1982 Legislative Session: 4th Session, 32nd Parliament

Hansard

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

Official Report of

DEBATES OF THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY

( Hansard )

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1982

Afternoon Sitting

[ Page

7111 ]

CONTENTS

Oral Questions

Distribution of lottery tickets. Mr. Hall –– 7111

Travels of general manager of liquor distribution branch. Mr. Barnes –– 7112

Federal sanctions against Argentinean goods. Mr. Barrett –– 7113

Orders of the Day

Budget Debate

Mr. Barnes –– 7113

Hon. Mr. Smith –– 7117

Mr. D'Arcy –– 7119

Mr. Davis –– 7123

Mr. Hanson –– 7125

Mr. Ritchie –– 7129

Mrs. Wallace –– 7133

Tabling Documents

Ombudsman of B.C., special report No 4. Mr. Speaker –– 7134

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1982

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, I would

like to make an introduction. It's my honour and privilege to introduce

two black southern African residents who are in the gallery this

afternoon. Ms. Pashukemi Shoombe and Rev. Erastus Haikale are citizens

of Namibia. Ms. Shoombe represents the South West Africa People's

Organization — SWAPO, which is a women's council. Her home is a refugee

camp in neighbouring Angola. Rev. Haikale is an Anglican priest and a

chaplain for thousands of refugees from Namibia living in refugee

camps, and he is from Zambia. Both Ms. Shoombe and Rev. Haikale

attended a public meeting in Victoria last night on their national

tour, leading to a Canadian solidarity conference in Ottawa from May 7

to May 9 to protest South African apartheid and the enslavement of

millions of black nationals in that country and its protectorate of

South West Africa.

Attending with them, Mr. Speaker, are

four local residents: Mr. John Graham, board director of Victoria South

African Action Coalition; Ms. Joyce Stewart, Ms. Peggie Munro and Mr.

Louis Tremblay, members of Victoria South African Action Coalition; and

Mr. Phil Fawcett, Victoria Interchurch World Development Education

Committee. I ask the House to join me in making them welcome.

HON. MR. WOLFE:

Could I also introduce Estelle Inman, a teacher from Camosun College,

who is here today in the gallery with three of her students: Victor

Menzies from Prince Rupert, Roderick Shuttleworth and Laura Sody. I ask

the House to welcome these visitors.

MR. COCKE:

Visiting us in the gallery today we have Ms. Sophie Weremchuk from that

far-flung riding of Dewdney. Accompanying Miss Weremchuk is Miss Nell

Joostema. I would ask the House to welcome those two guests.

HON. MR. HEWITT:

Mr. Speaker, in your gallery we have with us today Colonel David

Lightburn, who is currently stationed with the B.C. area headquarters

in Vancouver. In July of this year Colonel Lightburn goes to Brussels

as a military adviser to the Canadian ambassador to NATO. I ask the

House to welcome him and wish him well in his trip to Brussels.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, a parliamentarian is your guest today. He is Mr. David Arblaster, a member of the House in New South Wales.

MR. HOWARD: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to rise on a question of privilege.

MR. SPEAKER: Please state the matter briefly.

MR. HOWARD: It relates to a letter to the editor in today's Vancouver

Province . Naturally, this is the earliest opportunity I have had to raise this

matter. The letter appears to be under the name of or signed by the MLA for

Richmond, the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Nielsen). It relates to a subject

matter set down for consideration by this House, notice of motion thereof having

been given by the government House Leader last week. Motion 21 on the order

paper is the subject matter of that.

The

question of privilege which exists is that the government, once having

set down a notice of motion and leaving it sit there, thus enabling it

to be a threat against theVancouver Province , does not then

have the opportunity, I submit, to go outside and engage in public

controversy and debate about matters that are set down for

consideration in this House.

I say further, Mr. Speaker,

that if such action were to continue, it could easily tend to bring the

position of Your Honour and the Chair into greater disrepute, and that

I consider….

MR. BARRETT: Settle it here. Call the motion.

MR. HOWARD:

The motion, I submit, should have been called. That's the course of

action that should have been taken, not to go outside the House and

engage others in further controversy about this subject matter.

I'll

table the paper in its full, as I'm required to do, Mr. Speaker. I

would move a motion if Your Honour finds that I do have a prima facie

case of privilege.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is prepared.

MR. HOWARD: The motion would be that the minister stand in his place to be admonished by Mr. Speaker for contemptuous action.

MR. SPEAKER: We'll take the matter under consideration, hon. member, and return a decision.

Oral Questions

DISTRIBUTION OF LOTTERY TICKETS

MR. HALL:

My question is to the Provincial Secretary, Mr. Speaker. It was

announced by Mr. Barry Kelsey of the Ministry of Provincial Secretary

that the provincial government is going to confiscate the lottery

distribution network established by individual non-profit societies

throughout the province. Did the minister authorize Mr. Kelsey's

announcement?

HON. MR. WOLFE: Mr. Speaker, the member

might appreciate me explaining that the sale and distribution of

lottery tickets is under the administration of the Western Canada

Lottery Foundation, of which the four western provinces are members. It

has become necessary for this organization to change its distribution

system in western Canada. The prime reason for this change has been the

fact that the banks, through their many branches throughout the

province here, in Saskatchewan and other places, are no longer prepared

to handle the storage, control and distribution of these tickets. So it

became a matter of obligation on behalf of the Western Canada Lottery

Foundation that we had to devise some new method of distributing the

tickets for the benefit of maximum coverage.

I can say by

way of explanation that this has been under discussion at many meetings

with the current distributors during the course of this week, and I'm

sure that a full statement and information is going to be put out very

shortly by the Lottery Foundation. In other words, the matter is really

under the administration of the Western Canada Lottery Foundation. I'd

just like to add, for the benefit of members of the House who may hear

of this matter from other distribu-

[ Page 7112 ]

tors,

that they need not have any fear about them deriving the income they've

previously had in the coming year by virtue of the control and

distribution of their lottery sales.

What is happening is

that they have been guaranteed for the ensuing year the same net

proceeds which have been the average across the province for all

distributors in the past. In other words, the distributors receive

about 10 percent of the sale price of the tickets, of which they're

obliged to spend no more than 4 percent on administration. The balance

is used for a variety of charitable projects that they might have. So

they're guaranteed the maintenance of those net revenues through the

course of this new procedure that is just being introduced. There will

be a full statement put out on this by the Lottery Foundation in the

very near future. I suggest that the member might want to consider

having a look at that before he addresses the matter further.

MR. HALL:

I know about the Western Canada Lottery Foundation, as I was the

minister at the time who brought in the legislation and set up the

Western Canada Lottery Foundation. Was the minister aware, when he

authorized Mr. Kelsey's announcement, that that announcement cut across

pledges made by three successive Provincial Secretaries, covering two

administrations, including his own, that that distribution network

would always be in the hands of non-profit organizations?

MR. SPEAKER: Is there a question there? There's a question there, I'm sure.

MR. HALL:

I asked him if he was aware of anything his predecessors — namely three

Provincial Secretaries, starting out with myself, followed by his

seatmate in Little Mountain (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy), followed by the

member for Saanich (Hon. Mr. Curtis) — had done in that regard.

HON. MR. WOLFE:

Mr. Speaker, I am very aware of the entire background on how this

matter developed and also of the current situation in terms of

distributors in British Columbia and their problems. I can assure you

and the member that they need not feel threatened in terms of the

revenues which will ensue to them for worthwhile purposes. There will

be full information put out by the Lottery Foundation in the near

future. The member knows that the western provinces all were in accord

with the use of non-profit agencies for distribution, and I might say

that other provinces, including Saskatchewan, have been faced with the

same need to make a change.

MR. HALL: The minister

just mentioned Saskatchewan. Is the minister aware, for instance, that

the formula for Saskatchewan is very different from the formula he has

just read out to this assembly, in that Saskatchewan gives at least 50

percent and is going to continue for more than one year?

The

minister is obviously not aware of that. May I ask the minister one

final question? Is the minister aware, and will he confirm, that any

compensation for this confiscation is only for one year?

HON. MR. WOLFE:

I am very aware of the situation in Saskatchewan. The member said I was

not aware of it. They have had to make this change before British

Columbia has. Their commitment is not, as members indicated, for an

indefinite period in the future. I can say that the commitment is that

their revenues for the coming year, while the matter is reviewed and

the distribution system is put in place, are secure.

TRAVELS OF GENERAL MANAGER

OF LIQUOR DISTRIBUTION BRANCH

MR. BARNES: Has the

Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs or anyone in his department

instructed Mr. Bob Wallace, general manager of the liquor distribution

branch, not to provide information as to the cost of his recent trip to

Australia, New Zealand and South Africa?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: The answer is no, Mr. Speaker.

MR. BARNES: We will deal with that later. I have several I'd like to ask, so I won't interrogate the minister at this point.

The

Liquor Distribution Act provides, in

section 17, that the general

manager or any liquor distribution branch employee "shall not solicit

or receive, directly or indirectly, a commission, remuneration or gift

from a person who has sold, is selling or is offering for sale liquor

or other products or services offered for purchase or purchased by the

branch."

Has the minister decided to investigate the general

manager of the liquor distribution branch, Mr. Bob Wallace, for

accepting an invitation from the Cape Wine and Spirits Exporters

Association of South Africa as its guest, contrary to

section 17 of the

Liquor Distribution Act?

HON MR. HYNDMAN: Could I

open by observing that the member's question contains an assumption

which is wholly incorrect. I believe the member knows that Mr. Robert

Wallace, the general manager of our liquor distribution branch, is a

long-standing and experienced career professional public servant in

this country. Mr. Wallace has served with distinction the government of

the member well knows, it was my decision that Mr. Wallace, in keeping

with the practice of virtually every other liquor commission in this

country, should undertake some visits to foreign-country suppliers.

With respect to Mr. Wallace's recent visit to three countries —

Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, which countries have products

representing 70 of our listings — Mr. Wallace was very clear to see

that all regulations and legalities have been observed.

MR. BARNES:

The minister has advised that the general manager was to "promote the

sale of B.C. wines" on his trip to South Africa, New Zealand and

Australia. Which wineries requested that Mr. Wallace do so?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN:

As the member well knows, having regard to the statement I made on the

day of the member's press conference some months ago, the chief reason

the chief executive of our liquor commission, in keeping with the

practice, for example, of liquor commissions of Saskatchewan and

Manitoba, undertakes foreign-supply visits is primarily to provide the

best value and choice for our citizens. As the member well knows, in

addition to seeking out in competitive international markets the best

buys for our British Columbia customers and consumers, in the case of

the British Columbia liquor distribution branch, our general manager

also uses his travels as a chance to promote the British Columbia wine

industry generally.

MR. BARNES: The minister claims the liquor distribution branch bore the cost of the general manager's trip. Has he

[ Page

7113 ]

decided to table the detailed vouchers — the general manager's expenses

for the trip — from the date of departure to the date of return?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN:

I'm obviously surprised that the member, who made such an issue at a

press conference in Vancouver four weeks ago about this, apparently

hasn't had the time or interest to read my response, in which I clearly

said publicly that I intend to and shall be happy to table that

information with this House when it's available.

