Alberta Hansard — 10 May 1988, Afternoon sitting (14:30) (Legislature 21, Session 3)

19880510

Alberta — Debates (Hansard)

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 935 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY OF ALBERTA Title: Tuesday, May 10, 1988 2:30 p.m. Date: 88/05/10 [The House met at 2:30 p.m.] [Mr. Speaker in the Chair] PRAYERS MR. SPEAKER: Let us pray. Our Father, keep us mindful of the special and unique oppor tunity we have to work for our constituents and our province, and in that work give us both strength and wisdom. Amen. head: TABLING RETURNS AND REPORTS DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, I wish to table with the Assembly cop ies of the Public Service Commissioner's annual report for the calendar year 1987. MR. STEVENS: Mr.

Speaker, I'm pleased to table the annual report of the Alberta Foundation for the Performing Arts for the year ended March 31, 1987. MR. SPEAKER: Member for Edmonton-Glengarry. MR. YOUNIE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is my pleasure to table for the information of all members of the Assembly the text of a petition circulated by residents of the Lake district in Edmonton-Glengarry that was presented to the Minister of Edu cation yesterday, stating the reasons for their request for an ele mentary school in their neighbourhood. head: INTRODUCTION OF SPECIAL GUESTS MR. SPEAKER: Leader of the Opposition. MR.

MARTIN: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to introduce to you and to members of the Assembly, Victor and Margaret Dawson, who reside in the constituency of Edmonton-Norwood. They have a special visitor with them, however: Norah Sayer from London, England, whom I understand just arrived yesterday. They are in the public gallery; I'd ask them to stand and receive the traditional welcome from the Assembly. MR. GIBEAULT: Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to introduce to you and other members of the Assembly this afternoon a special visitor who's seated in your gallery, Dr. Mima Anaya from El Salvador. Dr.

Anaya is currently a refugee in Canada, since her husband was murdered by a death squad recently for his in volvement with the Human Rights Commission there. She's traveling across the country now explaining the situation in her home country to Canadians. I'd ask her to rise and receive the warm welcome of the House. MR. ROSTAD: Mr. Speaker, it's my pleasure today to introduce to you and through you to the Assembly, 57 grade 8 students from the Charlie Killam school in the Camrose con stituency. They're accompanied by three of their teachers Mr. Errol Moen, Mr. Art Fadum, and Mr. Bob Wall.

I'd ask them to stand in the members' gallery and receive the traditional wel come of the Assembly. MR. SPEAKER: Government House Leader, followed by the Minister of Municipal Affairs. MR. YOUNG: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my pleasure today to introduce to you and to members of the Assembly, from the Holy Cross elementary school, 39 students in grade 6, who are accompanied today by their teacher Mrs. Manuela Ferrante and a parent Mrs. Edna Nichols. I would ask that they rise and re ceive the usual warm welcome of the Assembly. MR. ANDERSON: Mr.

Speaker, I'm pleased to note in the members' gallery that we have a veteran Calgary alderman who is with us once more. She has served Calgary well and for a long period of time. I'd ask Barb Scott to rise and receive the welcome of the Assembly once more. head: ORAL QUESTION PERIOD Administration of Lottery Funds MR. MARTIN: Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of Culture and Multiculturalism. The Alberta Foundation for the Literary Arts is chaired by another failed candidate for a PC nomination, Dr. Howard Platt. But more importantly, on April 22, 1988, the minister wrote to Dr.

Piatt announcing that he intends to provide direction to the foundation on the awarding of lottery funds; that is, who gets what My question to the minister. Does the minis ter fail to appreciate that this type of political interference with arm's-length administration of lottery funds makes the founda tion into nothing more than a vehicle for pork-barrel politics? MR. STEVENS: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition made some comments about the chairman of the foundation to which I would take exception.

The chairmen of this foundation and in fact all foundations are wonderful citizens of Alberta per forming excellent service for the people. But it is this minister's responsibility to ensure that the funds that are available through the department and those that are approved under lottery fund ing are expended very carefully and in co-ordination for the benefit of the receivers. MR. MARTIN: Yes, they're being spent very carefully; no doubt about that, Mr. Speaker. The minister's letter actually gives orders to the foundation on how it is to spend all of the money: $1.125 million.

That's how carefully they're spending it. My question is: could the minister explain then -- he's tell ing what wonderful citizens these people are -- why his judg ment is better than qualified professionals working through the foundation? Is it because his top priority is to get re-elected in his own riding and to make sure the PCs are re-elected? MR. YOUNG: Well, I hope that's one of his directions. MR. STEVENS: Well, certainly, Mr. Speaker, if the citizens of Alberta are well served by not only the foundations but by all the departments, then there's no question this government will

936 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 be re-elected. The decision of the minister of culture is clearly to ensure that the funds are spent in a co-ordinated fashion so that no dol lars are wasted by overlap or duplication. A wide cross

section of expenditure levels was provided to the board's chairman. Those matters are now in discussion by the board, and I expect that the board will respond after its next meeting and indicate that they understand how those dollars will be spent to benefit the receivers, those who receive the grants from the foundation. MR. MARTIN: Mr. Speaker, that's outrageous. This is a letter that's already gone out from this minister telling them what to do. This minister, then, is saying that these people can't do their jobs; they have to take direction from him.

One of them is a $500,000 grant to the Banff Television Foundation, which just conveniently happens to be in the minister's own riding. That's almost half the new money allocated. My question is: how is this fair to the other foundations in 82 other constituencies? Is n't this nothing more than pork-barrel politics? MR. STEVENS: Mr.

Speaker, I'm going to ask the minister of economic development to supplement my answer, but I will in dicate this: prior to the announcement made about a month ago by the minister responsible for lottery funding, there were five foundations receiving lottery dollars and six other licensees un der the Culture and Multiculturalism portfolio. As was indi cated in that press release and at that time, the six licensees, one of which is the Banff Television Festival, are now grouped un der the four existing foundations.

The money will flow through to all of the recipients, and each of them has received an in crease from their previous dollars, based on the letter that the Leader of the Opposition has referred to. MR. SHABEN: Mr. Speaker, the Banff Television Festival has become an event that is world renowned. It's recognized around the world as an outstanding opportunity for filmmakers to dem onstrate their skills. Among those filmmakers are outstanding filmmakers from Alberta.

I think that the opposition, in criticiz ing an event that has grown in stature as a result of the work of the people of Alberta and is now recognized worldwide and at tracts people from throughout the world, is unfair in terms of the criticism of the programs that are set up to support this event. MR. MARTIN: A supplementary question. The minister misses the point It's the process that we're talking about, a slush fund for this minister.

Now, the minister of culture's letter indicates the type of abuse of ministerial authority that is going on under the existing Act My question is to the Minister of Career Development and Employment Why should we trust this government with the additional authority it wants under Bill 10 when it's already cir cumventing the intent of the existing system? Why should we trust you to spend all the money behind closed doors? MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. We're not talking about Bill 10, which has gone past second reading. Supple mentary. [interjections] Thank you very much, hon. member. Edmonton-Gold Bar. MR.

MARTIN: On a point of order, then, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to rephrase this question. MR. SPEAKER: Then rephrase the question without Bill 10. MR. MARTIN: Okay, Mr. Speaker. So I want this minister to answer how he can justify the type of authority he's seeking from this Assembly, when we see the type of abuse coming from this minister. MR. ORMAN: Firstly, Mr. Speaker, the lotteries in Alberta for the last 14 years, since they've been established, have been han dled in the manner in which they're being confirmed in Bill 10. If the hon.

Leader of the Opposition figures that there's some abuse or some unseemly use of the dollars, I think that he should bring an example forward. We fund a number of organizations. We have over 160 people from across Alberta who get the dol lars in a block funding and then distribute it to organizations throughout the province. Mr. Speaker, to suggest that government is somehow not accountable for its actions is ridiculous. It's government's responsibility to develop policy, make programs, and implement them. Now, whether or not the NDP is in support of those programs, I don't care too much.

It's the people of Alberta that this government is responding to. MR. SPEAKER: Edmonton-Gold Bar. MRS. HEWES: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Again to the Minister of Career Development and Employment on the extra lottery fund moneys that were available this spring. Will the minister please tell the House how these moneys were in fact distributed? A good deal of them were to go to the Wild Rose Foundation. Were they in fact distributed through the Wild Rose Foundation to their recipients, or will the minister come clean and admit that they were distributed through ministers' constituency offices? MR. ORMAN: Mr.

Speaker, that's a fairly serious charge, and I challenge the hon. member to prove that statement. MR. SPEAKER: Leader of the Opposition, second main question. MR. MARTIN: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to designate my second question to the Member for Edmonton-Strathcona. Purchase of Red Rooster Stores MR. WRIGHT: My question is to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. Earlier this year C-Corp, a subsidiary of the eastern food giant Provigo, purchased the Red Rooster chain.

The eastern giant promptly told the Alberta storeowners they were franchising the Red Rooster name and charging the owners $21,000 for the use of their own name; $21,000 each, that is. In addition, the stores will have to sell their equipment for a fraction of the cost to these people and only buy goods from C-Corp. My question: will the minister assure us that when this corporation's temporary registration under the Franchises Act expires on May 31, it will not be renewed unless these and other greedy and offensive provisions are removed? MS McCOY: Thank you. Mr.

Speaker, the owners and opera tors of the Red Rooster stores around Alberta have indeed been faced with a serious situation by the new owners, C-Corp, cor rectly identified as a subsidiary of Provigo, which is a Quebec- based company. The Red Rooster owner/operators had formerly been in contract with Home & Pitfield, and it was Home & Pit field that was purchased by C-Corp. Those contracts are, of

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 937 course, individual contracts and vary by and large from individ ual to individual, although they do follow a pattern. The major ity of those, if not all of those, contracts do not have very many clauses in them to protect the owner/operators from what amounts to virtually a unilateral renegotiating of the contract. The matter was brought to our attention primarily through the Securities Commission, which of course has a franchise department, by the owner/operators of Red Roosters.

The direc tor there has been working with them and with C-Corp to try to bring the two sides together at a negotiating table with some degree of fair bargaining and balance between the two of them. The owners and operators around Alberta at our suggestion formed an association. There are several hundred of them in Alberta who are now acting in concert through their legal coun sel, and we are hopeful that the matter can be negotiated to everyone's satisfaction. MR. SPEAKER: Supplementary. MR. WRIGHT: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

It's C-Corp's conten tion that they fall within the exemption provisions of the Act, as I'm sure the minister knows. If this turns out to be so, will the minister assure us that the Act will be speedily altered so as not to shield robbers posing as capitalists? MS McCOY: The Franchises Act in Alberta is the only such Act in Canada, and I'm far more used to hearing representations from Albertans that they would wish the Act to be repealed in its entirety on the grounds that it's frustrating the efforts of entrepreneurs and small businessmen.

In this particular case, however, we have only limited control over C-Corp, as has been pointed out, and to this date we have been attempting through whatever powers the Act does give and through moral suasion to attempt to bring C-Corp to the table in a fair negotiating stance with the owners and operators, all of whom are small businesses, and all of whom we would hope to help. MR. WRIGHT: Well, of course, if the company is not exempt from registration, you have much more control and probably adequate control. My question, Mr.

Speaker is: it turns out that this eastern bully, as I would characterize it, who does not want to deal with the owners' association, is able to impose these rapacious condi tions under the existing lease with the old owners. Is the minis ter prepared to consider legislation that would disentitle land lords so to oppress their tenants? MS McCOY: Well, Mr. Speaker, there are many options that we are looking at One of the options, of course -- I spoke to a representative of the owner/operators' association -- is for the owners and operators to negotiate with another supplier and an other landlord, essentially.

