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The House met at 2 p.m.

The Clerk informed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, whereupon Mr. Bruch, Deputy Speaker, took the chair pursuant to section 46 (2) of theConstitution Act.

THRONE DEBATE

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Minister of Municipal Affairs.

HON. DANIEL R.J. CAMPBELL (Comox): Mr. Speaker, as that song says, "It's so nice to see you back where you belong." It's also nice to see quite a number of other people back here where they belong, and I can't help but comment that quite a number of the new faces are from Vancouver Island. While we certainly want to commence this afternoon by wishing all new members well, and I do, and particularly the mover and seconder of the address delivered by His Honour on Opening Day. Vancouver Island, and of course we always include in that area of British Columbia the great area of theSun shine Coast, looked after so very well by my colleague from Mackenzie, but when we left here last year, we had a couple of gaps in the representation from Vancouver Island, and over the course of events, and I am not going to go into a lengthy post-mortem about those events of the summer, we brought to this Legislature the great new member from Nanaimo, we replaced the silent member from Oak Bay by the new and outspoken Member from Oak Bay, and in the great riding of Cowichan-Malahat, we came very close to making it 9 for 9 and we will next time, Mr. former Leader.

MR. ROBERT M. STRACHAN (Cowichan-Malahat): You want to bet?

MR. CAMPBELL: Yes, yes…certainly. You put up a pound of haggis and I'll put up a pound of crow feathers for you, my friend. (Laughter)

Before we started this exercise of the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker, we were told by the honourable the interim Leader of the Opposition that the Opposition was going to carry on a form of guerrilla warfare. As I recall, they were going to fight on the hills, the beaches and on the landing fields and wherever else they could roost. Then we were told that he was going to kill us by politeness and he certainly came awful close to that, if not killing us with boredom, and then the former leader was moved to say that the democratic socialist party, of course, never fights a polite war, but at the same meeting he said the democratic socialist party will fight for what is right all the time. Always have and always will, and we wonder when it is going to start.

AN HON. MEMBER: …. always have and always will.

MR. CAMPBELL: …and it was exciting in the early period just after the election. You know there was still a former leader and there was something to be done about burying that particular corpse, and on the morning of a certain press conference in Vancouver, when the former leader was in Vancouver announcing his resignation, the interim leader-to-be was over here in the halls of the Legislature with a screw driver in his hand, unscrewing the name plate while the corpse was still twitching in Vancouver. As I recall, that day the old refrain kept running through my mind — "he walked the bloody tower — with his head, tucked underneath his arm."

Then I can't help but thank those who came to the Comox constituency during the election both before it and during it, because they were so helpful. I notice you are sending a new batch, the member for Surrey has been there recently, and I hope that you keep up your visits, because they have been helpful in the past and I know they will be helpful in the future. The leader of the Liberal party, I want to thank you for your visit to that Liberal wasteland, as somebody described it, because one of the interesting things about the election was the tremendous ability of that objective group the press — the swamis of the printed word, to come up with the direction in which the public of this Province were going to determine the course of the next few years of political history in British Columbia. At least one of them recognized the swamp land or wasteland, as I recall, of Vancouver Island. As the Liberal leader came down from the Interior with all his ideas — it was just about that time that things really came to a head in his thinking, because he was bouncing around the Province saying "I'm winning, I'm winning, I'm winning". Then he thought he rose to the heights, and one really had to think about it before one could believe that he had actually said it, that as he trailed for the second time through the South Okanagan, he said that he was going to knock the Premier off.

AN HON. MEMBER: I thought it was going to be marijuana that you were using.

MR. CAMPBELL: …It became very obvious, as things went along, that the Liberal leader certainly was running around B.C. like an animated beany hat in a bus, trying to discover whether or not if you said it often enough — I'm winning, I'm winning, I'm winning, it was going to happen. Of course the people of British Columbia do not trust the Liberal party, and I'm going to, at least in one remark this afternoon, make it clear why they don't trust the Liberal party.

AN HON. MEMBER: You're getting partisan.

MR. CAMPBELL: …No, I never, that's one thing you can never accuse the member for Comox in this Legislature of ever being — partisan.

…Then, yesterday, we saw the beginning of the new look of the NDP — they had over the years had a shotgun marriage with labour. After the election they discovered that they probably would like to have a quickie divorce, and now they are going to try and have it both ways in the minds of the public of this Province, and continue to live in common law. I say, Mr. Speaker, that the people of British Columbia don't trust that tactic either, because they know you for what you are, and all the years since 1956 I've seen this thing go up and down like a yo-yo as to the position of the NDP party in British Columbia. It always recalls to my mind a picture put out on the various changes in the period of history as Joe Stalin moves across the stage in Russia. I remember seeing a motion picture where the hot came on and the cold came on, and as he stood on the balcony in the Kremlin waving at the people, first of all you saw the smile, then you saw the frown, then you got the smile back, then you got the frown, and many times, Mr. Speaker, I've said

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about this particular party opposite that has the responsibility for the loyal Opposition in British Columbia, the people don't trust you because they know that underneath all that sugar-coating there is pure and simple arsenic.

We wonder about pollution in this Province. I want to tell you that the NDP record in British Columbia, the socialist party record in British Columbia, has been just that. One moment you are presenting a front, at one time it was the Wall Street look of the former leader, remember with his statue in his hand, the Bond Street look. Then we were the only friends of labour in this Province, and the reason for the people on this side of the House being there that come from labour ridings, is that they do not trust you. They do not trust you. When the leader, the former deputy leader, stood up here yesterday and tried to suggest to the people of British Columbia that the shotgun marriage is over, the quickie divorce has been registered, and we are now going to live in common law, make no mistake about it, the people know you for what you are. They know you for what you are. Of all the tactics, Mr. Speaker, to try and start out the first year of the 70's with this blatant attempt to try and give some more sugar on that arsenic, yesterday's performance had to be pretty good, had to be pretty good. I don't know why all the birds are jumping out of their nests so quickly.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you that, having conducted a very quick post-mortem, I am going to get on and I am only going to talk about four subjects this afternoon, and I want to be finished by 3 o'clock, and I will be if I am not interrupted by any arsenic pills from across the way. Mr. Speaker, the NDP socialists after the last election already put their fingers in the air. They went to the Convention and they said, "My gosh, the labour people in this Province didn't support us. The wives of the labour people didn't support us. The social welfare recipients didn't support us. The old age pensioners didn't support us. The people didn't support us." And they said, "Gosh, we've got to change our image. Our image is wrong. There is something haywire. We've got to put on a new look. We've got to get out of that mini skirt and put a little longer dress on so that we can hide our knees." Eh?

I said, Mr. Speaker, that I would indicate in a very clear way this afternoon why the people of British Columbia can no longer have faith in the Liberal party, and I am going to do it in two parts, one having to do with Delta superport, and the other having to do with the White Paper, and both are equally important. In British Columbia, and I have heard this from too many people here not to say something about it, Mr. Speaker, because so often when members on this side of the House or members of this Government take a position on behalf of British Columbia, we always get the yak-yak that in some way we are trying to be destructive of the unity of our country and we are trying to make in some way a separatist suggestion. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, it gets a little bit rough when we have some problems in British Columbia here that are met with the stony silence that we get from some of the people who represent this Province in the Federal House. Seventeen Liberals in the Federal House. Seventeen Liberals. Six N.D.P. Not one word about the position of Roberts Bank with respect to its position within the geography of the Province of British Columbia. Here we have the situation, Mr. Speaker, where a Federal agent can make a statement such as this, "Water lots such as Roberts Bank are not part of the Province of British Columbia and therefore cannot be part of the municipality of Delta".

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. CAMPBELL: Now, Mr. Speaker, let's just examine what that means. My colleague, the Minister of Lands and Forests in British Columbia, has thousands — not just one, but thousands of water lots in the Province of British Columbia that are off-shore. Campbell River. Do you mean to tell me that the Campbell River Development that happens to be in Discovery Passage is not in British Columbia? Do you mean to tell me that the Tsawwassen Terminal is not in British Columbia? Do you mean to tell me that all those recreational boat basins that people have water lots on — do you mean to tell me that they are not in British Columbia? Do you mean to tell me that if Kaiser Resources has a position at Roberts Bank, and that if I send a letter to Kaiser Resources at Delta that I don't send it to Delta, British Columbia? Where in the name of common sense do I send it? Where do I send it? Kaiser? Victoria? Japan? I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, the people of British Columbia are getting fed up with the kind of…representation that permits this kind of thing to happen here. Do you mean to tell me that there are port facilities which are being handled on this kind of a basis in Eastern Canada? I tell you the answer is no.

Mr. Speaker, do you mean to tell me that they would take Valley Field, Quebec, which has a Port Authority of its own, and handle it in such a way as they are going to handle Delta? I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, the answer is No. They wouldn't dare. You better believe it they wouldn't. But, Mr. Speaker, I don't have to take my maple leaf down in this Legislature or anywhere else to say on behalf of the people of the Province of British Columbia that this, my friend, is absolutely unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable. Mr. Speaker, let the people of British Columbia know that they not only are silent in the Federal House, they laugh here. They laugh here…. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, they even tried to take the off-shore mineral question and attach it to the Delta superport. How far-fetched can you get? Is there some mine on Kaiser Resource Island in the middle of the Delta Municipality? I ask the Liberal members opposite if you have anything to do about representing the position of the Province of British Columbia, why don't you get on the phone to the 17 members and just for once — just for once, Mr. Speaker, present the case of the people of the Province of British Columbia. Just once. Just once.

Mr. Speaker, I will make it very clear where the Province of British Columbia stands. Roberts Bank is in British Columbia. Roberts Bank is in the Municipality of Delta. And, Mr. Speaker, let their silence indicate to the people of the Province of British Columbia why the Liberal party should not be trusted. Make no mistake about that.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak for a few minutes on the question of housing and, again, I am going to indicate as well why the Liberal party is not to be trusted. This Government, over the years, has tried to build incentives into the housing field in British Columbia and I doubt if there is any Province — I know there is no Province in this Dominion — where there is a finer programme for senior citizens' housing than what there is in the Province of British Columbia. I know, as well, that it is to the credit of the people who are in service clubs and other organizations who have become a partner with this Government in trying to make that programme effective, and I think most members would agree that it is extremely effective.

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Along the way the Government has moved in incentives which affect the principle upon which this Government has always rested a very large part of its political philosophy, and that is on the effectiveness of the home and the family and on the private ownership of the home. That has been one of the fundamental principles on which this Government has done business in the Province of British Columbia. When we moved through the home acquisition grant into the second mortgage field many people, certainly insofar as second mortgages were concerned, wondered how a small province — 2,000,000 people with the productive capacity which we realize is perhaps second to none in the country — how we could move into that area of providing second mortgages for home-owners. But again, it was simply following the basic foundation cornerstone of this Government which has always been individual ownership and family life as far as the home is concerned.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if you take any of the homes in British Columbia and you examine their values in terms of inflation, we can place that to one side because everyone recognizes that inflation has had an impact on the value of the family home today, everywhere, not just in British Columbia, but all through the North American continent. But if you really examine the other values which have been built into a home in recent years and what causes an increase of value to a home, you will quickly discover that the money that goes into the value of the home is to be found in the local investment in the community in which you find that home, whether it be hospital care or schools or roads, sidewalks, streets, and so on. These are what make the inherent values in our homes, and those values which are pumped into those communities are not pumped in from the Federal treasury. They are pumped in by municipalities, improvement districts, the Provincial Government itself. Those values are pumped in and have an impact on what today you might sell a home for, quite apart from the factor of inflation.

No one has said too much about the concept of the capital gains tax as it applies to home-ownership, but let's assume — and I for one find it difficult to even accept the proposition that anyone would consider a capital gains tax on a person's home — but let's assume that the Federal Government and the Liberal party have their way, and that there does come about a situation where there is to be a capital gains tax on a person's home. If that is the case, Mr. Speaker, it is almost incredible that because of those values which are pumped in locally, and almost 100 per cent locally, that any Federal Government would seek to centralize the revenue potential of that kind of a situation. It is almost incredible.

For the Federal Government to take the institution of the home and place a capital gains tax on, and then not relate it back to where the real values in pumping the values into that home are, I find almost incredible and I don't think surely it will ever happen in this country called Canada. Because that is a direct attack on the fundamental principle that at least once in a person's lifetime he should be entitled to a home. I don't care whether any of the members opposite fight the question of capital gains tax on this, but we will. We will. We will. Because this comes from the very fabric of our country and make no mistake about that. No mistake about that. The idea that a Federal Government should take those locally created values and try to transfer them into a tax potential revenue resource at the Federal level, at a central level, is just the worst possible direction in which centralization in this country can go. Just the worst possible revelation of this centralist tendency that is going to rip this kind of society of ours apart. Not this country, because this country is stronger than that.

These foolish attacks on that kind of a society which made us what we are, and make Canadians different than a good many other parts of the world, where they permitted tenant housing to get a-tremendous hold on the population. Go to Sweden or Denmark or even England or Scotland and find out how much of their life is wrapped up in the landlord and tenant relationship and then ask yourself a simple question. Is that the kind of country you want here? I say as far as I am concerned, that is not the kind of country I want here, my friend…. I say, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to continue to place the idea of incentives along the way in the housing picture in spite of some of that type of financial shenanigans by the Liberal government at Ottawa.

I want to say today that I want to ask industry and real estate to examine a particular area of incentives for home ownership. You know, an awful lot of old people, both psychologically and mentally and financially, when they are in a home and they are people who are 65 to 70, this escalating cost structure that we are faced with today, inflation that we are faced with today, places a very heavy mental strain on a lot of older people in this Province and elsewhere, not just in this Province but all over Canada and the United States. Many old people, I know, are reluctant to examine some of the new incentives which are inherent in some of the legislation we have here in the Province of British Columbia. Condominium. Strata type. I am suggesting a 5-5-5 plan, Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, where they, too, can examine some of the possibilities of the modern concepts of providing houses.

Many old people, not all of them have their own homes but a good many have, and they have got a great deal of capital tied up in them and they are faced every year by escalating taxation and so on. But the people in that age group, under the plans which have been presented by this Government, can prequalify themselves for strata title housing.

It would be a good thing, in my view, to examine this possibility in cooperation, as I have already indicated to the Old Age Pensioner Organization, with the Government, that will help them put together this kind of a package, where they might do two things — not only help themselves, but add to the housing inventory in the Province by selling the present home, and still moving into a title situation where they have a deed to a place they can call home. Because the strata title or the condominium does not presume that you have given up the idea of owning your own home. Quite the reverse, it's just another way to provide housing for any group of people, but I want to speak particularly about that age group beyond the age of 65. If they use the $5,000 from selling a home and say, so that we can get some figures for you to think about, they may own a home that is worth about $16,000 to $18,000 at today's present market prices. They can sell that home, put $5,000 or perhaps less, but $5,000 using this scheme so it is easier to follow, $5,000 in as a down payment on a strata title corporation, $5,000 second mortgage from the Provincial Home Acquisition Grant legislation, and $5,000 from the first mortgage. At $15,000 they will have a plateau rent situation which will come in in the order of about $100 to $110 a month.

But quite apart from that, in the strata title which you can build today in a modern concept, you are not going to limit these people in these strata title corporations simply to

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the unit which they construct for themselves, because you can build in at the same unit price — I think this is important — you can build in the recreational areas which are jointly owned and managed. You can build in, in some instances, certain aspects of home care, practical nursing, nurses, and/or registered nurses could be employed in these particular facilities. Yet the individual would not lose his sense of dignity, he would not lose any sense of security, and he would not lose any sense in the pride of ownership because he in fact would still own a transferable title and a registerable title to that portion of the building which was his.

I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, that this is another kind of incentive which is illustrative of the kind of thing that the Government of British Columbia has been trying to do, and we've been trying to make these things available for people so that this sense of ownership and this sense of security, and this sense of dignity does not go down the drain with foolish schemes of socialism and more foolish schemes by the White Paper. So, Mr. Speaker, I certainly intend in the next little while to pursue, as I have already indicated, an interest on the part of Old Age Pensioner Organizations, and I want to say that my colleague from Mackenzie, as she has done in the past in the area of senior citizens housing, will be helping these groups, because in British Columbia you can prequalify. This can be a packaged arrangement long before the homes are built, and if you bring in the elements of the industry and you bring in the elements of real estate, you bring in the elements of Government, and if those three together can make British Columbia a better place, a more secure place and a more dignified place for senior citizens in terms of housing, then we are going to get on with the job and do it.

