, knowing full well that it can't successfully be challenged in court in time for the election. The Attorney General can use his subsequent time in his career to explain how comfortable he is carrying the can for the Premier on that law. I'll leave it to him.

[1450]

I want to talk again about the context of this bill. We came back to this House on Monday, and what was the first instinct of this government? The Finance Minister was asked quite properly by the opposition to table the third quarter fiscal report for the province. We know it's available. We have speculation about what it might say, but we don't have it on the public record. Quite rightly, the opposition critic for the Ministry of Finance asked for it. Let the opposition and the public know the full extent of the revenue crisis in British Columbia while we're debating this legislation.

You've asked the public to bear with you and accept that B.C. isn't going to keep to its own laws and that we're going to return to deficits. You have information showing how bad the scale of the crisis is, and you wouldn't table it in the House. That was the very first thing that was done on Monday — a refusal to do that. There's no acceptable reason why that was denied to the opposition or to the public.

Then we had the Government House Leader on Monday. He couldn't help himself. He brought in an incredibly important bill, potentially worth billions of dollars. We'll see when the budget is tabled next week — worth billions, though, I'm sure. He came to the House in the very afternoon and said: "I'd like to proceed immediately to second reading. I don't want to give the opposition any time to read the bill. Let's start immediately. Let's just get out of here and get it done." I can't even believe he asked.

Remember, it was a great Premier who I think said: "Not a dime without debate." What's the watchword of this government? In this debate and the one we had in November — the one that we had on the Olympic village….

An Hon. Member: It was Bill Bennett, by the way, that said that.

R. Fleming: A great Premier, as I said. He's got a bridge named after him, thanks to this government.

What's the watchword of this government, though? It's billions without debate. We saw that with the Olympic village. It was a blank-cheque bill that they wanted to push through in one day, on a Saturday —and the same with this bill. They wanted to skip stages and proper notice for debate and get out of here and go home.

Think about it. This is a bill that actually renounces the B.C. Liberals' very reason for political existence. The Government House Leader wanted to hustle it through the House as quick as he could. That's embarrassing.

The Premier was right when he said, all of those years ago: "It's amazing how rewriting laws can work for a government that doesn't really care about the law." That's what this debate these past few days has been about right here, under his term as Premier. He didn't tell us back then that he was talking about his own views on how he would govern, but here we are. We're rewriting a law for a government that doesn't really care about the law. That's what's on display.

This isn't the only law government has passed that it ignores. I mentioned it previously. We've seen for three years this government break a law that it boasted about when it introduced it — a law to protect the K-to-12 education system, to put limits on class size and composition. We found out the other week that for the three years of existence of that law, every single year the law has been broken.

So when the Premier says that it's amazing how rewriting laws can work for a government that doesn't really care about the law, he was talking about the B.C. Liberals and how they would govern this province — tens of thousands of classrooms not in compliance with the government's own law.

[ Page 13702 ]

This government didn't honour the three-year budget commitment they made to our colleges and universities. That was passed. They said they'd provide stable, secure funding for post-secondary education, and then what happened? We were here last March, and at the last minute 2.6 percent of the core budget was cut from all 26 of our public post-secondary institutions that fiscal year.

I don't expect we're going to get the truth on what this government knows and when this government knew. We've talked about how the world crisis was upon us, how every other world leader seemed to know, how even Stephen Harper admitted and worked with others to introduce a very different kind of fiscal package in his government. But in British Columbia we waited until Groundhog Day to let B.C. in on a secret they already knew, which was that this jurisdiction was inevitably sliding toward deficits. The revenue collapse was too great to avoid that.

[1455]

What we should have is an honest piece of deficit control legislation, one that actually fits the ebbs and flows of the economy — a law that's actually informed by the lessons of history and the realities of recessions past in the 1970s, in the 1980s and in the 1990s. No other province in Canada has the total ban on deficits that B.C. has, and that's for a reason. They don't work. The proof that they don't work is the fact that we're here today debating Bill 48.

The concern is that dishonest legislation will lead to dishonest budgets. That's the real concern. I sincerely hope that British Columbians, because of what this government has done, don't become so cynical and disenchanted with government because they don't follow their own laws. I think that will reflect badly on all of us. I thank you, Madam Speaker, for the chance to speak to Bill 48 this afternoon, and I take my place.

R. Sultan: After listening to the accounting of my friend from Victoria-Hillside about the economic situation and the headlines he read — from crashing stock markets to layoffs to shrivelling investment to ruin and decay in all corners of the economy — prefaced by a quotation from that famous statesman Neville Chamberlain, I believe it was, who said "peace in our time," I couldn't help but think once again that members of the party opposite and leaders in the party opposite are demonstrating their specialty for always looking at the dark side and putting a negative light on what is admittedly a difficult situation.

I couldn't help but think of another quotation from the 1930s in rebuttal. President Roosevelt, looking at the inactivity and fear and frozen condition of the economy they inherited in 1933, went on the radio and said that the biggest thing we have to fear is fear itself. I would suggest that if we overplay the hand here in your anxiety to display how bad things are, indeed you help create the conditions that we are attempting to overcome.

It's not unlike this party's tendency to run down what I personally believe is one of the best health systems in the world, its tendency to point to huge fundamental defects in what I think is one of the greatest public education systems in the world. Now they're turning their tendency to tear down what has been, in fact, and remains one of the most successful economies we've seen in North America in recent times.