MR. BARNES:

The Republic of South Africa is the only country in the world that has

legislated racial bigotry into its social, political and economic

system. Is the minister now prepared to justify allowing a senior

public servant to travel to that country officially representing

British Columbia?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN: The member should

be aware that British Columbians choose to spend about $250 million a

year in their liquor stores on the products of foreign country

suppliers. The liquor branch, being the largest retail organization in

the province, feels it has an obligation on a reasonable basis to have

its chief executive officer in the foreign market seeking out the best

values and best selections for our customers. In the course of those

travels, South Africa has been visited.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

Interjections.

[Mr. Speaker rose.]

MR. SPEAKER: The first member for Vancouver Centre will come to order.

[Mr. Speaker resumed his seat.]

HON. MR. HYNDMAN:

In this province no citizen is forced to buy a certain country's

products in our liquor stores. This government believes that our

citizens have the right and the maturity to make their voluntary choice

of what products they choose to buy or choose not to buy. This

government does not think it appropriate for Big Brother government to

dictate a political shopping list to its citizens. The member might do

well to check with his colleagues in Manitoba. I understand South

African products are still available in liquor stores there.

FEDERAL SANCTIONS

AGAINST ARGENTINEAN GOODS

MR. BARRETT: I'd like to

ask the Minister of Consumer Affairs if it's the government's intention

to comply with the current sanctions against Argentina?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN:

Mr. Speaker, it would seem that that question deals substantially with

a matter of federal external relations policy. I should be happy to

take the question as notice and, should it be the case that the

opposition leader's question does have some provincial political

relevance, I would be happy to provide an answer.

MR. BARRETT: The minister stated that his government does not wish to

interfere with the freedom of choice of citizens, regardless of political nature.

Sanctions have been placed against Argentina, yet a shipment of apple juice

concentrate was allowed into the province of British Columbia contrary to the

position of the federal government. Would the minister tell us whether or not

his government supports the position of the federal government and the government

of Great Britain in sanctions against Argentina because of its aggressive action

in the Falkland Islands?

HON. MR. HYNDMAN:

I am not aware of apple juice concentrate having been listed on the

shelves of the LDB, but I shall be happy to take the question as notice

and, again, should the opposition leader's question have some relevance

to this portfolio, provide a reply in due course.

HON. MR. HEWITT: In order to clarify the situation for the….

Interjections.

[Mr. Speaker rose.]

(Mr. Speaker resumed his seat.]

HON. MR. HEWITT:

If I may make a ministerial statement, which is what I was attempting

to do when the noise came from across the chamber. I would just like to

make the Leader of the Opposition aware that that shipment of apple

juice concentrate was cleared by the federal government because it had

been ordered and was, I believe, en route prior to the sanctions being

put in place. I am sure he would be pleased to hear that.

MR. BARRETT:

I am pleased to respond under the standing rules of response to a

ministerial statement. I welcome the minister's explanation that the

apple juice concentrate was ordered before the embargo. I am now

pleased to understand — as I read into it — that the government will be

supporting federal government sanctions against Argentina and that it

will deny the people of British Columbia the freedom of choice of

buying Argentinean goods, a decision by the provincial government in

concurrence with the federal government.

In response to the

ministerial statement, having established the principle that

governments on occasion do sanction goods, I say there is no moral

force or reason on the face of this earth to deny goods from South

Africa other than the fact that they are a fascist administration that

has entrenched legislation against human rights unlike any other

country in the world, unparalleled since the defeat of Nazi Germany. I

would expect the same reasons that apply to Argentina would also apply

to South Africa, in all good conscience.

Orders of the Day

ON THE BUDGET

(continued debate)

MR. BARNES: I'm a little bit upset

at the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Hyndman),

having respected this minister for so many years — at least since he's

been in the House — and knowing him to be a socially conscious person.

We've worked together throughout the community. I recall recently when

we discussed the closing of the East Hastings liquor store. The

minister was good enough to consult me on a number of questions

respecting the democratic right of those citizens living in the

downtown east side who were being subjected to a vote respecting

whether the liquor store should be closed, mainly because of certain

social consequences and problems because of people overindulging in the

product available at that store. But in the final analysis the minister

exercised his authority as chief administrator of liquor distribution

in the province and ordered that the liquor store be closed temporarily

and, I believe, he ultimately decided to leave it closed indefinitely.

[ Page 7114 ]

Just

to set the record straight, those of us who are interested in the

consistency of the government with respect to issues of conscience and

morality should keep in mind that that minister was playing politics at

that particular time, and not so much concerned about the legal or

democratic rights of those citizens to self-determination; in other

words, the right to have their liquor store, which was convenient to

most of them. As you know, there was considerable protest by several

people who were using that facility. My whole point is that when it's

convenient to the minister, he plays politics. That of course is his

profession, but he should be honest about it.

When the

former Attorney-General was in charge of liquor administration he once

responded to us on this side of the House, when we asked him about

removing South African products, that it was a case of selective

ethics. That would imply to me that political considerations are very

much the order of the day with that government. I think that in this

instance we've demonstrated very clearly that the Minister of Consumer

and Corporate Affairs is a politician very adept at skating and dancing

around issues. However, I must say he is consistent, because he has at

all times said that he is not going to honour the commitment on the

part of his country, Canada, in signing United Nations declarations

against South Africa and condemning that country for its racist

policies and other atrocious actions against humanity.

He is

suggesting quite clearly that the members on that side of the House do

not recognize this country's commitment to try to improve the world

condition, to make, if nothing else, symbolic gestures that would

respect the rights of peoples in other jurisdictions, countries and

communities and of different political persuasions — whatever their

problems or circumstances may be. I think this is really the crux, Mr.

Speaker, of what I have to say today.

I realize we're

discussing the budget, and the budget was condemned by the hon. Leader

of the Opposition when he moved a motion which essentially suggested

that the budget neglected to mobilize human and natural resources

toward a strategy of full employment, embracing manufacturing and other

secondary industries; failed to establish policies helpful to small

business, and also made no attempt to relieve citizens of the heavy

burden of spiralling tax increases.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The House has spoken on that question.

MR. BARNES:

That's true, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to put things into perspective,

because we are dealing with an administration — perhaps a more

appropriate expression would be a regime of political opportunists…. I

don't like throwing too many adjectives around, Mr. Speaker, with

respect to the hon. members in this Legislature, because I think we all

would like to feel that this is one place where the load and the

responsibility we carry on behalf of our constituents is far too great

for us to be frivolous and careless in our behaviour, manner and

concern about the issues before us. So I take myself under advisement

when I begin to use expressions of degradation or slight insult about

those members on that side of the House. But I would just like to say

that the people of British Columbia are justifiably angry, justifiably

concerned and justifiably cynical because of the kinds of initiatives

that we've witnessed by one and all on that side of the House.

Mr.

Speaker, the budget speech, to quote the Minister of Finance when he

referred to Mr. Walt Kelly…. I don't know how many of you recall, but

the minister quoted Mr. Walt Kelly in his remarks. Mr. Kelly apparently

made a famous statement when he said: "We have met the enemy, and he is

us." This is a remark quoted by the Minister of Finance in his budget

speech.

The minister continued to admonish British

Columbians by telling them that they are victims of their own

prosperity. Can you imagine that, Mr. Speaker? The Minister of Finance

telling the people of British Columbia, who are suffering from the

worst inflationary conditions in the history of their province….

Unemployment is at an all-time record high, people are unable to manage

their affairs, and he is telling them that they are victims of their

own prosperity. He says: "We have allowed ourselves the luxury of

drift. A missing ingredient has been leadership — economic leadership."

Then he goes on to wrap up his incredible pitch by suggesting: "In a

rising sea of conflicting currents we need a steady hand at the tiller

— not at the till, aimlessly taking more and giving less."

Well,

that's cynicism par excellence, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Finance,

who himself has one of the largest expense accounts among all the

ministers for travel and propaganda on behalf of his ministry, has the

gall to talk to the people about having had luxurious excesses and now

being the time to pay up, and the gall to tell them that we've all got

to begin to pull together. I don't recall any efforts on the part of

any members on the government side to call together advisers in the

community who have economic expertise — be it in the labour movement,

in the educational field, in the private sector or whatever — and ask

for some advice with respect to economic initiatives that this

government might undertake, especially at a time of extreme economic

depression, when things are so bleak as far as the future is concerned

that we're going to have to ask them to restrain themselves. In other

words, we're going to be asking them to impose economic restraint upon

themselves in order to help the government overcome some of its faulty

fiscal concepts about how to manage the province.

For

instance, government travel increased 22 percent. It was $47 million in

1981-82, and the government expects to spend $57 million during this

fiscal year, 1982-83. What could $57 million buy? I would like to know

what kind of travelling those cabinet ministers are going to be doing.

What's going to be happening that's going to justify us spending $57

million — a 22 percent increase, far in excess of what they suggested

the communities spend on any matter. This is travel. Where are you

travelling to, and on whose behalf? Are you going first class, second

class or third class for $57 million?

HON. MR. CHABOT: Fifty-seven million dollars?

MR. BARNES: Yes, and it is all probably going to the Minister of Housing, who hasn't built a unit since he's been in office.

Government

ads — this is a propaganda machine, probably excluding the productions

of Mr. Douglas Heal — has gone up $2.5 million to $22,030,000.

Employment

opportunities in 1981 was $24 million and produced 16,000 jobs. In

1982-83 it has been reduced to $20 million and will produce 11,000

jobs. These are not student jobs; this is the overall government plan

to provide 11,000 jobs — down 6,000 from last year. The budget has been

cut by another $4 million.

[ Page 7115 ]

The

point is, Mr. Speaker, these are hard times, especially for young

students who are attempting to take advantage of our expensive

educational institutions but are unable to do so because the government

has turned its back on the future. In fact, it is so critical that it

is suggested that we'll have to import people to work in our technical

industries, because we haven't had the foresight, the imagination or

planning to coordinate our educational and training programs with the

aspiring young people who wish to fit into the workforce.

What

we've done, Mr. Speaker, is the 12-month boom-and-bust concept with no

planning, Now we are having to pay for this kind of lack of imagination

and understanding on the part of the government with respect to how to

plan and how to encourage the public with a plan to restrain and give

them a kind of direction, so that they can see the benefits that they

are going to receive as a result of imposing upon themselves the

harshness of doing without. Why should anyone believe, Mr. Speaker,

that the government has a plan or a concept? It is known for its ad

hockery, for its short-term and shortsighted views with respect to

planning. I think the budget fails on all of these counts to inspire

cooperation and enthusiasm that the minister spoke of when he suggested

that we'd have to pull together.

I think the Minister of

Finance had no right to admonish the public for what he calls excesses,

because really the only excess has been his lack of appreciation for

the turning of events within the economic community of British Columbia

and to recognize the kinds of options that are open to him with respect

to trusting the private sector and the interests in the community who

have the most to lose.

Mr. Speaker, the horror story goes

on. The government has attempted to undermine most of the people

programs — the social programs and the kinds of programs that maintain

the confidence and the spirit within the community; the sense of

enthusiasm that is needed; the sense of determination to work on behalf

of the future. It has taken $25 million from the downtown

revitalization program — a program that helps to maintain the level of

enthusiasm, the level of confidence and a sense of high spirits, as we

like to call it. The government has coined their own phrase; they call

it "the B.C. spirit." You need this kind of enthusiasm in any community

in order to have that feeling of togetherness; and taking $25 million

out of a program that helps to give people the feeling their city is

not crumbling around them is hardly a way to encourage people that doom

and gloom is not, in fact, upon them. The same thing happened with the

Energy Development Fund, where $8 million was confiscated by the

government under the guise of needing the money to balance the books.