If they did that in concert all around Alberta, I think that C-Corp would find that to be something of a Pyrrhic victory, a hollow victory, in proceeding as they seem to be doing. The problem does not exist just in Alberta. There are also Red Rooster operators and owners in B.C. and Saskatchewan, and they, too, are forming, as I understand, an association and keeping in very close contact So it is western Canada, and I think western Canadians have been able to drive hard bargains before, even with Quebecois.

I would hope that with our assis tance the negotiations which are under way will result in a satis factory agreement. MR. WRIGHT: Well, the purpose of the Franchises Act is to vet the agreement, so I ask the minister in particular will she come down hard on the ban in the proposed agreement on the very thing her government is very big on in another context; namely, the right to trade freely? MS McCOY: Free trade with the Americans and into the American market is indeed one of the things that this govern ment supports and for all of the right reasons.

Bargaining, however, between parties and the freedom to bargain is another thing that we support, and as we've said in other contexts, we are constantly trying to find the right balance so that there is a fairness of bargaining on both sides. In this particular case, in a franchise agreement, which is a contract between the two, we are, as I continue to say, trying to help the little guys. MR. SPEAKER: Thank you. Supplementary, Westlock-Sturgeon, or main question? MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, no, a supplementary. It's with respect to the Franchises Act. To the minister.

Is the minister considering any amendments that would make it easier for these people who are the recipients of franchises to have sort of a tribunal, a board that they could appeal their grievances to from time to time? MS McCOY: Mr. Speaker, that is the mechanism that exists in the Franchises Act, and the tribunal to which reference is made is the Alberta Securities Commission. That will continue to be the case. Ethics of Elected Officials MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, as a matter of fact, my question is very similar to the opposition leader's, a question on ethics.

Yesterday in my exchange with the Premier, he answered: But besides that, I will not only not stop them; I will fight for their right to be helped when they need it . . . Now, Mr. Speaker, what I'm interested in learning from the Premier, now that it appears that ethics are a question of situ ations and individual judgment from time to time -- for instance, is he aware that in British Columbia the cabinet ministers are censured if they take a flight on a private aircraft for personal reasons? MR. GETTY: Mr. Speaker, our responsibilities are for Alberta. MR. TAYLOR: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker, then.

When he says that if they need help -- there have been times when, as you know, the front bench and many of us in the House occasionally have been up to our armpits in bankers. Would he consider ministers' or backbenchers' taking a loan from someone doing business with the government as being unethical? MR. GETTY: It's completely hypothetical, Mr. Speaker. MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, it's not hypothetical. This is a question of ethics.

When he says, "I will fight for their right to be helped," would he consider it right to be helped, for instance, if they're feeling tired and run-down and would like to accept a vacation of a couple of weeks in the sun at the cost of someone doing business with the government?

938 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 MR. SPEAKER: We're still dealing in hypothetical; 359(3). MR. GETTY: It's not only hypothetical; now it's silly as well as hypothetical. MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, it's not so hypothetical for Tories. The next one: how about feeling a little run-down psychologically, and they want to tour some of the world flesh- pots, like, say, the nude clubs in Berlin or something like that, on a tour around the world? Would that be unethical? MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. This is nonsense. AN HON. MEMBER: Point of order. MR. SPEAKER: Yes; thank you. The questions are totally out of order.

The Chair recognizes the Member for Clover Bar, main question. Regulation of Powerboats on Alberta Lakes DR. BUCK: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the minister of lands and wildlife. It's a local issue, but it has provincewide ramifications. This has to do with a letter that was sent to the minister, and a copy that I received, about a body of water called Lily Lake, which is just east of Sherwood Park. The local authority gave a water-ski association permission to use this small lake, slough, for waterskiing purposes.

The question I have to the minister is: in light of the fact that it is a Crown body of water, what mechanisms are in place to make sure that the land surrounding the area and the waters and the habitat are not endangered when a local authority gives these people per mission to use that body of water? MR. FJORDBOTTEN: Mr. Speaker, I'm not sure whether per mission was given by the local authority in the case.

I've just read the letter this morning, and I think the hon. member is re ferring to a small slough or lake called Lily Lake and that there was a water-ski club that has been encouraged to leave a lake -- I believe its name is Hastings Lake -- and move to this other body of water. The only restrictions that are on there policywise, Mr.

Speaker, are that if there's some reason that there's a safety con cern or a navigation concern, the local landowners can make representation to a committee that's basically an inter departmental committee made up of the Forestry, Lands and Wildlife; I believe Municipal Affairs, Recreation and Parks, and transportation are involved. They would review and see if there was some reason -- safety reasons or navigation reasons -- that that activity should not be allowed on the lake.

Then a recom mendation is made to the minister, and the minister then refers it to the federal government, because the federal government has the final authority on water bodies and navigation on water bodies. DR. BUCK: Mr. Speaker, then, to the minister. What are the guidelines as to why some lakes are limited in that they cannot use powerboats and other lakes are available for powerboat users? What are the guidelines in that case? MR. FJORDBOTTEN: Mr.

Speaker, I understand that basically for navigation or safety concerns in some areas, if there is una nimity among the groups of land owners in the area that there is some reason for environmental concerns that it shouldn't be considered, then those representations are made through those advisory bodies and then to the federal government to make the final decision. There are certain water bodies in the province that have limitations on the power size of motors or whether or not power motors at all would be used. DR. BUCK: Mr. Speaker, a final supplementary to the minister.

Can the minister assure people who are not happy with a local authority giving permission for these bodies of water to be used in the manner described that there is an adequate opportunity for local people to protest and have adequate opportunity to have public meetings so that their wishes and views can be expressed? MR. FJORDBOTTEN: Well, Mr. Speaker, I think the proper place for them to go is to make their representation to the local council in the area. That would be the initial step.

If they feel that they would like to go further than that, I would expect that they could go to the regional committee and make their repre sentation there. The regional committee would only have authority to deal on the issue with respect to safety concerns or concerns with navigation, as I understand it. That's why I would strongly suggest that the local elected body would be the ones that representation should be made to. MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, supplementary to the minister. I've had some talks with the RCMP on this. My understanding is that it's due to the Solicitor General cutting the funds.

So could the minister share with the House whether he will discuss with the Solicitor General maybe increased funding to the RCMP so that they will not have to withdraw the policing of lakes in order to meet their budget? MR. FJORDBOTTEN: Mr. Speaker, I'm not quite sure what that has to do with the initial question. However, the RCMP is looking at withdrawing some of their members that have to do with certain federal Acts, but 95 percent of those responsibilities were carried out by our provincial department in any event.

In the areas with the RCMP, there has been great co-operation be tween the provincial enforcement officers as well as the RCMP, and I'm sure that would continue, and considering the withdrawal of some 10 members, I would expect it could be en hanced. But the hon. Solicitor General may wish to supplement my answer. MR. SPEAKER: Solicitor General, briefly. MR. ROSTAD: Yes, Mr. Speaker. The hon. leader of the Lib eral Party was in error to start with, that the Solicitor General cutback in funding affected the removal of the boat patrol of the RCMP.

That was a federal component of the RCMP; it was done unilaterally from the federal government without consultation. MR. SPEAKER: Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods, followed by Calgary-Buffalo. MR. STRONG: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker. MR. SPEAKER: Supplementary, St. Albert.

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 939 MR. STRONG: Mr. Speaker, I've had many phone calls from residents in St Albert with respect to the boat patrols. To the minister. Will the minister make representation on behalf of cottage owners and boat owners in the province of Alberta to see that the boat patrols in the province of Alberta are reinstated forthwith? MR. ROSTAD: Mr. Speaker, there were 10 RCMP members within the federal jurisdiction that were assigned to the boat pa trol for the entire province. The equipment is remaining in Al berta.

Each detachment has the training to use the boats and the various other equipment that goes with them The service will be provided by each detachment within the province. Employment Standards Enforcement MR. GIBEAULT: Mr. Speaker, my questions today are to the Labour minister. Yesterday, in response to the issue of exploita tion of new immigrant workers, the minister stated that Bill 21's provision would provide for additional information disseminated more broadly and that that would solve the problem.

Now, since the labour standards branch has received some 10,000 complaints last year and in previous years, it seems clear to many Albertans that people are familiar with their basic rights, but the question is: what about convictions? There have only been five -- count 'em, Mr. Speaker: five -- convictions and, given that, a fraction of the percent of complaints. Can this minister make a commitment today that he will direct his staff to aggressively pursue a policy of conviction of these sleazy employers? MR.

SPEAKER: We're not going to accept the word "sleazy;" just as yesterday we weren't about to accept another word that was used. DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods obviously has got a different concept of the kind of soci ety that we live in from the vast majority of Albertans. He obvi ously is in favour of a police state and hammering anybody without giving them any chance to correct any errors or to other wise correct their behaviour. The matter of the 10,000 complaints: that's about the only accurate statement that he made.

There are about 10,000 com plaints, but one has to remember that a complaint does not nec essarily mean there is any breaking of the law. The complaint mechanism is intentionally made very open, and in many of those 10,000 there is in actual fact no breaking of the law. The complaints are based on misunderstandings on the part of the employees. It is well known, Mr. Speaker -- and we found this at the many public meetings around this province -- that there is not an adequate knowledge of the law in relation to the labour legisla tion in the province by employers and employees.

It's for that reason that in Bill 21 and indeed in the final report of the com mittee there was the emphasis on education of the parties. That emphasis is carried into Bill 22, and that's where much of the situation will be corrected. It is the department's policy, as far as possible, to educate employers when they have broken the law. The vast majority of the employers promptly make any recompense that is required to fulfill the requirements of the statute and the regulations. Where there is a failure for them to do so, then prosecution is initiated.

The small number of prosecutions in fact indicates that the vast majority of employers do intend to obey the law and do so when the facts are brought to their attention. MR. GIBEAULT: Mr. Speaker, in addition to that shameful, low record of convictions on the part of this government, how can he expect Albertans to have any confidence in his depart ment when, at the same time as the work force in this province is increasing, he's decreasing officers in the labour relations division? DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, he just switched subjects completely.

The labour relations division has nothing to do with the prob lems that were being addressed in his first question. Inciden tally, I do take grave exception to the remark he made yesterday in the

preamble. I didn't catch it yesterday, but this minister and the department have not dismissed any employment standards officer for requesting or recommending a prosecution. So once more the hon. Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods was com pletely wrong. MR. GIBEAULT: The evidence supports what I said the other day, and it speaks for itself, Mr. Speaker.

But I'm going to ask the minister this: if he is not willing to take any action in regards to protecting employees in this prov ince from unscrupulous employers, will he at least be honest enough to stand in his place and say just exactly that that em ployees in this province are on their own, that they can expect no help from this government, and that you've just abandoned the concept of prosecution? DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, the dishonesty in this room is entirely in the NDP caucus.

The minister responsible for career devel opment and myself have been communicating and will continue to communicate with the specific problem of possible abuse of immigrants who may not know Alberta law. There is another factor that is involved that perhaps the Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods is completely ignorant of. Many of these immigrants come from societies where a govern ment officer, a government, a policeman in uniform, or a mem ber of the armed forces is anything but a friend.