While criticism is indeed their role, I wish from time to time they offered some constructive alternatives. About the only thing I've heard from the party opposite this week, as an alternative to the plans this government is bringing forward, is a proposal, as I understand it, to go out and convince people to lend $10 billion to the government. I'd say be careful of that one. We've seen it before.

Well, to turn to the bill at hand, which is why we're here…. Our Premier has called this early convening of the Legislature to deal with a crisis. We are in a crisis, and I don't want to minimize that. We're debating the government's first step in responding to the crisis — Bill 48, the Deficit Authorization and Debt Elimination Act. The bill proposes to give the government elbow room to apply remedies by granting them the latitude to run an operating deficit.

What crisis are we talking about? Well, as everybody should know by now, our friend and trading partner and that great engine of economy and democracy and creativity, our largest customer, the United States of America, is today deeply troubled. On Monday of this week President Barack Obama, holding his first press conference since being elected, told the American people: "If there's anybody out there who still doesn't believe this recession constitutes a full-blown crisis, I suggest speaking to…the millions of Americans whose lives have been turned upside down because they don't know where their next paycheque is coming from."

[1500]

Obama spoke of a deficit of jobs, a deficit of incomes and a deficit of confidence, and said that this could turn a crisis into a catastrophe. He said: "I refuse to let that happen."

Well, as has happened often in our history, we Canadians have basked in the temporary warmth of crisis postponed, partly through our own superior economic management in this country and in this province, partly through the delayed response to the supply chain. It takes a while to trickle through. But let no one in this House believe that we're immune.

The bad headlines, as the member for Victoria-Hillside so elegantly relayed to us just now, are appearing on the front pages. I'll add one of my own, the Globe and Mail on Tuesday, headlining: "Western Canada Hit Hardest by Decline." The story went on to say: "B.C. and Alberta see swifter and sharper downturns than other provinces as housing slumps and bankruptcies soar."

[ Page 13703 ]

The Premier himself, not mincing words at the economic summit he called in Vancouver last week, reported that government revenues had been dropping like a stone — his phrase. Again, as he described it, for home heating in this province, dimension lumber is now cheaper to buy than firewood. Such is the state of our largest industry — forestry.

What is the government doing about it? We shall see the outlines of the government's response next week in the Speech from the Throne and the budget tabled before this House.

But the shape of the probable response is quite clear: a focus on jobs, jobs and more jobs; stimulate the economy through infrastructure spending and public works; maintain incomes; cut taxes further; continue to invest strongly in health care and education; grant citizens greater flexibility in managing their own financial affairs; encourage long-run productivity improvement; and finally, maintain the financial reporting transparency which — despite denigration from the opposite side — is an award-winner in the accounting profession in Canada and makes this government an accounting and accountability model for the world.

I truly believe that.

The purpose of Bill 48 is to suspend the law adopted about six years ago prohibiting our provincial government from running an operating deficit. It suspends the law for two years. It also forbids the government from spending any surprise surpluses that might occur in individual ministries along the way through supplementary estimates. All such surprise surpluses will be allocated by law to continued debt reduction.

The law itself will dissolve in two years when, hopefully, life is restored to something more closely resembling normal. I stress the word "hopefully." None of us should be under any illusion as to what a government may be compelled to do when faced with the fiscal equivalent of an asteroid impact or a magnitude 10 earthquake.

Put another way, as an old James Bond movie once advised, we're once again learning to never say never. As a completely irrelevant aside and listening to the debate over this week here in this Legislature, I must say it's been quite an education in accounting and the philosophies of financial intermediation. Some disparage the existence of banks, it seems to me, as if we could somehow get along without financial intermediation in the economy.

I have to, as again an outrageous aside, declare my disagreement with Laertes, who 400 years ago told his son: "Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend." Only a barter society could live up to those words. Indeed, sometimes I think that's exactly the sort of society our friends on the benches opposite are advocating.

[1505]

I also hear a certain amount of confusion, if not deliberate intent to mislead, as people seem to switch interchangeably between debt and deficit — two rather different things — and as we hear people declaiming about borrowing to cover operating deficits as opposed to purchase assets. Indeed, my dear friend from Victoria-Hillside talks about the $13 billion number he pulled out of the air. It doesn't really surprise me, given the airport expansions, given the hospital construction, considering the seismic upgrades this government's been involved in, considering all of the infrastructure activity that has characterized the economy since this government came to power.

To suggest, as they seem to, that this should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis from current taxes is just wishful thinking. It may have been way back in the early days of Wacky Bennett that such things were possible. Perhaps my friend the former Speaker of the House could enlighten me, but I would think that even then Mr. Bennett realized that to finance some of these huge, huge capital projects, you had to go out and borrow money, and that is hardly irresponsible.

Well, in borrowing and lending, however, if they are inevitable, there are some reasonable limits, and I think this is partly what the debate's all about: what are the reasonable limits? What is our borrowing and lending situation? Well, one important indicator for governments is the ratio of debt to gross domestic product or GDP.

Looking at the Canadian federal government for starters, their debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at around 40 percent in 1995. I believe Jean Chrétien was in power, if I'm not mistaken. Under Stephen Harper it's declined to 28 percent. The feds are now projecting it to go back up to 32 percent over the next couple years as they provide a little help on the operating side until better days arrive.

With a stimulus package federally of about 1 percent of GDP in each of two years, the feds have temporarily forsaken their goal of driving the debt ratio down to 25 percent. Nevertheless, I repeat, as a country we've managed our affairs more prudently than the Americans, and as a province we have managed our affairs more prudently than other provinces of Canada — and I would say that across the board — and, for that matter, more prudently than any other G7 country.