Two and a half million dollars was wiped out of the Provincial

Computerization of Libraries Fund.

All of these are programs that the government considers to be

frills. In times of restraint, stop feeding the children, cut back on

education, cut out the cultural programs and begin to talk about hard

times in such a way as to encourage people to degrade themselves, to

lose a sense of dignity, a sense of pride. The troops, too, have to

have their heads up. They have to be able to feel they can stay

healthy, especially when they see so many people spending so much money

on frivolous things, when they see a government that consists primarily

of ministers, perhaps with second incomes. Many of them are probably

independently wealthy; many of them probably do not require their MLA

salaries at all as far as day-to-day living is concerned. I suggest,

Mr. Speaker, that if you were to canvass those cabinet ministers you

would probably find that most of them are very well off, are

independently wealthy.

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: We may have a few

but I would suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that there certainly are not

very many. Certainly this hon. member wouldn't be counted among them.

The

point is that they don't have the sensitivity, the pressing needs.

Perhaps they should be forgiven, because reality is where you yourself

are at. We all understand that very well. As difficult as it is to try

to show compassion and understanding for someone else who is in need or

someone else who is hard pressed, it takes quite a bit of effort and

concentration for well-off people to really understand, no matter how

hard they try. Those people over there, I think, have demonstrated this

by the document they've submitted on behalf of the people of British

Columbia as the spending estimates for the next fiscal year: $7.7

billion does not reflect their concern in any real way.

Another

example is that the Drug, Alcohol and Cigarette Education, Prevention

and Rehabilitation Fund, a perpetual fund of $18 million, has been

wiped out. This $18 million fund provided annually a return of a few

million dollars to maintain educational programs for people who perhaps

purchase more of these debilitating substances, cigarettes and alcohol,

which is obviously one of the major sources of revenue for the

government. They've wiped out the programs that try to enlighten

people, that try to encourage them to restrain themselves from trying

to anesthetize their frustrations and fears about the hard times in the

economy by overindulging in alcohol and other poisonous substances.

1979, the government realized $206.2 million revenue from the sale of

alcohol. In 1980, it realized $222.5 million; in 1981, $274.6 million.

Its revised total for 1982 is $319 million, and it is estimating $365

million for this present fiscal year. They cancel a perpetual fund of

$18 million that was providing a very small percentage, probably $5

million a year — I haven't got the exact figure — which was a return

directed to those people who are affected by various complications as a

result of their overindulgence in the use of alcohol, drugs and

cigarettes, etc. That's another act of cynicism. Is cutting out on

educational programs that are going to maintain the public good health

a way to restrain? I would suggest that it's retrogressive; it is a

disincentive; and it's cynical in every respect. It suggests to the

people that they are on their own, as the Minister of Consumer and

Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Hyndman) quite eloquently put it this

afternoon when he suggested that people do not have to drink. Mr.

Speaker, you and I know full well that we live in a society of

commercial exploitation in high-pressure sales, and we know that we

have conditioned most of our citizens in such a way that they're not

always aware of how they are being induced and seduced to behave in

ways which are not beneficial to themselves in very many ways.

the government, rightly or wrongly — because I don't believe that

particular administration was the first government to exploit the use

of the revenues that they get from the sale of alcohol and cigarettes —

certainly have come to rely on these large sums of money through the

sale of spirits as a regular and necessary part of their revenue. In

fact, as you can see, the revenue in liquor sales alone has almost

doubled

[ Page 7116 ]

just three years. I think that is very indicative of a trend. The

government no longer recognizes the need for restraint with respect to

its moral commitment to the public, and instead has not only begun to

promote and project greater revenues from the sale of alcohol but has

began to exploit the sale of lotteries even further. The government has

begun to take advantage of the inclination that people have to think

that they can find a quick buck, and they do all they can by promoting

on television and radio and in the newspapers with very cleverly

designed devices that will encourage people to take a chance. Mr.

Speaker, we know the odds of winning any of those big prizes are

probably about as good as you, sir, being struck by lightening in your

chair.

However, the government feels that the public can

make up its own mind whether it wants to or doesn't want to buy lottery

tickets or whether it wants to or doesn't want to purchase liquor. The

government feels no moral responsibility whatsoever, which is evidenced

by the removal of this very small perpetual fund that was providing

educational information to help people make rational and reasonable

decisions with respect to their health. I'm not impressed with the

incentives in the budget.

Mr. Speaker, let's take the

housing problem. We've got unemployment and high interest rates and

there are many problems that we discussed, but the housing problem is

the one that I would just like to spend a moment or two on. Social

Credit opposes government involvement in housing. There's no question

about it. In 1976, soon after the Social Credit government took office,

the present Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis), who at that time was

the Minister of Municipal Affairs, took it upon himself to dismantle

one of the public's house-building corporations, the Housing

Corporation of B.C. That corporation had been land-banking, purchasing

multiple rental dwellings and had been constructing some as well on a

rational plan basis with a view to keeping the private sector

developers honest. It restricted its activities to constructing homes

within the moderate- to medium-price range to ensure that affordable

housing options were available to people who found themselves in the

crunch due to circumstances beyond their control, especially people on

fixed incomes and so forth.

The government with its

doctrinaire, arrogant attitudes about so-called laissez-faire, freedom

of choice and all of these concepts which in practical terms mean

nothing….

You and I know that, Mr. Speaker. We don't care

whether you call it free enterprise, socialism or what. We want action;

we want benefits; we want returns. This is what a modern contemporary

political organization should be concerned about — not slogans. But the

government stands on its hind legs and says that the government has no

place in social housing, no responsibility whatsoever, and is not going

to get involved. It wiped out a perfectly legitimate and effective

program of construction on behalf of the people of British Columbia so

it could take its rightful place in the competitive market. Who has a

better right to compete in their own marketplace than the people of the

province? Why should it be that the public themselves cannot

collectively compete through their government in the so-called free

marketplace? Why do they have to be denied this right? By what reason?

For what purpose — to satisfy a concept? What about reality?

think the government has been criminally negligent with respect to its

attitude on fiscal policies. The message is clear, and it will speak

for itself as time goes along; certainly at the next election, I'm sure.

The

B.C. Housing Management Commission has hundreds and hundreds of

applicants who have been waiting for years — single parents, young

families and people who are on fixed incomes. People who are locked

into economic hard times are in no position to do very much for

themselves. They are asking the government to provide housing for them.

We do in fact have a corporation. It is an administrative body that was

set up to manage the units that had been constructed by the Housing

Corporation of B.C. But when the Housing Corporation of B.C. was

dismantled, there were no new units coming on stream which the B.C.

Housing Management Commission would administer on behalf of these

people on the waiting list. They are waiting today with no hope. Why

doesn't the government tell them honestly: "Look, you're on a waiting

list, and you're not going to get any unit"? But the government hasn't

got the courage to close down that expensive administrative

organization. It has no new units. I'm sure that the staff are

thoroughly embarrassed by having to turn people away day in and day

out, with no hope of doing anything for them.

Consider the

thinking of the government when it comes to housing. They did create

one corporation but they got rid of another. They got rid of the Public

Works department. It was another public organization that was doing

something economically on behalf of the people, where the cash flow was

turned back into the economy.

The B.C. Buildings Corporation

is a Social Credit invention. That's their answer to the Housing

Corporation of B.C. The only difference is that they went out and hired

a private entrepreneur, who was already a millionaire, to manage it on

behalf of the people of B.C. He proceeded to engage in activity with

the private sector, who are all speculators, real estate brokers and so

forth, and now the government rents facilities from that organization,

instead of from itself, at additional expense and God only knows what

else. It's hard to get an up-to-date account of just what really

happened in that particular branch of the public sector.

It's

just a matter of public morality, what you consider to be the public's

right and what the government takes from the public by decree. It's

some kind of special privilege, I suppose, that politicians feel they

have once they get elected. But it's a very difficult concept for me to

understand when I think of 57 people here on behalf of the nearly three

million people who are out there and who we are going to have to go to

pretty soon. We are going to have to turn in our report cards, and

we're going to have to tell them what we're doing on their behalf.

Those poor voters are going to have to try to make decisions based on

information that has proven to be faulty and incomplete. They have no

right to access to information; they can't get the facts. We get

stonewalled by the politicians in power.

The government

gives the illusion of being concerned by creating a number of standing

committees that are going to look into public affairs. But those

committees don't sit. And when they do, the information isn't

available, and there's no way that we can get any information. We have

cabinet ministers sitting on committees judging themselves with respect

to what accounts will or will not be reviewed. When we object, we get

overruled or outvoted by the heavy hand of the Social Credit majority.

So the public has every reason to be concerned and cynical about this

budget.

We find that the government has represented itself

as having balanced the budget. And then we find that all they've done

is borrow money between 1982 and 1983 to pay 1981 and 1982.

[ Page 7117 ]

The

northeast coal deal is just one example. This has happened to all kinds

of programs through transfers and very clever, new, so-called accrual

accounting procedures. You can't quite figure out what is going on.

would suggest one other thing, Mr. Speaker. Normally we at least get a

first-class book for the estimates — all well bound and on a par with

some of those glossy government news publications that go out from

various ministries. But this year we got a computer printout on pulp.

After having to fight for it, we receive it late. In other words, no

details whatsoever. These are the kinds of things that make us wonder

if the government is really sincere in its desire to cooperate — not

only with the opposition but also with the people of British Columbia.

Speaking

of housing, there is another program that the government decided not to

pursue any further, and that is the co-sponsored federal-provincial

rental aid program, which provided some 850 units. They did so in order

to save $3.5 million that the government had to pay as part of its

share to subsidize these units which contained people on fixed incomes,

senior citizens, the handicapped and so forth. This is a program that

was in place. They didn't create it, but they began to look upon that

as an excess and eliminated that program as well.

I'm not

sure who really qualifies for the renter's rebate. It's another very

small item in the whole housing problem. In order to get anything back,

you've got to be on the poverty line. But, Mr. Speaker, you and I know

that if you're on the poverty line, you can't afford to buy or rent

housing at market rates. So who is benefiting? It's just another piece

of cheap propaganda about the government being interested in helping

those in need when, in fact, it's another shell game.

I want

to say a few things about rent controls, Mr. Speaker. In 1975, rent

controls had become a way of life. In 1972 the New Democratic Party

assessed the very critical housing situation, in which unconscionable

rental-market exploiters were rent-gouging. People were flipping

properties and carrying on a number of activities that resulted in the

tenants being placed at a disadvantage with respect to being able to

have a place to live.

In December 1975, during that

election, people were very frightened about losing rent controls. All

the politicians of the day were asked point blank: "What are you going

to do about rent controls?" I remember that the now Premier, Bill

Bennett, who was leading the opposition at the time, took out a

full-page ad in the major newspapers, with a big picture of himself

saying: "Rent controls will stay, and that's a promise and a

commitment." I'll say one thing about the Premier: if he can possibly

find a way to have his cake and eat it too — or give the illusion that

he can — he will try. So he instructed his Minister of Consumer and

Corporate Affairs, Mr. Rafe Mair, who is no longer with us, to proceed

to undermine the controls. He said: "Do not remove them, because it is

a very hard time for the government. What we'll do is create some

loopholes." They came out with a revised Residential Tenancy Act, which

today is a very useless document with respect to protecting the rights

of either tenant or landlord. It's just a shambles, and the rentalsman

has been faced with an impossible task of trying to administer a

document that would find him in court more than out in trying to deal

with these disputes.