There is an education process required in this, and that education process has gone on within the employment standards department We have concentrated upon this with immigrants. We have held special courses and programs for immigrants, held by employ ment standards officers, and we will continue those efforts. They will, of course, be augmented by the investigation that the minister for career development and myself will take

part in to make sure that the abuses, such as they are, are minimized. MR. GIBEAULT: A final supplementary, Mr. Speaker, to the Premier, since the Minister of Labour is not interested in protecting workers. We're talking really about the basic concept of respect for law, which the Premier has referred to on numer ous occasions. I'd like to ask the Premier: is he willing to stand today and give an assurance to the people of this province that he and his government will prosecute scummy employers at least as fast and as hard . . . MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. [interjection] Hon. member.

Will the hon. member withdraw the remark? [interjections] This is the second time it's been brought to the attention of the hon. member.

940 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 AN HON. MEMBER: No. MR. SPEAKER: All right. If the hon. member is being told what to do by another member of the House, perhaps that's what's happening. Is the member prepared to withdraw that phrase? MR. GIBEAULT: Mr. Speaker, perhaps there are other words that would describe it just as well, but if it offends anybody's sensitivities, I'll withdraw that word. The Premier knows what kind of friends he's got in employers that do these kinds of things. MR. SPEAKER: Thank you for the withdrawal, hon. member. Mr. Premier. MR. GETTY: Mr. Speaker, first of all, the hon.

Minister of Labour dealt with the issue, I thought, perfectly adequately for purposes of the member's question. Secondly, the hon. member is now dealing in some kind of hypothetical situation. He has already been challenged by individuals in the Legislature -- I repeated it yesterday myself -- to in fact come forward with the information rather than just make these allegations which he likes to throw out and then hide behind the fact that he's in the Legislature. [interjections] MR. SPEAKER: Order please. I didn't see the hand of anyone else for supplementaries; therefore, Calgary-Buffalo, main question.

Employment Equity MR. CHUMIR: Thank you. It's a related question to the Min ister of Labour and to the Minister of Career Development and Employment The heartland need of immigrant groups is em ployment equity so that they have a chance to get ahead economically. We've seen, unfortunately, that the government is badly out of touch with the exploitation of immigrant workers. Now, the ministers of career development and Labour have indicated that they are having the situation and issue reviewed, but the terms of their review are unfortunately so vague that they're almost invisible.

I'm wondering whether the Minister of Labour, who has primary responsibility in this area, perhaps supplemented by Career Development and Employ ment, can give us the precise details about any investigations that he has set in motion, including the terms of reference, the time frame for reporting, and whether, as he indicated yesterday, it will be a case of the labour standards branch investigating it self as opposed to an independent review, as should be the case in this situation. DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has brought up a whole number of issues which are completely red herrings.

I already said in answer to the Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods that we have held courses for immigrants to the province so that they are aware of the employment standards within the province. The matters that have been brought forward in this House, the specific matters, as opposed to the unfounded wild allegations so intemperately expressed by members of the House, the finite entities are all currently under investigation or have been concluded. The government has been taking action in the past, long before the hon. members read the newspapers. MR.

CHUMIR: Well, there obviously is not going to be a meaningful investigation. To the Minister of Career Development and Employment The main problem is that the government takes a hands-off ap proach, and then when the problem materializes, they say, "Why didn't somebody tell us this?" Why has the government even failed to set up a body to monitor the problems and repre sentation of minority groups in the workplace, thereby ignoring the recommendation of the Alberta heritage council in 1986 that such a monitoring body is badly needed. Why have you ignored that sensible recommendation? MR. ORMAN: Mr.

Speaker, with regard to my responsibilities for immigration and immigration settlement in the province, firstly, I should let the hon. member know that we do have a series of publications that are published in six languages and are to be republished in another six languages so that individuals know what their rights and responsibilities are as Albertans. We distribute those through Canada Employment and Immigration and our department employment centres and also through the citizenship courts.

We try to the greatest extent possible to get information into the hands of new immigrants so that they know, as the Minister of Labour indicated, that the accessibility they have here in Alberta is much greater, possibly, than from whence they came. The hon. Member for Calgary-Buffalo knows that we have established an immigration and settlement advisory committee. I have talked to that committee and asked them to review this matter.

This very committee has recently, in the last six months, met with all of the immigration and settlement agencies, the nongovernment organizations, and this issue has not been brought to their attention, and this is really the point of contact for new immigrants. Now, Mr. Speaker, it does not mean to say that it is not oc curring. It is saying that if it is occurring, then that communica tion is not coining to us as a government.

That immigration and settlement advisory committee together with the Premier's ad viser on ethnic affairs in the Calgary Premier's office are there as facilitators, so if people are having problems with govern ment programs or feel that they are being abused as immigrant workers, then we want to assist them. Unfortunately, at this stage there are no individuals that are coming forward and lodg ing the complaints from immigrant workers, so all we can do is go back into the field and further explore and contact leaders of communities and let them know: "If there are these concerns, please bring them forward.

We'd be pleased to deal with them." MR. CHUMIR: Small wonder you don't know what's going on. The Premier's adviser there wasn't even any consultation with the Alberta heritage council on that appointment. To the Minister of Labour. Even the federal government has an Employment Equity Act, which provides for the estab lishment of procedures and monitoring to encourage fair em ployment practices in government and amongst large federal employers. I'm wondering why the government refuses to take any commensurate action to address these issues within the provincial government.

Why is nothing happening in this province? DR. REID: Mr Speaker, he's asking a question that has noth ing to do with the primary question. The primary question was related to immigration, and the hon. gentleman is now address ing a specific requirement of the federal government for those

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 941 who get contracts from the federal government That is not in the employment standards area at all; it has more to do with the awarding of federal contracts. However, there are requirements in this province for equal treatment of people who are doing the same work or similar work, and that is regardless of all their physical characteristics, their racial origin, and everything else. That's part of Individu al's Rights Protection Act and is enforced in this province through the Human Rights Commission. MR. CHUMIR: The minister is obviously bucking for the Speaker's position.

The question dealt with employment equity. The problems of immigrant women, particularly those who work as domestics, are amongst the most desperate, and I'm wondering if the minis ter could tell us what type of regulation he has in mind under Bill 21 to ensure fair treatment of domestics and nannies, since they are to be exempted from the labour standards provisions in Bill 21, as is the case under the current Act? MR. SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. Employment equity. DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, the requirements of the people work ing as domestics will be addressed in the regulations.

There is some degree of flexibility required there because some of those people are working under a federal program; others are not For the domestics we intend to see that they are treated fairly and reasonably, allowing for the fact that in many cases room and board are provided by the employer and the flexibility of hours that is required for the work that they do. The hon. member will have to wait until he sees the regulations, as will the rest of Albertans. MR. STRONG: Mr. Speaker, the member's initial question made reference to exploitation of workers.

One of the ways that this government assists in exploiting those workers is allowing overtime agreements. To the Minister of Labour. When will he stop the practice of overtime agreements that abuse and allow employers in this province to take away moneys employees legitimately earn by working overtime? DR. REID: Mr. Speaker, without getting into debate on Bills 21 and 22 once more, I would indicate to the hon. member that if he reads that legislation, he will find provisions about time off in lieu and overtime agreements. It's right there if he would care to read it. MR. SPEAKER: The Member for Vegreville.

Ethanol Fuels Industry MR. FOX: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of Agricul ture, while trying to defend his negative reports on ethanol, said that in spite of the multimillion dollar boo-boo, the net benefit to agriculture just isn't there. I'd like to point out that most people in rural Alberta know that you get two products from a still: you get white lightning out of one end and mash out of the other.

I'm wondering if the minister will admit that these re ports make another serious multimillion dollar error by not properly calculating the value of this dried mash as a protein supplement for livestock feed. MR. ELZINGA: Mr. Speaker, no, I will not, because they do take into account in the reports, if the hon. member read the re ports thoroughly, the value of the dried mash. I would point out also to the hon. member that it is important that a price be set for the product, acknowledging that the marketplace is going to set that price.

I should share with the hon. member, too, if he has figures contrary to that, we would deeply appreciate them, be cause the individual who was quoted in the Edmonton Journal, whose information this hon. member is relying on, indicated much the same as I have just indicated. MR. FOX: Well, Mr. Speaker, the minister says that he wants to discuss this based on facts. Is he denying that the Touche Ross report says on page 10 that the Alberta livestock industry does not use soybean meal as a protein supplement? What are Alberta farmers going to think about that when they import $21 million a year? MR. ELZINGA: Mr.

Speaker, I'm not denying that whatsoever. For the hon. member's information, it is the poultry and the hog people that use soybean meal more so than the cattle people. I'm sure the hon. member is aware of that. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, I'm happy to underscore what I have consistently indicated to the hon. member: that these papers have been issued for discussion purposes. If one looks at the front of the paper, it indicates that it's a discussion paper so that we could develop with proper input from individu als concerned, himself included.

But unfortunately, to date the information that he has relayed to us in each case -- and I'm happy to cite the cases again if the hon. member wishes, but ac knowledging your time constraints, Mr. Speaker, I won't -- has been wrong, more so than the report. MR. FOX: Well, I can certainly understand the minister being defensive about his credibility on this issue, but I'm wondering, Mr.

Speaker, if the minister is aware that in addition to all of the errors contained in these negative reports, they also seriously underestimate the most promising new market opportunity for ethanol; that is, as an octane replacer for premium gasoline. [some applause] MR. ELZINGA: The applause indicates the worthiness of the question. We know how worthy it is. I want to indicate to the hon. member, as I have done on a consistent basis -- and he attempts to convey a different attitude. I would like to share with him and the House again that these reports were commissioned by us for information.

We've nei ther accepted nor rejected the recommendations therein. We look forward to dealing with them after we've had an opportu nity for additional input, Mr. Speaker. I've indicated to the hon. member that we're going to have public meetings throughout the province whereby we can have that valued input. We recog nize the importance that it could play, but we also recognize that in the event that the government is going to put taxpayers' money into an ethanol industry, we have to do so on a sound economic base. MR. FOX: Well, Mr.

Speaker, the minister hasn't told us if he's going to scrap these reports or if he's going to pay the culprits to do them again. I'd like to ask the minister how he can stand up and repeatedly make statements, based on these error-filled reports, that ethanol would require long-term subsidies in order to be viable when Mohawk Oil has been marketing their ethanol

942 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 successfully for years. MR. ELZINGA: Mr. Speaker, the success with which ethanol has been marketed is debatable, as the hon. member, I'm sure, recognizes. As I indicated -- and let me reinforce it, Mr. Speaker -- there was one error as it related to forgone tax revenue. The hon. member is very misleading in the event that he tries to convey that there are additional errors.

In addition to that, in the event that there are other debatable points within the reports, that is exactly the reason why we issued this discussion paper: so that we could develop discussion on an informed basis, unlike what the hon. member is attempting to convey. MR. MUSGROVE: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the minis ter to tell the House in regards to the dry mash: how much sav ings per litre would there be if the mash were not dried but fed in liquid form from the manufacturing basis? MR. ELZINGA: Mr. Speaker, that's much like I responded to the hon.

Member for Vegreville: it depends upon what the marketplace will pay for it. We haven't got any commitment from the cattle feeders within the province of Alberta that they are interested in the dried or the mash. Until we do so, it's very unfair to draw any conclusions. We based it on the price of soybean. MR. SPEAKER: The time for question period has expired. Might we have unanimous consent to complete this series of questions? HON. MEMBERS: Agreed. MR. SPEAKER: Opposed? Carried. Thank you. Westlock-Sturgeon. MR. TAYLOR: Mr Speaker, a supplementary to the minister.