This is a golden moment in the fiscal history of Canada, when we can look at those ratios on the last page of the London Economist , as I did last night just to remind myself, and see: "Wow, we have a great report card on the ratios."

Now, look at the United States by contrast. The Barack Obama stimulus package is closer to 6 percent of their GDP, compared to our 1 or 2 percent — a startling contrast. It makes the U.S. plunge into further deficit spending, far greater than our own. As one American expert, David Smick, put it recently: "Too much debt is never a good thing, and in many respects, Americans may be living on borrowed time." Continuing with Smick's quotation: "It's important to keep things in

[ Page 13704 ]

perspective." He says America's gross national federal government debt, at 65 percent of GDP, is less than Germany, which is all of 67 percent.

I wouldn't say a 2 percent margin is much to brag about. Again, I interject my own comments, admittedly. Japan's debt is roughly three times larger at 176 percent of their economy. Smick went on to say that the critical point is this: "Whether the U.S. financial system avoids catastrophe depends on more than merely correcting financial imbalances as measured by these ratios. As important as that goal remains, most likely it depends on the dual fears of a lack of financial transparency caused by the U.S. sub-prime mess and the effect of the housing crisis on consumer demand."

Hmm. Lack of financial transparency and the housing crisis. Well, we've had some experience with that in this province. The NDP government of a decade ago provided a vivid object lesson on the first point — how to erode the credibility of public financial statements, a core root of the global financial problem today. Nobody knows what to believe anymore, and it's a problem which motivated this government's well-intentioned corrective laws when it took over from the NDP, as we're all aware.

[1510]

As for the second point — the housing crisis — we must thank the good judgment of our banking system for steering Canada around the worst of those sub-prime mortgage misjudgments, which plague the United States today and which, through obscure securitization, became embedded in financial institutions all around the world like a hidden, toxic waste. We still haven't figured out exactly where they are, and even when we identify them, we're not quite sure what to do with them.

Financial transparency and housing — two key variables. What does the NDP have to say about all of this? Well, not much, it appears, but it doesn't stop persons opposite from talking about it for many days.

But let's give credit where credit is due. In reality, it appears they agreed with the government's core fiscal strategy prior to the financial crisis. Let me repeat that. It appears the NDP agreed with the government's core fiscal strategy prior to the financial crisis, and it appears they also agree with steps taken by the government since the financial crisis.

Partisan politics aside — and it's always fun to throw the odd spitball at one another across this two and a half sword lengths that separates us — the spirit of unanimity in this House among all members of this Legislature is in fact helpful and, I think, positive, and it diminishes the fear that can freeze us into inactivity and lack of economic transactions.

As, for example, the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca pointed out — and I salute his balanced commentary — we're all in this together in terms of passing laws which, with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps had an element of hubris in them. I think responsibility for that, I heard him saying, is shared equally on both sides, and I would have to agree with the member for Malahat–Juan de Fuca.

To illustrate, precrisis the Leader of the Opposition said: "Don't agree with deficits. I think a balanced budget is critical," CKNW, October 23, 2008. "The balanced budget act is there. It's going to remain, and I believe we need to balance our budgets" — CKNW, again on October 23.

Now, post-crisis, the Leader of the Opposition quoted again: "I've said all along that I believe in balanced budgets. I believe in fiscal responsibility, but I also believe in common sense" — hmm, the door's opening a crack — CTV News , January 28 of this year.

Echoing this sentiment, the member for Cariboo North is quoted as saying: "We've seen a federal throne speech that's talking about the potential for deficits, and it may not be the time to work within mandatory balanced budgets."

So my ear tells me there's really no huge gap between what the government is saying and what the opposition party has been saying on the subject of balanced budgets and the need to temporarily suspend this law.

Since they appear to my ear to agree with the substance of Bill 48, what new insights are being launched in these days of debate from benches opposite? Well, midst the many peaks of oratory achieved yesterday, my favourite was the member for Delta North who said that we're in a deficit position today because the Premier was sleep-deprived. I didn't quite see the connection, but that's his allegation. On such firm foundations the NDP would build its budgets.

Another familiar refrain was heard from the member from Maple Ridge who blamed the usual suspects, the big banks. Since our need to thaw the world banking system is at the heart of our global recovery effort and since Canadian banks are now celebrated around the world for their wisdom and the fact they're still continuing to actually function, to villainize them now seems a bit strange.

Indeed, this debate is an opportune moment to contrast the NDP versus the B.C. Liberal government track record on red ink, matters fiscal and the indebtedness of governments. On this topic there is a huge gap between the two parties.

I'll recite three of them, but I will quote again my friend from Victoria-Hillside who referred to "the biggest deficit ever" as a condemnation of the fiscal irresponsibility of the B.C. Liberals once they were elected. Well, let's look at the reality — three measures.

[1515]

The debt-to-GDP ratio. As I mentioned earlier, the B.C. taxpayer-supported debt to GDP ratio was a piddling 12 percent when the NDP took office in 1991. It was just a shade under 22 percent when they left office, almost doubled. Since that time, this B.C. Liberal gov-

[ Page 13705 ]

ernment has driven it back down to within 2 percentage points of where it stood when the NDP started out. But it took seven years to erase a decade of what I would call not the greatest fiscal management.