Mr. Speaker, in the next few years of the 70's municipal government as well is certainly going to change, and I'm not going to be exhaustive about this subject this afternoon, but I want to bring one aspect of it to the attention of the House, because a little later on in the Session there certainly will be an opportunity to discuss some of these things in terms of legislation.

But, I can report to this Legislature once again, Mr. Speaker, as I've done now for quite a number of years, that the municipalities in British Columbia are better treated financially than. any municipalities in any other Province in Canada. I can report again, Mr. Speaker, to this Legislature that financially the municipalities of British Columbia finance more out of revenue surplus than other surplus accounts that exist anywhere else in Canada. I can report, Mr. Speaker, that there is no other place in Canada where municipalities can indicate on a five-year basis what their capital budget requirements are, and that no other place in Canada could they say they require $460,000,000 over the course of the next five years, and that $246,000,000 of that will be financed from their own revenue sources without borrowing. I tell you, Mr. Speaker, that there is no other part of Canada or North America that could make that statement about their municipalities.

I can report that municipalities of British Columbia still have the highest percentage of tax collections of anywhere else — not only in Canada, but in the world. If you think that that has anything completely to do with the legislation that is presented by this Government from time to time, you are just 100 per cent right, because the home-owner grant, Mr. Speaker, makes it possible for people in British Columbia to pay their taxes like they pay them nowhere else in Canada. I can tell you there is no comparison, no comparison. That money, because it flows into the municipal treasury on the day the tax bill is presented to the Minister of Finance, and that goes into the municipal treasury before their current budget has been used throughout their fiscal year, that means that they are not only prepaying their taxes in British Columbia, but that the Province of British Columbia through the Government of the Province of British Columbia, is prepaying their taxes, and that happens nowhere else in Canada, nowhere else. If you take the amount of the money transferred from the Province to the municipalities in British Columbia, and you put it on a per capita basis, there is no provincial government that transfers more of their revenue to local government on a per capita basis than this Government. Even if you take it from the other point of view, and you say how much is much, and most of the time it's how much is more, if you take the amount of revenue that comes totally to the Government of the Province of British Columbia, that is to the total government operation, you'll find that transferred to the local levels of government in the Province of British Columbia, that over 50 per cent of our Budget goes to local government, goes to local government, and, Mr. Speaker, there is no other province in Canada that can make that statement, and I can assure you of that.

But there are, in my view, there are some skunks in the garden, Mr. Minister of Finance, skunks in the garden patch. That's right, and, they're becoming more obvious every day. Last year the Department of Municipal Affairs, and I'm only going to touch down in one area because there are lots more, last year the Department of Municipal Affairs commissioned a study on a test area in British Columbia to look at some of the trends on the cost of municipal administration, and I am sorry to report to you that there are many areas in British Columbia where the costs of standing still are making municipalities run away insofar as taxes are concerned. You can look around British Columbia and find lots of examples of this and, of course, this opens up the whole area of amalgamation and unit costs and all sorts of things.

But just to give you an idea, Mr. Speaker, of what's happening, in this test area in 1964 the administrative costs — and that's not legislation, that's not the foreman on the job for public works — this is just straight administrative costs, in 1964 in this test area the cost of administration was $350,000 excluding the villages and excluding the school boards and excluding the local improvement districts. That's only those municipalities which were beyond village status, $350,000 in 1964, $400,000 in 1965, $470,000 in 1966, $510,000 in 1967, five years, and the latest year for which we have the figures $560,000 in 1968. An approximate increase in administrative costs alone of 15 per cent per year. Projected to 1972 in this area, which is only eight years, the cost of administering local government in this area, and I repeat exclusive of school boards, local improvement districts, regional districts, simply the municipalities beyond village status will reach by 1972, $790,000.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I think what can be said here in a very legitimate way is that municipalities that are in that kind of shape should start to look at putting their own house in order before they come to any level of Government requesting additional funds, because these municipalities are obviously running to keep still. If you examine tax notices of some of these municipalities you'll find that without adding 15 cents to the quality of service or 10 cents to the quantity of service in those years I'm speaking about, you'll find that in order to just maintain that apparatus of government, that is what the

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taxpayer is paying by way of bills.

To illustrate the kind of thing that was discovered during the course of this study which we were on last year, and I'm not referring, by the way, for the sake of the new members in the House, to the financial study which will come later. This is simply the cost of the structure of local government in a single test area in British Columbia. All the population figures were worked out so the figures I'm using were weighted with the population taken into account, so that the population increase was not the cause of the increase of administration…. (Numerous interjections by some honourable members).

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please! Will the member please continue with his speech.

MR. CAMPBELL: The only thing that I would prefer not to do, and I don't intend to do it, so I will tell you now, I don't intend to identify this area because I could make the same case in any part of British Columbia. This was a test area. But I do want to indicate that this was the kind of thing that was discovered. In one particular municipality, in order to get a burial plot, somebody was pushing 10 pieces of paper around. In order to build a house in one particular municipality somebody was pushing 17 pieces of paper around, 17 different administrative exercises in order to get a building permit, and these were all charted on this report, and if any of the members of the House want to look at this report I would prefer that they look at it in terms of being for their own information. I have no objection to anything in it being made public, except the name of the area involved, because this was done on the basis of a test and was done to fit it into other parts of the Province. As a matter of fact, as this was being done in the test area, we did it in other areas as the thing developed, as well.

The point I am trying to make is this, Mr. Speaker, that in the 70's it is quite obvious that we cannot afford the structure of government that we got ourselves through the 60's with, and these municipal councils who haven't taken a look at some of the ramifications of the age of technology and the use of computers, and are continuing with this sort of thing, you cannot expect the Province of British Columbia or any other level of government to pick up the tab for that kind of a situation. It's just not possible. This is a situation where the municipalities will have to put their administrative house in order, because there is no way that you can find enough money to look after not only the politically parochial aspects of municipal governments but the administratively parochial aspects of municipal government. It simply cannot be, and I see that there are still people in British Columbia who cannot find it in their minds to contemplate something like this. North Vancouver city and North Vancouver district are two cases in point. Yes, we'll amalgamate but five years from now, or we'll amalgamate but not this week but next week, or we'll amalgamate and have a go at joint services, but please don't rush us because we would rather have a further study and a further study and a further study.

Mr. Speaker, we are not going to solve the problems of pollution, we are not going to solve the problems of housing, we are not going to solve the problems of urban transit, we're not going to solve any of these problems, we're not going to solve them until there is a realistic look taken at the machinery we are going to use to do the job in the 70's, and administratively I've just given you one small part of it.

Mr. Speaker, maybe some of the older people who are in municipal life will not understand what is necessary here, will perhaps be joined by others who do, and I want to announce this afternoon that at least, in part, some of these decisions in the 70's will be made by the younger people of British Columbia, because I am going to announce this afternoon that I am recommending that the voting age for the Municipal Act be reduced to 19.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to just spend a word on this question of pollution because basically, in this debate, almost everyone else has. I was somewhat relieved to find in the edition of the Vancouver Daily Province two mornings ago, just the beginning of some understanding of the kind of pollution control mechanism that this Government has been pursuing for some time, with very little public understanding of what we were trying to do, In 1965, the Government of this Province had a choice to make. In 1965, if you examine all the clutter of legislation that's on the books with respect to pollution control across North America and indeed Canada, and I know that the leader of the Liberal party must have had a good deal of that kind of legislation in that box, because we looked at most of it, the biggest mistake that was made in pollution control in any other part of North America was to approach the question of pollution control on the basis of contractual permits to pollute, for want of a better description, and I am going to explain what that means. A contractual permit to pollute was a kind of permit which was delivered to an individual municipality, to an industry and, in effect, it said, you have the right to place in this body of water, a certain amount of dissolved content whether it be organic, inorganic, or of a bacteriological nature, and they placed this, having built up what they call standard methods of control. As a result, two things happened along the way. Yes, they had pollution control legislation, but this is exactly what happened. First of all, they had entered into a binding contract with an individual or a municipality or an industry to pollute.

No — wait a minute, now you listen to this, because I don't think you understand this either, but there was a glimmer of understanding in the editorial page of the Vancouver Province the other morning. Two things happened, first of all, as they moved along through their theoretical application of pollution control law, they found that they had an accumulation of pollution, not only in their lakes but in their rivers, and I can recall the Don River, and the Trank River and the Delaware River and the Monagahela River, and the Ohio River, and if you want to examine the pollution control statutes which obtain and still obtain in those rivers, you go ahead and look at them, and you'll find that they…

AN HON. MEMBER: The Fraser River, the Peace River….

MR. CAMPBELL: …I'm going to come to that, too. Be patient.

…that they have a contract to pollute and the accumulative effect was disaster. The second thing that happened — and it's now history — once they had an accumulated level of pollution with which they could not live, that was after the event, not before the event, that was years down the pike, and still is in some of those jurisdictions. What happened is that 20 or 30 years later, they found that the accumulated level of pollution that they had permitted to be there, because of contracts either by Department of Health or by a pollution control branch, were something with which they could not

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live, and therefore they started to try to clean up after the events, and they brought in penalty sections, and they brought in legislation at the federal level, and pure air, and pure water laws and so on, but psychologically they had made a contract, and therefore no one did anything and they're still not, my friend. Secondly, they were all willing to pass the buck from those who had given them the contracts in the first place, either the federal authority or the provincial authority, and they said if anybody has to pay this bill and clean it up you do, but not us, not the polluter.

Now let's come to my friend's question about the Fraser River. Here in British Columbia, the choice was made not to go on the contractual permit route, but to go on the technological permit route. Now wait a minute, my friend, in the Fraser River, in the lower Fraser River, and we are talking about municipal sewage pollution now, none of those municipalities have anything that would approach a contractual permit, and they will not get one. They will not get one. What happened in relation to industrial pollution on the Fraser stem was simply this, the coastal pulp mills in British Columbia are not on any kind of permit whatsoever. The permits which have been issued on the Fraser stem, the permits are not contractual permits, they are conditional permits and they are technological permits. If the technology changes, the individual industry is responsible now and down the river, and down the road, from now till the end of time, they must produce at a cost to the individual who holds the conditional permits that have been caused if there is a change in the pollution content of that river, or technology changes, or what have you, and that's the major difference. That's a major difference. Why?

Because, Mr. Speaker, on the coastal area, there are no permits at all, and they are now acting under advisement from the Pollution Control Board that they must have their pollution control plan in hand by January of 1971. When they do get permits on the coast, Mr. Speaker, they will not get contract permits, they will get technological permits and I'll predict this, and there is a big difference, I'll predict this. Yes my friend, a standard contract permit is a licence to pollute — that's exactly right. That's exactly what they are not going to get in the Province of British Columbia. Because, Mr. Speaker, the logical conclusion to this approach, and let's have no misunderstanding about this point, the logical conclusion to the technological permits, is that if an individual industry, or an individual company, or what have you, and I'm talking about industrial pollution at the present time, they will have to cease, or close down under a conditional permit and they don't under a standard contract permit. I'm saying that there are pulp mills on the coast of British Columbia that will have great difficulty in meeting the standards of the technological permit.

I'm saying further, that this Government has said many times, the difference between a technological permit and a contract permit can be very clearly illustrated in my own constituency of Comox. Because if Western Mines were dumping effluent into Buttle Lake, up to a particular level standard, and it was not exceeding that standard, there would be absolutely nothing that anyone could do that had made a contract permit with that particular industry. But that doesn't happen to be the case, Mr. Speaker, that doesn't happen to be the case. I think you might do me the justice of knowing just a little bit more about it than you do — I happen to live there. Mr. Speaker, they have a conditional permit, and if, in that particular instance, the technology changes, or if there are problems created in the receiving body, this Government has not made any contract with Western Mines whatsoever, because we have not issued a standard contract permit. And my colleague the Minister of Lands and Forests, did not issue a standard contract permit in Skookumchuck, and I defy anyone in this House to say that it isn't the best pollution control standard in the world, not just in Canada. My colleague the Minister of Lands and Forests, did not issue a standard contract permit at Prince George. My colleague, the Minister of Lands and Forests, did not issue a standard contract permit in Kamloops, and neither my colleague, nor this Government will be issuing standard contract permits, we'll be issuing technological permits. There will be, make no mistake about it, some industries, and we might as well live with this, there may be some industries in British Columbia that cannot meet that standard, and you'll have to live with that, too. Mr. Speaker, this Government is not afraid of the 70's, but we are willing to forcefully and with great challenge accept its challenge.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Second Member for Vancouver East.

MR. ROBERTA. WILLIAMS (2nd-Vancouver-East): Mr. Speaker, I'd like to first let the House know that we have been fortunate enough the past hour to have in the gallery the Honourable T.G. Norris and his wife — a great man of British Columbia. I might also say, Mr. Speaker, that that was one of the few rewarding things of the past hour. I might also note, Mr. Speaker, that my mother and relatives are in the gallery as well, and I would like to welcome them.

Well, I am sorry if the Honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs is going to leave right away, I would like to make a few comments about the last hour's proceedings. I know that he's been trying to catch up with the man that left earlier who showed his usual courtesy for the Opposition by leaving, and I would just like to deal with a few of the points dealt with by Honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs, before I get on with my own thoughts. It took half an hour, Mr. Speaker, for the Honourable Minister to get down to what he seemed to want to talk about. One half-hour was spent on pure abuse and wasting the time of this Legislature. At 2:30 he got onto the question of housing, and the housing problem in this Province remains one of the great problems of the people of this Province, and I think the Honourable the Minister can take some of the credit for that. My concern, Mr. Speaker, is that the kind of comments we had in the first half-hour from the Honourable Minister were the kind we are getting accustomed to in this Legislature and this Province. It was the kind of tirade carried on by the Premier and this Government that has debased the political currency of British Columbia, that's the problem.

The Honourable the Minister cried about the question of capital gains. He said that Ottawa was going to do things that would hurt people that wanted housing in British Columbia, that need housing in British Columbia, and yet it's not the capital gains system, it's the unearned increment in suburban land, the land speculation that has become rife in this Province at the hands of the Minister of Municipal Affairs, that has increased the cost of housing in British Columbia more than anything else. In Victoria alone, where the Minister now resides, the cost of the average house went up $5,000 in the last year, and the primary reason is because the Honourable the Minister has let land speculation go unchecked in British Columbia. The Honourable the Minister talks about amalgamation and a range of other things. Mr.

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Speaker, the Honourable the Minister has had the power to deal with amalgamation. This Government has had the power to deal with pollution for 17 years and nothing has been done about it. The power resides there, and what we heard really were only excuses from the Minister.

Now that the Minister has left, Mr. Speaker, I might deal with the main things that I wanted to talk about. I could express the usual niceties that most of the people, or some of the people on the other side have expressed, expressing congratulations to the Speaker on his election, I don't intend to. However, I think our group made our position clear on that question. I would like to say, looking at the sort of overwhelming majority that the Government now has, Mr. Speaker, that it reminds me in a way of the dinosaur. You know you've grown bigger and bigger all the time, and yet at the same time, more mindless, and that this Government, even with its great size right now — even with its great size — I hope, like the dinosaur, has the prospects of extinction at hand, more or less.

The range of subjects I want to deal with, Mr. Speaker, cover a fairly wide range. I would like to deal with Cypress Bowl and the disaster, in effect, that the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources has allowed to develop on the doorstep of our great City of Vancouver, and I would like to compare it with other matters that the Honourable Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources deals with, because I don't think the Cypress Bowl experience is any different than these matters the Minister deals with all the time. I would like to also deal with Divide Lake, a lake which we face the prospect of losing in British Columbia in the near future. I would also like to deal, Mr. Speaker, with the question of the liquor hearings which were held by the Liquor Commission. The findings of that Commission, and the growing problem, the growing apparent problem of influence peddling in relation to government, and the desire for favours on the part of influence, peddlars in relation to government. I think throughout all of this, Mr. Speaker, there is a common thread, and it relates to the question of privileges being granted by government one way or another. I would like to also deal, Mr. Speaker, with what I regard as the threat to Parliament with the overwhelming majority that this Government has — I would like to deal with that in some detail as well.

I hadn't intended, Mr. Speaker, to discuss the Cypress Bowl. I didn't intend to discuss Cypress Bowl in great detail today, Mr. Speaker, and I don't think I shall, but on reading the full report in the Vancouver Sun of last Friday which states, "The Bowl has lost its unique value" and the quote is from Jack Wood, the ranger for the municipality of West Vancouver, I couldn't help but feel that I had to deal with this question before the House today. Now when I grew up in Vancouver's East End one of the great opportunities I had was to use the mountains of the North Shore on the weekends. Myself and my friends, living in an area that was never that well endowed with parks and recreation facilities, and unfortunately still is not, were able at least to go to the North Shore and freely enjoy the public open space on the mountains. We were able to buy a cabin for virtually nothing and enjoy it every weekend like many other kids in our part of the City. When I see what's happened and what is happening in Cypress Bowl, it's with a mixture of sorrow and anger, because it's clear that other kids growing up in the East End of the City, now also deprived of park and recreation facilities like so many of us were, face the prospect of being deprived of that public open space on the mountain as well, and it's a tragic story, Mr. Speaker, and a complete condemnation of the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources.