Since the taxpayers paid for a study that even he admits has boo-boos, would he tell the House whether he's going to ask for the taxpayers' money back from the Touche Ross study, or are they going to do a new study without the errors in it? MR. ELZINGA: Mr Speaker, if the report had as many boo- boos as the hon. member, I would discard it, but that's not the case. There was one error within the report that we had commis sioned, that the Alberta Grain Commission took the lead on. Touche Ross did not uncover that error as it related to forgone revenue. They have to date corrected their information.

We have that new information before us on which we can make a very objective decision, plus other information that will be flow ing through, as I indicated too, from other provinces and from the federal government. MR. GIBEAULT: I refer you to Beauchesne, citation 320, Mr. Speaker, where it clearly indicates that "dishonest," a term re ferred to by the Minister of Labour earlier in question period, is unparliamentary, and I would suggest that the appropriate thing to do would be for the minister to withdraw that remark.

Might I also, sir, with respect, point out that in my copy of the fifth edition here I do not see the word "scummy" listed as an unparliamentary word. DR. REID: Mr Speaker, I was responding to the reverse word ing that the hon. member used, and perhaps I was more honest in my approach to it than he was. But in view of his sensitivity I'll withdraw the word "dishonest." MR. SPEAKER; Thank you. Two points of order. The first one is with regard to -- I be lieve the word was "dishonest". AN HON. MEMBER: Dishonesty. MR. SPEAKER: Dishonesty.

Page 111: "Since 1958, it has been ruled parliamentary to use the following" expression, and that was the word that was employed. Therefore, while it didn't have to be withdrawn, the Chair still appreciates the fact the Minister of Labour did indeed withdraw it.

Nevertheless, with regard to point number 2, as raised by the Member for Edmonton-Mill Woods and also raised in a note to the Chair, with regard to the word "scummy," as with regard to a previous word used -- I think it was "scuzzball" or something like that on a previous day -- the list that is there is really what reflects the federal House, what has been regarded as parlia mentary or unparliamentary. Whichever House one wishes to imply to in terms of either the federal House or the U.K.

Parlia ment, also with regard to this particular Chamber, it's within the discretion of the Chair to respond to words that are used in cer tain contexts as to whether or not the Chair deems them to be appropriate. That is indeed what the Chair has done from time to time in a previous discussion. Since June of 1986 the Chair also decided that in terms of question period, the Chair would not accept the use of the word "scab," and it's in that light that the Chair ruled the hon. member out of order and asked for the retraction earlier in the day. ORDERS OF THE DAY MR.

SPEAKER: Might we revert briefly to Introduction of Special Guests? HON. MEMBERS: Agreed. MR. SPEAKER: Opposed? Thank you. The Member for Edmonton-Kingsway. head: INTRODUCTION OF SPECIAL GUESTS (reversion) MR. McEACHERN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It's my pleasure today to introduce to you and to members of the Assembly, 15 adult English as a Second Language students from the Alberta Vocational Centre, which is in the constituency of Edmonton- Kingsway. They're in the public gallery, and they are accompa nied by Lorna Jamison.

I would request that they stand and re ceive the warm welcome of the Legislature. head: MOTIONS OTHER THAN GOVERNMENT MOTIONS MR. YOUNG: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of my colleague the hon. Member for Red Deer-South, I would request that Motion 208 be withdrawn. The hon. member had introduced Motion 208. There has been a discussion among House leaders, and I under

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 943 stand that there is accord with his request. The rationale for his request is that the particular specific in Motion 208, specifically that . . . the impoundment or immobilization of a motor vehicle driven by a person convicted of an impaired driving offence . . . is covered in

section 15 of Bill 26, also sponsored by the hon. Member for Red Deer-South. MR. SPEAKER: Is there unanimous consent for withdrawal of Motion 208? HON. MEMBERS: Agreed. MR. SPEAKER: Opposed? Carried unanimously. [interjec tions] Order please. Government House Leader, with respect to written questions. head: WRITTEN QUESTIONS MR. YOUNG: Sorry, Mr. Speaker. I would move that all written questions on the Order Paper stand and retain their places. [Motion carried] head: MOTIONS FOR RETURNS MR. YOUNG: Mr.

Speaker, I would also move that all motions for returns stand and retain their positions on the Order Paper. [Motion carried] head: MOTIONS OTHER THAN GOVERNMENT MOTIONS (continued) 209. Moved by Mr. Hyland:

Be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly urge the govern ment to continue its programs of water management, includ ing the construction of reservoirs and drainage systems. MR. HYLAND: Mr. Speaker, in the province of Alberta in rough terms 80 percent of the water used is where 20 percent of the water originates. So there is a drastic imbalance of usage to where water originates; thus the need for some sort of con veyance or retaining of the water so that it can be used to the maximum amount available.

Associated with that is the appor tionment agreement that we have to pass on 50 percent of the water originating in this province to Saskatchewan for the rivers that go that way and likewise the water that goes other direc tions from the province. Along with that, I remember a figure that I found many years ago that the consumptive use of water in Alberta was the highest in Canada. Something to the extent of 70-plus percent of the water consumed in Canada was consumed in the province of Alberta.

Undoubtedly a good portion of that is related to the irrigation industry in the southern part of the province, in that consumptive use of water is measured as water that does not return to river valleys;

whereas in other uses of water much of the water returns into the river in one form or another. I think, Mr. Speaker, that this motion is very timely in the dry conditions that we've seen as of late throughout the whole province, not just in the part of the province where I come from, where we're used to relatively dry times. Others are not quite used to dry times. I well remember the former Member for Cardston telling me for years that he had a crop failure. To him a crop failure was 50 bushels an acre. Then when it got down to 40, he said he had a real crop failure.

I told him that in the country I come from and the Member for Westlock-Sturgeon grew up in, 40 bushels an acre was a bumper crop. We really thought we had something if we had that. Then two or three years ago he came to me and said: "Alan, I know what a crop failure is. I harvested six bushels an acre." I said, "John, you now know what a crop failure is." So, Mr. Speaker, the shortage of water in the province is all relative to what you're used to, the amount of water you're used to and the amount of precipitation you're used to getting.

I've been driving to Edmonton more lately, and I notice all the way along Highway 36 from the time I leave home, crossing the river, then all the way up 36 and then from Viking into Ed monton -- I don't know how many dry sloughs there are along that highway, but I do know there are only two wet sloughs, sloughs that have water in them. That's a long stretch of the province, and it shows the need for some sort of water projects throughout the province to assure that at least domestic water is available to all, either by storage or by pipelines, et cetera.

It shows how vulnerable we are to nature when it comes to domes tic water. [Mr. Musgreave in the Chair] I well remember the words of the former Member for Chinook in his perception of what control of water is and what no control of water is and the illustration he used to use: a glass of water is control and retention of water; dumping it on the floor is misuse of water. That's something I remember from his words and I will remember for many, many years.

In his desire to find water and methods of controlling water and methods of construction of reservoirs and management of water in drainage systems are the two projects that were left in his area when Sheerness power plant was put it and the Deadfish diversion and other small systems of getting water to farmers and ranchers so that in a dry area they could assure at least their winter supply, or part of their winter supply, of their feed. Mr.

Speaker, we often find areas outside irrigation districts where, if we fly along river courses, we see people pumping water out of the river onto fields adjacent to the river in order to supply feed for their cattle herd. We also see pumping out of creeks and other areas in order to assure a supply to run a proper operation, so they're assured of carrying their livestock through the winter months. Mr. Speaker, we've heard a lot about multi-use of land and water.

In thinking about this motion, I think about at least two provincial parks that are built on irrigation storage reservoirs, one being the provincial park at Lake Newell, which is an irriga tion reservoir, and the other being a provincial park at Park Lake just north of Lethbridge, which is an irrigation reservoir. So it shows that multi-use of land does work and it can continue to work.

And adjacent to other small irrigation reservoirs, I can think of at least four recreation areas in the southern part of the province: Stafford reservoir, Golden Sheaf park outside Medi cine Hat, Cabin Lake, also outside Medicine Hat, and the pro posed Forty Mile recreation area, which is just getting under construction and is adjacent to the construction of the Forty Mile storage reservoir in the St. Mary system, which is a large inter

944 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 nal reservoir. It is very much multi-use with this recreation area adjacent to it and a boat ramp into the main reservoir for the use of motor boats, et cetera. I'm sure when it opens in the near future, all members would be glad to go down and see how multi-use of water can be accomplished. Mr. Speaker, the other subject that often comes up, too, is the work that Ducks Unlimited has done -- and other organizations, but especially Ducks Unlimited -- related to storage projects and water projects throughout the province.

In doing their work so there is water for waterfowl, they have done many joint projects not only with government but with individual people on individ ual parcels of land in having facilities and small reservoirs where water can be stored and used for domestic purposes. I think they should be commended for the action they've taken on this. The other group that has been involved in many of these things is fish and wildlife organizations throughout the province.

Indeed, part of the Fish & Game Association in Medicine Hat is the people who are the local group who are looking after Cavan Lake recreation area, which is outside Medicine Hat. These kinds of co-operations, Mr. Speaker, need to continue to exist and improve and develop even to a greater extent than they are. In our rush, support came from all parts of the province, including those involved in fish and wildlife and all other areas, about the irrigation canals that were leaking, and that we should seal those canals and stop the loss of good, pro ductive land.

The only thing we did and we are looking at now and will continue to look at in the future and should continue to look at even more so -- and, indeed, some irrigation areas are doing it -- is that in stopping those canals from leaking, most of that marshy land dried up. So we now have another challenge that somehow we have to replace that land. Perhaps we can do it in areas where it's out of one chunk of land rather than out of a ribbon of land along a canal and continues to grow out and grow out and hurts more land.

If we can put it into areas such as is happening in the Eastern Irrigation District, we can vastly im prove the system. We can get the place for the birds in co operation, as I've said, with Ducks Unlimited and fish and wild life associations. We can get places where the wildfowl and the pheasants, et cetera, can live and survive and multiply so we can continue the multi-use aspect of water and water projects throughout the province. Mr. Speaker, we debated in this Legislature before an emer gency motion on the Oldman River dam.

As I said at that time, I can well remember meetings in Pincher Creek, probably in 1976-77. We, the irrigation committee of caucus, had a tour of possible sites and had a meeting in Pincher Creek. At a time previous to that, the Department of the Environment had studied the situation and issued reports. We continued to study the situ ation and issue reports after that until we finally made a decision a few short years ago and decided to go on construction with the dam. So we could well study that.

It's interesting to note that those who had concerns about the dam previous, when it was being explored on various sites, in cluding that on the Peigan Reserve -- a great deal of money was given to various people for studies so they could study various locations and put proposals forward. The concerns that were expressed -- when people thought it was going to go in certain areas, they didn't have certain concerns on it. What happens if an earthquake comes along? What happens if this? What hap pens if that? We all read the Bible. What happens if the end of the world comes tomorrow?

I mean, we can't control every thing. There are things we can control and we can cut the odds the best we can, but obviously we may step out in the street and somebody may run into us. I mean, we can't say we'll never die, because we know there are two things that are for sure, death and taxes. So we can't predict everything; we can't stop everything. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, the same as the Member for Edmonton-Glengarry is entitled to his opinion on the Oldman dam. It's wrong, but he's entitled to his opinion, as we all are entitled to our opinions on various aspects. Mr.