So the rent controls are no longer

effective. But the political scenario with respect to rent controls is

a paradox. We have one faction in the community — I suppose they call

themselves friends of the government, the developers — who are saying:

"Remove rent controls so we can get on with constructing homes and

solving the housing problem." Those people are going to do so at such

high cost that it will not benefit the people who really need them.

They say they're not going to construct low-rental housing unless

they're subsidized. They want the people who are going to rent from

them to do the paying in advance and put up the front money. So

somewhere in between, probably about 70 percent or 80 percent of the

units already on stream are getting the best of both worlds.

rent controls were removed, you can be sure that a large majority of

the units out there today would go up, but not all the way up. They

would not go up high enough to bail out those people who would like to

have rent controls removed so they can justify having overextended

themselves in speculative housing in the hope that they'd be able to

gouge tenants. They would still be stuck, because that large majority

of units in the middle would rise just enough to keep the pressure on

the top, but the guy in the middle would be hurting even more, This is

one of the problems that we find ourselves in.

This is where

doctrinaire politics and philosophy are no longer applicable. The

government has to recognize its responsibility and go into the housing

field and begin to construct units. People are being victimized by the

government's policies with respect to constructing rental housing. I

tried to emphasize this one problem, but as you know, the document is

hardly relevant with respect to high interest rates, the cost of living

and a host of other problems facing the community.

Mr.

Speaker, I would like to close by suggesting to you that I and the

members on this side of the House will certainly be voting in

opposition to this budget. I will be looking forward to speaking to

those ministers directly when the ministry estimates are before the

House for debate.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, I think just you and I and a few New Democrats are here.

HON. MR. SMITH:

At the outset, I'm going to add on the record an acknowledgement that

others have made of the events that occurred in the nation's capital on

the weekend, namely the patriation of the Canadian constitution and the

proclamation by the Queen of the Canada Bill, including a charter of

rights. Millions of Canadians saw that serene lady sign the

proclamation and address the crowds at a moment in which rain clouds

formed over the Ottawa River and burst and loosed a spring downpour on

the audience. Some there might have wished that that downpour had

occurred at the time of some of the earlier speakers on the occasion.

But everyone listened with a great deal of pleasure to the words of the

Queen, and neither gloomy weather nor dire economic circumstances could

dampen her spirit.

Some members may think that it was an

ominous sign that while the rain still drizzled and the ceremony

concluded the Queen left the stage to carry out other duties, including

unveiling a plaque in the East Block in Ottawa, escorted by the Deputy

Prime Minister, who is also the Minister of Finance. Were she other

than her dignified self, she might have asked him during that soggy

stroll if he had anything in his budget for such a rainy day.

I will try to address my remarks to the budget before us at this….

Interjection.

[ Page 7118 ]

HON. MR. SMITH: I'm glad. You're the only one listening, Rosemary.

should also on this occasion pay tribute to the contribution made by

both the Premier and the Minister of Intergovernmental Relations (Hon.

Mr. Gardom) in achieving a peaceful settlement of the constitutional

debate with the consent of nine of the provinces. Would that it had

been with the consent of the tenth.

Unlike the federal

budget, which did not provide rainy day relief, this budget brought in

by our Minister of Finance points the way to sunnier skies.

We've

had some good addresses in this chamber which I've enjoyed, both on the

amendment and on the main motion. I congratulate the member for

Kootenay (Mr. Segarty), the member for Prince George South (Mr.

Strachan) and the member for Kamloops (Mr. Richmond) as just a few of

those who delivered excellent speeches. I also enjoyed the remarks of

some of the members opposite, particularly the fiery address of the

member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer), and I'm sorry that he's

not here today.

The member for Vancouver Centre also made a very amusing speech on education, which will no doubt be reproduced in National Lampoon .

I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I would much rather be his

haberdasher than his speechwriter. The former at least has a sense of

tidiness, of dash and of proportion; the latter — his speechwriter — I

think needs more study and perhaps the attention to detail that comes

from those who peruse racing forms. In the debate on my bill and on the

estimates I will be dealing in some detail with his less outrageous

remarks.

Basically, Mr. Speaker, the Finance minister

deserves strong congratulation. For months during the Christmas season,

when the rest of us were shopping, making lists and doing family

things, he agonized and wrestled over the problems of a sagging

economy, depleted revenues, and the soaring costs and rising

aspirations that some people have come to expect from endless

government services. I'm pleased with the budget result for a number of

reasons. I'm sure the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke), the

member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Lorimer) and some others, including

the Minister of Municipal Affairs (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm), will agree

with me that the budget is acceptable because the tax on pipe tobacco

did not increase.

Seriously, the Finance minister faced a

number of difficult options. His first option, and one that he no doubt

seriously considered, was whether to deficit-finance, mortgage the

future and commit the province to a pattern of paying for operating

services out of borrowed money. That is the approach some other

jurisdictions have taken in this country — one which is a tantalizing

one to follow in a year of depleted revenues, but one which has

disastrous ongoing consequences. Another option that he had was simply

to cut expenditures and starve services. That has happened in many of

the states to the south; it has happened in the United Kingdom, and it

happened in other places. His third option was to bring in a balanced

budget, restrain government spending and balance that restraint with

wage guidelines that would prevent massive layoffs and cutbacks in the

public service and allow most of the essential social services to

continue. The minister wisely chose the third course.

supporting the budget motion, therefore, I am supporting a minister who

has been steadfast and dutiful and who has displayed courage. This

budget is being applauded not only in this province but across the

country. Many times during the past weekend I heard the refrain: "Your

Premier and your government have shown leadership in balancing the

budget and reducing public expenditure. If only other governments would

do the same thing."

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

realize that no budget will please everyone, and this budget came at a

particularly difficult time. But the budget includes no major tax

increases, with the exception of the increase in the capital tax on

banks. It is a budget also that preserves thousands of jobs in the

public sector, with the wage-restraint program supporting it. It is

also a budget that has a proposal to sell housing and employment

development bonds to stimulate investment in housing; it is a budget as

well which contains new money for school tax reform this year and next

year — an additional quarter of a billion dollars over a period of two

years to reduce school tax, specifically, and redistribute burdens. It

also is a budget, Mr. Speaker, which contains and provides for growth

in services for the elderly, for those on income assistance and for

families with children.

It is an economic recovery budget.

It is not a budget of castor oil; it is not the kind of budget that

Washington state, the United Kingdom and other jurisdictions have gone

through, where cutbacks actually mean 10 percent or 15 percent fewer

dollars being spent on a program this year than last year. In other

words, what it really is is a moderate application of the brakes in

this province in a period when reductions in revenue have been met with

modest restraints on government spending and a reasonable assumption of

social services.

I want very gently to observe some of the

positions the official opposition seem to have been taking on this

budget to try to put together some kind of logical position which they

are advancing in opposition to the budget. The first proposition that I

seem to deduce is that the government is to blame for the economy. The

second proposition, Mr. Speaker, is that they exhort us publicly to be

frugal and not to spend money, to be very careful; they express a great

deal of concern about the need for restraint; but in almost every

specific field in which they are interested, approached or lobbied they

ask us to spend more money.

They have never told us whether

they're in favour of a deficit budget or not, whether they would have

borrowed for the future. They've never told us whether they support the

restraint program, or whether they would cancel it. They have never

given us concrete, realistic methods of creating more jobs besides

their usual solution of hiring more public servants. They have never

told us which of the projects that they like to refer to derisively as

megaprojects they would cancel.

During the past few weeks,

Mr. Speaker, a number of interest groups have come to the Legislature

concerned with expenditure in the health and education fields. Those

groups have had meetings with members on both sides of the House. I

wonder, Mr. Speaker, if you were a fly on the wall in the offices of

the members opposite, or in their caucus room, what they've told these

groups. Have they told them that there is indeed a need for restraint

this year? Have they told them that they support the restraint program?

I think it's a pretty fair bet that they have encouraged these groups

to believe that if they will just remain calm and patient and enrol as

poll captains, in the future the restraint program won't be around,

[ Page 7119 ]

the

lid will be off and the money will start to roll out of the wheelbarrow

again, and everything will be the way it used to be: spend, spend,

spend. I'm sure that's what they've told them, Mr. Speaker; but they

won't tell us in this House, and they won't say on the hustings,

whether they're in favour of the restraint program or a balanced budget.

Will

they abolish northeast coal? I believe that they probably will — that

they're committed to abolishing northeast coal. But they're a bit

ambiguous on that. Will they cancel the work on B.C. Place? The member

for North Island (Mr. Gabelmann), in his usual candid way, indicates

that in his view that should be postponed for a year, and I respect him

for saying that. But I have never heard of an official position from

his party that they would cancel or delay the work on B.C. Place. Will

they also oppose, and will they not go ahead with plans for, Expo and

the convention centre?

We have from them a lot of posturing

and criticism, portents of gloom and all sorts of encouragement for

every interest group in this province who feel that they're not getting

enough money into their programs. But they have no clear position that

they are prepared to enunciate on the platform, or in this Legislature,

as to whether they're in favour of these projects or in favour of the

restrained budget.

In the area of education, Mr. Speaker,

they are even more prone to use innuendos, inaccuracies and portents of

gloom and doom. Instead of applauding this government's initiative in

putting in an additional quarter of a billion dollars in the next two

years into the reduction of school taxes, they quote alarmist figures

indicating, quite inaccurately, that residential property tax is going

to soar. They know from the figures that the new finance formula

highlighted in this budget will provide tax relief to 50 school

districts, which will pay less under this system than under the

previous system. In 15 school districts in this province taxpayers will

actually pay less tax this year in actual dollars than last year on an

average home. They know that, Mr. Speaker, but they are not saying it.

They don't intend to give this government credit for taking the first

major step in redressing property tax burdens.

Another thing

that they are not saying in this house, Mr. Speaker, is that they would

have assumed the industrial commercial tax base as a provincial

resource, and that they didn't have the courage to to do that and they

would have done that a long time ago. They privately applaud that

measure, and they're entirely in support of it in their private views.

get the usual old chestnuts from them, Mr. Speaker, about how the

school system is an elitist school system. The first member for

Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), having returned from his tailor, referred

to the school system as elitist, saying there were massive rises in the

funding of independent schools and that the government had a higher

commitment to the independent school system than to the public school

system. I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that this government has a

commitment to keeping both systems operating. It is not elitism to fund

independent schools and to give parents in this province a choice in

their children's education. Nor is it elitism to provide major

increases in the quality of education in this province during the past

five or six years, which this government has done, and to put major new

sums of money into the education system in the next two years under the

budget.

As well, it is interesting to know their position on

funding independent schools. I always hear the examples when they're

decrying that there isn't enough money being spent on education; that

somehow the grants to independent schools are going up. I take that as

being their own unrevised and unrepentant doctrinairism coming up. They

can't bear to see a nickel of public money going into the independent

school system so as to allow parents to have that kind of choice.

know what they would do if — heaven preserve us — they were ever again

in the treasury benches. We know what they'd do to the independent

school system. They'd ultimately stop the funding for the independent

school system, and if they didn't stop it immediately, they would exact

such centralized control over everything that system did, that most

independent schools would opt out.

Another one of the old

saws that they raise, and one that is fashionably raised in certain

circles of the B.C. Teachers Federation central executive, is to make

little comments on the subject of consumer education. If ever there was

a time in the economy of our nation when a course was necessary and

language, but also literate economically, that time is now.