What are some of the statements that were made by Mr. Wood, the municipal civil servant in West Vancouver? They're long, and they build up a complete solid case against the Government, I'm afraid. The situation is such, for example, the forest ranger says, that because there's been so much clearing, because there's been excess of logging of the Bowl by the private interest that the Government gave the Bowl to, that they now face the prospect of dangerous drifts in the wintertime, avalanches in the ski area where there would have been none before, and they face the prospect of fire hazard in the summer because of the slash and mess created by the haphazard logging and wanton destruction by the company doing the logging. That's the situation in this great recreational Bowl only a few miles from the centre of Vancouver. The forest ranger says that they face the prospect of waiting 30 years to grow trees in the Bowl where trees should never have been cut. That's the prospect, they say. It's not even a good place to reforest, and the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources said that at least maybe they had a good reforestation site.

In summary, what Mr. Wood, the forest ranger in West Vancouver said, Mr. Speaker, was that much of the Bowl's unique value had been lost or destroyed. He said that early replanting should be undertaken because of the wanton destruction and logging, and he said that the existing fire hazard needs to be eliminated.

You know, when the honourable Leader of the Opposition got up and dealt with this matter thoroughly at the beginning of this debate and when the Minister listened to what the honourable Leader of the Opposition had to say he said "Well, I thought he might really have something," when the honourable Leader was talking about letters that had not been disclosed by the Minister and the details of the destruction in the Bowl. I want to know, Mr. Speaker, just what is "something". What is it that the Minister thought that the Leader of the Opposition might be talking about? Is there more? There must be, in view of the attitude of the Minister.

Only this Friday did we get the information of the taped conversations between the Minister of Lands and Forests and the Municipal Clerk in West Vancouver, and I think that itself is a comment, quite a commentary on the behaviour of the Minister in relation to the municipality of West Vancouver. Why should the municipality of West Vancouver feel that it was necessary to tape the words of a Minister of the Crown? Why should they feel it's necessary? Do they feel they can't trust the Minister? Have they had experience with the Minister in the past that leads them to believe they have to tape every word he says so that they can protect themselves? Is that the problem they have in West Vancouver? How many other municipalities? How many other public agencies in this Province face the same problem, Mr. Speaker, with the same Minister of the Crown here in British Columbia?

You know we've heard from some of the new members in this Session, "Tell it like it is, we think it should be told like it is." I'm waiting for the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources to tell it like it is. (Applause) When he's on the telephone and doesn't think he's being taped he tells it like it is. What is it he said? "Quite frankly, I'd be quite happy to lock it up, reforest it and forget about it." What else does he say on the telephone? "Wrap her up, wrap her up fast, and it's a wonderful area to reforest, let's reforest it and

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forget it, let's reforest it and forget about it." Why doesn't the Minister make these kind of comments in public? Why doesn't he admit that he's made a wreck of Cypress Bowl and he wants to do something positive now and improve the situation. He said something to the effect, Mr. Speaker, that I'm rolling around on this subject. Now, maybe this Minister of the Crown is the first one to taste the rounded life that the Premier was talking about in the Throne Debate. The Minister said, "If you can pay for the Bowl, more power to you, I'll give it to you." Is the Minister saying he'd like to wash his hands of the whole mess? If he is, why doesn't he simply say that he'll turn it over to the Regional District and we in the metropolitan area will take on the job and clean up the mess that he's left us with.

AN HON. MEMBER: Providing he resigns so he can't make any more mess.

MR. WILLIAMS: Another interesting matter with regard to Cypress Bowl, Mr. Speaker, is the question of the stumpage rates for the public timber that was cut in the Bowl, and what does the forest ranger in the municipality of West Vancouver say about that? Mr. Wood says "For some reason an unusually low stumpage rate has been set by the Government". An unusually low stumpage rate. But, Mr. Speaker, that's the way it is in every park that this Government allows to log. There's cut-rate high grade logging going on in Wells Gray Park near Kamloops at the hands of this Minister and the Minister of Recreation and Conservation, with the added help of the honourable the member from Kamloops. There's going to be, we understand, cut-rate logging in Strathcona Park as well, and Cypress Bowl is no exception to the rule. Mr. Wood is a little naive. He may not be familiar with what the Government has allowed to happen in the other parts of this Province.

Or maybe, just maybe, Mr. Speaker, the reason these people get the cut-rate that they do get to destroy the parks of British Columbia is because they hire effective public relations men. Maybe that's the reason stumpage rates are so low in the parks. Maybe that's the reason these groups are able to destroy our parks in British Columbia.

Who was the public relations man throughout the Cypress Bowl fiasco? The public relations man was none other than William Clancey, long-time confidante of the Premier, longtime adviser to the Premier on public relations. A few years back when Mr. Clancey wasn't so well known he actually ran an advertisement in The Province newspaper. He ran an advertisement saying — this was way back in 1964 — that William Clancey and Associates Ltd., Public Relations Counsel, Preparation of Briefs for Municipal, Provincial, and Federal Governments. That was the ad. Amongst those in the know in British Columbia now, Mr. Speaker, everybody knows that you deal with certain P.R. men when dealing with this Government, and it's no longer necessary, Mr. Speaker, no longer necessary to run advertisements. Those in the back rooms know who you get to deal with the Government of British Columbia. You get the Premier's P.R. man to deal with the Government of British Columbia. These people must have something to sell, Mr. Speaker. What they sell is their influence in Government. What they sell are cut-rate prices for the public's resource. There's no question about that, Mr. Speaker.

On the question of logging costs, what does the forest ranger say about the cut-rate stumpage rate and the logging operation in the Bowl in terms of its finances? What the forest ranger in West Vancouver says is that logging costs in the Bowl were $35 per thousand board feet and that included stumpage paid to the Crown, and yet the forest ranger in West Vancouver says that the value of the wood hauled out of Cypress Bowl was $70 per thousand, Mr. Speaker. That's double their cost. That means that $35 per thousand was made in logging Cypress Bowl. That means that all they had to be docked in additional cost was the tote road they built into the Bowl. There were fifteen million board feet cut in the Bowl, Mr. Speaker. Fifteen million board feet, and on the basis of $35 a thousand that comes out at something like half a million dollars. The tote road didn't cost any half a million dollars. The forest ranger himself said the road was paid for many times over. But what kind of sight were we treated to at the hands of this Minister, Mr. Speaker? We had him running around telling the public they were losing money. We had him running around saying they were losing money but the forest ranger in West Vancouver who has no axe to grind whatsoever, if you'll pardon the pun, in this case said that money was made and a great deal of money was made in this destruction of public land in Cypress Bowl.

The honourable Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Speaker, dealt at some length with a letter dated June 17th, 1969, signed by the Minister, a letter that the Minister had never revealed. A letter that was never listed in the list of events with respect to Cypress Bowl, and why didn't he deal with that letter? Why didn't he reveal the letter at an earlier stage, Mr Speaker? The reason he didn't was because it was a million dollar letter. The letter that the Leader of the Opposition read and dealt with at length at the beginning of this debate was a million dollar letter, because that letter gave the right to Benguet and the gambling interests of the Bahamas to subdivide Cypress Bowl and create residential subdivisions in the Bowl. There's no question about that, and the leases that were traded to Benguet and Alpine Outdoor Recreations were traded by the Crown for $10,000, sold by Alpine to Benguet for a million, and this letter was the basis of the deal. No question, that's a million dollar letter. The Minister couldn't seem to understand the Opposition's concern about this letter. That's the reason, Mr. Speaker. It's a million dollar letter. The Minister by the stroke of a pen almost daily is creating values and giving values away in terms of the public resources of British Columbia, and he's doing it so often, he's doing it so often that he couldn't understand the Opposition's concern.

I think a short summary with respect to that letter would be in order and some of the events with respect to the Bowl would be in order, Mr. Speaker. Let's just summarize these. (1) Alpine Recreational Outdoor Development always intended residential development — that's now apparent. (2) They were unable to raise the necessary finances. (3) They got the Government approval for subdivision type residential development in the letter of September 17th. (4) They used this to negotiate with Benguet for financial support. (5) Benguet wanted more proof than this letter so they sent their representatives to the Department for further checking. They then got a more legal document from the Government after that. (6) Alpine then got the more legal looking document in the way of leases for residential development. They got this legal document in short order and the legal requirements of the Land Act, as the Leader of the Opposition indicated, were even bypassed in order to deliver the same. (7) Benguet was then satisfied and took over Alpine Resources. It's interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that there was one constant throughout and that was that Alpine intended residential

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subdivision development for some near 9,000 lots, and there is one other element throughout and that is the involvement of William Clancey.

I wonder, Mr. Speaker, if we can really believe anything that the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources now says to this House. We faced the situation last Session when the Minister misled the House, and documents were filed in the House to prove that, and the sorry history of Cypress Bowl confirms the fact that this Minister is willing again and again to mislead the Legislature, the people in this Chamber, when he feels it necessary. But the Cypress deal, Mr. Speaker, was no different really than most of the deals that go through the Minister's hands. Timber sales in British Columbia at the hands of the Minister are non-competitive. They're completely open to wheeling and dealing and influence peddling. This Minister now has more discretionary power than the former Minister of Lands and Forests, Mr. Sommers, who found the problems of dealing with his discretionary power extremely difficult, so difficult, so difficult, Mr. Speaker, that he ended up in prison. Ninety-five per cent of all the timber sales in British Columbia are non-competitive bids. They are matters of arrangements between the parties involved. These issues with respect to timber sales and pulp and the other aspects of resource development in B.C. are a little more confusing to the general public than Cypress Bowl, but they still represent the same principle. Pulp mills, Mr. Speaker, have the same pattern in British Columbia, the same pattern of dispensing privilege with the signing of a document by the Minister.

There's now no competition for pulp mills and pulp harvesting rights or pulp licences in the Province at the hands of the Minister of Lands and Forests, Mr. Speaker. There was one case, and it was Skookumchuck, the Crestbrook Mill near Cranbrook that did involve some competition and it gave an indication of the value of the licences that the Minister gives away for nothing. In the case of Skookumchuck, three companies bid for the right to the pulp timber in the Skookumchuck area in the East Kootenays and the bids went up, Mr. Speaker, to 7.3 million dollars. That is the amount they were willing to pay in bonuses to the Crown for the right to harvest pulp timber. That is what they were willing to pay. That is what it was worth. Three companies, some of them associated with giant American concerns like Boise-Cascade and, of course, the Japanese interests ended up getting the mill in the final case.

What did the Minister say at the time? The Minister said that the bids were triple the upset price, and he wasn't used to that and he didn't expect it, and he said this area in the East Kootenays, he says, is the most difficult project in the Province and you are bidding on the lowest grade wood in the Province. It doesn't give you any right to the saw-log material, he hastened to add. So he said, in effect, you are dealing with some of the worst pulp-wood in the Province, but three industries competing in open competition for the public resource indicated they were willing to pay 7.3 million dollars more.

But what happened, Mr. Speaker? The Minister hastened back to his office, reconsidered the matter, and decided that it was wrong that the public should be paid for its own resources. He decided a new system would have to be evolved. He wasn't used to competition for the public's resources. There was no competition in Cypress Bowl for the Bowl, as the national government did with respect to Sunshine and other recreational ski developments in the Rockies. There was competition in the Federal parks, Mr. Speaker, for the rights to ski areas and so on. There is no competition in British Columbia when you want to wheel and deal with park timber. There is no competition whatsoever for public resources in British Columbia. The Minister, Mr. Speaker, is free to wheel and deal as he pleases. The Honourable the Minister knows much about privilege and I hope that he discusses it again, because you know the circumstances surrounding the Honourable Minister a few years ago were such that in a British Parliament the Honourable Minister would no longer sit in the House. That's the situation.

AN HON. MEMBER: Withdraw! Withdraw!

MR. WILLIAMS: …If the Minister wants me to withdraw and it will make him happy, I'll make him happy. I have no idea what he wants withdrawn.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: No member is allowed to impute motives in this House and the member has said he will withdraw.

MR. WILLIAMS: It's a matter of observation….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. Will the member please be seated while I recognize a point of order.

MR. WILLIAMS: He has not raised a point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please be seated.

MR. WILLIAMS: He has not raised a point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member be seated.

MR. WILLIAMS: I am not aware of any point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: For the last time, will the member be seated.

AN HON. MEMBER: …point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. I am recognizing….

AN HON. MEMBER: (shouted remark)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member be seated. Will you please be seated. Proceed. What is your point of order?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: He didn't make one.

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, he said an observation, Mr. Speaker — he said he wanted to make an observation, not a point of order.

MR. WILLIAMS: Order, Mr. Speaker.

AN HON. MEMBER: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just so that there be no misunderstanding. When the Minister rose, he said, "On a point of order."

SOME HON. MEMBERS: He didn't say that at all…he

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did not…Play back the tape.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. Proceed.

AN HON. MEMBER: Play your tape back. Come on. Let's have the tape.

AN HON. MEMBER: …the whole substance of the member's discussion this afternoon has been based on innuendo and is in violation of the Rules of this House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. Order, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, what we really were finding out from the Minister of Recreation is that he can't take it when it is told like it is. His junior members want to hear it like it is and I intend to do so. I am representing the people of my riding and I believe the people of British Columbia. We need to deal…. (Shouting and interruptions)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: …we need to deal, Mr. Speaker, with the trading and privilege by this Government. That is what we need to deal with.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. Will the Honourable Minister please be seated.

MR. WILLIAMS: …the trading and privilege by this Government, Mr. Speaker, is what is going to bring it down just like it brought the Coalition down.

AN HON. MEMBER: Go back and drain another lake.

MR. WILLIAMS: I just wish the Honourable the Minister would spend as much time on his own speeches.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. Mr. Clerk, please.

AN HON. MEMBER: Good, good.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: …7.3 million dollars is what I said the public lost.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please be seated…. Order, please. I might just point out that according to the Rules of the House no member may impute improper motives to another member of the House, and I would ask the members to observe that rule or the Chair will have to take the necessary action.

MR. WILLIAMS: I assure you, Mr. Speaker, that….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: I would just like the Minister to know that I have only begun to fight. 7.3 million dollars we lost. We lost 7.3 million at Skookumchuck, Mr. Speaker, and how many pulp mills have we got in this Province? What is it — 20 or 25? Twenty-five pulp mills in British Columbia? The Honourable the Minister isn't here to give us the precise number, perhaps it is a little more. Anyway, what we are talking about conservatively, Mr. Speaker, is 200 million dollars in terms of public values lost to the people of British Columbia because if we had competitive bidding for every right to cut pulp wood in British Columbia from all these new mills then the public treasury would be 200 million dollars richer.

It is clear in British Columbia, Mr. Speaker, that we can do anything we want because of our rich resources, but at the hands of this Government we have frittered them away, we have given away the public values in countless instances and they can be catalogued readily. But this is just one example. 200 million lost to the people of British Columbia at the hands of the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources. Is it any wonder, Mr. Speaker, that with this kind of system pervading this Government that there are influence peddlars? Is it any wonder that that kind of honey attracts flies? It is as natural as night follows day that these kinds of people should hang around Government in British Columbia so long as Government in British Columbia is going to do business the way it does and with this massive majority, Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that it is business as usual.

AN HON. MEMBER: What's wrong with that?

MR. WILLIAMS: What is wrong with that? What is wrong with business as usual? I'm sure that Bill Clancey says "What's wrong with business as usual?" I am sure all kinds of P.R. men in slacks say, "What's wrong with business as usual?" One of these days the people of this Province will not say business as usual is O.K.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Shouting)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: We are hearing now, Mr. Speaker, from the competitors, believe it or not, Mr. Speaker, we are hearing now from the competitors for the leadership of the Social Credit party. (Laughter) And the laughter should indicate the chances.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Shouting)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: I might just comment on this, you know. It is clear from the Minister of Municipal Affairs' statement earlier today, he wasn't really speaking to the press gallery, as he usually is, he wasn't really speaking to the House, as he never is, he was speaking in fact to the new boys, to the backbenchers. He was trying to gain votes really in the coming competition in the Socred sweepstakes.