Speaker, let me move north in the province and talk about the Red Deer River, some comments I've had from people and friends who've got relations in Red Deer. One in fact said to this family member: "You know, I don't know what's hap pened to our water this year in Red Deer. We can drink it out of the tap now. We never could. What's happened to it?" And he said: "What about the dam above the river?

The river's live; there's water in it now." I think years ago Red Deer was prob ably worse off than Medicine Hat to the extent that they had nobody to phone upriver to say, "Please flush the toilet so we can get more water." There was no major centre upriver from them. So they were at a disadvantage. Now, with the dam, they do have a better domestic supply of water. I'm sure if the Member for Drumheller gets involved in the debate, he'll also tell us about the improved supply and quality of the water in the river at Drumheller. Mr.

Speaker, I just had a note that says the town of Three Hills would not have water today if it were not for the Dickson dam on the Red Deer River. I might add to that, if memory serves me right, that when the St Mary reservoir and the Water- ton reservoir were built on the rivers in southern Alberta, the agreement said that enough to make 350 cfs of water has to come past the city of Lethbridge. With the way things are in the rivers this year, we could well have a whole lot less than 350 cfs in that river in the middle of summer when we may be close to that amount now.

You look at the water coming down the river and it's extremely low. Mr. Speaker, the Paddle River and the construction of the dam on the Paddle River which controls the rampant flooding -- I can remember in this Legislature, before the announcement of the Paddle River was made, the then member Dr. Homer telling us about the improvement the construction of that dam would make on the Paddle River to controlling the damage along the lower part of the river.

I can also remember him saying that when the public hearings were being made, individual people would get up and make a recommendation against it at a hearing and the mayor would get up and speak for the whole town. He was listed as one person, so why construct a dam when you've got a five for and 55 against type of ratio, yet not putting the numbers they were speaking for? I remember the now Member for Barrhead and Minister of the Environment making many speeches in this House relating to the Paddle River dam and the benefit. What do we see, Mr. Speaker? We haven't heard much about the Paddle River dam lately.

We haven't heard that in 1986, the worst flood in history -- the saving of a mere $20 million in damage. There we go; one flood. It's not only the saving of the damage, the $20 mil lion. It's the impact it had on those people: they didn't have to go through cleaning their house; they didn't have to go through trying to rebuild their land that would have been washed away. Indeed, it shows how much that improved the area. That dam was able to take up the rising flow of the water and let it out at a lesser rate, and it saved that much in damage.

And that's dollar damage, not damage people feel when they get flooded out and have to deal with the situation. Mr. Speaker, let me go on to drainage. I can remember a

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 945 number of years ago when a committee I was on took a tour of the northern part of the province. I remember going through High Prairie. I hope I've got the name of the right river, but the West Prairie River goes through the town. All the work that had to be done along that river because of the soils and because of the slopes in order to get that river through the town without washing major portions of the town into the river and then out into the lake to create more problems.

I remember the discus sion with some of the people involved, the mayor and some of the councillors, about the problems they faced because the river runs so flat and is not in a deep coulee formation, as we see in other parts of the province. It's just on a flat area, almost like an irrigation ditch without sides wandering through the countryside. When the spring thaw comes along, it flows over its sides and causes damage. I remember looking at the Slave River and the work that was done on the Slave Lake outlet and the straightening of the chan nel in the river, a very wandering channel.

Some work was done to straighten it out so the water would pick up speed and flow faster through the area and thus not cause as much damage as it did.

I remember looking at drainage projects near Spirit River and, because of the type of soil in that area, how a lot of work had to be done on any drainage area because the soil virtually disappears if the ground isn't rocked or doesn't have other forms of control in it The soil virtually disappears and you can see on one side of the road a channel that's five feet deep with rock and gabion basket in it On the other side of the river, where it runs through a culvert and drops off, it can well be 20 to 25 feet or more deep where the soil has just disappeared into the formation. Mr.

Speaker, we do have drainage programs, some 75/25 cost-sharing programs, which I spoke of in some of those ones that I looked at, that have been in the areas. And we also have had in the past five years 245 drainage projects and have spent about $12 million-plus on these projects in the north, and that's in one aspect of the program. The other aspects of the program, with 160 projects that have either been asked for or people are thinking about asking for them, as best as we can estimate them, are with a roughly estimated cost of $33 million.

So we have a very long way to go, and we're finishing these or projecting some of these at a rate of approximately 35 a year, so we do have a few years of drainage projects ahead. Under other programs, Mr. Speaker: under the surface water development and control program, we have approximately 14 projects per year, with somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3.4 million in the budget this year for these programs. So we have a long way to go. We've come a long way with the drainage projects, but we have a long way to go. And if I can urge mem bers anything in that aspect, I would urge them more. We need more.

We need to move the water off some of this land so it can be productive. I believe we need to do more in that aspect, and we need to do it co-operatively. We need to do it with land owners, we need to do it with municipalities, and we need to do it with government departments that are involved. It's not something one person can go ahead and do. If one person moves the water off their land, it ultimately ends up on another and the next guy has twice as much. It's something that needs to be done together, and it needs to be taken to some other source.

Also, when we're doing that, we need to work at having multi-use of the land.

As I said, the problems we found when we cleaned up irrigation canals are a lesson we have to remem ber in that when we take some of that area out -- marsh areas and other areas -- we need to somewhere have at least some of that land replaced so we can still have that wildlife around and those areas around, so that part of nature can continue to be there and to live life to the fullest, so those who want to either hunt, fish, or just go out and look, hunt with a camera or whatever, have the ability to go in areas and look at wildlife as well. So, Mr. Speaker, I would urge all members to support this motion.

I would gladly listen to their suggestions, and look for ward to their support on the motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. MR. ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Member for Westlock-Sturgeon. MR. TAYLOR: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Rising to speak to the motion, I felt at first that I could support it But when it has the word "continue" in there, if it had been a case of urging the government to continue its program for water management . . .

I may move an amendment toward the end of this speech -- not knowing about parliamentary procedure -- rather than speak against it, because speaking against it could be interpreted as being against water. But I did want to touch on a couple of things. Coming from the same area the hon. member does, I know that drought is something we've lived with for some years. The fact that 80 percent of our people are living and using the water where only 20 percent of our water lies, Mr. Speaker, is something that's been repeated over and over again, but no one seems to pay any attention to it.

What I'm afraid of is that this government, knowing that, is sitting back and making no plans, doing noth ing in the south to help avoid the day when we will have to do river transfers from where 80 percent of our water is -- in the Peace River and the Athabasca drainages -- to the south. It's a laissez-faire attitude that is, of course, in keeping with this gov- enmient's philosophy of sitting back and letting the events un fold as they should, as they say.

The point is that any study of the rest of the world -- and I've worked in many areas of the world -- is that if you let it unfold the way it should, people will continue to build and build where the area is until they run short of water. Then if the technology is available to transfer the water, they'll do it; if the technology is not available, they won't One only has to tour the Middle East and fly over the empires that have come and gone, all the way from Gibraltar to Morocco to Cairo to Tehran to China, to see.

If you've worked in that area, as I have for many years as a surface geologist, you can see that water was the limit to growth. It was not some touring band of Saracens or pagans that whipped through and killed everyone. They ran out of water or the river drainage changed. If you want to go along to Asia Minor where they used to be located, St Paul and the Greeks, it was so attractive that even the Roman emperors moved their empire to Asia Minor at one time, to see what hap pens as water . . .

There it was a little bit different It wasn't a shortage of water; it was a case of the shift of the earth so that water left the mouths of the rivers into swamps, swamps bred mosquitoes, mosquitoes bred malaria, and their civilizations went down the tube. So nearly always, whether you're an ar chaeologist, as some of my family is, or a geologist -- what I worked at -- you can tour the world and watch the effects of water. What I see setting up in this province, Mr. Speaker, does not

946 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 console me a bit. What I see developing in the south is the ever increasing use and demand for water without any intention of trying to divert or trying to get some of the industrial growth, some of the growth that could be better handled where the water is in the north, to move up here. The idea seems to be -- as the ancient Babylonians or any of the other ancient empires, the As syrians or whatever we had, where there was a centre that went on -- that you grow and grow until you finally run out of water, and bang, the civilization collapses.

In this case, we're not go ing to collapse because we're too modem, too up to date. What we will do is force ourselves into water transfers from the Athabasca and Peace just as sure as - you'll pardon the expres sion, Mr. Speaker -- the Lord made little apples. There will be within two generations or within one generation . . . And they don't make many little apples in southern Alberta. But just as sure as the dickens one of the big demands that will happen to our next generation of politicians is how to get water to the south.

Yet when we go to the south we see irrigation, using the dam prospect rather than . . . And this is something they only have to go to Iran to study. Rather than study the reforestation and seeding of the Rocky Mountain slopes so the snowpack holds the water and releases it slower over time, the idea is grabbing a dam, which in itself is not bad if you were a dictatorship.

But under a free society, when you build a dam that water becomes accessible to many others, and whether you look at the Aswan or the Indus or wherever you go in the world, a large collection of water, although it may have originally started out to be water for agriculture, soon attracts industry, the industry attracts population, and in no time you get an area like the Aswan, which didn't take even one generation -- it did not take 20 years, Mr.

Speaker -- to where it is almost impossible to get a gallon of water to irrigate the Nile delta now because the dam is needed to generate electricity and flush the toilets of a huge, new industrial aluminum empire, a manufacturing and processing empire that was built following the dam that they didn't have and couldn't have supported if they had stayed with the Nile with its yearly flood. Now, what we are seeing in this province, Mr. Speaker, is that there's a complete lack of long-term planning.

Dams were not a bad idea for the time of the Bible and into maybe the Vic torian era, but they were fast superseded in the early part of this century. Water is best stored today in off-stream storage, small spots here and there, in somehow or another the way Mother Nature originally intended it to be in reforestation of the slopes and methods that feed the streams to try to delay the flow as long as possible. We go on into priorities. This government has quite cor rectly set out the priorities as being, first, people; second, agriculture; and third, industry.

But as I said before, once indus try arrives it brings people, and the people that work for industry automatically bypass agriculture and end up in a top spot. It's fine to say, "Oh, no, the farmers will always get the water rather than an aluminum plant or rather than Cargill" or something like that. But the fact of the matter is that the industrial plant brings in large numbers of employees, who bring in families, who bring in a service industry, and that's where the water goes in order to support the industry where their jobs are and their own households. The farmers get squeezed out.

That's what's wrong with dams -- not the technology of just putting a dam and grabbing water, but because people will crowd in and start using it. [Mr. Deputy Speaker in the Chair] The second

part is when we come to planning. I'll try to move on because so many people want to speak on this. So a question of aquifers. Well, as a marine geologist, I'll admit that most of my lifetime, till I was lucky enough that the Westlock- Sturgeon people decided to send me here, water and the survey ing of water in many areas is worth a lot If you had any self- respecting Arab and brought him to Alberta, he or she would laugh himself or herself silly seeing us taking fresh water, forc ing it down oil wells to chase out of the ground some gooey black substance they have running out their ears.

That we use actual fresh water at the rate of a 1.25 million barrels a day to flush oil out of the ground has to be one of the most nonsensical procedures. Probably 75 percent of the world's population would sit there wondering what had ob sessed us, what we had been drinking or what kind of drug we'd been taking that we will allow it. Nevertheless, we wanted to have our oil. For some reason or another water goes to a farmer who plants a crop, who sells the crop, and maybe pays some income tax.