Mr.

Speaker, they speak about collective bargaining for teachers, and the

first member for Vancouver Centre speaks about the need for more

freedom in the field of collective bargaining. What they're really

saying, and what they're saying privately to the B.C. Teachers

Federation executive, is: "Boys, we support the right to strike in

education. We don't think there's anything wrong with the strike

weapon. We think there should be free, collective bargaining, totally,

in education. We don't think that there's going to be a problem if

schools are closed, and we believe that even though 58 percent of the

teachers of this province voted against that approach in a referendum."

They're just as out of touch with the teachers of this province as they

are with the public of this province.

To return to this

budget, the budget points the way to a recovery, to a better future.

The incentives are there. The minister has taken a responsible approach

in balancing the budget; he has produced restraints mixed with

incentives. He has also, in an era when this government has been able

to cooperate with the federal government in a major way, produced major

project development in the north and in the lower mainland, which is

going to guarantee a major and more rapid recovery in this province

than in many other parts of North America. The minister is to be

applauded, and I, as one hon. member, will be voting for the motion in

support of the budget.

MR. D'ARCY: I'm pleased, Mr. Speaker, to see that the member who

just spoke actually did get around to education at some point in his discourse.

I'd

like to talk about the budget and the general policies of government,

in particular how they relate to my constituents in the southwestern

part of the Kootenay region of B.C.

I'd like to point out

that it won't be much of a problem to address you, Mr. Speaker, in this

debate, because there are really very few people on the other side of

the House who seem to be interested this afternoon.

Last

December the government, in an attempt to pay up the revenues, which

they had severely underestimated in March of last year, arbitrarily

increased licence fees for hydroelectric purposes in this province.

That was a cruel blow to industry, employment and retail trade in my

constituency.

[ Page 7120 ]

Interjection.

MR. D'ARCY:

The major employer in my riding — as the person chirping over in the

corner well knows, as Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland); he used

to be involved in the mining industry — is involved in the smelting and

refining of ores. We don't mine in our area, but we do have a major

smelting and refining operation which, along with the Sullivan mine in

Kimberley, employs roughly 6,300 people.

The only reason why

that operation is in Trail is because of low-cost hydroelectric power.

In fact, they are there for the same reason that Alcan is in Kitimat.

It's not because of the proximity to ore and it's not because of the

proximity to market; it's certainly not for topographical reasons,

transportation costs or geotechnical reasons. It's there for only one

reason: low-cost hydroelectric power, which that company has put into

place at its own expense, by its own investment over the years. In

every other aspect of that operation the reality of the marketplace

militates against having that operation in the West Kootenay or

probably any place in British Columbia at all.

The one

reason it was there — low-cost hydroelectric power — was severely

undermined by an arbitrary action of this government in quadrupling the

licence fee charged for water going through the plants on the Kootenay

and Pend-d'Oreille Rivers, which supply electricity to this operation.

One year later, the doubling of those same licence fees has resulted in

a cost increase by a factor of ten to that company. This has had an

influence — I'm not going to suggest it's the only influence, but it

was one of the factors — in that company making a decision this spring

to close its operation for a minimum of five weeks. It is the first

shutdown that that company has seen in Trail in over three-quarters of

a century. I would like to point out that we're not just talking about

the closure of the production part of the operation; we are talking

about a complete shutdown of the secondary and tertiary operations of

Cominco. As I think some people in this House know, all of that

company's engineering operations from around the world are done in

Trail. In addition, they contract out their expertise in mining and

smelting technology to firms around the world; it is indeed a secondary

professional industry, based in Trail and operating on a worldwide

basis. This is being shut down. The foundry operation, which to some

degree serves the smelter, is basically a separate operation; it is

also being shut down.

The government of B.C. — not just the

area — will lose a significant amount of revenue in income taxes, sales

taxes and in all the multiplier effects thereto because of the

shutdown. In part, it has been influenced by an arbitrary action of

government without consultation with anyone in industry. There are

6,300 jobs, Mr. Speaker.

Before I leave the question of

hydroelectric power in the West Kootenay, as Mr. Speaker is well aware,

over six years ago Cominco and West Kootenay Power applied to the

former energy board for the opportunity to separate the operations of

West Kootenay Power and Cominco Ltd. After a significant amount of time

and cost to the company and to the taxpayer, the energy board and the

company came up with an accommodation. Agreement was reached; it was

sent over here to Victoria for ratification by cabinet, and the

cabinet, without a reason given, turned it down. The same process was

gone through again last summer and last fall with the new Utilities

Commission.

We in the West Kootenay, and indeed all people

in the southern part of the province, including the South Okanagan, who

rely on West Kootenay power for electricity, are wondering what is

going to happen to the plant facilities and their transmission system —

a system of electric power which has been very low cost to industry and

consumers but is badly in need of upgrading. It is old. It needs

significant investment to bring it into the 1980s, and that investment

is not available and cannot be made available until the Utilities

Commission makes a decision on this application — a decision which I

submit is long overdue.

Mr. Speaker, we did hear the

Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Smith) talk to some degree about school

taxes. The arbitrary decision of government to seize control of

commercial property on the industrial tax base has savaged my

constituency in terms of cost to all property taxpayers and

particularly residential taxpayers. In school district 11 alone, a

preliminary estimate is that everybody's taxes are going to go up on

the average of $85 this year as a result of this action.

One

of the advantages of living in a resource-based community, a

manufacturing community…. Some people in the province would say: "Well,

who would want to live there with a smelter in the middle of town?" or

"Who would want to live in a town such as Castlegar, which has a

pulpmill on the edge of town?" The fact is that one of the benefits

that people who have lived in manufacturing communities have enjoyed is

a reduction of property taxes due to the fact that they have a

significant industrial operation in the community. If someone chose,

for whatever reason, to live in Oak Bay, where the Minister of

Education lives, or in West Vancouver, which have zoning laws and

regulations that prevent and discourage industry from moving in, they

paid the price, and the price was higher than average property taxes

for school purposes. I see it as direct thievery on the part of the

government to remove from my constituency, from a number of

constituencies held by members on the other side of the House, from the

constituency of my colleague, the member for North Island (Mr.

Gabelmann), and indeed from all of the constituencies with a

concentration of industrial activity…to rob that money in order to

reduce the taxes in constituencies such as West Vancouver and Oak Bay.

Mr. Speaker, I consider that a most irresponsible and unfair action of

government.

It's quite true that the school tax formula

needs overhauling, but a little bit in this direction is totally

inconsistent and, in my view, makes it more inequitable and worse, in

fact, than it was before.

Another word on property taxes,

Mr. Speaker. In my constituency, assessments have gone up this year by

roughly 40 percent on average. The budget arbitrarily increases the

taxes in rural areas by another 20 percent. This means that apart from

the school tax increase I just mentioned, gross taxes in rural parts of

my riding are going to go up at least 50 percent before the change in

the school tax formula.

A few years ago I had to laugh at

the antics of Howard Jarvis and his property tax revolt in California.

Mr. Speaker, I guarantee you that when the tax notices are mailed out

by municipal and regional district governments in June of this year, we

could see a similar agitation for a similar kind of revolt,

particularly in my riding and, I suspect, in other ridings as well. The

government may well think that the people out there who own real

property are going to blame their school board, the municipal

government, CUPE or the BCTF, but they're not going to blame those

organizations.

[ Page 7121 ]

They're

going to know why they've had a tax increase, and one of the reasons

they're going to know it's the provincial government that has done it

to them and done it to them arbitrarily is because the school boards,

the hospital boards, the municipal councils and the regional district

councils are going to tell them so. They're going to tell them so

because those people out there who are appointed to those boards,

including college councils, are angry at the way the rules arbitrarily

have been changed in the fourth quarter by the provincial government.

When

I moved to Castlegar in 1960 we had a terrible, substandard, heavily

travelled highway going into Trail. Between 1962 and 1975 the W.A.C.

Bennett government and the Barrett government rebuilt all but one mile

of that highway to modern highway standards. The most heavily travelled

mile, though, is the mile through the Cominco smelter. Nothing has

happened on that since 1975. The engineering, the contract documents,

the agreement with the federal government and indeed a pledge of a

million dollars for the removal of railway crossings have been in place

now for six months.

Part of the $700 million reinvestment that Cominco is making in Trail depends

on the relocation of that highway. The government, though, sits month after

month and twiddles its thumbs. The multiplier effect of that kind of highway

investment, apart from the need of the public from a safety and travelling point

of view, gets more severe every day. I ask the government to move with much

more than deliberate speed immediately. Those contract documents are ready,

the engineering is done, the agreement with the federal government is in place

and the federal money is available. There are no excuses. We have a major investment

in secondary and tertiary industry, job-intensive industries, high technology

industry — the kind that the member for Vancouver–Point Grey loves to talk about

— waiting on this highway expenditure.

I'm

going to dwell on that member for Vancouver–Point Grey. He talked a

great deal in his speech in the budget debate about what he thought was

going to be a gallium arsenide mountain. We have lots of mountains in

Trail already. I hope he's correct about that. I want to go back to my

earlier remarks. One of the reasons we have a high technology

investment related to the mining industry in Trail is the lowcost

hydroelectric power. On the one hand the government brags about this

taking place in B.C., and yet on the other hand they pull the rug out

from under the private company that made the decision to put those

operations in B.C. and not in some other part of the country or world,

which they may well have done. Many other Canadian companies have done

just that. I find it hard to accept the fact that this government has

any business expertise or acumen whatsoever. They advocate one thing

and make it as difficult and discouraging as possible for those persons

and companies in B.C. who attempt to do what the government is

advocating.

Other persons on this side of the House

have talked in great detail, I think, about the general economic

conditions in their ridings, especially those from outside the lower

mainland and greater Victoria. In the West Kootenay I unfortunately

have to report that Stats Canada and UIC report that we have 16 percent

unemployed. We have 80 percent more applicants for unemployment

insurance in the Trail office than we had a year ago. The Ministry of

Human Resources reports a similar increase in applicants for

assistance. They also report a strain on staff. They report that they

have asked Victoria, through their regional office, for more

caseworkers because they have whole new caseloads coming on stream. Of

course I'm concerned about that. I think everyone in the House is

concerned about that sort of thing.

I would like to talk

about some specific proposals that I and community leaders in my

constituency, along with my colleague for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson)

and the MP for the area, have discussed with numerous people that we

feel involve a minimum amount of action by government. They not only

have a high return in economic, and hence social, benefit to my riding,

but also would have a significant return in revenue to the provincial

government. I would reiterate, as has been said before in this House,

that any spending in this province returns at least 30 cents on the

dollar to the provincial government and the creatures of the provincial

government: school districts, hospitals and municipal governments out

in the province. There's an immediate return and an immediate

multiplier effect.

The Minister of Education has bragged

about his new special restraint program. The immediate effect of

educational cutbacks in my constituency is that special needs programs

are being scrapped by the school districts — special needs programs for

children with learning disabilities and also for gifted children. We're

really getting back to the core curriculum and the three Rs, because

the school boards don't have any money to do anything else.

know very well what the social costs are going to be later on, because

individual children are not getting the opportunities that they should

be getting — not because the school boards are hard-hearted and

callous, but because they are doing their best to conform with

arbitrary decisions that have taken place here in Victoria — once again

without consultation with the public.