AN HON. MEMBER: I think Waldo will get it.

MR. WILLIAMS: …I think it is fair commentary, Mr. Speaker, about the new members that the Minister felt it necessary to deliver a speech at that level.

I would like now to deal with another example, and since the Honourable the Minister of Recreation and Conservation is present, unlike so many of his senior Cabinet colleagues, I would like to deal with a matter that he has some jurisdiction over and some knowledge of, I am sure. That is the matter of Divide Lake, Mr. Speaker. Divide Lake is in the area near Ashcroft where the great copper findings of Bethlehem and

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Lornex and Valley Copper, the Highland Valley. It is presumably a very valuable lake and one which the Minister has some control over. There was a park reserve on the lake. I think the basic story is covered in the January 30th issue of the Vancouver Sun which simply states, "Copper firm gets park land." It is surprising, really, that it rates headlines, Mr. Speaker, because the parks in British Columbia have become essentially corpses to be divided up between various resource groups. The Government, Mr. Kiernan said, permitted Bethlehem to stake claims in Divide Lake in exchange for $50,000 donation from the Company for development of a picnic site at Lac Le Jeune near Kamloops, and, says the Minister, $50,000 for the lake, he thinks it is a pretty good deal, The Minister thought that $50,000 for a mile-long lake in the ore-rich Highland Valley was a good deal. $50,000 for a lake a mile long.

AN HON. MEMBER: How many acres?

MR. WILLIAMS: Thirty-six acres. The interesting thing, Mr. Speaker, is the follow-up statement by the Honourable Minister. Why, he says, this was the most generous offer we have had in a long time. I wonder why. I guess he was thinking of Cypress Bowl. Or maybe he was thinking of Strathcona Park. Or maybe he was thinking of the Cape Scott exchange. Or maybe he was thinking of the Wells-Grey deal managed by the member from Kamloops. Maybe he was thinking of all those poor deals in the parks that the people of British Columbia have suffered at his hands. So I don't challenge the Minister at all on his statement. I agree it is the most generous offer this Government has had in a long time. He said they paid $15,000 — that is the president of the company that bought the lake from the Government. He said $15,000 for the surface rights and a $50,000 contribution. That is what he said. Thirty-six acres. I am glad that we got the acreage figure.

AN HON. MEMBER: Be honest about it.

MR. WILLIAMS: Oh, I am quite willing to be. No, I appreciate the added information from the Minister, Mr. Speaker, because we will be able to compare it with other matters, and if that is the price for 36 acres, well, let's compare it with other sales in the area. But the whole deal — and the Minister in a way reminds me of a comic strip character, and I don't mean disrespect in that regard, and I am thinking of the Li'l Abner comic strip. In that comic strip there is, or at least there used to be, someone called Available Jones, and Available Jones was available and ready to do anything for a price and it seems that that is pretty well the way it is with the parks in British Columbia at the hands of these two Ministers. But the problem, Mr. Speaker, is that the price is….

AN HON. MEMBER: What kind of unavailable Jones?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment.

MR. WILLIAMS: If the Minister wants me to withdraw the statement, I will withdraw it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would ask the member to withdraw that statement, casting reflections.

MR. WILLIAMS: I mean no disrespect.

AN HON. MEMBER: A point of order. The honourable member has…(indecipherable)…and should be told to make his points in debate without continually being both insulting and reflecting on character by innuendo.

MR. WILLIAMS: The record, Mr. Speaker, is clear. The parks of British Columbia are available for a price. It is bad enough. We say the parks should not be available at any price. They should not be available at any price, Mr. Minister. They should not be available and you make them available, you and your colleagues make our parks available for a price in British Columbia. In terms of public policy, in terms of conservation, that's terrible enough, Mr. Speaker, but the irony is that the prices are dogpatch prices to boot. That's the situation in British Columbia. Let's compare it. There was a recent sale, near Divide Lake, of .44 acres — that's less than half an acre sold near Divide Lake in December of 1968, and what was the price paid for half an acre. The Minister has been kind enough to tell us that the lake was only 36 acres.

AN HON. MEMBER: No, that's not the lake. That is the parcel that was held under park reserve.

MR. WILLIAMS: …oh well, that makes it even worse — but that's fine…but the price, the price Mr. Speaker, paid for less than half an acre near Divide Lake in a sale to Bethlehem Copper was $25,000. That was for less than half an acre in that ore-rich valley, and the Minister is willing to give up park reserves and give up rights to a lake, in this valley, for only a $50,000 donation. That's the problem, Mr. Speaker, and the facts speak for themselves.

I have been dealing with the question of the bartering. I have been dealing with the question of the bartering of privilege in British Columbia at the hands of this Government. The bartering of privilege prevails in many ways with respect to this Cabinet — in many ways, and not the least of which was revealed by the recent hearings under the Honourable Judge Morrow, with respect to the liquor laws of British Columbia. A good many findings evolved during those hearings, and many of them that should cause concern on the Government side of the House, as well as on this side of the House. Unfortunately I doubt if the concern is there. One of the key issues in terms of people in this Legislature should be the one that was revealed during the hearings involving the former Attorney-General. It is covered, fairly fully, in the December 3rd issue of the Vancouver Sun. At any rate, the material was all presented in the Sun, involving Mr. Fouks and Mr. Bonner as partners in business. Now, Mr. Fouks, Queen's Counsel, was unhappy with the statements in the Vancouver Sun, which reported those hearings. He was quite self-righteous and said that — regarding the Vancouver Sun headline he regarded it as an attempt, and a vicious one at character assassination, etc. But then he added, what he added is interesting, he said, "I might say that the facts contained in the story are correct." That's what he said, and I am reassured, as I wouldn't want to use the material unless that were so. Now, the interesting thing is that as a result of the hearing, we find that Mr. Bonner and Mr. Fouks have had a long personal association, since they were both 18 or 19 and students at University. Interestingly, and I don't think the Vancouver Sun even indicated this, although it was indicated in the Victoria Times, there has even been a political association between the former Attorney-General and Mr. Fouks. In the Victoria Times of December 3rd, Mr. Fouks said he had also acted as fiscal agent for Mr.

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Bonner during an election campaign, so the relationship, politically, is established.

What did the former Attorney-General say, the vice-president of MacMillan-Bloedel, senior vice-president? He denied any conflict of interest in terms of his business association, and he denied any inference that Fouks might have been privy to Cabinet decisions, and I'm sure that's so. He denied that any of Fouks' brewery clients had provided money for their apartment building, and I think that is really the main statements of Mr. Bonner in this regard. Interesting question, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. It has been the practice in this House when a matter is before the Courts, and I believe the statements made before the Commission are before the Courts…

AN HON. MEMBER: No, they're not.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: …and, as well, we are also dealing with something that is before a Royal Commission, and I believe that the member is skirting very closely on the line of privilege of this House, and I think he should hold his comments.

MR. WILLIAMS: With all respect, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that the case involves insurance matters. I am dealing with the liquor question. With all respect, Mr. Speaker, the case before the Courts involves the question of the Insurance Agents Association of British Columbia, I think that's what the case regards, and I'm not interested in the question of the Insurance Agents Association…

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. I am not aware of the exact ramification of the libel case, but I do know that there is a case before the Courts arising out of statements made before that Commission, and I would ask the member to withhold….

MR. WILLIAMS: I would point out, with respect, it was not statements before the Commission, it was individual newspaper comments, Mr. Speaker, on the part of an individual columnist on a newspaper and not directly with anything that went before the hearings at all.

I would just like to ask the question, Mr. Speaker, who appointed Mr. Fouks as Queen's Counsel? Why, Mr. Bonner, of course. The Cabinet appointed him Queen's Counsel in British Columbia. When was Mr. Fouks appointed? He was appointed in 1964, Mr. Speaker, and it is interesting to note further, Mr. Speaker, that 1964 was the year that the Brewers' Institute of British Columbia was established as well, a group which we hadn't heard of before, hadn't heard of until the recent liquor hearing. I think it is worthwhile going over the background of some of the material, particularly in relation to Mr. Ginter.

Mr. Ginter is an interesting folk figure in British Columbia. Ben Ginter thought that maybe free enterprise and booze was a reality in British Columbia — naive fellow. All he wanted was the freedom to sell the beer he was producing, That's all he wanted, my free enterprise friends — he just wanted to sell his beer, and he claims he met Mr. Fouks regarding this. Mr. Ginter said that he met with Mr. Fouks regarding the desire he had to sell his beer in the Kootenays of British Columbia. The Kootenays had been a preserve — an area of gentlemen's agreement for a decade, agreement between the major producers and Interior Breweries. Interior Breweries, based in Creston, continued to sell within the Kootenays and did not export their beer outside the Kootenays, and the big four did not enter the Kootenay market except at an additional price — the higher price was charged for the big four's products in the Kootenays. Mr. Ginter wanted to enter that market, and at the hearings, what did Mr. Ginter ask? In the Province of December 3rd, this is one of the questions he asked, he said, questioning Mr. Foukes, he said, "Now think carefully, " Ginter persisted, "Who was the one that called to make an appointment for me — did you not receive a telephone call from Dr. Gordon Shrum?" Foukes replied,"No" Ginter also asked Fouks about his relationship with Mr. Bonner, and we found of the apartment business which was covered. We find further….

HON. LESLIE R. PETERSON (Attorney-General): Point of Order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: What is your point of order? Will the member be seated.

(Due to taping difficulties, some of the Debate was not recorded at this point.)

MR. PETERSON: …has been going to some lengths in discussing evidence that was brought out in examination and cross-examination before a Royal Commission. This Royal Commission is still meeting, and while I am ready to observe there is no prohibition on members of this House discussing matters that have been referred to a Commission, it has been considered in the past certainly by the members as not appropriate to do so, particularly when this Commission, chaired by one of the Judges, is presently engaged in analyzing the evidence and coming to some recommendations and to some report. So I think it is manifestly unfair for the NDP in this House to carry on a misfraction and not show any regard to the members of the Commission who are engaged in this task at the present time, and I would ask the honourable member to kindly take this into consideration and to desist from this line of argument. (Loud interruptions)

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker…. I intend to, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate the Attorney-General's comments. I would not doubt that the Commission intends to produce final recommendations and I commend them for that. It's long overdue and necessary, and I commend the Government for having the hearing, but I have no intention of second guessing the recommendations or making any recommendations whatsoever, and I, like the Government, look forward to the recommendation. I do not have definite recommendations to make in this regard at this time, but Mr. Ginter said finally, and I would just like to make it clear, he said in respect to Mr. Fouks, but for him under oath to have made statements that, "There was no $10,000 suggestion in terms of a fee, and that I was not in his office one evening, so help me God, this is not true, and he remembers only too well." I think that Mr. Ginter's problems with the Government, and presumably the former Attorney-General, should be commented on. Mr. Ginter wanted to sell beer at 10 cents less than the big four. The problem presumably….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we come back to the practice of this House, that there have been sufficient

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recommendations made to the Royal Commission, and I believe that the practice of the Legislature has been that we do not begin to prejudge what the Commission will find. Furthermore, I think the Attorney-General's point applies in asking the member to desist.

MR. DAVID BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): …for the Commission, which is not privileged, which has been touched on by other members of this House. It has been printed in the press, and I point out further, Mr. Speaker, that my colleague has made it very clear that he doesn't pretend to predict the outcome of the Commission — and there is no rule whatsoever in this House that prevents him from discussing these matters in as much detail as he wishes.

MR. WILLIAMS: …Mr. Speaker, I think we should be reminded that Mr. Ginter also wanted to do things like bring in canned beer and he had difficulties in so doing. I think we should remember that Mr. Ginter had trouble in dealing with this Government, and I think it is worth keeping that in mind, in relation to all the other material, because it is clear as a result of the hearings, Mr. Speaker, that someone isn't telling the truth. It's clear that someone is not telling the truth. At the very least, a phone call to Dr. Shrum regarding the arranging of appointments, would be in order. I think my concern is partly, Mr. Speaker, that we really are only starting to tap the question of privilege, only starting to uncover the problems with respect to the Government liquor monopoly in British Columbia. I think we are just beginning to see what was going on. We found that payments were made in everything as diverse as cash and asparagus, and the hearings ceased when I think the public would have been interested in more of the details.

I think the students at the University of British Columbia covered the situation in a rather simple and interesting way in their student newspaper, The Ubyssey, which I believe all of us receive, issue dated January 20th, and that shows the question of the former Attorney-General and Mr. Fouks in relationship to the Brewers' Institute and the fact that the former Attorney-General was responsible for administering liquor laws in the Province, and other laws as well. I would note, too, that they indicate in their diagram that Mr. McKay Brown lives in a penthouse. This is the penthouse of the apartment owned by Messrs. Bonner and Fouks on Balsam Street, in Kerrisdale. But what the students say, it is not surprising to discover relationships such as this, however, such things are quite common in corporate societies where company directorships, club affiliations and political preferences mingle and merge. What the students are talking about is the establishment, and their little chart shows a part of the establishment in British Columbia. The interesting thing is that one of the lawyers referred to in The Ubyssey as of January 20th, wrote The Ubyssey wanting to correct some of the information. Mr. McKay Brown, who lives in the penthouse, wrote them on January 30th, giving them some details indicating that he didn't himself represent the insurance agents — he represented the All Canada Insurance Federation at the Wootton Royal Commission on Automobile Insurance, and I think it's kind of the very able lawyer to provide this kind of correct detailed information because the All Canada Insurance Federation, Mr. Speaker, is the Federation that the honourable Leader of the Opposition has asked the Combines Department to investigate. They're the group that we maintain price rigs automobile insurance rates across this nation, with the exception of Saskatchewan.

The apartment was shown in a picture in the Vancouver Sun, Mr. Speaker, a little blurry, there's 12 floors, it's a beautiful concrete high rise and there's a penthouse above the twelfth floor. It's called Dorset Place Apartments Ltd. and the holding, that's the company that owns it, which is jointly owned by the two gentlemen we're discussing. The legal description is Lots 6 to 12 of Block 17, District Lot 526, Vancouver. It's in Kerrisdale, which is probably the highest rent district of the city, one of the most attractive residential areas in the community. It's 12 stories and a penthouse, Mr. Speaker, and that's an estate arrangement between the two gentlemen.

Twelve stories and a penthouse is quite a nest egg, and I wondered, Mr. Speaker, what it's worth. So, not knowing much about 12 storey apartments and their prices I looked in the want ads in the Vancouver Sun last night under the appropriate column, there is a comparable apartment I think, for sale. So I phoned up and I asked the real estate man what the asking price was. The asking price was $1,550,000. I said, "Well, how much cash would it take to buy that building?" I was advised that there were two mortgages on the building so that you wouldn't have to have the cash since the mortgages covered a substantial chunk of the value. There was a first mortgage at $875,000 and a second mortgage at $200,000. That meant $975,000 was covered by mortgages, but it still left an amount, Mr. Speaker, of $575,000 cash to find. That's how much cash had to be found in this particular case, and I admit that it's a couple of years later and prices have gone up, but they haven't gone up that much. So the cash that had to be found individually with respect to this building was $263,000. In other words, over 17 years you'd have to save $15,000 a year to buy that building. I could be wrong about it, but that's my arithmetic based on current prices.

But, you know, well I'm glad that the present Attorney-General knows all the details of the real estate market in Kerrisdale, but at any rate, I grew up in the same area as the former Attorney-General and the question, the question…the honourable the Premier as usual has ignored the comments of the Opposition and I'd like to welcome him back to the Legislature of British Columbia.

…the question you have to ask is where do you find the kind of cash needed for this kind of business deal? I think it might help in developing this kind of real estate asset to get the land cheap. That might be a way to embark on this kind of business deal. So let's look at the question of the land involved. There are six lots, six former individual housing lots in Kerrisdale. Prices in Kerrisdale have always been high. It's possible, Mr. Speaker, that what was found were a group of owners who didn't really know what they were doing, and that happens in real estate. Often people are able to buy below the market price when the seller is an uninformed seller. So I thought I'd check into that question, and checking in at the Land Registry Office I find this, Mr. Speaker. I thought that it might be an uninformed owner of the land in Kerrisdale and I'm afraid that I was wrong. We find in the Land Registry Office in Vancouver that the owner of the land prior to the Bonner-Fouks Company owning it was J. Diamond & Sons Ltd., J. Diamond & Sons Ltd., who have offices on Georgia and whose main actually operating offices are at the foot of Commercial Drive.