Second measure. Consider the operating debt of the government, and again, let's not get confused between capital and operations. The operating debt of government — that is, government debt other than that invested in infrastructure and physical assets like bridges and power dams and so on — was $6.6 billion when the NDP came to office in the early '90s. When they left office, it was $12 billion, double the operating debt in a decade, and it has since been driven back to $6 billion by this government, to where it was when the NDP first came back to power.

Third measure. Consider the province's credit rating. These are the green eyeshade boys who look at all the fine print of the balance sheets to figure out what's really going on and where all the bad stories are hidden in the footnotes. And here's their report card on B.C. government fiscal performance.

In the 1990s the NDP received two credit-rating downgrades, raising the cost of borrowing to taxpayers, on debt itself, which was mushrooming. Since coming to office, this government has achieved eight credit upgrades, to the point where we now have one of the best credit ratings in the world from Standard and Poor's and Moody's Investors Service. This saves the taxpayer tens of millions of dollars of interest each year.

All things considered, in a crisis atmosphere where the credibility of published figures and the conservatism of balance sheets has become critical to economic recovery, whom would you rather have in charge — the fudge-it budget crowd or the government who gets glowing report cards from the rating agency bean counters? Well, they're maybe not as exciting, but I'd vote for the latter.

Bill 48 is therefore a bill that I support and that every member of this Legislature should and, I forecast, will support. It's not only an essential piece of legislation in troubled times, but it has also conveniently provided British Columbians with an opportunity to contemplate the economic philosophies, the leadership style, and the calibre of thinking which underlies two great parties contending for citizen support in the upcoming election.

British Columbians will have the further opportunity to contrast these two next week when the Speech from the Throne and the budget are brought down. For me, the decision is quite obvious. In troubled economic times, with jobs and households on the line, go with experience and track record. This is not the time for leadership experimentation or discredited ideology.

J. Kwan: I rise to enter into the debate on Bill 48, the bill that is to allow for the government to bring forward deficit financing and a bill that incorporates also a debt elimination aspect to it.

Before I sort of get into the details of the bill, I do actually want to just talk a little bit about the history of debts and deficits financing over the years and to correct the minister for small business, technology and economy. I think that's her title.

[1520]

I just want to say very clearly that in 1991 the incoming NDP administration inherited a huge deficit. Not as big a deficit as the current Liberal Party brought in when they were in government, when Gary Farrell-Collins was the Minister of Finance — not as big as that, because that was the biggest in the history of British Columbia.

In 1991, when the NDP came into office, they inherited a pretty big deficit — yes, from the Socreds, some of whom are sitting around this table here today in this Legislature, in this very chamber. The Social Credit government left the NDP with a $2.5 billion deficit when they left office.

In 1991, under the leadership of Mike Harcourt…. Many would know of him and know him well, for he is still active in our communities today, working hard as ever, driving the issues of sustainability, amongst many issues. Under his leadership and the subsequent NDP government, they actually brought the debt down significantly, to the point that…. By golly gee, when the NDP left office in 2001, guess what happened? The NDP actually left the Liberals a surplus, and not a small surplus, I might add, but a $1.4 billion surplus.

That's the history of what happened here on deficit financing in the province of British Columbia. It was this Liberal government that inherited a surplus budget from the NDP, then went on to create the largest deficit in the history of British Columbia. Yes, the government of the day, the Liberal government, created a $3.076 billion deficit — under the Liberals, on their watch, the largest deficit in the history of British Columbia.

So all the Liberals who claimed that the NDP left them deficits — they're wrong. They're dead wrong. If they want to suggest that I'm wrong, all they need to do is check the Auditor General's books, because it tells all in that document. That document does not lie. It states very clearly that it was the NDP who left this government a $1.4 billion surplus, and it was this government that created the largest deficit in the history of British Columbia, a $3.1 billion deficit.

I just want to set that record straight because I've heard over this past week…. "Inaccuracies" is a minor way of describing this. It's an understatement, but I would want to stay parliamentary in this House. I heard stuff that came out of the mouths of cabinet ministers, who've been around, who sat through this period of time, who ought to know the information and know the truth and should be speaking the truth in this very Legislature and didn't. Shame on them.

I just want to also say that the Liberals created the largest deficit in the history of British Columbia. Let us just be clear. That deficit was manufactured by the

[ Page 13706 ]

Liberal government, because they created a tax cut for the wealthy and they took from the poor. They took from the poor by eliminating some of the most critical programs that the poorest of the poor relied on.

In the midst of all of that, they called it a structural deficit. The structural deficit, it turns out, was a result of the tax cuts to the wealthiest British Columbians. That's what happened.

[1525]

I also want to say that the government says about this situation we're in: "Oh, but we didn't know. We didn't know about the world economy collapsing all around us. We didn't anticipate this at all." Really?

Let me just go back and review some of the warning signs that the Liberals might have picked up. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but dating as far back as 2008, here are some of the headlines from last year. January 2008 — a year ago: "Are Politicians Ready for a Recession? Probably Not," Vancouver Sun . January 22, 2008, Vancouver Sun : "B.C. Companies Lose Billions in Crash." February 16, 2008, Vancouver Sun : "Canadian Factory Output Plunges." March 26, 2008: "Ready for a Slump? As B.C.'s Economy Cools, How Well Are We Prepared?" March 27, 2008: "Drop in B.C.'s Business Optimism Cited as Omen for Economy." March 29, 2008, Vancouver Sun : "B.C. Economy Expected to Cool in 2008."

Let's turn to a different paper — the Province . April 24, 2008: "Retail Sales Loss Hammers Loonie." June 12, 2008: "Canada's Industrial Capacity Utilization Slumps." June 24, 2008 — back to the Sun : "Denying Income Inequality Won't Make It Go Away."