Mr. Speaker, I have

two school districts. One of them, the Castlegar district, has been one

of the most efficiently run in the province on a cost-per-student

basis. Their reward for their efficiency is to be chopped back by the

same percentage as everybody else. Nice guys have finished last once

again. And students — children — in my constituency are suffering

because of it.

We see major capital programs and

occupational training programs through Selkirk College in Trail and

Castlegar being cancelled or delayed because of the cutbacks in the

funding for community colleges. These cutbacks — in terms of operation

— are primarily in occupational training. We once again saw an

arbitrary decision last September when the provincial government just

wiped out the mining school in Rossland. Again, Mr. Speaker, this was

occupational training; it was not elitist university training or trades

training. It was training people who were not employable so that they

were employable in the mining industry in British Columbia. They were

also trained to operate heavy equipment in other fields, including the

trucking industry, mining, forestry and heavy-duty contracting. It was

arbitrarily hacked up by the government.

In the budget we

see the youth-employment program taken out. This was of tremendous

assistance, not just to the students involved but to the small

businesses who hired these kids and to the non-profit societies such as

the Rossland mining museum — a museum which is nearly as elaborate as

the Britannia mining museum. Unlike the Britannia mining museum, which

has had large infusions of public funds and operates at public expense,

the Rossland museum has been provided for by contributions from

individuals and industry

[ Page 7122 ]

and

has been operated on a non-profit basis without the assistance of the

provincial government. That was cut out. Now non-profit societies such

as that, which used to rely on staffing from the youth employment

program during the tourist season, are not going to be able to operate

in the way that they have before. We know that last year, of course,

the youth program in parks — a program that has been in place for many

years in B.C. — was arbitrarily ended.

Mr. Speaker, we have

that rare thing in my riding, a popular hydroelectric project. We have

a hydroelectric project which the community — environmentalists, trade

unionists, the chamber of commerce, everyone agrees — wants to go

ahead. That project is the installation of a generating station in the

Keenleyside Dam in Castlegar; it used to be called the High Arrow Dam.

That dam has been in operation for 14 years now and it's never

generated a single kilowatt of power. There is a proposal by B.C. Hydro

now to install a 144-megawatt generating station there. There is a

desire that this proceed as soon as possible. I would hope that if B.C.

Hydro makes a decision to go ahead, the government and its agencies

will put no obstacles in the way of this project going ahead as soon as

possible.

I would ask that the government immediately

contact the federal government and ask for a new allocation of funds

for the TIDSA program. I've no idea whether anyone in your constituency

of Delta has taken advantage of this program, but I'd like to say that

the TIDSA program — under the federal-provincial agreement — is one of

the outstanding initiatives of government that I have seen in the ten

years that I have been in this Legislature. It has indeed had a

tremendously positive effect on the tourism industry and on maximizing

the benefit from the great natural resources that we have in B.C., with

no danger to any other use of those resources. It has helped the

private sector, it has helped municipal government, and it has helped

non-profit societies. In the ski industry it has really had an effect.

I'm sure that the money that has been invested by the provincial and

the federal government in B.C. tourism has already been returned in tax

revenue and in economic activity out there in the private sector. The

fund is out of money right now, but the program is still in place. What

we need is a new infusion of funds. I want to emphasize that we're

talking about seed money here. We're not talking about make-work

programs that would be taking advantage of individuals out there in the

communities.

Mr. Speaker, we've had a lot of discussion

about what the budget does or doesn't do to the forest industry. I

would have two proposals that I would relate directly to my riding;

they also relate to the rest of the province relative to the forest

industry. The first one is that we should have a road-building program

go into place immediately. What's happened traditionally in the forest

industry is that the loggers themselves build roads, usually in a

hurry, especially in times like this. They do just the bare minimum

that's required; the companies can't afford to do anything more

elaborate. The cost the roads is charged against stumpage and because

the roads are hastily built and substandard, once the logging has been

completed — and sometimes even before — the roads wash out. They cause

silting in creeks and erosion problems, and government or some other

agency has to go back in and clean it up.

What I suggest,

Mr. Speaker, is that the roads that will be needed over the next few

years — the Forest Service and the companies know where they're going

to be logging over the next few years — be built now, be built properly

and be built at government expense, and that those costs, plus

interest, be charged back to loggers when they go in to log those

areas. The equipment is available, the technology is available, the

skilled operators are available. It should be done now in advance of

the need, and done properly. Once again, the partial return to

government of this money that it would cost to build these roads would

be immediate, and over the years the investment would be more than

repaid.

Regarding seedlings, Mr. Speaker, that's the other

item relative to the forest industry. I have been astonished to find

out that while the government allows the private production of

seedlings — this is supposed to be a free-enterprise government — you

have to be, in effect, a mega-corporation to get a licence to do it. A

cottage industry or a cottage operator with whatever number of acres

who wants to produce seedlings — and, by the way, the government can

make sure that they are quality seedlings — is not allowed to produce

those seedlings, and we have a shortage of seedlings in this province,

Mr. Speaker, as we heard in this House. We are not going to have the

tree-planting program which we could have, because of a shortage of

seedlings. Here we have a business opportunity; we have an employment

opportunity; we have an opportunity to reinvest a small amount of money

for a big return in a renewable resource. A stupid, arbitrary rule,

which in fact militates against the small and even medium-sized

entrepreneur, is holding that kind of program back. I consider this

kind of arbitrary action by government complete business insanity, if

not political insanity as well.

We have had a proposal put

forward in the Kootenays — not by a politician such as myself, but it's

a good proposal, so I'm going to repeat it here. It's a proposal put

forward by a Selkirk College board. The Selkirk College board, as you

probably are aware, like other community colleges, is partly elected

and partly appointed by government. They have suggested, in cooperation

and consultation with private firms and on the model and initiative

that we've seen with the discovery parks in B.C., that we have a

discovery park in the Kootenays, and that this be related particularly

to the mining and forestry industries. Mr. Speaker, when a college

council approves that kind of a program, you'd think that the

government would listen. I would have hoped that at least the Minister

of Universities, Science and Communications (Hon. Mr. McGeer) would

have listened, especially when you consider the fact that we have some

of the technology that I mentioned earlier already in place in the West

Kootenay in the high-technology industry related directly to the mining

industry. But that proposal has been turned down by the provincial

government. Once again, that's something that would involve the private

sector but not a great deal of government money; it would involve a

proposal which private firms and a college council have already made.

Mr.

Speaker, over the period of the six or seven years that the present

government has been in, we have seen the size of government increase

each and every year. The second member for Surrey (Mr. Hall) has

already talked about this in this debate. We have seen a government

that said that governments should be economic, that they should be

small and that they should stay out of people's lives…. We have seen a

growth, an escalation in the size of government, relative to the gross

provincial product that has increased at a faster rate than we've ever

seen in the history of the province.

In addition, we have also seen the indebtedness, which each British Columbia citizen has to underwrite through the

[ Page 7123 ]

Crown

corporations, grow at a far faster rate, relative to inflation — in

other words, in real dollars — than we have ever seen before in the

province of British Columbia.

We've heard people say on that

side of the House that the government should be operated as a business.

Most businesses that I know of have to work in some sort of a

marketplace. I don't see any concern about the reality of the economy

of B.C., the reality of the marketplace which we as a province all find

ourselves in, which is a reality of world markets. I don't see any

concern or acknowledgement of that by government at all. They're simply

saying: "We want to increase rates. We're not going to call it tax

increases. We're just going to increase water licence fees and user

fees for all kinds of services by several hundred percent. We're going

to get our bucks, and we don't care how we do it."

Some of

the increases and the impositions have been what I would call bizarre.

Probably the most bizarre recently are the fees that have been

established for health inspection. Here is a service designed to

protect the public. The restaurateur doesn't particularly want to be

inspected by the health inspector. He is inspected — as are grocery

stores, persons installing septic tanks and things like that — as a

service to the public to protect the public's health. Now this

essential service is being charged for. I suspect it's because of

opposition from the inspectors themselves, who I guess didn't want to

have to walk around with change dispensers on their belts like they

were working in a beer parlour or on a bus or something, that these

fees are going to be collected by Victoria. They're not going to be

collected at the time. So someone is going to be inspected, and in a

little while they're going to get a bill from Victoria for a service

which they never requested in the first place.

I cannot see

how any of these things are helping the body politic, economy or people

of B.C. cope with these difficult times. The worst thing against us

right now, I would say, is a lack of confidence and faith in the

future. I believe government should be leading and not discouraging

investment, business and small individuals with agricultural land who

would like to be in the business of growing seedlings, expanding the

tourist industry or of surviving in these very difficult times.

in this province have a great deal of faith in the B.C. economy, the

people of B.C. and in the resources that we have here. I would hope

that at some point this spring or summer the people either get an

opportunity to deal with the amount of confidence that they have in the

government or that the government itself will come to its senses and

show a little positive leadership that will indeed improve the economy

of B.C. so that individuals here can make a return on what they have

invested in time and money and take a little pride in their province

once more.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, may I have leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

MR. BARNES:

I want to introduce Mr. Carlos Charles, who is here visiting in the

assembly this afternoon. He is from the Solicitor-General's Ministry of

the federal government. Mr. Charles is an associate regional consultant

with that ministry. I would like to ask the House to make him welcome.

MR. DAVIS:

I'm mightily concerned about the state of our economy. I'm concerned

about it nationally and I'm concerned about it provincially. It's weak

and it's apparently getting weaker. We're going to see more

unemployment and more belt-tightening before things pick up again. Our

economy is certainly weak nationally, and it's also getting weaker.

Consumerism and welfare statism are doing it in, it seems. Ottawa,

having spent much of our substance on people programs, doesn't have the

will or indeed the wherewithal to launch new job-producing projects on

any scale. It's too busy paying old debts and fretting about

federal-provincial relations to do anything positive about unemployment

on the one hand, and nation-building on the other.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Government

at both levels, federal and provincial, have tied their hands

financially in a number of ways. For instance, 85 percent of the

federal budget is contractual or fixed, in the sense that it makes

regular monthly or quarterly payments. It has to make these periodic

payments directly to people or indirectly to other governments and

agencies across the country serving people. It can't avoid these

regular commitments. It has to keep paying. It has to make payments on

the national debt at regular intervals. It has to pay old-age pensions

regularly, unemployment insurance regularly; health and welfare

subsidies to the provinces at least on a quarterly basis; finance

fiscal transfers to the have-not parts of Canada; fund Indian Affairs

regularly, and so on.

Its obligations are not only

overwhelming but they are contractual and fixed; they are not easily

changeable. Hence, our federal government has little room for financial

manoeuvrability. It has less than 5 percent of its income, only 5

percent, which it can use to build real things like harbours, airports

or vocational training centres. Defence is miniscule in Canada today,

and communications are expensive. It's sad, but our national government

is now so heavily committed financially in the people-program area, an

area which common sense and the British North America Act say falls

largely within provincial jurisdiction, that it can't do much about

unemployment these days.

Our national government has been

profligate for years. Since the early 1970s it has been running a

deficit of substantial proportions. It has been spending much more

money than it has been taking in in taxes. Now it has reached the

ridiculous. Outgo equals 120 percent of income; $5 goes out from Ottawa

for every $4 taken in by the federal government in taxation. The

result: we have the largest financial shortfall, the largest deficit,

relatively speaking, of any nation in the western world. We're running

a 20-percent deficit, as compared to 10 percent in the United States

and 5 percent in the United Kingdom.