Now, you know, Mr. Speaker, any kid growing up in the East End certainly knows who Mr. Diamond is. Now Mr. Diamond happens to operate the city's only animal rendering plant at the foot of Commercial Drive. It's the worst-smelling

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operation in the City of Vancouver. They render down old animals, I don't know if they're race horses or what, but they render them down and create tallow which is shipped out from the harbour, and the waste from the animal rendering is dumped openly into Burrard Inlet by Mr. Diamond. I might note that something the kids in the East End might not know is that Mr. Diamond was voted good citizen of the year a few years ago. So, he is the owner of the most offensive polluting industry in the City of Vancouver. The name of the industry is West Coast Reduction Ltd., at the foot of Commercial Drive.

Well, if you check into Who's Who, which most East End kids don't bother doing, you find further that there is other information on Mr. Diamond. Who's Who will tell you, as East End kids know, that he's got something to do with the race track. Mr. Diamond is also president of the B.C. Turf Ltd. He's also co-chairman of the West Coast Jockey Club Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of B.C. Turf, and B.C. Turf, if you check at the Companies Office, is sort of almost in some ways a family affair. If you check on the list of directors you'll find, if you just go over to the Companies Office here in Victoria, that amongst those listed are Jack Diamond, 105 North Commercial Drive — that's the animal reduction plant, Charles Diamond, 105 North Commercial Drive, Gordon Diamond, 105 North Commercial Drive, George I. Morfitt, 105 Commercial Drive, Comptroller, and also Arthur Fouks, 1030 West Georgia Street, Barrister. The Vice-President of B.C. Turf is Arthur Fouks, Q.C.

It's interesting to look further, Mr. Speaker, and look at the objects of incorporation that are registered with the company's documents in the Companies Office, and it includes a wide range of things. Let's point out first that B.C. Turf Limited and the Jockey Club group are essentially the monopoly controllers of racing in British Columbia, but the objects include, listed in their own documents, to carry on the business of hotel keepers, tavern keepers, licenced victuallers, refreshment purveyors, and for some strange reason, market gardeners. Their objects also are to operate by club licence or otherwise the business of offering for sale and selling beer, wine and spirituous liquors in accordance with the laws for the time being enforced in the Province of British Columbia. They're hoping for changes in the liquor laws, too, They in addition, to do all other acts and deeds in connection with the sport of racing, etc., etc., and a range of rights and privileges with respect to racing and controlling racing in the Province as well are included in the objects. But, there is one final interesting comment in the objects, or inclusion in the objects of this company, Mr. Speaker, and that is that one of the objects of this company is to obtain any Provincial Order or Act of Parliament enabling the company to carry out any of its objects into effect or for effecting any modification of the company's constitution or for any other purpose which may seem expedient, and to oppose any proceedings or applications which may seem calculated directly or indirectly to prejudice the company's interests. So, clearly, within the company's objects are dealing with the Government of the Province of British Columbia.

The members of the Racing Commission are covered in the annual report of the Racing Commission, Mr. Speaker, and the Racing Commission is of course the responsibility of the Attorney-General. The Racing Commission was the responsibility of the former Attorney-General. In 1964, in 1965, 1966, in 1967, when all of the individual private dealings were going on, the former Attorney-General was responsible for policing and administering the race tracks of British Columbia and policing and administering the monopoly that is controlled by Mr. Diamond. Mr. Diamond owned the land, Mr. Speaker. I don't think we need to deal with this in too much more detail other than to make it clear that Vote 55 in the Estimates covers….

You know, it's like pollution, Mr. Speaker, most of it is of their own making. Most of it is of their own making. The former Attorney-General had the responsibility to police the race track monopoly and Mr. Diamond in this Province under Vote 55 of the Estimates, and he dealt with them regularly in this House, he had dealings with Mr. Diamond in private….

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, Oh.

HON. W.A.C. BENNETT (Premier): It's right in the record. It's in the record. The people, Mr. Speaker, will read this in the record….

MR. WILLIAMS: Is the Premier saying that the people will be able to read it in Hansard tomorrow morning? Is that what he's saying?

What we didn't, what the Commissioners — oh, you had your chance, Mr. Minister, you had your chance and you flubbed it. The problem, Mr. Speaker, is that we've really only seen the tip of the iceberg. As a result of these hearings we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. What of the voluntary donations made to Government by the liquor interests of British Columbia which the Commission did not choose to deal with? The Commission did not deal with voluntary contributions to Government. There is every indication, Mr. Speaker, that what's below the tip of the iceberg is even uglier, and I think we've had indications of that.

It may be only natural, Mr. Speaker, that the former Attorney-General should have gone on to MacMillan-Bloedel Powell River, a group that deals in privilege with this Government all the time. It's only natural that that company should want him and his experience. That company was founded by a former civil servant. Mr. MacMillan was the former Chief Forester of British Columbia. That company, Mr. Speaker, went to the Judiciary for their present President and took him off of the Bench. That company, Mr. Speaker, has gone to the Legislature and the Cabinet for the next in line, for the next, President of MacMillan-Bloedel, Powell River. No, the more we learn, Mr. Speaker, of the operations of this Government, the messier and murkier they become, and a frightening aspect of all of these events is the involvement on the edges of senior employees of this Government. Mr. Ginter says that Dr. Shrum arranged the appointment with Mr. Fouks. We found in the Cypress Bowl dealings that Mr. Borthwick, Deputy Minister of Lands, was a major holder in a mining company and mining interests. I think, Mr. Speaker, there's no doubt that we've only seen the beginning of that particular story and I think that particular story should be considered in more detail later by this House.

There's no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that what we have on the other side of this House is the old coalition gang. That's what we've got over there. The difference between that group, Mr. Speaker, and the old coalition gang is that there isn't the principal feud that caused the breakup of the coalition — that's the only real difference. That's the same old coalition

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gang surrounded by influence peddlars, surrounded by self-seekers, surrounded by those that are seeking the spoils of power, and it's a spoils system that this Government operates under. Now for those of us outside, or for those outside the House, many of these influence peddlars around the edge of Government seem to be in dark corners. They seem to be in dark corners and only occasionally have the spotlight shine on them. What we're finding, though, is that they're wrong, that that's not really the case at all. We're finding that they're really all friends together, they're really people that belong to the same club, they're people that go into business together, and it's simply the way you people do business, it's simply the way you handle the public's business in British Columbia.

I'm afraid that one of the ways that that group, Mr. Speaker, does business is especially disturbing here in the Legislature. I'm convinced that this massive majority of the Government is determined to destroy and curb the rights of Parliament. I don't think there is any doubt about that in terms of the interruptions and the range of matters that have come up even today. I think that the web that we see, the web that we see evolving with Social Credit, the one that involves influence peddlars, that involves the spoils system, that involves conflict of interests, that involves, it appears, some senior officers, is one that should disturb us all, but the desire to curb the rights of the members of this Parliament should probably be the most disturbing of all.

The pattern has been established by the Government already, Mr. Speaker. The Premier refused to accept a reasonable amendment earlier in the Session urging a closing time of 11:00 p.m. for the business of this House. It was a reasonable request and one accepted by virtually most of the Parliaments of this country.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a matter that has been dealt with by this House and cannot be debated.

MR. WILLIAMS: I've dealt with it again.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I wish the member would adhere to the rules of this House.

AN HON. MEMBER: He abuses them more than anyone else.

MR. WILLIAMS: Ah, that is what the Minister says. How much more evidence do we need about that massive elephantine majority curbing the life of Parliament in British Columbia? How much more? It even permeates, Mr. Speaker, the selection of school students listening to the debates in this House. You have got a spoils system based on which riding they are from, in effect, and you discriminate against the kids that are coming from ridings that vote for the Opposition. It is an incredible situation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, Oh.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member be seated.

HON. D.R.J. CAMPBELL (Comox): A point of order. The Chair of this House has had leveled against it a charge that the Speaker's Office is responsible for a spoils system insofar as visitors to the Gallery is concerned. Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the Speaker's Office undertake to ask the member to withdraw because the member has very clearly indicated that there is a charge against the Speaker's Office of this Parliament that there is a spoils system, and I ask, Mr. Speaker, through you, that the member be instructed to withdraw….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. CAMPBELL: …Mr. Speaker, I am perfectly in order. I ask that you instruct the member to withdraw any imputation and any implication that the Speaker's Office is responsible for a spoils system.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The member raised the point of order, and I must agree with his point of order and ask the member to withdraw his imputation.

MR. WILLIAMS: The right to ask questions in this Parliament, unlike Ottawa, is a right that no one on the Opposition side has? That is a right that exists in the Mother of Parliaments in England and, it exists in Ottawa. The question period simply doesn't exist in British Columbia, and it is possible that the Honourable Lady Minister isn't aware that there are freer Parliaments in this land. There are freer Parliaments in this land. It is clear that this Government wants to use its elephantine majority against the Opposition. There is no question about that.

But I would like to end up with just a few comments, Mr. Speaker, on another matter. I would like to deal, for a few minutes, Mr. Speaker, with the question of the financial genius of the Minister of Finance. Because that has sort of been the conventional wisdom in British Columbia, that if the Honourable the Premier was nothing else he certainly was an able man in the world of finance. But the Honourable Premier's dream with respect to what he has called his crown jewel, British Columbia Hydro, has obviously become a nightmare. We have found that we no longer really have, and maybe we never did have a financial genius as Minister of Finance, because we have found that hydro rates are going to be increased 15 per cent this Spring. That is what Dr. Shrum, the chairman of B.C. Hydro said on January 9th, suitably a long distance away from an election. We found also that the likelihood was that the rates would have to increase 8 per cent annually thereafter, or at least the following year, so we face the prospect of a 23 per cent compounded increase in hydro rates over the next year and a half. The problem, in addition to these rates which we face, Mr. Speaker, is that the Hydro Authority has to find $200,000,000 capital per year to expand the Hydro programme in British Columbia. Those are the figures that we have.

We find, further, Mr. Speaker, that Dr. Shrum at long last admits to political interference in the affairs of B.C. Hydro. Dr. Shrum said that the previous rate decreases in British Columbia were brought about by political interference by the Premier, in effect, in order to win elections. Hydro policy — rational hydro policy — in British Columbia was put aside in order to win elections for Social Credit. That is what, in effect, Dr. Shrum said. Dr. Shrum said from the political point of view, reducing rates at the time was probably absolutely necessary.

AN HON. MEMBER: What are you quoting?

MR. WILLIAMS: I am quoting Dr. Shrum. Dr. Shrum said this and was quoted January 9th in the Vancouver Sun, an article by Mr. Jes Odum of January 9, 1970, my friend. Then

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Dr. Shrum said that the rate increase should have been made earlier rather than his announcement this January. What he said is, "But I don't think Victoria would have been very happy having an increase in April when there was an election coming on." That is why there was no increase. That is why there is no money left in the till. That is why Hydro has no money in the bank, and the price, only now, is going to have to be paid by the average consumer in British Columbia.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Shrum didn't speak earlier, Mr. Speaker. Why didn't Dr. Shrum say in 1963 that there was political interference in the affairs of B.C. Hydro? Why didn't he speak out then? Because he presumably wanted Social Credit re-elected. That, presumably, is why he didn't speak out. Why didn't he speak out in '64, '65, '66, and all of the following years when he knew that the finances of Hydro were reaching the danger point? Why didn't he speak up? Why wasn't he a man like H. Lee Briggs who was willing to speak what he thought and, subsequently, I am afraid, got fired by the Premier? Why wasn't he an honest man so that the public — why wasn't he completely open with respect to the financial problems?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. I would ask the member to withdraw the imputation of a dishonest man by saying….

MR. WILLIAMS: I withdraw that. Why wasn't there complete frankness about the financial affairs of B.C. Hydro throughout all those years, Mr. Speaker, when B.C. Hydro was reaching the danger point? Why did they go along with the political talk of the Premier that started in 1963 and said we are going to decrease the rates this year and we will decrease them every year thereafter? Why didn't some of the financial officers of B.C. Hydro speak out and say that that was a disaster course? It is unfortunate they didn't, but now at least the record is getting straightened out. We know, Mr. Speaker, that the problem is that power in British Columbia and a rational hydro policy in British Columbia is permeated by politics, and we have it from no more an authority than Dr. Shrum, the chairman of B.C. Hydro. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I would move, seconded by the member from Surrey, that the following words be added to the Address in reply to the Opening Speech: "That this House has no confidence in the power development policies of this Government referred to in the Opening Speech."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The Member for Dewdney. What are you rising on?

MR. GEORGE MUSSALLEM (Dewdney): A point of order, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: What is your point of order?

MR. MUSSALLEM: A ruling of the Chair as stated. That is, that if a member makes an improper remark it may be brought up after his address. I call on the member to withdraw the remark that he impugned to the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources.

MR. WILLIAMS: I do. I make….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. Let me….

MR. MUSSALLEM: He impugned that he was doing the same thing that a Minister by the name of Sommers did and went to gaol for, and I ask him to withdraw that remark. I don't think a scurrilous remark like that should be allowed in this House at any time.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. Mr. Clerk.

AN HON. MEMBER: Only the member referred to in the remark can object.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: This was perhaps not placed in the proper wording. It is a privilege of the House to request a retraction of a statement, and if this is the wish of a member of the House to do so, it is their prerogative.

MR. ROBERT M. STRACHAN (Cowichan-Malahat): …a ruling by a former Speaker, Mr. Irwin, that only the person that found himself impugned has the right to ask for a withdrawal.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am ruling that there are certain privileges that accrue to a member of the House, there are certain privileges that accrue to the House as a whole, and if the member is raising the point that the privileges of the House have been abused by the statement, the member can ask for a withdrawal.

AN HON. MEMBER: …he must state the content.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The member did state the content, and I am asking the member if he wishes to so proceed.

MR. BARRETT (Coquitlam): Mr. Speaker, the member stood up on a point of order asking for a withdrawal from an interpretation of his, not the words of the member who spoke, and unless there are exact words given by that member, there is nothing — to withdraw.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member rose and, as I pointed out to the member, that he perhaps did not phrase it just in the proper manner. However, the member has the prerogative of rising when he feels the privileges of the House have been abused and stating what he is objecting to, and ask for a withdrawal. If there is a misinterpretation, the member concerned may say so. He has that privilege of saying that he was misquoted. Does the member wish to do so?

AN HON. MEMBER: In the meantime, if the Minister feels in some way slighted, let's find out, and if he objects, let him object, then he has a point of order.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair recognizes the Member from Dewdney. Do you wish to proceed?

(Various comments by some honourable members not clearly audible on the tape.)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: What is your point of order?

MR.BARRETT: …Mr. Speaker, and I want your ruling on whether or not we proceed on that motion.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Certainly. But the member rose on a point of order and I clarified his procedure.

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AN HON. MEMBER: A point of order is always in order.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Let's get on with it, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Surrey.

MR. ERNEST HALL (Surrey): It was getting, Mr. Speaker, a little like August 27th, I didn't know whether I was going to make it or not. However, before I get into my speech I do want to address the House on one thing which we all read about this morning, and that is the proposal by the United States to continue the nuclear testing in Alaska. I don't need to say many words about this, Mr. Speaker. I just want and hope that the Leader of the House will present us with a motion as soon as possible so that this House can demonstrate and convey to those responsible our complete rejection of this continued programme of testing, as indeed the Government did some time ago.

Mr. Speaker, many of the members who have already spoken have referred to the honour and the pleasure that is theirs in taking part in the debate. I feel the word "pleasure," Mr. Speaker, is most modest and unassuming. In view of the efforts that I made, along with all the other members, to get here, the word "pleasure" is a little understated. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, it is a lot more than pleasure that I feel standing here, especially when I reflect on the conduct of the Government party during the election. Other speakers have mentioned the questionable morality of the huge Government advertising campaign during the election, and whilst it achieved its short-term objective, Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the Government has, in that campaign, done a disservice to the political life and the political morals of this Province. If we are to continue some of the statements and to act upon some of the statements made by Cabinet Ministers regarding forthcoming changes in the Elections Act, I am sure we are going to have an opportunity to go further into that question. Our election campaign, Mr. Speaker, in Surrey was very smooth and rather uneventful. We were remarkably free from outside interference, Mr. Speaker, nobody important came from the Cabinet to whip up the crowds so I can't tell any stories about parades or misleading statements. All I can report is the outcome, which appears to be a popular one.