Then a litany of articles between July and August in 2008. "Pesky Statistics Are Raining on Liberals' Economic Parade." Another one: "Consumer Confidence at Lowest Level in Five Years." Another one: "Leaders Must Focus on the Economic and Financial Crisis Unfolding Before Us." Another one: "Economic Growth Slowing in B.C." Another one: "Canada's Housing Bubble Could Soon Burst, Merrill Lynch Warns." "Commodity Index Drops; Global Sell-off Continues." That's now in September 2008. "Global Crisis Ends Plans for B.C. Pulp Mill," 2008.

This goes on. There are pages and pages of headlines in each and every month in the papers, talking about the economic meltdown that's happening and, yes, touching British Columbia too. Yes, right up to January, all through the year. And I can go on with many of these headlines.

But what did we hear? What did we hear from the Minister of Finance as this was happening all around him? He is the guy who should be in the know, who actually gets the briefings, the support from the staff — the excellent staff, I might add — who would provide him with the information. What does he say? Well, he says on November 21, 2008: "There is nothing on the horizon that would suggest the province is at risk of going into recession."

Well, I've got to ask this question. Where the heck has the Minister of Finance been? It's sort of just like him on the Olympic file. He refuses to tell British Columbians the truth on the cost overruns of the Olympics. Turns out that on his main file he has no idea what's going on. As recently as November he says, "Everything is just fine in British Columbia," yet every headline you pick up in the newspapers as far back as at least a year ago gives you the warning signals.

You've got to ask: where is the Minister of Finance? Is this really a surprise to them, or did they just not want to come clean to tell British Columbians what the story is with British Columbia's financial situation?

[1530]

[H. Bloy in the chair.]

As if that's not enough by way of warning signs, let's just go to Stats Canada to get some information, shall we? Those are stats. Kind of gives you a sense of what's going on around us.

Let's just look at the stats around debt and bankruptcy rates. Yep, personal bankruptcy filings in Canada rose more than 50 percent in December of 2008 from the same month of 2007. You'd think that might be a bit of a signal that something is starting to go wrong, that British Columbians are having a bit of a tough time managing, that businesses are at a little bit of a risk, that the economy is softening just a tad.

But more than that, it's not just bankruptcy rates. Canadians now carry more personal debt as a percentage of their personal incomes than do Americans, challenging Canada's reputation for financial prudence. Yeah, the economic crisis started in America, but yet Canadians are now carrying more personal debt as a percentage of their personal incomes than do our American counterparts.

You'd think that might be a wake-up call for the Minister of Finance. Not so. Not for the Premier either, but then get this. B.C. lost 35,000 — not 35, not 3,500, but 35,000 — jobs in January, with gains in part-time employment more than offset by an astronomical loss of 68,000 full-time positions — 68,000 full-time positions. That ought to ring alarm bells from here all the way to Fort St. John.

The Premier and the Minister of Finance — in fact, the entire Treasury Board, I would expect — will be sitting around the table going: "Uh-oh. Something's gone awry here, and we should have known; we should have seen it coming more than a year ago." Well, the Premier, just prior to us coming back with his legislation, says: "Oh, but I only found out a couple of weeks ago, and I lost sleep over that."

Really? I find that, frankly, hard to believe. I find it hard to believe. Not with all the very excellent staff in the Ministry of Finance that would have actually alerted

[ Page 13707 ]

the government to the dire situation. The government either chose to have a blind eye to the matter, or the government chose not to tell British Columbians when they knew what. That's what I think.

Just on this question of unemployment, some people might say: "Well, the unemployment might just be one region of the province but is not across the board, and the opposition are just being naysayers because that's what they do all the time." Well, let's just look at the statistics and see what they say. Between December and January, 68,000 full-time jobs were lost, and let's just break it down. Let's just break it down region by region.

Vancouver Island coast. Between November and December of 2008, unemployment increased by 37.8 percent.

Lower Mainland. Some will say that the Lower Mainland is immune from an economic downturn. Not so. Unemployment increased by 24.3 percent between November and December of 2008.

Hon. K. Krueger: More than 400,000 new jobs.

J. Kwan: Kamloops–North Thompson, where the minister is heckling, where he's from…. Guess what happened there.

[1535]

Well, that region experienced, yes, a 56.9 percent increase in unemployment between November 2007 and November 2008. Where's that minister at? Did he not notice this statistic is happening right in his own community? Did he just choose to close his eyes and say: "I don't see it, and I don't hear it, and everything will just be rosy"? Sort of like what the Minister of Finance continues to say.

Here's what he said. He said in December of 2008. "We are not in British Columbia anticipating that we're going to see significant layoffs. We still have an unemployment rate that is one of the lowest we've seen in many, many decades," he says. "Massive Layoffs Not Likely in B.C., says the Minister of Finance." Well, tell it to the families who lost their jobs.

What's happened in the Kootenays? Unemployment has increased by 15 percent. In the Cariboo region 7,800 jobs were lost between December 2007 and December 2008.

Those are the very warning signs that the minister and the government chose to ignore, and those are the facts. It wasn't as if this economic crisis just sort of popped up on them. The warning signs had been there all along. The government chose to ignore them, or they chose not to tell British Columbians the truth.

Meanwhile, what did that mean for the government's behaviour in terms of them managing taxpayers' money? Well, it didn't change one iota of their behaviour. What happened? Well, I recall that the Premier, when he was in the opposition, railed against the government on government advertising campaigns. And what do they do? Well, they only increased the government advertising campaign by 150 percent. That's all….