The water that goes down a hole and chases out oil goes directly into the government's coffers so all the front bench with their little leprechauns and gnomes that advise them from time to time can think of thousands of schemes to put that money to work. Sure, they're sucking out our riches from under the ground.

But just think of all the institutions with brass plaques on the comers with the front bench's name on them that they got by taking fresh water, pushing it down holes, pushing out oil, selling the oil, and buying the new Grant MacEwan col lege or this new hospital that can't support the beds or that new hospital here and there. What a lovely thing we've developed. But when we stand to explain to our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, when we write up his tory, they're going to call us damned if we sit here and pull such a silly, short-term nonsense solution.

May I move on a little bit further on the aquifers? I asked the hon. member for the Environment the other day whether he knows whether Cargill will not disturb the water supplies for the town of High River.

"Well, yes; we're making a study." Even the town of High River is so pleased that Cargill is going to build a plant there that they haven't bothered to think about whether or not the aquifer will be depleted, whether or not depleting the aquifer down to maybe only 80 percent of volume -- in other words, taking 20 percent out -- will in such a way cause a flushing through that brings in salts, the stuff to make it nonpotable. There's very few studies on aquifers. We can show you aquifers all over the world. One of the first jobs I got, Mr.

Speaker, back in the early '60s when I set up a corporation of my own, was to make studies for the com munist government of north China on how their aquifers were used. You can draw down an aquifer. Not all the water is gone, but drawing it down 10, 15, or 20 percent can change the whole aspect of what's in that reservoir and what kind of water comes out. Yet I venture to say that the Alberta Research Council, the Department of the Environment, and the Department of Energy have done nothing on that to see what it would do. We go on a step further, Mr. Speaker. There is the case of potable and nonpotable water.

Under the plains of this province -- and it doesn't take any astute geologist to tell you that -- you have literally as much as the Pacific and Arctic oceans com bined. There's salt water, sulphurous water till we wouldn't have it. In most regimes around the world where I've worked, that salt water or nonpotable water had to be used to go down

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 947 wells to chase out the oil, to go up, yet we make no restriction of that at all. Admittedly it makes the oil operators -- and 1 used to be one -- spend a little more money cleaning up the water so it'll go down the well without contaminating the pipes or without plugging the pores in the reservoir. But the point is that this nonpotable water could be used a great deal. As a matter of fact, I have lived and worked in some regimens where non potable was in the sewer supply.

There was one freshwater tap in each house -- one or two -- and the toilets and everything else were connected to nondrinkable water. We haven't even looked at that yet. That's so far in advance of the thinking of this gov ernment that I don't think we'll ever get around to looking at that. But the use of potable and nonpotable water is something I've seen very few studies of. The town of Taber, adjacent to the hon. Member for Cypress-Redcliff's constituency, has been taking some revolutionary steps in the direction of using the sewage to ir rigate some lands out around the area.

This is a very good use of water. In my own constituency up in Westlock we have a pond that overflows twice a year. But when I threatened to go out there with the CBC crew and get the fact that the sewage is going to be flushed in the Wabash Creek, the hon. Minister of the Environment called up the city council, all excited, and said: "Don't you dare open that thing; don't you dare. You're not going to be allowed to open it." Now, apparently he is going to come up with a solution, Mr. Speaker.

One of the rumours is that he's going to use these new four-litre plastic cartons that may be going to be allowed in this province and no other, to haul it out by hand on weekends, so that I won't be able to get the 6 o'clock news and watch the CBC hold their nose, flushing some of the sewage down Wabash Creek. Nevertheless, this is an example, again with no forethought, no thinking ahead, of what they're going to do with the use of water. Now, I might finally go on . . . MR.KOWALSKI: Mr. Speaker. . . MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please. A point of order. MR. KOWALSKI: I wonder if the hon.

Member for Westlock- Stuigeon would permit a question, Mr. Speaker? MR. TAYLOR: I would certainly permit a question. I've tried to get him out of his torpor for the last two weeks, so I'd love it. Yes. MS BARRETT: Let him ask. MR. TAYLOR: Pardon? MS BARRETT: He wants to ask you a question. MR. TAYLOR: That's what I say; I'd love it. Yeah. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. Minister of the Environment. MR. KOWALSKI: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

I won der if the hon. member for Westlock-Sturgeon would explain to the House why he didn't attend a meeting last Friday afternoon with Mayor Kay Vaughan of the town of Westlock and myself and members of the town council and a number of very deter mined farmers in the area to discuss the very unique situation affecting the town of Westlock. Did the hon. member not attend because he was too busy elsewhere in the province of Alberta? AN HON. MEMBER: That's two questions in one, thank you. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order. Order please. [interjec tions] Order please.

The Chair has some difficulty relating the question from the hon. member to Motion 209. Liberal leader, carry on. MR. TAYLOR: I have some difficulty, too. But, Mr. Speaker, as long as he asks any question at all, I should be glad. A pretty simple reason: I wasn't invited. After all, it's like one of those speeches in Athabasca. It's like that speech in Athabasca. I mean, I remember that the minister has threatened or implied that maybe even the Mounties' establishment would disappear if they didn't vote Tory next time. But I wasn't invited.

If he will invite me next time, I'll not only be there but I'll make the coffee. [interjection] No, I don't know about that Mr. Speaker, after all the threats that have been ordered by the Min ister of the Environment, they were probably afraid to have any body there. Let's go on then, on to the last part of the thing. The last

part I want to talk on, and one of the reasons why I'm going to move an amendment to the motion that they delete the words "to continue" . . . To substitute "institute" instead of "continue" will be my amendment. And I won't get up and speak on it -- well, maybe just very quickly on the amendment. The last

part I wanted to touch on was the fact that the water futures. . . And those of you that have been looking in a news paper -- I know a lot of people don't believe in the Sun or the Journal, but this was a reprint, so it was all right -- there was a graph of what the heat elements have been in North America, what the average temperature has been for the last roughly 10,000 years, going back to the glacial age. One of the interest- mg parts, Mr. Speaker, is that the average temperature now is fast approaching what it was at the hottest it's ever been in the past In other words, the greenhouse effect is coming in.

What's concerning me about this government more than any thing else is that maybe our concentration shouldn't be so much on saving the dams and putting the water out as the research into drought resistance and how to live with drought. Because it would appear that we may be trying to do the impossible here. If indeed the greenhouse effect is in, and indeed the long-term drought or long-term dry era is coming -- and it would seem to be -- building more dams is just going to give fewer and fewer people more and more water.

It is not going to adapt Albertans as whole to the new environment of drought that seems to be coming towards us, from what the long-term studies would ap- pear. And we're well into that cycle now. So I would think that I would like to see some studies done with this government on drought resistant varieties, what types of farming you do in drought areas, the types of cities you build in drought areas, how you care for and the nursing of your aquifers -- all this type of thing. All that seems to occupy peo ple's minds -- and I know the hon. Member for Barrhead is thinking of a dam up in the Pembina area.

The reason he told everybody to cool it was that the economics work out that you could pay every farmer $1,000 an acre and lease it back to him, and it would still be cheaper than a dam. Nevertheless, the fact is that what we have is people with what I call a "beaver men tality." And I don't refer to the eating habits; I refer to the fact that they love to build dams everywhere and anywhere. That in

948 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 itself is not the solution to the problem, Mr. Speaker. I believe that with the cycle that is coming upon us now, we are into a period of having to learn to live with drought That doesn't mean dams and pocketing away water. It means a lot of re search, drought resistant varieties, aid to farmers to get them over their drought cycles, and so on. Consequently, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to close out by amend ing Mr. Hyland's motion: taking out the words "continue its" and substituting the word "institute." AN HON. MEMBER: Do you have copies? MR. TAYLOR: No, I haven't. MR.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Perhaps, hon. leader, if you're proposing an amendment, you could . . . Order please. Perhaps you could have the amendment written out and sent to the Chair, so the Chair will determine whether or not the amendment is in order. AN HON. MEMBER: This is unfair to the House, Mr. Speaker. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair had assumed the hon. leader had the amendment ready to proceed. The Chair is hav ing some difficulty, as the responsibility of the Chair is to keep the debate going. Could the hon. leader assure the Chair the amendment will be here in three minutes?

The Chair can tell already, by looking at the proposed amendment, that this is go ing to be an exciting day. MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, I'm continuing on the amendment . . . MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order. Order. The Chair will determine whether the . . . Hon. leader of the Liberal Party, to your amendment. MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, I just gave the House a valuable lesson there in the fact that brevity is the soul of wit. [interjec tion] There's no need to have long-winded things put out If the lawyers depended on me for an occupation, they would all starve to death.

Speaking on the amendment, the reason I deleted "continue its" and substituted "institute" was to point out that this govern ment, indeed, has been backward and behind time and, in fact, in a matter of words, sloppy in its pursuit of instituting programs on water management There is probably -- for any government I've ever run into or operated with in water-short areas, and Al berta's a water-short area -- less long-term planning and water management here than any corporation you could get into. Look at the recent drought announced here in central Alberta.

We had to strike a hastily put together committee of three or four cabinet ministers to worry about getting water out to even feed cattle. Even then there's a waiting list or no regular system on how to go about getting water to the cattle holes in the fact of what pipe and pumps are available. Now, Mr. Speaker, and I think there'll be other members in the opposition -- this is why the amendment is in such a way that it will not affect the total. If you were going to speak on the issue anyhow, it will not affect the whole area. But it is in a positive way.

Instead of just saying, "You've been doing a great job; you've been in power for 14 years," this actually gets down and says, "We have to," and it's an emergency in that we have to institute a program of water management. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before proceeding, hon. minister, we should take a moment to distribute the proposed amendment by the hon. leader of the Liberal Party. MR. McEACHERN: Mr. Speaker, the amendment is a rather short and simple one. I think we could all understand the debate if it went ahead, if that would be okay. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: The hon.

Member for Edmonton- Kingsway obviously has not read the amendment. [laughter] MR. TAYLOR: Mr. Speaker, though, on that point of order. It's such a simple amendment All it says is "institute" instead of "continue." I'm sure no one will have any problem debating the issue, Mr. Speaker. It's not one of those things that has to be typed out in writing. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Does the hon. Minister of the Envi ronment understand the amendment, even though it hasn't been distributed? MR. KOWALSKI: Mr. Speaker, this is most irregular. We have a very well-defined motion on the order paper that says:

Be it resolved that the Legislative Assembly urge the govern ment to continue its programs of water management, including the construction of reservoirs and drainage [programs]. We have a debate going on for some 45 minutes, and then I sup pose in a great deal of frivolity -- and I think Beauchesne covers the element of frivolity in its rules -- the leader of the Liberal Party, the Member for Westlock-Sturgeon, nonchalantly, off- the-cuff, decides to move an amendment. Mr. Speaker, one would always believe that honour and honourability are important in this Assembly.

What you're ask ing this Member of the Legislative Assembly to do, Mr. Speaker, is trust the leader of the Liberal Party with respect to wordings about a . . . MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please, hon. minister. The Chair has ruled the amendment is in order. The Chair simply asked if the hon. minister wanted to wait until the amendment had arrived or if he had the confidence in the Chair to under stand the amendment. MR. KOWALSKI: Well, Mr. Speaker, that's an entirely differ ent question than the one addressed a minute or two ago.