1969 came and went in Surrey with very few basic changes in the problems of the area. We in Surrey are, and I think we still are, today weighed down with the largest per capita social welfare case load in the Province. We are still trying to counter the "stop and start" school construction edicts of the Government. We are still plagued with land assembly problems, and the complicated land assembly statements made by various authorities are making things worse. Much of our community efforts in the field of health care, particularly cerebral palsy, is being frustrated by some of the scrooges in the Department of Health. Lack of action by some of those responsible in the operation of the Family Courts is leading to groups forming to try and get action in that area. We've seen the spontaneous growth of anti-pollution groups, tenant groups, and other protest groups in my area. In the furthermost part of the riding the farmers are still waiting, with growing impatience, for any sign of action at all on the Fraser River flood control. The municipal council is still waiting for answers to the problem of the overpasses on the rail route to Roberts Bank. In going over these problems, Mr. Speaker, some of them for the fourth time, I think that it's fair to say that the Government said that if the Socred Government was re-elected August 27th, all would be solved. But five months have passed, we've heard the Speech from the Throne, there is nothing there, Mr. Speaker, nothing in the five months to suggest that these problems are even being looked at.

Whilst I talk about the Speech from the Throne, may I say seriously, Mr. Speaker, and sincerely, how much the people of Surrey regret the oversight in that Speech in not paying tribute to Len Shepherd, the M.L.A. for the old Delta riding from 1937 to 1945. Len Shepherd was a school trustee, and as a councillor and as an M.L.A. served the people of Surrey and Delta for way over 30 years, and I do regret that oversight, As I said before, Mr. Speaker, our area has got a social welfare case load, a social welfare financial burden, that's becoming unsupportable. The member from Nanaimo pointed out on Friday, I think it was, how the sharing of available money is moving, how those shares are changing. It's true to say that the shortage of money supply hits in a very real way the communities like Surrey, south of the River, who are faced with rapid growth problems. We heard the Minister of Municipal Affairs accuse the Liberals in Ottawa of being senseless, but there is no more senseless Government than this one. The senseless nature of the fiscal policy of this Government speaks for itself. They pretend to share — they set up elaborate machinery, as the Minister of Municipal Affairs calls it, but they have still got the rigid power — and they operate that rigid power ruthlessly in the money supply, and the Government has done little in the past twelve months to help the area south of the River. Well over half of the calls I get, Mr. Speaker, come from constituents who are on social welfare, and after three years of looking into the cases and into these calls and problems, I am of the opinion that as far as the Surrey area is concerned, that in terms of meaningful rehabilitation, very little, if anything at all, is being accomplished. There is no contact, there is very little advice and now, in that area, the housing problem that faces a family that's on social welfare is so bad that it really beggars description. Now they are faced with the increasing costs that face us all. The situation of over five per cent of the population of Surrey is, in my view, Mr. Speaker, a provincial disgrace.

I've got here, Mr. Speaker, a number of letters that I have received from various PTA groups in the School District No. 36, and they all bear the same message. They bear the same message that was in fact brought to this Legislature by the mothers and the children and the fathers in the Delta School District, our neighbour, and that message is, Mr. Speaker, that the Government is breaking faith with the school children, the parents, and the future of education in this Province. Again, Mr. Speaker, the great centralist has spoken. Ignore local wishes, ignore the results of referenda, in fact stop referenda. I would like to read a couple of these letters, Mr. Speaker, to see how they describe in human terms the effects of these stop and go policies. Here's a letter from a school trustee, talking about the Grandview Heights School. "No gymnasium, no library — they have about 35 books in the hall of that school, no teachers' washrooms, no staff room." Here's one from the Irma Stephenson PTA. "One large residential development is presently under way in Guilford, others are pending in the near future. We know that the school board's proposed referendum made provisions for accommodating the increased enrolment, now we'll be experiencing crowded classrooms and shifts in the education

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of our children." Here's one that's been sent to me via the school board. This one is from the Prince Charles PTA. "More development is required on sites. While classrooms are adequate at this time, there is no space available for the implementation of kindergarten. Funds are not available to purchase all the equipment necessary for the teaching of the new science programme as designed by the Department of Education." The PTA itself in this school, Mr. Speaker, has paid out $425 for a science programme, $300 for gym equipment, and $225 for playground equipment. Grandview Heights, again complaining about no library, no gym, no medical room, no kitchen, no staff room. Here again in the Grandview Heights, this is a third letter repeating those points.

You know, Mr. Speaker, in 1968 when the Social Credit ice jam prevented the school building, the total cost of the essential classroom programme at that time was $40,000,000. The Government share was only $20,000,000. That was one-fiftieth part of the Budget. I suggest the same thing is happening today. Whilst building costs are low and over seven per cent of the work force is unemployed, a thin year developing for the building trade, we halt construction of schools. It's a disgrace, Mr. Speaker, and our educational performance on all levels, kindergarten through to university, is slipping, and it's slipping by the evidence of the Government's own figures. Though, Mr. Speaker, the Minister's office would often throw figures our way, and you know you can sometimes make what you want out of figures, but using the Public Accounts and the annual Budget Speech, I did some percentage figuring. I found out, for instance, that when you look at the appropriation for education that we all hear about and we are going to hear about it again next Friday, going over the last five years, we see that in 1964 the per cent of the Budget for education was 33.7 per cent, the following year it was up to 34 per cent, the following year it dropped to 31 per cent, the year after it went up almost one per cent back to 31.9, but last year it came down .1 of a per cent, leaving the figure at 31.8 per cent.

Now that's fine, those are the estimates. But then we look 12 months later to find out what was spent, and we express those expenditures as percentage of total expenditures, we find that the figures are very different. In 1964 for instance, instead of it being 33.7 per cent it was only 27.8 per cent, in '65, instead of it being 34 it was 26.8. In '66, instead of being 31 it was 29 and so on and so forth. But if you do another calculation, and you express the education expenditures at the percentage of total expenditures, once the figures are in you find out that the figures have changed again and have gone down another per cent.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, may I say that if you look at the surpluses — and that's really where the action could be — and you look at the amount of the education appropriation that's unspent, and express that as a percentage of the surplus, you'll find that in the last three years the unspent portion of education appropriation, expressed as a per cent of the surplus, has never been less that 25 per cent. That's the way that this Government figures out its priorities. That's the way that this Government really tells it like it is in its Budget Speech, but tells it like it is in a different way when the figures come through 12 months later.

You know, Mr. Speaker, the education debate over the last few years has actually shown to me, and I think to the members of the public, that there is an anti-education bias in the Government, and in just this Session now we can take a look at some of the statements that have been made by Government members. The new member for Revelstoke, for instance, in his maiden speech, showed he knows nothing about teachers, when he attacked their efforts to put the education issue before the public last August. He showed that he knew nothing of the teaching career when he made his speech. That should have been adequately shown by a letter that many of us have got from a school teacher in Richmond, who took the trouble of working out how much money an apprentice — and we heard the member from Revelstoke talking about trades — how much a plasterer, for instance, would earn over 18 years compared with a school teacher, and the interesting thing in this letter, Mr. Speaker, is that the plasterer earns a total of $200,000 over his first 18 years, whilst a teacher has only earned about $124,000. It seems to me that the member for Revelstoke really should get in touch with his local school teachers' association, and get some of the facts from them.

We shouldn't be surprised, however, because last Session we had the member for Delta, who is an ex-teacher himself, show that he had forgotten all that he knew when he attacked the teachers last year in their involvement in trying to get this educational formula that we complained about, changed. He indeed was singled out for special mention by the then president of the Teachers' Federation. It seems to me what the member for Delta really wants, Mr. Speaker, is for the teachers to shut up, to accept what they're given, to be good little teachers, and ask no question. Well, I don't think the teachers are going to do that, and I congratulate them for it. My opponent on behalf of the Social Credit party in the last election, Mr. Speaker, was the chairman of the school board that doesn't think the school budget has got anything to do with school teachers and, you know, that means no cooperation, Mr. Speaker. On the other hand, when we see a progressive school board elected, like we did last December in Burnaby, one of the first things that the school board did, was to call in the teachers' association to look at the preliminary figures and that's sensible, and that speaks well of the future of education in Burnaby.

Whilst I'm talking about education, Mr. Speaker, we've all got the PTA brief, and let me tell the House now that PTA Day is going to be February 11th, and I say that, because I want the Minister to speak on that day in direct contrast to his efforts in previous years, so he's got the warning now, Mr. Speaker, and we look forward to hearing from him on PTA Day. A couple of the things in the brief, I think, are interesting because they bear out exactly what we told the previous Minister of Education and indeed this one. It goes on about the freeze, it talks about the fact that this situation has not led to a practical and efficient climate to provide methodical planning for the future. Last year, for the first time, the Government of B.C. In its wisdom decreed that no school referenda would be presented in December '69, anywhere in the Province. This decision has left many school boards wondering where classrooms will come from to meet September, 1970 requirements. If there is impending legislation to eliminate the necessity for rate-payer approval for shareable capital progress, the PTA fears appear to be groundless. I don't think that legislation is coming. Construction of new facilities, they go on to say, is of the utmost importance to alleviate serious over-crowding and swing-shift. It's imperative the school boards be permitted to present that referendum to their rate-payers, so that they can proceed with construction according to plan. Now, Mr. Speaker, we've got the same old thing again. The teachers, the PTA, the school children, all complaining about the fiscal

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policies of this Government, and yet the great centralist speaks again and even stops, on this occasion, the referenda from taking place.

Similarly, Mr. Speaker, the universities have also had a few things to say about education in this Province, and here are just a couple of facts that they deduced from some of these figures that are available. I hasten to add that I'm still rather surprised that the Dominion Bureau of Statistics doesn't appear to be able, to make much sense of this Government's figures — they usually empty the columns they print for British Columbia, but here's a couple of instances where it shows we are falling behind in the lead table. In Alberta, the provincial per capita capital grant is going to be over $19. In Toronto, it's going to be over $13. U.B.C. will only be $7 and a few cents. The operating grant in Ontario is $33.66 per capita, in Alberta it's $43.26 per capita, in B.C. it's down to $31.52 and yet we're supposed to have a young population. Proof again, Mr. Speaker, that even the much-wanted educational programme in the universities that the Minister is often talking about, is falling behind in reference and in respect to the lead table of the other provinces.

Mr. Speaker, one of the problems we've got in Surrey, and I think it's a problem that's true in many of the other areas of the lower mainland, is the land assembly, and particularly regional parks development. A regional park development in our area, Mr. Speaker, and I'm sure I'm going to be joined by the member for Langley in this, has probably occasioned more debate and more hostility and bitterness than one could imagine. What has happened, Mr. Speaker, is that the Tynehead Regional Park Land Assembly Programme has effectively frozen the value of homes in the area. There are no funds available for the purchase of these homes to make up the park, therefore, no home-owner is interested in upkeep or improvement in that value-frozen home. Two years have passed, Mr. Speaker, since the problem developed, and as you know the budget that is available for land assembly in the area is the sum total of the mill rate in the region and a grant from the Provincial Government. There simply isn't enough money in the budget to meet the fair price of the properties involved in the park area. Mr. Speaker, I believe it is unfair, and I believe stupid, to jeopardize the excellent programme through this "freeze them out" approach. There has been so much confusion, so many idiotic statements made by both authorities and some of the people involved, that the whole scheme has got off to a bad start and has not led to the suggestion that would see a severe limitation on the size of the park. Now I have attended many meetings of the people involved in that area, Mr. Speaker, and I think that members of this House would agree with me, that if regional parks and this kind of land assembly is such a good idea, and I want to believe it is, and it's so important to the public, and I want to believe it is, then I believe it's important and good enough to be prepared to pay for it, and that's one thing that the Department and the regional district is not doing. I want to ask through you, Mr. Speaker, that the Department place this on its priority list and make sure there are funds available this year to complete the land assembly programme, and to give those people a fair return of their properties and not allow this business of having them frozen out to continue any longer.

Mr. Speaker, in past years I've talked about the cerebral palsy programme, one of the reasons for that is that one of the best and largest cerebral palsy treatment centres is in the Surrey area. This year I'd like to cover the details of some of the inadequacies of the financing and some of the problems they're running into because they simply aren't getting the kind of support they should have from the Department of Health. First of all, let me quote from the Christmas Bulletin of this Association, just one paragraph: "1970 is nearly here and will bring with it new problems and increasing pressures to develop services both for children and adults, and as far as one can see there appears to be little relief in sight for our chronic shortage of funds," and now from a letter that was sent out last year by the then President of the Cerebral Palsy Association of B.C. He says, and he's referring to the support and the help he got from the honourable the Minister of Health Services, he points out that he, the Minister, has advised that the grant for '69-'70 fiscal year was in the amount of $95,000. The grant, Mr. Speaker, is 30 per cent less than they received the previous year. It represents only 19 per cent of the financial requirements for cerebral palsy in this Province. Cerebral palsy, let me add, Mr. Speaker, is a disease the occurrence of which is a known fact and can be budgeted for years and years in advance. He goes on to say that it does not provide for the increase in salaries and other costs, it doesn't provide any contributions towards increased case load, it doesn't provide for new treatment centres in communities like Prince George, Kelowna, Kamloops, Penticton and Nelson, where services are now being developed.

You know, Mr. Speaker, this is a tragedy that the Department of Health would allow this kind of programme to falter the way it does. In '69-'70 the estimated operating costs were $527,000, their revenue was $405,000, their deficit would have been $122,000. This year they're facing a $300,000 deficit. It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that when you see that kind of thing happening in a programme like this you cannot be satisfied, and I expect the Minister of Health to be dealing with that some time during the Session and to unleash some of the funds that have remained unspent from year to year.

Last week, Mr. Speaker, the member for Burnaby North made mention of the plight of deserted wives. Over the past six months I've had the opportunity, as indeed I think the member for Delta has had, of meeting with the newly-formed group in Surrey. They have prepared a brief and I'd like to emphasize a couple of points that, to my personal knowledge, reflect a situation that's gone on far too long. The brief concerns itself with the frustration that's caused by the complication, bureaucracy and the problems in the Family Court and the other related family services. The brief says that, for example, a deserted wife with possibly several small children and no transportation must beg a ride to the Court only to be told that she must take her turn in Family Court to obtain a legal separation, and then, Mr. Speaker, the wait commences. The involved, long, exasperating wait, in a strange atmosphere for a hearing which may come any day, not necessarily that day, maybe a week from now, maybe two weeks from now. In the meantime there is no advice, there is no money, and frequently the deserted wife in these cases is left entirely to herself.

It seems to me that we've got to be able to evolve a different system that deals with this thing rather than to leave it in the cold and sometimes bureaucratic and sometimes unheeding hands of the Family Court and the officials that surround that establishment. It goes on to say that they feel that you will agree, in presenting this brief, that it makes a poor foundation on which to develop the next generation, and of course it's talking about the children

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of such a marriage. We regret very much that such conditions exist in the Province of British Columbia in one of the most enlightened countries of the world. Mr. Speaker, I think we should investigate this further and I intend to bring some more cases to the attention of the Attorney-General and indeed the Minister of Social Welfare, if he's in Estimates, and go into that a little bit further.

Last Session in 1969, Mr. Speaker, I remember how many of the members applauded when the matter of the final solution to Fraser River flooding was talked about, and I stood in my place at that time, Mr. Speaker, and I pointed out that the applause was premature, that nothing was really going on and it would be a long time before anything was done. You know, Mr. Speaker, in 1968 to '69 we spent $502,000 out of a $5,000,000 expropriation. We're going to learn on Friday how much we've spent in the first nine months of this current fiscal year, but I venture to suggest that we've done no better. I don't think I could really say it any better than in the words of the Chairman of our Dyking Commission who wrote to me last month and simply said that things were at a standstill.

I remember how many times we've heard speeches from the Minister of Water Resources telling us what was going on. I remember how many times we've read statements in the newspapers from the Federal Liberals about what they were going to do. But there's the word from a man who really knows it, the Chairman of the Dyking Commission, who says things are at a standstill. That's where we've got today after thousands of words — thousands of words on the Fraser River flood control. The Governments, Mr. Speaker, must stand condemned insofar as they put misleading figures in their Estimates, they talk and they temporarily still the voices of criticism, but I don't think that's good enough. We've heard thousands of words about Fraser River flood control and, as I say, today we're at a standstill.

Lastly, Mr. Speaker, in the catalogue of the shortchanging of Surrey, are the problems of the overpasses in connection with the rail line to Roberts Bank. I simply want to say that the municipal council is still not aware of whether or not this Government has any intention of building overpasses, where they're going to build them and when they're going to build them. Turning to….

AN HON. MEMBER: (a remark, not audible.)

MR. HALL: That's not true. I have a letter this week saying they still don't know, and I'll back my letter against your statement any day of the week, Mr. Minister.