An Hon. Member: Are you okay?

J. Kwan: I'm okay. But I'll tell you that B.C.'s finances are not okay under your watch.

So advertising campaigns increased under this government's watch by 150 percent since 2001. That's what happened there.

Did that change the government's behaviour? No. They're carrying on business as usual. This year, how much has the government put in advertising? Almost $30 million. You might think that's a drop in the bucket. But for many British Columbians that's a significant sum that could actually support community events, community programs and many more.

I see that my colleague wants to make an introduction, so I'm going to yield the floor to him for a minute.

M. Farnworth: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

M. Farnworth: I'm glad I got this opportunity to make an introduction because it will give my colleague a chance to have a drink of water.

Anyway, I know in the gallery today there are a number of students from schools in my riding. I know that they're looking and watching our deliberations here in this chamber, they're touring the gallery, they're seeing the wonderful architecture and they're learning about the importance of this magnificent building.

I hope that those students who are visiting here truly appreciate what a terrific place this is and how this is the heart and seat of our democracy in this province and is an important part for when they are eligible to vote. Some day some of them will be sitting in this place. I would ask the members of this House to make those students who are visiting here today most welcome.

[1540]

Debate Continued

J. Kwan: Thank you to my colleague.

So the behaviour of the government continues. Advertising continues to be spent by the government — unnecessary spending, I might add. Perhaps the government, if they were prudent with taxpayers' money, would have cut the advertising budget, if they were prudent with taxpayers' money, but they didn't do that. In fact, they rush out the door to spend as much money as they can to promote the gas tax that the government brought forward.

[ Page 13708 ]

As if that's not enough, the government went in the dead of summer — hopefully when nobody was paying attention, I guess — and actually increased the wages for the top bureaucrats to the tune of some 43 percent, to a whopping $348,000. That's not a small sum, but the government saw fit to do that and thought that was appropriate. This was, of course, after a promise that they wouldn't increase the top bureaucrats' wages, when they already made such an increase a few years ago.

But on the eve of doing that, what did the Premier do? He sent out a press release — I believe it was a Friday just before a long weekend — and then hopped on a private jet and went to Beijing for the Beijing Olympics opening. How about that for accountability and transparency? That's how the government is managing your tax dollars.

We talked about Olympic cost overruns. The government continues to insist that somehow the Olympic cost is only $600 million when auditors and others are looking at the figures, and they're saying: "Huh. It's kind of more like $6 billion — several zeros missing on that $600 million." Then the government says: "Oh well. No, no, no. That's not the case."

So while the budget for Olympic cost overruns continues to rise…. To this day the Minister of Finance, the Minister Responsible for the Olympics, still won't come clean to tell British Columbians how much we're going to be on the hook for the security cost overruns. The feds say that they never committed to the $175 million that the government claims are the Olympic security costs. It's likely more like a billion dollars and counting.

In the meantime, what's the Premier doing? He goes and announces the retractable roof. Well, that's an important project, isn't it? If my memory serves me correctly, $364 million of taxpayers' money on a retractable roof. Well, that's an important project, eh? It's just unbelievable on the management of taxpayers' money.

In the meantime, what are we faced with? We're faced with — yeah — legal aid cuts, as if the cuts made by this government are not deep enough in legal aid, as if when they cut close to some 40 percent of legal aid services in British Columbia by way of funding, that wasn't enough.

We're now anticipating yet another cut. The recent cuts to legal aid will mean, frankly, more delays in the court process, in child protection cases. Ultimately it will take longer for families to be reunited, leaving children to linger in foster care instead.

The announcement that the Family Law Clinic at the Legal Services Society will close as of March 31, 2009…. That's this year. That's going to happen. It's going to happen in about two months' time. This is a horrible, horrible blow to low-income women who need these services.

Staff lawyers at the Family Law Clinic work on complex cases, and they take on cases that the private bar would oftentimes not touch. In particular, working with people that have mental health issues or learning disabilities is also another challenge that legal aid services provides. With this loss, it is going to be even more devastating than it already is with the loss in people accessing representation in the judicial system.

[1545]

What else is happening? In the Ministry of Children and Family Development, B.C.'s child protection legislation requires that removal of children from their families happens as a last resort. A major finding in the Broken Promises report, a fairly recent report, was that the resources are not available for families who are in need.

It is critical that we create family-based housing that is integrated with counselling, child development services, vocational training, mental health services, medical care and family support and reunification services. This, of course, will reduce the number of children who are moved into foster care and dramatically improve the health and development of children.

Is the government doing that? Instead of doing that, they are initiating retractable roof projects while the wait-lists for people with disabilities grow. Mr. Speaker, you would know this, because we travelled on the Finance Committee together. We heard from parents all across the province, urging the government to reduce the wait-lists for children with disabilities who are in great need so that one could identify what the problems are and provide assistance so that they have the best opportunity for success in life.

That happened not just the last couple of years. It happened year after year after year. I've been on that Finance Committee for so long. I can't even remember how long it was. We heard consistently from people urging the government to act. We even agreed when we were on that committee to actually bring forward that recommendation to government to act. And what happened? It never made it into budget dollars. That's what happened.

I'm not on the Finance Committee anymore, frankly, because I got, well, very sad at the fact that we go and invite people to come and travel to these committee meetings to express their views, to offer their thoughts — all of which, the majority of which, just fall on deaf ears for the government. When it came to budget day, it never made it into the budgets. That was frankly sad.