There is no doubt at all that this member has total confidence in the hon. member in the Chair, and if that being the question, then one would answer in the affirmative and say yes. Oh, we've now got the amendment, Mr. Speaker. It says: Re Bill 209 Delete "continue its" [and] substitute "institute" and there's some more scratching in there. Yes, indeed, Mr. Speaker it's my pleasure to now speak to the amendment, but first of all I'd better really understand what it says: urge the government to institute programs of water management includ ing the construction of reservoirs and drainage systems. Well, Mr.

Speaker, I intend on speaking to this amendment, and would like to point out in no uncertain terms that the amendment is hardly necessary, considering that this govern ment and this province and this caucus has been in the business

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 949 of water management, including the construction of reservoirs and drainage systems in our province for a great period of time. There's no doubt at all, Mr. Speaker, that when one wants to talk, one would just use a relatively small amount of information by way of factual information to basically point out why all members should reject this amendment, and we can get on in a serious debate that's already been established this afternoon by the Member for Cypress-Redcliff. Mr.

Speaker, by way of factual information, surely the Mem ber for Westlock-Sturgeon and the leader of the Liberal Party is aware of the Alberta water management and erosion control pro gram which provides financial assistance to local authorities and water projects for the direct benefit of the community. Surely the leader of the Liberal Party is aware of the cost-sharing pro gram that currently is in existence with respect to this very im portant scenario. Surely the member is aware of the surface water development and control program.

Surely the member is aware of the irrigation headworks and main irrigation systems improvement program. Surely the hon. member is aware of the irrigation rehabilitation expansion program. Surely the member is aware of the estimates that are contained in the Alberta Heri tage Savings Trust Fund. Surely the member is aware of the Oldman River dam. Collectively, Mr.

Speaker, if you were to take a look at these particular projects that have been under way now for a great number of years in our province, and have been well enunciated, well placed, the hon. member would be aware that there's nearly $1 billion worth of information and projects currently under way, under construction, under management. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, I think it's important to reamplify, once again, that our approach to water management in this province is a tripartite approach. It includes on-stream storage, off-stream storage, and conservation methodologies. Those are well known.

We even published information with respect to the policies that we . . . MR. YOUNIE: A point of order, please. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Edmonton-Glengarry on a point of order. MR. YOUNIE: Thank you. You may have to give me some guidance on a particular citation in Standing Orders or Beauchesne, but the amendment reads, "Re Bill 209." Bill 209 is the Loan and Trust Corporation Conflict of Interest Act under the name of Mr. Mitchell on the Order Paper. I haven't heard anything in relation to loan and trust corporation Acts or conflict of interest so far. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: The hon.

Member for Edmonton- Glengarry is quite correct. MR. KOWALSKI: Mr. Speaker, the difficulty, of course -- your question a little earlier asked this member to trust the Speaker, and the member did trust the Speaker. The member would not, of course, say that he would not trust the leader of the Liberal Party, because that would undoubtedly be unparlia mentary. But it certainly is a reflection, Mr.

Speaker, of the dif ficulty we have when we have to deal with a member coming forward and all of a sudden scratching something on the back of a sheet of paper without any more thought given to it than was already displayed this afternoon. Mr. Speaker, I think I've made the point with respect to the amendment that has been brought forward by the leader of the Liberal Party. I would ask all members to reject the amendment so we can go on with the serious discussion that has already been enunciated this afternoon by the Member for Cypress-Redcliff. [Motion on amendment lost] MRS. McCLELLAN: Mr.

Speaker, water management is prob ably the most important issue in my constituency. It is not something we take lightly. The southern half of my con stituency is one of the most arid in this province, and I speak to this motion not only as an MLA but as a farmer who has experi enced water shortages firsthand. The words of Mr. J. Palliser, a British agricultural scientist who came to southern Alberta in the mid-1800s, still ring throughout the region. He said the area was "unfit for agriculture." Well, Mr. Speaker, we've been able to prove Mr. Palliser wrong. Agriculture is very much alive.

Reservoirs and irrigation systems have become familiar sights on this southern Alberta landscape and have enabled this province to expand its agricultural land base and diversify the southern Alberta economy. Water management is a complex issue which affects the north as much as the south. It's about bringing water to regions where it's scarce and removing it from where it's too plentiful and a hindrance to development. It's about maintaining minimum flow requirements to ensure high water quality. It's about assuring water supplies to communities all over this province.

It's about fueling economic expansion and diversification. It's about maintaining an adequate water supply 365 days a year in all regions of this province. Assured year-round supplies are not the case in several Al berta river basins. It's an unfortunate bit of irony that stream flow peaks when demands are lowest; conversely, low flow co incides with periods of high demand. Because of a rapid spring melt and runoff, as much as 60 percent of the annual water flow passes through the system over a three-month period, roughly late spring to early summer. Mr.

Speaker, the challenge is to somehow capture the water when the flow is high for use in drier seasons. This necessitates the development of impound- ment and conveyance networks and irrigation systems to divert and retain the water and mechanisms to release the water in a regulated way. But there are consequences of water management; otherwise, we would not be debating this motion today. Building a reser voir or draining a wetland has an impact on the environment, making water management a provocative issue.

It requires that we carefully weigh the necessity of a project versus its potential for affecting our natural and cultural heritage. These decisions are not easy, but they are the responsibility of this government, and this government has not shunned it or left it for successive generations of Albertans to deal with. Water problems do not simply go away of their own accord. This government was elected to make tough, informed decisions on matters which affect the future of this province.

The deci sion to build dams and reservoirs is among the toughest deci sions of all, not only because of the environmental considera tions but because of the financial cost. In retrospect, Mr. Speaker, many Albertans will be grateful that this govern ment had the foresight to build one of the most advanced and sophisticated water management systems in the world. The costs are indeed substantial, but the potential return on the in vestment is enormous.

Without water management efforts we risk losing agriculture in the south forever, and that jeopardizes the hamlets, the villages, and towns that agriculture supports.

950 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 Providing access for livestock watering and assured feed sup plies through irrigation goes far beyond improving the viability of farming. Mr. Speaker, agriculture is not the only sector affected by lack of water. Without dependable water supplies our ability to attract industry is reduced -- another threat to the future of rural Alberta. A low industrial presence means a low tax base. A low tax base limits the ability of communities to provide ser vices, which are enticements to locate in the area.

Abandoned farms and dwindling communities are grim signposts to those of us who cherish the rural way of life. We cannot separate water management from rural economic stabilization and growth. The two go hand in hand. Everyone in this province, no matter where they live, is entitled to safe and uninterrupted water sup plies, be it for domestic, municipal, agricultural, or industrial use. This is the foundation of water management in this province. The philosophy which has guided water management has been based on a good deal of caution and prudence and a vision -- a vision of a green Alberta. Mr.

Speaker, it was Henry Kroeger's vision, and it is mine. He believed that our natural resources must be utilized to their fullest potential for the better ment of Alberta. I'm happy to report that the greening of Chinook is under way. The 70-mile Hanna-Oyen pipeline is expected to be opera tional by fall. It will provide Hanna, Youngstown, Cereal, and Oyen with municipal water plus tap-offs for rural users along the way. The Sheerness and Deadfish systems are also function ing, while irrigation systems in the lower reaches of the Berry and Deadfish creeks are expanding.

This will allow for the ir rigation of an additional 8,000 acres this year. But it's obvious to us who live in the region that much more needs to be done. The government is currently assessing the possibility of irrigating adjacent to the Red Deer River, and is also conducting a study of previously proposed schemes to bring water from the Red Deer River to the headwaters of the Sound ing, Bullpound, Berry, and Blood Indian creeks and other parts of the special areas.

I'm fully supportive of this coalescence of previous studies, and I'm optimistic that continued research will identify courses of action for my constituency. Mr. Speaker, research is a critical phase in water manage ment because of all the various issues that come to bear on a given project Research must be thorough, and it must explore all options. This government has devoted considerable energy to ensuring just that Yet we're deluged by accusations that many water management projects, specifically the Oldman River dam, are prefaced by too little research and too little pub lic debate.

Well, on the contrary; let's consider the groups who have participated. The government listened to farmers, irriga tion districts, native representatives, commodity groups, munici pal govermments, conservation groups, and academics. Phase 1 studies began in 1974; a decision to build the dam was not ren dered till 1984. Ten years' worth of studies and discussions, and still the government is accused of rushing into this decision without adequately assessing the ramifications of the project. Mr.

Speaker, there are some who would continue to drag their feet on this and other issues indefinitely for the lack of political courage. But I challenge any opponent to spend one year on a farm in my constituency. Besides having to deal with normal farm operations, let them try to deal with the lack of water. I believe the experience would be sufficient cause to reconsider one's opinion on irrigation. My message to the critics is this.

I think you must reach a point where you say, "Enough studies." The potential for study on this project is virtually inexhaustible, so you have to make a value judgment at some point and determine that the research done is sufficient Mr. Speaker, this government reached that stage in 1984, and it hasn't looked back. It's obvious to anyone who lives in the area that the demands on the Oldman River ex ceed the river's capability to meet them. Given the limitations of off-stream storage, the only alternative was a combination of off-stream and on-stream storage.

Even the Environmental Council of Alberta acknowledged the need for on-stream storage at some point in the future. Here we are, nine years after that report, and I think we've reached that stage. Certainly the farm- CTS who are lined up waiting for irrigation licences would agree that this time has come. The dam is also criticized because it's said to benefit only a few farmers. A brief presented by the city of Lethbridge pre sents a somewhat contrary view. According to them, over 12 percent of their gross domestic product is attributable to irriga tion activities.

Most of their food and beverage processing de pends on food grown on irrigated farms. Also, some 20 firms in Lethbridge are involved in the sale, manufacture, and/or repair of irrigation equipment systems. Expanded irrigation will bring an additional 170,000 acres under production. This will no doubt lead to expansion within the food processing industry. Also, the fact that irrigation allows farmers to switch from dryland crops, such as wheat, to other more lucrative crop varieties will also lead to diversification within the food proc essing industry.

Directly and indirectly as many as 150,000 Al bertans stand to benefit from this project. Mr. Speaker, I mentioned earlier that there are certain costs to irrigation, and one of those is environmental impact. I'm convinced that the Department of the Environment does the best possible job in identifying and mitigating any potential damage, and this also applies to archaeological and historical assets. It works closely with Culture and Multiculturalism and Forestry, Lands and Wildlife to preserve our natural and cultural resources.

While I give my support to the Oldman River dam and other projects which will help relieve the dry conditions of the south and maintain its rural component, I do not think they preclude the necessity for continued water conservation effort Conserva tion efforts must occur in tandem with construction of head- works and main irrigation systems. This government, through the Department of Agriculture, has already shown its commit ment to conservation through rehabilitation of existing systems. Mr.

Speaker, because of the current drought, demand for bet ter water management has intensified, but the weather patterns of the last three or four decades indicate that this dry spell is not an isolated episode. Although it's difficult to determine whether this drought is part of a normal weather cycle or indicative of more permanent alteration, experts indicate that increasing lev els of carbon dioxide in the environment are resulting in a global warming trend. We might then expect the regions affected by drought to enlarge rather than shrink. The point is that dry con ditions may not be temporary.

Water management efforts are not then directed at a transitory occurrence but at a condition which is more enduring and that must be dealt with. The south- em and eastern regions have always been dry, and lately they've been exceedingly dry. Through construction of reservoirs we can utilize a resource to change that and to bring under produc tion thousands of acres of land. Weather is but one variable fanners must contend with. Others include fluctuating input costs and unstable commodity prices. We can't control any of those factors, but by constructing the apparatus that guarantees

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 951 delivery of water year-round, we're bringing greater stability to rural Alberta and enhancing the possibility that our children will be able to extract a living from the land. Mr. Speaker, water is not often considered a resource in the sense that oil and gas are, and for that reason and because it is inexpensive, it's generally taken for granted, at least in the areas where it's readily available.