Federally, we're on a

spending binge where people programs are concerned. We're turning over

most of our tax dollars to people for consumption, and doing little if

anything to improve our national infrastructure — transportation,

communications, factories, plants for producing goods and services of

all kinds. Worse than that, we're deluding our people by keeping prices

down internally: subsidizing the use of high-cost foreign oil, for

example; refusing to let producers charge a proper market price that

will cover their costs; discriminating against foreign investors, with

the result that they're abandoning their losing operations — losing

because of this government discrimination — and going elsewhere.

[ Page 7124 ]

What

happens in one's own private affairs when one continually spends more

than he or she earns, largely on consumer goods? What happens when he

or she has to borrow more and more? Their bankers tighten up on their

line of credit; interest rates go up against them; they're a bad risk,

at least until they mend their ways. So it is with Canada at large. Our

country, being sloppily and sometimes wilfully mismanaged, has a poor

credit rating. No wonder our interest rates are high. We haven't

learned to control inflation and we're falling down as producers. We're

making faces, believe it or not, at foreign investors, savers in other

parts of the world who could come to our rescue but whose capital is

apparently not wanted here these days.

Yesterday the Prime

Minister said he didn't want to step down from his high office as long

as unemployment was high and inflation had the nation by the throat. He

didn't tell us that one out of every ten Canadians of working age is

now out of work, a post–World War II high. He didn't say that our

inflation rate of 12 percent was running ahead of that of most

countries in the western world. It's now getting on to double that of

the United States. It's much higher than inflation rates in western

Europe, certainly higher than inflation rates in countries like Japan.

He didn't tell us how he was going to trim his budget and at the same

time create more jobs. He didn't say how he was going to cut Ottawa's

oil bill and keep our cost of living from going up more rapidly in the

immediate future.

Yes, our national economy, with its 20

percent federal deficit, with no federal money or very little federal

money for make-work projects, with energy and other price increases

still having to work their way through the system, and with foreign

capital looking elsewhere, is in difficulties. We're on a slippery

slope. A business turnaround — even if it occurs in the United States

and western Europe later this year — isn't going to rescue most

Canadians in 1982. It's going to be 1983 at the earliest before foreign

markets put our resource industry employees back to work, before our

dipping Canadian dollar gives our Canadian manufacturers some

elbow-room and before Canadians themselves can muster enough savings to

get construction moving in central Canada and the Atlantic provinces,

and moving with some confidence out here in the west.

Prime

Minister Trudeau is a genius in some things, but he also has his

faults. He likes a fight, and his timing isn't always the best. Now

that we're short on capital, now that we need the savings of others to

supplement our own, he's stressing nationalism as a policy above all

other policies. He's insisting that our oil industry be Canadianized

virtually overnight. He's giving federal grants in lieu of depreciation

to Canadian companies only. And he's insisting through the Foreign

Investment Review Agency that foreign investors take a back seat if

there's any possibility that Canadian firms can take over their ideas

and do the job here at home.

Mr. Speaker, we're all for more

Canadian ownership and control; certainly I am. I'm for Canadians

having every opportunity to invest in their own country, especially in

resource industries where the resources essentially belong to the

people. But to deliberately curtail resource and other industrial

development when our own economy is short of essential commodities like

oil, when we have so much unemployment and when a healthy economy is

itself the best guarantee that Canadians will be able to save and be

able to buy into and to control their own industry, makes no sense to

me. Move in some areas. Move gradually, but above all move fairly, and

don't discriminate unduly. And use the free play of market forces

wherever possible. This is the only safe and reasonable way not only to

self-determination but also to full employment and financial stability,

particularly financial health in the long run.

Our British

Columbia scene is better, certainly, than the Canadian one by

comparison. We of course have the federal overlay. We're facing a

measure of inflation buttressed by high interest rates which are, in

large part, Ottawa-induced. We cannot attract foreign capital the way

we used to. Ours is therefore seen by outsiders as a provincial economy

which, while it has a tremendous resource potential and is a good bet,

is a good bet not in the short term but only in the longer term: not

next year or in the next year or two when we're trying so hard to get

our own costs well under control, but in the longer run, when saner

policies will, I hope, be in effect from one coast to another.

Make

no mistake about it, Mr. Speaker, we're as inflation-prone as the rest

of Canada, if not more so. We've got militant unions and a public

service with the bit in its teeth. Restraint is needed, especially in

the public sector where wages and salaries are generally the highest in

Canada. So I for one endorse the government's restraint program, modest

as it is, reasonable as it is, given the fact that one out of every ten

British Columbians will be unemployed this year, that private incomes

in total are tending to level off and that our own expanding people

program — which now takes up 75 percent of our total budget — will call

for a provincial government level of expenditure which is high or

nearly as high, relatively speaking, as it was during the giddy NDP

years.

Back in the days of the former premier, W.A.C.

Bennett, the provincial government spent about 12 percent of the gross

provincial product on goods and services. The present Leader of the

Opposition, when he was Premier, drove the 12 percent figure up to 18

percent between 1972 and 1975. This 18 percent figure dropped a point

or two in the late 1970s. But now, with its tax revenues faltering and

expenses continuing on an upward march, we are heading towards an 18

percent figure again. I know the budget makes it look like 17 percent

or less, but if one allows fully for northeast coal and likely cost

overruns in health, we're going to be up there in the rarefied

atmosphere approaching 18 percent — especially if the housing market

doesn't pick up briskly in the United States this fall, or if our

mining industry doesn't get a shot in the arm from rising metal prices

soon and high interest rates continue to make it difficult for our

construction industry, especially housing, for another 12 months at

least.

Whereas our provincial government was generating a surplus, an

excess of income over expenditure from 1976 through 1980,

whereas it

developed a $1 billion contingency fund in the interim, we are now

having to draw heavily on that fund. This year it looks as if we will

be able to spend 5 percent more than our current tax intake and still

stay in the black. Ours, therefore, is not really a balanced budget, at

least on an annual basis. But it's balanced if you take one year with

the next. It's important to say that we have stayed in the black

because we put something aside in the good years, enough at least to

look after the bad years, including 1982.

I'm worried,

nevertheless. I'm worried about our ability to live with the budget,

which we will be voting for. Certainly I'll be voting for it tomorrow

night. I'm worried about income — that it may not be enough. I'm

worried about outgo, including additional health costs and the as yet

to be

[ Page 7125 ]

identified

way of financing the Tumbler Ridge branch line to B.C. Rail. Income, in

other words, could be overestimated. Outgo, meanwhile, could be

underestimated. This would be a new thing for B.C., because

traditionally — and I know the official opposition has always said this

— it was the opposite. Incomes tended to be underestimated and

expenditures inflated. We are perhaps moving from a safe position in

the black to a tenuous position from a budget-balancing point of view.

I say this mainly because I'm personally pessimistic about the business

upturn. How quickly it will occur, not only generally in Canada but

also in B.C…. It may be further away — say, well into 1983 — than most

of us like to think.

The greatest uncertainty as I see it is on the income side, and

particularly in relation to resource development — revenues, for

instance, from our forest industries, mining, and the energy sector.

Take natural gas. Why would anyone bid for new gas acreage in

northeastern B.C. when the chance of marketing their new-found resource

is limited for some years an hen the wellhead price, or netback, in

B.C. is depressed, and when the B.C. government is unable to match the

royalty and other tax cuts that Alberta is offering to prospective

developers on the prairies? Last fall Premier Lougheed gave half a

billion dollars of relief to small oil and gas companies with shut-in

reserves. That was to help them over a difficult cash-flow situation.

Now he's announced a much bigger program — a $5 billion program to get

drilling going again on a larger scale, in respect to both oil and gas.

Tax cuts on his part mean more money in the industry's pocket, more

money for exploration and development. Drilling rigs may not be leaving

Alberta at the rate they were last year, but that doesn't mean they

won't be thinking twice about B.C.

Petrochemicals have been Alberta's ace in the hole in the last

couple of years. A number of big plants have been built and others are

under construction in our sister province now. Again, they get

important tax breaks. They can buy cheap Alberta gas in the field if

necessary. Any transportation problems they face are also being

overcome with special government assistance or tax breaks. Why look to

B.C. when our government has set its face sternly against giving any

B.C. user, even of B.C. gas, any price break whatsoever. It will be

interesting to see how Ocelot Industries does at Kitimat. It'll be

interesting to see whether we eventually get a petrochemical industry

at Powell River, courtesy of an expensive pipeline to Vancouver Island.

They'll be test cases. If they make money, that's great; but it will be

in the late 1980s before we see any rush to B.C. insofar as

petrochemicals based on natural gas are concerned.

There are

a few other comments I have about our current provincial budget. One

has to do with natural gas again. I noticed the comment in the budget

papers that the implicit subsidy — and that's the term used in the

papers — to B.C. consumers is an estimated $166 million in 1982. Are we

going to continue to subsidize the use of natural gas in this province?

Are we going to copy the federal government and hide the true cost of

energy from our people? Why shouldn't we face up to true costs and

price all our products in this province — certainly those which are

wasting resources, like natural gas — at least at a break-even figure?

I've ever been in favour of hiding those kinds of costs. I don't favour

subsidizing the use of energy of any kind, especially depleting

resources like the petroleum fuels. So the sooner the province picks up

this $166 million the better — adds, in other words, $166 million to

the income side of the budget. This would add, in effect, another 2

percent to the income of the government at the provincial level, and it

would help to put us on a sounder basis insofar as energy production

and consumption in B.C. are concerned.

Over to electricity.

I think the provincial government did the right thing in raising its

fee for water used in the generation of hydroelectric power. As the

Minister of Finance said when he introduced this budget, B.C. Hydro

pays no profits tax or corporation capital tax. Also, most of its dams

are exempt from property taxes for school purposes. In other words, it

doesn't have to pay the same kinds of taxes nor anything like as much

tax as private investor–owned utilities do. It doesn't pay the same

kinds of taxes you and I do, Mr. Speaker. So it should make a

contribution to our provincial economy in another way. The water-use

tax makes a lot of sense in this context. It can help B.C. Hydro pay

its own way in this province. By making a contribution of between $100

million and $150 million a year to the income side of our budget, it

will help firm up the total contributions made by our natural resource

industries in 1982.

The leader of the official opposition

and others on the opposite side of the House have wept some crocodile

tears about Cominco having to pay more tax to the province in the form

of water-use fees. It is a big bite, of course. It is a sudden one. But

since when did the NDP worry about the CPR and its subsidiaries. I am

sure they would have imposed this tax or some similar tax in order to

strip off the so-called resource rent created by operations of this

kind. We have heard a lot from Bob Williams and others in the NDP on

this subject in the past. They, of course, would have gone further.

They would have taken a much bigger bite out of the Comincos and the

Alcans in this province, and in jig time they would have been saying

that the provincial water or rental fee still isn't high enough.

much for saying one thing and meaning another. I would like to hear how

they would deal with the real issues, the bigger issues in this budget:

how to curtail spending and how to increase income in ways which are

consistent with more jobs and lower interest rates. So far they haven't

given us any ideas as to how we can keep our B.C. economy on an even

keel while the federal government stumbles from one lash-up budget to

another It is a challenge, I admit, but it is a challenge which an

official opposition should also do its best to meet. Otherwise it is

not being a loyal opposition at all.

There are several other

matters which concern me. I will try to deal with them at another time.