Turning to matters more general, I want to deal with one basic problem that I've observed for some time in our labour legislation and that is, Mr. Speaker, that there's really no basic encouragement given by this legislation or this Government to organizing the unorganized into trade unions. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the reverse is true and witness to that are some of the mysterious reasonings behind the granting of certification in the pulp industry, and I believe those mysterious reasons are only the tip of the iceberg in this whole problem. If the Government believes what it says, Mr. Speaker, and supports the Nemetz report, then it should go the whole way and remove the hindrances and obstacles from our statutes that prevent the growth of the organized work force. Until they do that, Mr. Speaker, until the Government does remove the hindrances and the obstacles in the growth of organized labour, then they have no defence to our charge that they really are anti-labour.

You know, Mr. Speaker, I know of no industrial nor commercial enterprise of any worth that's not benefited from the presence of an organized work force or a bargaining union. Not only do the workers get better pay, working conditions, and security, but profits and productivity invariably do better as well. Now the Minister of Labour knows this as well as I do and the procedures that are necessary for a trade union to organize a new unit or for workers to organize themselves into a bargaining unit are, I think, cumbersome and I think they're needless. The reasons for the legislation are unclear and I believe that the reasons that are there in preventing the workers from organizing into bargaining units and into the organized sector of the work force are clearly the root cause of much of the labour unrest in the Province, and I think, Mr. Speaker, it's time this whole process should be reviewed and the inequalities during the bargaining procedures, during the setting up of new contracts, be eliminated and ended. You know I can think of no greater way to begin the war on poverty, to begin the war on the poverty that exists in over 20 per cent of our population, than to strengthen the hand of the unorganized worker and to help bring to him not only the economic advantages but the dignity of being part of the democratic bargaining system to which the Minister of Labour often pays tribute. Mr. Speaker, many of the remarks I'd like to make on labour would benefit from some answers from the Minister in the best traditions of debate, so I'm going to leave most of that for the Estimates.

I think that just about every member up to now, Mr. Speaker, has raised the question of pollution, and I think it's been very interesting to watch how some of the members have handled the subject and in what spirit and what mood those members have indeed handled it. It's my opinion, Mr. Speaker, on looking at the debate so far on pollution, that the Government has been getting off too lightly. They've been getting off far too lightly, Mr. Speaker, and you know one of the reasons is that for a Government member it's a safe issue to be bold on. They can sprint down to the beach and they can dash into the cold water and they can throw a little water of criticism up, then they can sprint all the way back to safety, and that's what they've been doing, that's what they've been doing. I don't think anybody is fooling anybody in this debate. As the Provincial Secretary would say, we know what the score is. You know the score really is this, Mr. Speaker, that the Government was warned years ago by members of this party and by authorities outside of this Legislature what would happen. Years ago there was lots of evidence, and years ago there was lots of criticism, but the Government, through its chief apologist, the Minister responsible for pollution, the member for Fort George, has tried to put up a smoke screen to cover the Government's failure. I have seen him time and time again, Mr. Speaker, stand up and say, "If only somebody had told me, if only the public had been this aware before, where were the critics years ago?" That's the kind of smoke screen we've seen him putting up on television, but he was told and he was made aware.

Years ago, Mr. Speaker, this Minister was a member of the Council of Resource Ministers. Is he telling us that it was never discussed there? Did he ever go through the airport — in the old Vancouver Airport — and see the photographic diagram on the wall that predicted accurately what was happening with air pollution and smog? That was thirteen years ago. He's voted down amendment after amendment on pollution in this House and he's been a willing party to the

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shell game of responsibility for years, and he's not going to get away with the kind of snow job he's been doing on television recently.

You know, all of us could make a speech like the member for North Vancouver yesterday. It was a good speech and it was adequately researched. It contained a catalogue of quotations from the ecologists, from the environmental scientists, letters from school children — it was a good speech. We've all got letters on the current problems. We've all got letters of complaint about the current applications for discharging this, discharging that. We've got letters. I think the only person who hasn't got letters is the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources. We've got letters from Campbell River, we've got letters from Half Moon Bay, from the Okanagan and all over the Province from people who are complaining about what's going on, and that debate can go on and on forever. We can keep on quoting the letters from the kids and the letters from the environmental scientists, but we've really got to look at what the Government's doing, and we've got to look at the record of the Government and what it has done in the past and what it intends to do in the future on pollution.

I've got just six or seven points here that I think will bring this thing back into focus. First of all, Mr. Speaker, there's been one prosecution in all the years they've been over there, and that was a laundry in Victoria. Secondly, they've allowed pulp mills to contravene their permits and to pollute the Fraser, as we showed in the last Session. They allowed Panco Poultry in my own riding to operate for over a year without a licence and who do we see there again but the member for Vancouver East's friend, Mr. Fouks, Q.C., again. We've seen the farce perpetuated in the months of June and July and August of this year about the Minister of Health's air control standards. In my own area, Mr. Speaker, they've passed a by-law that the Minister wanted them to do and they don't even have the equipment to measure that Ringleman chart which the Minister clutches so firmly. It's an absolute farce. I was up in Port Alice in the member's riding that he mentioned over there, and I've seen the incredible story develop about the Pollution Control Board in Utah Mine, and if you were at that meeting, Mr. Speaker, in Port Alice, a meeting which had over 200 people there, a meeting which I suggest to you couldn't have taken place in that company town 15 years ago.

AN HON. MEMBER: Where was the Minister?

MR. HALL: …It's not that long ago, Mr. Speaker, since a member of this House wasn't allowed into Port Alice. I'm talking about Colin Cameron. That meeting could not have taken place 15 years ago. I doubt very much whether the TV. would have been allowed in there ten years ago. That meeting was the event, Mr. Speaker, when 60 per cent of the voters of Port Alice turned out to a Pollution Control Board hearing on pollution, and what developed at that meeting was, I think, tragic.

In Port Alice just before the Session, Mr. Speaker, it became evident when the officials of Utah Mine were asked questions, that the Pollution Control Board hadn't asked them to do a thing. Every suggestion that came forward — and I want to pay tribute in one way to the fact that the people from Utah Mines were there and showed us who was really the villain of the piece. They said they'd not heard from the Pollution Control Board, that they didn't know whether they wanted studies done or not. Mr. Speaker, that farce of the Pollution Control Board's attitude over two years in the development of this permit is, I think, a condemnation and the fifth point that I've got down here.

Mr. Speaker, the sixth point is oil drilling in the Straits. The Minister of Municipal Affairs says no, the Minister of Mines says yes, and the Minister of Education says let's go in sideways. You know it's comical. If it wasn't so serious it would be hilarious. They sound like General Custer's lieutenants discussing imminent victory. It's pathetic to listen to each one of the Ministers as they move the shell around talking about drilling in the Straits of Georgia. The seventh point, Mr. Speaker, is that the Pollution Control Board itself is still not independent, it's still civil service dominated, it still has no budget, it still has no staff, and is still doing no research. The next, Mr. Speaker, in the story of this Government's history on pollution is the continued story of missed chances and opportunities to write in, by regulation, environmental controls when they award licences, when they award permits, when they award cutting rights, when they award concessions, when they award timber and pulp sales, when they give land leases, when they make land sales and when they make land easements. There are opportunities after opportunities after opportunities where the Government could write in simply by regulation some simple, decent, hard-nosed environmental standards, environmental controls, and start this war against pollution that they've talked about for years.

The last point on this pollution story, Mr. Speaker, is the complete failure of the Government to look at the problem as an integral part of the social cost accounting process that should be the base of our industrial development programme. Mr. Speaker, the presence of "B.C. For Sale" signs south of the line show anything better than I can what this Government has allowed to happen. As long as that kind of thing takes place, as long as people in the private sector do believe, and they obviously believe it's so, that this Province is for sale, then of course we can't expect the Government to come up with sensible social cost accounting processes which should be the basis of municipal development.

Mr. Speaker, there are two items of legislation that I want to deal with. One is the concern for road safety. For three Sessions now I have tried to persuade the Attorney-General and the Department of Commercial Transport to copy some of the excellent legislation that is present in the States on commercial transport. I'm going to try that again, Mr. Speaker, although I suspect that the Government won't act until the problem is so bad that the Attorney-General will have to do something. First of all, I want to send him a report which shows what is happening in the field of trucks and trailer-transports these days, a report here which covers not quite a three-year period with filmed observations. Out of these 3,547 observations and radar reports it shows, for instance, that there were 51 cases of trucks driving on the wrong side of the road, not stopping at railroad crossings, so on and so forth. I would like to send that over to the Attorney-General for his examination and I would like to deal with a brief that has been presented by one of my constituents in regard to improvement in regulations governing commercial vehicles and trucks.

Mr. Speaker, the brief deals with the kind of changes in regulations which would be helpful and would start the programme and see the beginnings of the kind of legislation the States below us enjoy. It deals with inspection of equipment, with brake systems, with tire maintenance, and I want to add, aside, that I am by no means convinced that the

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tire standards that we have in this Province are adequate. But in particular it deals with the question of commercial vehicle inspection stations to be staffed by people with special training in commercial vehicle equipment and that they should be integrated into the expanding inspection station programme. Mr. Speaker, if we built such commercial vehicle inspections north of the west bound Port Mann scales on 401, we'd catch, I think, a good 60 to 70 per cent of the traffic of the Province. I want to recommend this brief to the Attorney-General and to the Department of Commercial Transport and I hope to be able, if they need any further information, to be able to give it to them.

The other point I wanted to raise on legislation, Mr. Speaker, was the consumer protection and the need for strengthening that legislation. For some years now we've tried to strengthen our consumer protection laws, we've attempted without success on this side of the House to introduce packaging laws, laws that would stop gimmicks and misleading advertising, and I'm sure that we are going to continue to press for that kind of legislation. However, I do feel that this kind of legislation would and should go hand in hand with a provincial Labeling Act so that as well as providing some protection against misleading packaging and the description on the outside of the box, we could ensure that the customer and the consumer is told exactly what's inside the package. I believe this is particularly relevant in the field of textiles, non-prescription drugs and indeed in the food industry, and we've seen a perfect example of progressive, thoughtful legislation to all those in the States, and they have a first-class Labeling Act. I feel that we could make a start here, Mr. Speaker, with a Labeling Act for B.C. manufacturers which, together with packaging legislation, would augment the present consumer protection legislation we passed in the last Parliament.

Mr. Speaker, during the past year one of the disturbing trends that I have noted for some time and including the election campaign, and I am sure other people will have noticed it, is the growing number of people, not all young people, Mr. Speaker, who believe and think that parliament is becoming irrelevant, and I think you'll agree with me, Mr. Speaker, that many observers have commented on this with some misgivings. We've instances, I am sure many of us have been through these kind of instances, where we've been faced with statements at meetings, at youth groups, and so on, that strengthen this feeling that an ever-growing number of people are considering that the parliamentary system is becoming irrelevant. You may remember, Mr. Speaker, that during the debate two years ago on marijuana I asked the House to consider the relevance of 55 middle-aged legislators solemnly discussing the proposed Act whilst at the same time a 13-year old girl was on television talking about L.S.D. trips.

Mr. Speaker, I feel that the whole question of relevance, the question of parliament, and the question of the measure of responsiveness and responsibility to our problems could be the greatest issue that is facing us today. I think, Mr. Speaker, that we've got a great many problems…. I wonder if the member would wait for his turn. Mr. Speaker, I repeat that the question of relevance, the question of parliament, the question of the measure of responsiveness and responsibility to our problems is the greatest issue that is facing us today. Unfortunately this Government appears to be badly equipped to handle the problem. I want to express the concern of myself and my party about this problem, and I want to say to the House and to warn the House that democracy on this continent was never so dangerously poised. Our systems of checks and balances are based on a rational tradition, and I think it is fair to say, Mr. Speaker, that the forces that may and could appear to play a role in the future could be described as neither rational nor traditional.

Mr. Speaker, you know when the wishes of the school taxpayers that I talked about, when the desires of the farmers for flood control are unanswered, when the crises that occur from time to time take place, when nothing is done for the underprivileged of the community, I think that we are adding to the numbers of people who have already made up their minds that parliament and politicians and the democratic system is irrelevant.

You know, Mr. Speaker, I am one who believes that dogma and manifestos, objectives, and agendas for new generations are all dead, they're all dead. All the paper war of the political parties is, in my view, Mr. Speaker, irrelevant. The only dogma that I am prepared to accept is that which deals with making democratic governments work. I want to ensure that the dead weight of bureaucracy is lifted, is reduced and we make democratic all the quasi-judicial boards that proliferate around the Province, I want to see them work. I believe that if we don't do that, that the numbers who believe that the system is becoming irrelevant will grow even more. I believe that we have to have the open file system. I believe we have to have responsiveness and responsibility in government. The rest, Mr. Speaker, will have to go to the essential nature of this Government in power and I add that I don't believe that this Government has got it.

Nowhere have we seen this better than in the Crown corporations, and in seconding this motion that is before us, it is obvious to me that the degree of responsiveness and the degree of responsibility of the Government in its instructions and advice to B.C. Hydro has been purely political. Group after group after group have protested the increase. I received a letter just a couple of days ago from the Surrey Federation of Ratepayers, and this is exactly the same kind of resolution that was passed by the Surrey Municipal Council, by many trade unions in the Province, all protesting the increase. The letter says, Mr. Speaker, quite simply, that by unanimous vote they condemned the present unequal power rates charged the users of electric power. Much criticism was directed at B.C. Hydro for the sale of cheap power to the State of Washington whose residents enjoy rates much below that paid by power users in this area. The simple facts are, Mr. Speaker, that we are going to have the highest domestic power rates in the country. Now I'm used to the boasting of the Government about the best and biggest and the finest, but this is one boast that I am sure they have got to be ashamed of. Let's look at some of the figures, and I think they were given to the House some while ago, but if we took at what happens in Vancouver where we're likely to pay over $17 for a thousand kilowatts compared to $16 in Regina, $12 in Calgary….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. I would draw the member's attention to Motion No. 3 on the Order Paper, which deals with the capital financing and rate structure of British Columbia Hydro. As long as that motion is on the Order Paper it is not proper to discuss that motion.

MR. HALL: Well, Mr. Speaker, in seconding this motion, I want to say that the boasting of the Government is going to fail on this particular point. We've got the resources, Mr. Speaker, we've got the rivers and the dams, we've got a Premier who boasted that the rates would go down and

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down, and we've got Dr. Shrum who says they are going up and up, and thatos why, Mr. Speaker, I take pleasure in seconding the amendment.

(Due to taping difficulties, or the member's microphone being turned off, nothing is recorded at this point.)

MR. JOHN D. TISDALLE (Saanich and the Islands): I wish I was prepared to or could be allowed the privilege of going ahead, Mr. Speaker, but I want to ask your clarification on your ruling just a moment ago on Resolution No. 3. I understand that that is a motion to refer only and if it is, then it shouldn't reflect on my ability to debate any further…that was only the amendment.

MR. BARRETT: The motion as presented is in order. Your reference to Motion No. 3, I bring to your attention, is a motion dealing with establishing a committee, and as a result the amendment is wide open to complete discussion.

MR. GORDON H. DOWDING (Burnaby-Edmonds): You can't bar debate in the Throne Speech. Resolution No. 3 can't bar debate, or people would put resolutions on to stop debate.

(Debate not being recorded at this point.)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: What is your point of order?

MR. DOWDING: That any member of this House could stop all debates in the House simply by putting motions on the Order Paper to deal with every subject in the Throne Debate. Yes, that's what the Speaker will be saying, so that all you have to do to curtail all debate on the Throne Speech is put a series of motions on the Order Paper, but that is not what the Chair has ruled in this House. Time after time it has ruled that the debate on the Throne Speech cannot be curtailed by any motions that are put on by members of the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are now debating an amendment and I have made my ruling. The member for Saanich and the Islands.

MR. TISDALLE: Mr. Speaker, I listened to this amendment, and I even went up to read it, but I would suggest in the future if we have time, that a quick reprint of these amendments be brought in for the convenience of all of us that we might speak sometimes by word to them, it is quite important to know their wording.

But I see this amendment as a charge not only against the Government and a want of confidence, but it is an insinuation of immorality which the speakers previously carried on all the way through, and the insinuation through this amendment tonight reminds me of former previous accusations outside of this House, and in here too, when people at the head of Hydro were told that they didn't have the best interest of the people at heart, and that they could not possibly be honest and truthful in their deliberations because they had formerly served another corporation. I think that if that is the purpose of this amendment, to castigate and to reflect on the ability of people because the Socialists have always felt that they only can be the authority when it comes to running the apparatus of government, I for one see in this amendment an attempt to smear every good civil servant in this Province. It was written well and spoken well in the previous speech regarding Hydro, and everyone stands in jeopardy when the Opposition takes such action against a civil servant or against an organization or an arm of government and….