Other issues in the MCFD files — they continue in terms of housing needs for people, women who are pregnant or with young children and don't have adequate housing, who are at risk of losing their children. If they don't have adequate housing, how are they supposed to ensure that they bring their baby into a world that would not compromise their well-being? Yet the government doesn't see fit to provide them with the housing supports that they need.

I can go on about the homelessness rate that's proliferated under this government's watch — 10,000 to 15,000 people who are homeless today in the streets of British Columbia. In the Lower Mainland alone, homelessness

[ Page 13709 ]

has more than doubled. Yes, the government wants to crow about how great they're doing in this homelessness crisis. They say that they bought some hotels, and they're doing everything they can.

Let us be clear. The homelessness crisis happened right under this government's watch, and they did nothing. In fact, what they did when they first came into government was cancel the permanent housing program in British Columbia and eliminate 1,700 units of affordable housing that were funded and slated and ready to roll.

Now what is the government doing in 2009? They've gone around announcing those very projects that were cancelled back in 2002. Why do I know this? Because I actually happen to have that list of cancelled projects from the government. I can go on about that, but I won't.

I want to say this, though, on the homelessness crisis. It's not just in the Lower Mainland. I recently got a letter from someone from Nanaimo, who raised the issue around homelessness. I got another letter from someone from Burns Lake who's raising the issue around homelessness. They say that the only thing they have to keep warm for the homeless is survival gear. They don't even have a shelter.

That's what's happening across the province of British Columbia. We can go into the education crisis too, about what's happening there, but I see that the debate has to come to an end. I hope the government takes stock as they go and spend the money of British Columbians, that they actually pay attention to what's happening in and around the province.

[1550]

D. Hayer: As I listened to the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, it seemed to be a totally different story than when we listened to our member for West Vancouver–Capilano, who told the truth and was giving a good story of what the reality was in the 1990s and now.

As we sat on the Finance Committee before this…. We have sat through many arguments from the opposition on the Finance Committee and also in this House for the last almost eight years.

It is my privilege today to speak to Bill 48, which is very important especially at this extraordinary time. There are especially extraordinary circumstances outside, when there is so much economic turmoil around the world and when we see an unprecedented amount of financial crisis in the United States and around the world. The world economy is changing every day. It definitely has changed since we sat on the Finance Committee starting in September, October, November, and we have seen huge changes.

I don't want to repeat what my other colleagues have said or what the member for Vancouver–Mount Pleasant has said, saying how wrong she is on the information and how the facts are twisted. Our government has made a difference. Remember in 2001, before we were elected, most British Columbians, when they wanted a job, had to go to Alberta, Ontario or the United States.

Then our government came in. We found a structural deficit, the worst economy left by the NDP, the worst unemployment rate under the NDP, and we had to fix it. With the help of British Columbians, with the help of our business people, with the hard-working British Columbians and our workers and unions, we were able to make a difference. We were able to make sure the worst economy of British Columbia was once again the best economy.

Mr. Speaker, you remember in 1991 when the NDP got elected. They got the best economy, the lowest unemployment rate. By the time they left office, they had destroyed this province to the worst point, to number ten in Canada. The unemployment rate was one of the highest. Our economic growth was the worst in Canada. We were dead last in the private sector job creation programs. Private sector investment was an abysmal 16.8 percent — the tenth in Canada.

B.C. suffered the highest unemployment rate in western Canada every year between 1991 and 2000. Real disposable income dropped every year between '91 and '96. It left B.C. with a $3.8 billion structural deficit in 2001. The unemployment rate was one of the worst. In 1991 taxpayer-supported debt to GDP was 12.4 percent, but in 2000, by the time the NDP left, it was up to 21.8 percent — from 12.4 percent when they came into office to 21.8 percent when they left. The marginal tax rate was the highest in North America.

You know what? People were looking forward to changing the government. This is why they left them with two seats. Then five years went, and people forgot about how bad things were. They elected a few more. On another hand, when you take a look at what they promised, they promised the Port Mann Bridge to Surrey residents. You know what they did, Mr. Speaker? Nothing.

They didn't like the people south of the Fraser, so all the improvement was done north of the Fraser. Nothing much was done in Surrey. You know what our government is doing? We're putting ten lanes on the Port Mann Bridge. You know what the opposition is doing? Their leader says it's the wrong bridge, wrong plan, and she doesn't like it at all. The MLAs from the NDP in Surrey — do you know what they say? Our leader doesn't understand.

Finally, when we had a crisis at the Pattullo Bridge, which the NDP transferred to TransLink in '99 without any money…. It had some problems, but then the people realized that this was really bad. They told all the NDP MLAs from Surrey: "We will not elect any one of you."

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They talked to the leader. Now she says that since the election is coming, she might support the Port Mann Bridge. After the election, they will probably go back to saying that they're against the twinning of the Port

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Mann Bridge. You know, our government, for the first time, is…. We're going to put ten lanes on there. We're going to have ten lanes. As a matter of fact, we're going to put the buses there.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members. Members, please direct all your comments through the Chair. And would all other members please allow the person who has the floor….

D. Hayer: We're going to make sure that we have the buses running. Last time the buses ran on the Port Mann Bridge was back in 1987-1988. Once it gets to ten lanes, it will have buses on it. It was designed for a light rail system. It will have bicycles going on there. It will have two lanes going to Coquitlam, two to Surrey and another three to Vancouver. We're going to expand the lanes to the east of the Port Mann Bridge, and we're going to expand the lanes to the west of Port Mann Bridge.