Perhaps the time has come to alert Albertans about the importance of water and the need to better manage it For water management efforts to continue, it's im portant that we have the support of all Albertans as well as the support of everyone in this Assembly. Thank you. MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. Member for Edmonton-Glengarry. MR. YOUNIE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do have a number of things to say on the motion, and I appreciate the member bringing it forward and giving us a chance to discuss it.

I cer tainly think we have to look carefully at the government's water management policies, and I did want to look for things I could support and then other things I couldn't and see if it would be possible to support the motion in whole. Had the member said that the government should continue those parts of its water management program that are wise, amend those that are not terribly wise, and disband those that are downright folly, then I would have had no problem supporting it.

But instead, he says that we should continue all of it -- the good, the bad, and the foolish -- and that is certainly a very difficult thing to do. A couple of matters brought up by the previous speaker, es pecially the pipeline that will be bringing water to Oyen and other small communities in that area.

It is an issue on which I do take some particular enjoyment, because it was only after I was contacted by people in that area, went down and visited one of their town council meetings with the mayor, brought it up in question period and embarrassed the minister into using one of the 17 plans his own report had indicated, that something was finally done. And it was my pleasure to help the riding of Chinook all I could, in any way possible.

I even took some pleasure out of the fact that one of my questions in question pe riod suggested one possible solution and the Minister of the En vironment stood and heaped ridicule upon me, not noticing that it was one of the 17 solutions recommended in his own study. So I certainly do commend that portion of the water manage ment policy. The previous speaker and I have slightly different recollec tions of the ECA's recommendation on on-stream storage on the Oldman River, so it'll be interesting to phone them up and ask.

I remember them saying that they could not envision a need for on-stream storage in the foreseeable future. Now, if that comes out as meaning that at some indefinite point in the unforeseeable future the need might exist and therefore we should build the dam now and get the jump on inflation, so be it I find that a pretty hard thesis to accept myself. A couple of things I have seen as good in the government's whole water management scheme. One is some of its ideas on canal rehabilitation.

I certainly think a system that's been ig nored for many, many more decades than the present party has been in government probably needs a little bit of fixing up, to say the least So I think there are some good possibilities there. I am concerned when I read in a news media outlet that cannot be called, as the Member for Red Deer-North so affectionately refers to most of the media as, a left-wing socialist type -- the Alberta Report is hardly one of those ilk. They did a story on Carl Anderson, who was pointing out that in the Eastern Irriga tion District just one project was costing $300,000.

He said that it should have been done for $5,000 and that in fact that portion that was done for $300,000 was to help out, I believe he said, two farmers. Well, I drove down and talked to him, because I didn't want to be accused of taking something out of a news media outlet that for socialist purposes had intentionally misquoted someone. So I went down and talked to Carl, and indeed he had been quoted accurately.

I drove out to the par ticular project he was looking at, and although I'm not an en gineer, I certainly seemed to see the sense in his argument that, to say the least, we'd been doing a little bit of overkill on the project. So I'm hoping that the canal rehabilitation will not be used, like almost everything else this government does, as a source of patronage contracts for faithful friends.

It certainly seems to me that if there's an area of government activity where that seems to be more prevalent rather than less prevalent, it's in the whole area of water management And it was interesting that the Min ister of the Environment, in fact, pointed out the other day that if there was anything he appreciated, it was pork politics -- with a bit of a gleam in his eye. I don't know if that explains it or not.

In any case, I think we have to look at cost What we have with the water management philosophy of this government is a philosophy that was set in the early stages of the government's term in power rather than its sunset stages that it's in now. It was a time when it was literally up to its eyeballs in money and looking for things to throw it at and friends to pass it on to. What we have now is a water management scheme that I would compare to pulling plows with Porsches. I think we've got to look at a cost-effective system. We're told we need user fees in schools to be cost-effective.

We were told we needed user fees in hospitals and in our medicare system, and once we got rid of that, then we needed to cut back and take things out of the medicare system to be cost-effective. It seems to me there is still one area of government policy where cost-effectiveness means nothing and is not taken into consideration at all, and that is water management So I really think we have to look at that. Off-stream storage is, as far as I'm concerned, the way to go. The Member for Cypress-Redcliff pointed out that off-stream storage can in fact be multipurpose. I would agree with him.

It is dams and their reservoirs that are seldom effectively multipur pose. Off-stream storage is often much better suited to the multi-use purposes that it should be used for, so I do agree that wherever we can use off-stream storage, that should be done. He mentioned the good work of Ducks Unlimited in water management in co-operation with the government. The Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Forestry, Lands and Wildlife will recall getting letters from me about the Stirling Lake Ducks Unlimited/sewage lagoon combined project.

I wrote the ministers asking how in heaven's name you can put government money into a Ducks Unlimited Wetlands for To morrow project and a sewage lagoon. I didn't really get very satisfactory answers back from the ministers, so I decided to perhaps consult the ones who may know more about it. I talked with representatives of Ducks Unlimited and found out, much to my surprise, that it's not unusual to combine, as long as it's done carefully, sewage lagoon projects with duck habitat projects.

They are, if done carefully, quite compatible, and they're convinced that the one at Stirling Lake is being done very carefully. They saw it as a way of making sure, in fact, that they would get water in the area, because although a Ducks

952 ALBERTA HANSARD May 10, 1988 Unlimited project on its own may not qualify for water out of the irrigation system or out of the whole water management scheme, certainly if it was also a sewage lagoon project, that would guarantee it. Another matter that was raised was the Pembina River problems. They have flooding problems for a number of reasons.

When we met with the Pembina River Drainage As sociation, they commented, in fact, that part of the problem, al though it's a very complex problem, is the unwise deforesting -- and I won't call it responsible forest management or logging -- of a large portion of the watershed and bad watershed manage ment, which I would call very badly managed in the province, and unwise draining of some swampland, that the forests and the swamps retained the water, slowed down the running of the spring melt into the river.

Now instead of winding creeks going through swamps that hold the water and instead of forests to hold the water, you have the water, as soon as it melts off the mountains, running directly into the river and downstream as quickly as it is humanly possible to make it go. Therefore, now you get the once-in-a-hundred-years floods every 20 or 30 years, it seems, rather than every 100 years. And it's been bad man agement on the part of government in terms of their water man agement policies that has caused this to happen. [Mr.

Musgreave in the Chair] I think it's unfortunate that we're creating those kinds of problems and then using the problems that government helped to create to justify unwise dams. That's being done in the Oldman watershed. And in the Oldman watershed, where the tourist potential is also so much greater if we preserve some of those old-growth forests in their present state, we find that in fact the watershed is being logged off, the runoff comes more quickly, and that is used as a justification of the Oldman dam. So I think we have to look very carefully at that.

I think we have to look at some drainage projects in northern Alberta. But I think again they have to be looked at very carefully and scrutinized for their environmental impact, that we have to be very careful that in an attempt to increase farmland, we don't in fact destroy more than we create, that we don't in fact cause en vironmental problems that start showing up a decade or two later and end up getting out of control. I really think that is very important.

What we have to do, instead of the ad hockery we see in this government so often, is look at some alternatives, look at some of the things we can research. I advocate these as areas that the government should have been researching for some time. They may want to point out where they have; they may not I think we have to be studying the extent of salinization in the south where irrigation is taking place now, what the future trends are, and what kind of long-term problem for the future irrigation that is not done as carefully as it should be may be creating.

I would point out that any member of this House that says "If you don't agree with Motion 209, you must be against irrigation" is being most lamentably unfair. I am a supporter of sensible, wise, cost-effective irrigation. I am not a supporter of the govern- ment's philosophy of irrigation at any cost to protect their last political stronghold for the next election, which I see as what they're doing with it. I think we have to start doing more complete research into salt-resistant crops. Presently most of the irrigation done is done on traditional hay and grain crops.

We have to start look ing at more salt-resistant crops; we have to start looking into some specialty crops. Indeed, we have done some research. I think if we want to increase irrigation by the amount this gov- ernment wants to, then we have to look at these in much, much more detail than we have. Perhaps we should look at what effect it would have on the use of water in the south if there were a flat rate charge for water used in irrigation. One person said very wisely, "If beer were free, we'd have a shortage of beer." I think we can com pare that to water in the south as well.

We should look at what effect it would have to start charging. Again, I would say that the government has argued that we need user fees in schools. We need charges for almost anything else the government does. Water down there doesn't seem to count. I think we have to look at what effect conservation and re duction of waste would have on the demand for water and, therefore, the need for very expensive projects. That really has to be looked at carefully. We have to look at, and it was alluded to by the Member for Westlock-Sturgeon, dual water systems in a number of areas and communities.

I don't think we're looking carefully enough at enough of those to make sure that every thing we do in water management is done wisely, done in the most economically sensible way for the taxpayers of Alberta. Lastly, the Member for Cypress-Redcliff finally got around to pointing out that in fact the whole slant of his motion was a motion to support the building of the Oldman dam, that that was key to it all. And if it is, then I certainly think we deserve to scrutinize the Oldman dam very carefully in terms of this mo tion. The motion is urging the government to continue what it's doing at present.

Part of what it's doing at present is the Oldman dam. The Oldman dam is environmentally senseless, economically senseless -- in fact, I would say economically grossly misrepresented all over the province in terms of its po tential economic benefits.

And I don't think the engineering problems that were re vealed in the Hardy report have been sufficiently solved or ac counted for in the final design documents, at least not according to engineers who are looking them over and sending the minister questions about it A number of problems cited in the Hardy report are not dealt with in the final design documents, which could indicate that the dam at a worst case scenario may not even be totally safe and at a best case scenario is going to cost us a lot more to make safe than the present estimates that the government gives us, which means the $350 million which makes it not cost-effective could turn into $500 million, $800 million, $1 billion.

As I say, it's the Porsche approach to water management I think we have to start looking at some slightly more cost-effective, less expensive ways to do it. I would ask the minister and the government members to consider a couple of suggestions put out by -- this comes from the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering of April 1988; fairly recent, I think you will concede. Before any hon. member jumps up and says that anyone who could possibly say this must have been up in the mountains smoking something strange, I will list some of the co-authors of this particular

article just to assure them of their eminent capabilities and qualifications. One is a professor of natural resources and a professor of civil engineering at the University of Michigan. Another is a profes sor of civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Another is the dean of energy and mines at the University of Arizona, formerly director of the Centre for Research in Water Resources. And the fourth author is director of the Water Re source Research Centre of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute. I presume their credentials would meet with the approval of most

May 10, 1988 ALBERTA HANSARD 953 members who are concerned about sound water management. What they have said -- and I will give a short quotation and then explain its significance in the Alberta context -- is that one of their strategies would be to: Promote greater participation of engineers with other water specialists in developing and implementing innovative solu- tions to water problems. Improving the management of exist ing water systems is particularly important and takes priority over the more traditional approach of building new w

Document details

Collection	Alberta — Debates (Hansard)
Citation	19880510
Type	hansard
Volume / chapter	L21 S3 19880510 1430 01 han.pdf
Language	en
Format	json
Source	PROVINCIAL
Identifier	fc5af1ffdfbdfed98913247d324c817c4997718f

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