I am still very much opposed to a capital tax on any kind of business

whatsoever. I am still opposed to a school tax on machinery and

equipment in industrial and commercial establishments. I hope we manage

to avoid that kind of impost in this province. It is not common in

other provincial jurisdictions across Canada; it is not known in the

states of the U.S.A. I hope we don't fall into that trap.

I think my time is drawing to a close, Mr. Speaker, so I will finish my remarks.

MR. HANSON:

I take my place on the main motion. I have no trouble voting against

this government's budget. There is a very interesting line in the

conclusion of the budget speech on page 19, where it says: "This is not

a budget of illusions." This is a budget of illusions, Mr. Speaker, and

I am going to address myself to the illusion and reality of the present

economy of my riding and Vancouver Island. This government has actively

impaired the economy of my con-

[ Page 7126 ]

stituency and Vancouver Island over the last few years. I am just going to explain to you what I mean by that.

I've

been involved, trying to bring to the attention of this government, the

error of their ways in terms of funding and financing energy, ferries

and support of small business on Vancouver Island, and it's always been

like talking to a stump. They have not listened; they have not heeded.

I'd like to detail a number of examples.

Interjections.

MR. HANSON: The extras of "Quest for Fire" are a little unruly today, Mr. Speaker.

MR. KEMPF: You're from the "Minority All-Stars."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. Would all hon. members please come to order.

MR. KEMPF: You don't even know what work is!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

MR. HANSON:

The B.C. Ferries routes 1 and 2 from the island to the mainland are our

highways. There are some interesting figures when you analyze the

financing of the B.C. Ferry Corporation. What we have developing now is

a situation where not only did this government sell the ferries to

eastern financial institutions where we leased them back, but now the

government will not even provide an adequate amount of money so that

those lease agreements can be properly met.

It says in the

annual report of the Ministry of Highways: "The highway equivalent

subsidy for the ferries is a vote to provide for the annual highway

equivalent subsidy to the B.C. Ferry Corporation and the lease payments

and related administrative costs for ferries subleased to and operated

by the corporation." In this annual report of 1980-81, the total budget

of the Ministry of Transportation and Highways was $515 million. The

subsidy was roughly 10 percent of that, or $52 million. That subsidy is

really our portion of the Highways budget. If you analyze the electoral

districts of Vancouver Island, you find nine ridings and ten seats.

Victoria, in terms of the 1980-81 annual report, received $522 out of

$515 million. That's not unusual, because it's a municipal area like

Vancouver, and it doesn't get the Highways budget.

However,

if you add up the electoral districts on Vancouver Island you find that

the budget of 1980-81 came to $52 million. As I pointed out, that was

roughly 10 percent of the entire Ministry of Transportation and

Highways budget. However, we have about 20 percent of the population.

In other words, we don't get our share of that budget per se, but where

we do make it up….

Interjections.

MR. HANSON: Well, it goes to goat trails in the Cariboo.

DEPUTY SPEAKER:

Order, please. I'll ask the Minister of Forests (Hon. Mr. Waterland),

the member for Mackenzie (Mr. Lockstead) and the member for Omineca

(Mr. Kempf) to please come to order.

MR. HANSON: They

don't like logic on that side of the House. They don't like substantive

and empirical data being brought to the House, where we can have a

rational debate.

What I'm pointing out is that our portion

of the Ministry of Transportation and Highways budget of the province

of British Columbia comes in the form of that highway subsidy. In 1980

it was roughly 10 percent. In 1981 it was roughly 10 percent. However,

in this budget not only do we not have an increase to match inflation,

but we actually have a reduction of 25 percent in the amount of money

that was made available from last year. So our portion of the actual

Ministry of Transportation and Highways budget, rather than being about

10 percent, which is half of our population, is now 7.4 percent. That

increase, which is going to have to be recovered by the fare box and

curtailment of sailings, is going to have a direct negative impact on

the economy of Vancouver Island. There is no doubt about it. Mr.

Speaker, you may be aware that that 25 percent slash in the provincial

government share to the Ferry Corporation doesn't allow the corporation

to adequately cover its lease costs paid to the financial institutions

in eastern Canada that own our ferries. They have also had to collapse

the peak period where they put on extra vessels to handle the increased

seasonal load. They've had to collapse that period by about six weeks,

so the small tourist-related businesses on Vancouver Island and in my

own riding are going to suffer a negative impact, which is a direct

policy of your government. I would have thought that the Minister of

Tourism (Hon. Mrs. Jordan) would be one of the first on her feet in

this House to object to such usurious rates.

So we have a

government that is not really a government at all; it's a kind of

grandiose tax-collection agency. They established a large number of

Crown corporations, and they've tried to make them the black hats in

the old cowboy movie. They make them put the squeeze on the public.

It's such narrow economics.

That highway system which

happens to be on water is our lifeline. Last November this government

increased the commercial rate, through their people on the corporation,

by roughly 25 percent. So for every bit of goods that comes across from

the mainland to Vancouver Island and back, two dollars a foot must be

added to the cost of living and the cost of doing business on Vancouver

Island. That is absolutely ridiculous. If small businesses are to be

competitive and are to survive on Vancouver Island, and in my own

electoral area, there has to be a conceptual change by the government.

They have to view that highway system on water as a public service and

not a toll booth for their own collection agency.

Now we're

faced with a slash of 25 percent in that subsidy. We're getting fewer

and fewer sailings, the turnaround time is going to be longer and we're

going to have longer lineups. The over-height vessel has moved to route

2 between Nanaimo and Horseshoe Bay. So the recreationists, the people

who want to come to Vancouver Island for holidays because they haven't

got enough money to make a long journey — we want them to spend their

money here in British Columbia — will have nothing to face but long

lineups. It's unfair; it's discriminatory; it's bad business; it's

narrow business; it's just a tax-collector government form of business.

Mr.

Speaker, there are bucks unlimited for the projects that they want, but

when it comes to services required for the social and economic

well-being, no way at all.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where does the money come from?

[ Page 7127 ]

MR. HANSON: The money comes from the taxpayers of Vancouver Island, who are not getting their fair share of the transportation budget.

that's the transportation situation. The government actually impairs

the economy of Vancouver Island because they're unwilling to maintain a

decent transportation system back and forth to give the people of

Vancouver Island their fair share of the transportation dollar.

Energy.

In greater Victoria many small businesses and about 5,000 residences

rely on air butane for their energy needs. Air butane is a synthetic

gas. Because we don't have a pipeline linked to the mainland, we burn

this synthetic gas, which is transported from the mainland and put into

a pipeline system here in Victoria.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Interjection.

MR. HANSON: Why don't you get on your feet when it's your time and make some sense yourself?

This

air-butane system has been a closed system for a number of years, but

the important fact is that people on Vancouver Island are going to be

asked to pay four times the amount that people on the mainland pay for

natural gas. We already pay three times as much, and now we're going to

pay four times. We're going to pay $1.30 per billing unit,

whereas on

the mainland they're going to pay about 30 cents. Now is that an

impediment to small business? Is that an impediment to small

drycleaners, to restaurants, hotels, residences? Of course it is.

Again, it's a discriminatory tax on the people of greater Victoria.

They discriminate in transportation, in energy; they discriminate in

the fact that they don't pay enough attention to the actual basic needs

of this area. They're lazy.

They don't do the job; they're

not a government. This is the message that the community has got to

understand. They're just a tax collection agency. Crown corporations do

the tax collecting. They indexed all the other taxes — gasoline,

tobacco. It's all indexed. They're trying to make the Legislature

redundant, Mr. Speaker. They don't like the Legislature; they don't

like the light shining in at all.

There are about six

hundred reasons why I'm voting against this budget. I'm going to talk

about just a few. One of them is the ferries; another is that air

butane. I'm hoping the B.C. Utilities Commission is going to do the

fair thing and make a ruling that the people of Vancouver Island should

pay the same amount for their gas as the people on the mainland. That

would remove a serious impediment to small business, and I know the

members on that side of the House want to see small business on

Vancouver Island thrive.

MR. BRUMMET: Where does the subsidy come from? From us.

MR. HANSON:

We have a postage-stamp policy in this province for energy, for

electrical and gas. No matter where you live, you pay the same amount —

except in Victoria. That's discrimination, Mr. Member.

MR. BRUMMET: How much subsidy do you want? For everything?

MR. HANSON: We just want what you get in your own riding. That's all.

MR. BRUMMET: We produce it.

MR. SPEAKER: — Order, please. The member for North Peace River will come to order.

MR. HANSON:

The member for North Peace River has asked me what kind of a subsidy

the people of Victoria want. They just want their fair share, Mr.

Speaker. They want nothing more and nothing less: they just want to pay

exactly what people on the mainland pay, not four times more.

think one of the crucial reasons for voting against the Social Credit

government's budget is the impact it's going to have on health care, as

we've already seen in the last few days. Here in Victoria we have a

hospital system called Juan de Fuca Hospitals. It has seven units and

serves a particular need, an extended-care need. They are elderly

people; they need full-time care and they have to be in an

extended-care hospital. They are very important hospitals because they

are relieving the congestion in our regular hospitals, in the

acute-care hospitals.

Anyone who has tried to get into a

B.C. hospital in the last year or so knows there are fantastically long

waiting lists for elective surgery. Why is that? Because a large number

of beds in all of'the hospitals of British Columbia are occupied by

people who have no place to go other than that bed. There have to be

extended-care and intermediate-care facilities to relieve that

congestion, to free up our acute-care hospitals.

As a result

of this budget, the government has underfunded the extended-care

hospitals, the Juan de Fuca Hospitals system here in Victoria, by

roughly 5 percent. The impact of that reduction has been that the board

is meeting now to close beds. They are going to leave the extended-care

beds in these hospitals empty because they cannot service them. Rather

than jeopardizing the quality of care that's given to the patients in

those seven hospitals, with 75 people in each one, those beds, as each

is freed up by a person's dying or going into acute care, or going into

some other facility, as each is vacated it will not be filled by

someone coming from an acute-care facility — because of underfunding.

Isn't

that about the most rotten thing you could imagine? It's an insane

policy. It flies in the face of all statements in the budget that there

will be no curtailment of the quality of health care and services. It's

appearing before us every day in the newspapers. As the Juan de Fuca

Hospital Society reduces its bed count from 75 to somewhere near 60 in

each facility over the next four to six months, and as they lay off 128

casual, on-call health-care workers — nurses, nursing aides, cooks,

orderlies, etc. — in these extended-care hospitals, the pressure on the

acute-care hospitals is going to build again.

To make

matters worse, the acute-care hospitals already have an enormous

waiting list. I'd like to tell you something about that. Currently the

waiting lists for elective surgery…. Elective surgery is not

life-or-death surgery, but it is the kind of surgery that could keep a

person off work; it could be extremely painful; it could be something

that's aggravated over time into a more serious condition.

Let

me just tell you: at the Royal Jubilee the average waiting list for

1982 has ranged between 900 and 1,300 people. There are 350 urgent

cases. In the minds of the public, urgent means right away: "Doctor,

when do I get into that bed?" In Victoria if you go to the doctor today

and he says that you have an urgent need for surgery, you are going to

wait two and a quarter months. Victoria General has

[ Page 7128 ]

between

800 and 900 elective surgery people waiting to get in — that's a wait

of seven to nine months. If you need a hernia operation, cataract

operation or minor surgery to get you back to work, it's a seven- to

nine-month wait. There's a staff shortage at the Jubi