Also, with our plans, because of the way we have dealt with the economy, with the help of British Columbians, our unions and our business people, we're want to make sure that we actually have expansion of Surrey Memorial emergency. You know, we're putting a tower in there. Many people say that should have been done 20 years ago. When the last government was here, they made some minor changes, not major changes.

We also have a new hospital coming in on Fraser Highway and 140th Street. Actually, it's under construction. They just poured the concrete the other day, and they're really happy about it. When I talk to the doctors and talk to the nurses, the other health care workers, they say: "Thank you very much for doing it." They say there are some MLAs that will always criticize health care workers and hospitals.

I tried to say thank you to the health care workers, and I tried to say thank you to the doctors and nurses who work hard. I tried to say thank you to British Columbians who helped our economy progress and made sure we have funding available that's going to create more than 8,000 jobs by twinning and widening Highway 1 and ten-laning the Port Mann Bridge.

Also, when we took a look at the South Fraser perimeter road…. When I was on the Surrey Board of Trade — I was the president there — the NDP had said they were going to make sure that we have a South Fraser perimeter road. You know what? Nothing was done. We have actually started working on making sure we have a South Fraser perimeter road. The South Fraser perimeter road is going to be really good for the truckers. It's good for my constituents; it's good for the workers.

When you take a look at the new tower that we're putting in the Surrey Memorial Hospital, that is great news. I know that when there's a ribbon cutting, our colleagues from the NDP from Surrey are always in the front and say: "We want to be standing in there for the great news stories."

Even talk about the Olympics, you know. This morning there were many students here who were singing "O Canada" to celebrate the 365-day countdown, and there were many NDP MLAs there. They wanted a picture with them. I know their leader doesn't support it, but I can tell you that British Columbians are saying that this is probably the best time to have the Olympics here, because it's going to help our economy.

When you look at 2010, the only economic growth expected in Canada is in British Columbia. They say it's because the Olympics are going to create billions of dollars' worth of investment in the long term. There are going to be billions of people watching the Olympics from all around the world, and they're making sure they come here later on to visit, to invest and also to move here as immigrants. That is great news for us.

Mr. Speaker, I know we're running out of time, and I know we don't have too much time. I think my colleague from the opposition wants to take his place to say his version of events. I know he's going to disagree with us. I know he's going to say a lot of negative things.

But they also know that at end of the day, every single member sitting on the other side is going to vote for the bill. I mean, it's sad. Why don't they say some positive things too, and then they can vote for it. On the other hand, I think I will have more to say later on.

I support this bill. It is a very important bill. It is to make sure British Columbia's economy stays strong. It is to make sure people have money to make their payments, to buy food. It is to make sure we create more jobs in construction and development. It is to make sure British Columbia stays the best place on earth, and it's to make sure the British Columbia economy stays the best in Canada — not like the 1990s, when it was the worst in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, I support this bill. I will give the floor to our colleague from the opposition.

[1600]

M. Farnworth: It's my pleasure to take my place in debate and follow the member for Surrey-Tynehead. I'm shocked, though. I am shocked that he would think that I would get up and that I'm going to be negative. I'm really disappointed in him. I was going to start off and say something really nice and positive. I enjoyed listening to his comments, and I know that he is one of the Premier's favourite MLAs.

He is one of the Premier's absolute favourite MLAs. Why is that? Because he's the type of MLA that a Premier likes. You give him the message box, he goes out and says it, he doesn't question, he doesn't talk back, he doesn't argue, and he goes and does his job as a loyal backbench government member. It's a really good thing for a Premier to know that he's got someone who will

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drink the Kool-Aid, no questions asked, and go forward and carry the message.

But I must admit I was puzzled by a couple of comments that he made. They are not negative. They are offered in a spirit of positive and constructive critique. He says he likes to thank the health care workers. He says that we're down on health care workers. He thanks the health care workers and thanks the doctors. I just wondered: did he send them thank-you cards after he voted, along with his colleagues, to tear up their contract? Did he show his concern and thank them at that particular point in time? Just a question. I just raise that as a question.

We're here today debating Bill 48, which will amend the balanced-budget legislation, and we have heard an awful lot from the government benches. It positively gives a new meaning to the definition of revisionist. I mean, I have heard some of the most revisionist statements I have possibly heard in my entire time as an MLA.

An Hon. Member: Have you listened to your colleagues?

M. Farnworth: I have listened to you, hon. Member.

I was astounded to hear the member for Okanagan-Westside saying: "And the opposition doesn't support savings credit unions protecting your saving deposit, increasing it. They don't support…." And I'm going: "Wait a sec. Wait a second here." Where was he? Of course we supported it. Absolutely, we supported it, and we supported all those other measures.

Unfortunately, he got it wrong, as did so many other members on that side. They get caught up in something. It has been a problem for this government that they've been struggling with. I used to think it was just confined to the leader, that arrogance and out of touch. It is an ideological arrogance that that side of the House keeps getting trapped by. They think they know everything, they think they have all the answers, and they think that nobody else has a good answer and that no one on this side of the House has a valid point or idea. It's an intellectual arrogance, which is why we're here today.

Before I get into that intellectual arrogance, I just want to briefly point out to them…. I've done it before, but gosh darn it, I feel I've got to remind them of something, and that is our role here. As opposition, our job is to critique, to prod, to poke, to question.

D. Chudnovsky: They just don't get it.

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M. Farnworth: And as my colleague from Vancouver-Kensington