MR. BARRETT: You're incredible.

MR. TISDALLE: …the incredibility comes from the Opposition that they challenge every person by person in the operation of any…

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would point out to the member that we are dealing with Government power policy and excluding capital financing and rate structure.

MR. TISDALLE: I realize, I realize, but power policy that is operated by people is what concerns me, and the insinuation, intimidation, that is provoked against people because…

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The member will have his opportunity in the Throne Speech to deal with what was dealt with in the Throne Speech. We are now dealing strictly with the amendment and would the member stick to it.

MR. TISDALLE: I understand that very carefully, but it's very difficult to deal with a policy of an amendment, that is directed towards individuals and the undermining of Government operations by attacking people, and that's what this amendment is intended to do.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker. I'm sorry I have to participate in this debate, but this debate is made necessary because of the occurrences, decisions, mistakes, incompetent policies that were adopted by those that were charged with the responsibility of governing this Province. The great power debate in the Province of British Columbia started in 1955 when the then Minister of Lands and Forests made what was called the Kaiser Dam deal.

AN HON. MEMBER: What a give-away.

MR. STRACHAN: The Premier has said that that was a better deal than the Columbia River, and in view of what we are now beginning to find out, the Premier might, for once in his life, have been absolutely right in that statement. The Kaiser Dam deal was going to give 80 per cent of the down-stream benefits to the United States, and the Premier has said that was a better deal than the one he finally made with them on the Columbia. I'm not happy because what has happened to British Columbia out of the power policies that this Government has forced on the people year by year. For a Province like British Columbia finds itself paying high, the small business-man, that you cry about, and the domestic user, the people, is paying higher electricity rates than any other province in Canada except the Maritimes. Where has the financial genius gone? Where has the financial genius gone? The chair is empty, on this day of reckoning, on this day of reckoning, after all these- years. We find that in 1963 the Premier promised that rates would be cut $5,000,000 a

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year for a decade. He says, "I know it is almost unbelievable but it is easily within our grasp." It's easily within our grasp. What happened to his grasp? Where is the $5,000,000 per year reduction? 1963 was election year….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I must remind the member that Resolution No. 3 deals with capital financing and rate structure.

MR. STRACHAN: I'm talking about what the Premier promised the voters in 1963 — how he misled the voters of this Province on his power policy and what it would do in British Columbia. He stands exposed and naked before the people of this Province for having misled them, for having deceived them for having destroyed the authority….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. Will the member for Cowichan-Malahat be seated….

HON. L.R. PETERSON (Attorney-General): I'd ask the member to withdraw his statement that the Premier deliberately deceived the people of the Province.

MR. STRACHAN: I did not say he deliberately deceived us…. Oh, if Mr. Attorney-General doesn't know the rules of this House, I'll withdraw. Sit down.

MR. PETERSON: You know the rules.

MR. STRACHAN: Dr. Shrum predicted in 1965 that by 1970 British Columbia would have gained this cheapest domestic electricity thanks to the power policies of this Government. This is what he said. Looking back, it is now obvious, Mr. Chairman, that the issue was never clearly and fully presented to the people of this Province. I have a letter, too, from the North Oyster Ratepayers, where they're complaining because their monthly power rates are going to be between $30 and $40 per month. What does the Premier say? It's obvious that first of all Dr. Shrum made it very clear that politics were involved in the decision to reduce the rates. Shrum, Chairman of the Crown Authority, said he was against the rate reductions in '62, '63, and '64, but the Premier said it was his policy to go on and reduce the rates….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am just asking the member for Cowichan-Malahat for the second time to cease debating power rates. He knows the rules of this House.

MR. D. BARRETT: It's not the rule of the House.

MR. STRACHAN: It's a rule that's just been made up, and from now on we are a small minority and they can make up their rules, because they've got the count to back them up…that's what we're faced with…that's what we're faced with, we may as well face up to it right in the first Session of the Legislature. That's why we didn't support the Speaker of the House. That's why we didn't support the Deputy Speaker of the House, because we are fed up with rules being made as they go along. We're fed up with it. The Premier said….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Dewdney — what is your point?

MR. G. MUSSALLEM: …point of order. I'm sick and tired of hearing….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order Please!

MR. MUSSALLEM: My point of order is that truth must prevail.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would just ask all members to give other members the same respect that they themselves ask. Will the member for Cowichan-Malahat please be seated. I recognize the member for Dewdney.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Truth must prevail in this House, and this is a point of order. A big majority is not a big majority if the majority is only one. Why keep yelling about a big majority?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The rules of the House have been adopted in British Columbia, they are here to be observed, and they apply to all members equally. Member for Cowichan-Malahat proceed.

MR. STRACHAN: Mr. Speaker, on July 15th, the Premier of this Province said that the Peace and the Columbia are not going to cost the taxpayers a single nickel. In Prince George, speaking to the Associated Boards of Trade in 1961, the Premier said by selling the surplus Columbia power at five mills, here's what we can do. We can build High Arrow, we can build Duncan, we can build Mica Creek and other points in B.C. to produce 2,000,000 horsepower — all at no cost to Canada — that, my friends, is the real meaning of cheap power, because nothing is cheaper than something that is free.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who said that?

MR. STRACHAN: The Premier of this Province said nothing is cheaper than something that is free. Mr. Speaker, this financial genius surely knows by this time that there is nothing for nothing. Everything has to be paid for, and we are now paying for the political adventures of that party, and the consumers of this Province.

Mr. Speaker, there was a recent article which pointed out that the Government had never made available to the House, the complete information, and when the member from Surrey was speaking, he was expressing worry over the loss of faith in the parliamentary system that many of the young people are having. In this Province, Mr. Speaker, we are not allowed to look behind the financial statements that are tabled in this House with regard to the operations of Crown corporations, and because of that limitation that's placed on the Opposition, it's impossible to get the true financial picture about the operations of the Crown corporations and that's why the people were misled and that's why they were able to be misled.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is now debating Motion No. 3 in its entirety and I would ask him to desist.

MR. STRACHAN: I am not debating it…I am debating the frightful policies of this Government and the point to which it has taken the Province of British Columbia and because of them we now face a power increase. Mr. Speaker, but what worries me as much as anything else, as much as anything else, is the fact that in adopting the power policies

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they did, they corraled the capital market and they sacrificed the school needs, the hospital needs, the municipal needs of the people of this Province, because of their bungling and incompetent power policies. Had the people voted for the C.C.F. in 1960 they would have had their cheap power and they would have had their schools and their hospitals and their municipal health. Mr. Speaker, here is a brief that I presented to the B.C. Energy Board in 1959 in which I asked for, on behalf of my party, I laid out a request for a rational power development in British Columbia that would meet our future needs and still provide us with the lowest possible cost power. In that brief, I also said what would happen if the Government proceeded with its then outlined power policy, and I said in simple language it will mean that the cost to the consumer might remain relatively stable until approximately 1970, and at that point the consumer will be faced with an abrupt increase to approximately 10 mills per kilowatt hour, which rate will never level off nor be reduced. I said that in 1959, because it was already evident then, the costs that your power policies were going to lead you to.

The Premier said, when he was asked on January 20th of this year about the power situation in this Province, he said the final decision must be made by the people's duly elected representatives. The final decision must be made by the people's duly elected representatives. This amendment today gives you a chance to stand up and be counted, whether you are going to endorse the policies that have led us to this havoc in our educational system, that have left us short of hospitals, that have left our municipalities in need, and saddled us with the highest-priced power in Canada, and that's why I'm supporting this amendment. Now is your opportunity, as members of this Legislature. If you don't vote for this motion, you're voting for an increase in power rates and you are voting for the kind of policies that have caused us so many problems in the past.

On the motion of Mr. Dowding, the debate was adjourned to the next sitting of the House.

The House adjourned at 5:58 p.m.

The House met at 6:05 p.m.

THRONE DEBATE

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Member for Burnaby-Edmonds on the amendment.

MR. G.H. DOWDING: Mr. Speaker, it is a very short supper, but I enjoyed it, and I wanted to say that this particular motion is one that, in effect, is necessary if we are going to have the members of the Government having their supper tonight, and that supper I think….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think the matter of suppers is not a matter of amendment.

MR. DOWDING: It should be crow for supper, I think for them, because for many years now, their election advertising, and their statements in this House have indicated the wisdom of their power policy, and promised and held out to the people of British Columbia that through the wisdom of their power policy there would be increasingly reduced rates of power. Now we find, ten years later — yes, on those promises, yes — but after the election of 1969 what happened then? Where are the power reductions? Where are the statements being made before the election about the bleak future for electric power rates in British Columbia under the guidance of this Government? Not a word was said, certainly not by Dr. Shrum, certainly not by this Government in the electioneering around the Province. They still talked about the validity of their policies on power. They still held out the same hopes and promises to people on which they gained their election. But at this late stage in the Throne Speech we find that they are beginning to pave the way for the revelation that their power development policies not only will not lead to lower cost power, but indeed have starved most of the other services of the Government and particularly in the field of Education and in the field of hospital construction. That is why this motion is before the House, because the revelations included in the Throne Speech make it clear that this Government is lost, completely incompetent in the field of power development. But the worst factor of it all, Mr. Speaker, is that they carved this policy in rock, they have already committed this Province, to a course that cannot be altered at this late date, and it means that ten years after the onset of this policy, the final proofs of it are now becoming clear to the people of British Columbia.

I want to point out that before the Government embarked upon the two-river policy, they got a report from the B.C. Energy Board. There was one member of that Board who took a lot of trouble investigating the future of power in British Columbia, and that was Dr. Angus, a very learned man, a very competent man, and the one amongst them that posed a warning that this Government ignored. When that report was filed by the Energy Board in 1961, in this Legislature, before this Government had committed itself to any policy, Dr. Angus stated that it would be embarrassing for himself, if he were to commit himself to a public expression of opinion on this subject that was before the Energy Board, because he, as you know, at that time was Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission, and he knew a great deal about power and the cost of power. He knew a great deal about the B.C. Electric since he had supervised its rates and its structures as a public watchdog, and Dr. Angus had this to say, "The evidence before the Energy Board is, in my opinion, inadequate to support an opinion on this character." He is referring to the Energy Board's majority report.

It is based on arbitrary percentage figures representing the interest on Government guaranteed bonds in the case of public power and its supposed fair rate of return in the case of investoral power, these are not strictly comparable figures. He pointed out some of the factors that both the Energy Board and this Government ignored and that speech of his and those remarks of his, contained in the minority report, were not heeded by this Government. They proceeded on the basis of their Columbia Treaty, although they were warned about that. They took a second-best deal on that. They talked about what the power was going to cost. They got no guarantees from the Federal Government when the Treaty was signed, although they kept insisting they wanted guarantees. They talked about four-mill power on the Peace, three-mill power on the Columbia, and suddenly we find that all their daydreams have been shattered in the year 1970….

AN HON. MEMBER: …(An undecipherable remark)

MR. DOWDING: …and yes, you never listened, and it's

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too bad you didn't listen, because electric light bills are going up because you didn't listen.

I remember in the August Session in 1961, you were warned by the Liberal member, then Mr. MacFarlane, who is now a Judge, and he went over some of the costs involved, and some of the problems of interest in inflation, and you know what the Premier said, Mr. Speaker? "Don't you think we know that. Don't you think we know that!" Well, he apparently didn't. Promises made by the Premier up until this year, all over the country, that we would have ten years of succeeding reductions in the cost of power to the public have not been borne out, and if the excuse is that they didn't know what was going to happen when those promises were made, then one can only refer to the warnings that were given to them right from the beginning and right through.

One of the things that I think should have been heeded by this Government, was the long-term assessment by the economists of the continuing inflationary spiral in Canada and the United States. As a matter of fact, the strange thing is the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources, in 1961, actually pointed this out to the Government, and he was one of the Ministers in charge of signing the Treaty. He was one of the Ministers in charge of B.C. Hydro and he, along with his colleagues who sit on that bench, were several of them directors of B.C. Hydro when it was taken over in 1961. Knowing this, it is incredible either that they did not take into account when they were obtaining the American money for the construction of the Columbia, or that they did not calculate what was involved, before they made statements to the public that they could have continuing reductions in power rates year after year for the next ten years, and this is where they had to face the truth — one or the other. Either they misled the public, knowing what they were doing or, alternatively, they misled themselves in developing a power policy that included the two rivers constructed at the same time, partly with American money, and what the Opposition told them time after time was a bad deal for the people of British Columbia, because it would lead to higher rates. You have heard the brief of the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Cowichan-Malahat, which he submitted to the B.C. Energy Board in 1959. If that warning wasn't clear and you didn't accept it, you have no one to blame but yourselves and you'll accept the parliamentary responsibility for your policies that have gone wrong.

Now there are a lot of reasons why those power rates are going to go up, one of them is the folly of the administration, and the incompetence and the inefficiency in some areas of the power development policy. To give you a little example of the kind of blundering that goes on with this Government — and remember that the fiscal agent of B.C. Hydro sits in this House — can you conceive of anyone starting to construct a dam and committing the Government to over $100,000,000 in expenditure, and actually doing part of the work before they even knew the dam was even feasible? That happened, my friends, in this Province, on the Mica Creek dam. The report, which was confidential apparently, the report that was discussed last March, a year ago, makes it absolutely clear that Caseco Consultants had been trying for almost a year to get the okay from B.C. Hydro to do the examinations into the dam site that would make it possible to know whether the dam was feasible, and they couldn't get the approval from B.C. Hydro. Several of the directors of B.C. Hydro sit in this House, and here they were committed to this vast expenditure with a green light, without even knowing whether it should be amber.

Now we have had a report since that time that says that they must expend more millions of dollars to make sure that the dam itself at Mica Creek is safe, and the report that was handed down, a very sparse report, last October, I have the report here….

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, now you say it has nothing to do with safety?

MR. DOWDING: It certainly has everything to do with the wastefulness and the extravagance, and the lack of planning, that we say is the reason why we have no confidence in this Government's power development policy, nor will the people when they see their rate bills next month, or whenever the rates go up.

But when I look at that report, by the Columbia Board of Review, dated November 24th of last Year, they don't say how much it's going to cost to increase the height of the dam and to widen it to prevent any possibility of any slippage from water caused by falls in the reservoir area. But in March, the experts looking at it in the secret report, make it very clear that it could cost up to $12,000,000 more to improve the dam to the point where they can feel that it is safe. There's another $12,000,000. If the people of British Columbia want to know why their rates are going up — explain that kind of inefficiency in planning.

You could go into some of the other things that the Government has been responsible for in increasing the cost of power in this Province. The kind of folly that exists in setting up the kind of a dam they did at High Arrow, against the warnings of the Opposition, against the warning of McNaughton, and in this House hearing the Minister say that it was necessary for the Americans to have this. After they got the money from the Americans, the Premier of this Province telling us that we now had enough money that it wouldn't cost us one cent to build the Columbia dam. Then he goes to Ottawa after that, and says it is going to cost another $100,000,000 above what they got from the Americans. Later on, he goes back and he tells us it's going to cost us a little more money, and he blames this on things like the Federal sales tax. But, Mr. Speaker, before the Columbia Treaty was approved by this Government they knew the sales tax was going up — they made no provisions for it. They did not take it into account.

This is the sort of blundering that has led to the stage where the consumers of British Columbia are going to have to pay, and pay heavily, for the policies of this Government on power. In fact right now I believe a claim is going on that could cost the Government another $30,000,000 on the construction of the Peace River, over contracts that are being contested at the present time. How do these things happen? Well, the Government set up an organization that is supposed to do the hiring. After the work was being done the contractors say, "Well, we didn't hire these people, the Government did — B.C. Hydro did." They set up the agency to do it, and they left themselves wide open for another increased liability of around $30,000,000. Now you keep adding these, never mind about the normal rate of inflation and the high cost of money, keep adding these things up, year after year, it becomes a pretty disastrous thing to the hopes of people that we would have economical power in British Columbia for many years to come. I suggest that the chickens are coming home to roost, that people are beginning to realize that what the Premier told them was certainly

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wrong, that the promises he held out to them he cannot achieve and that, unfortunately, the commitments that had been made cannot be in any way altered. You can't change the Columbia Treaty and the terms of the Columbia Treaty. It could have been a better deal.

I want to point out another blunder. When the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources was wheeling and dealing with the Americans on the Columbia, he came back and told us this about the negotiations and what a highpowered team they had in all the computers, and how well they were doing, and how they knew how to play chess with the Americans, and even brought a pen back that he used to sign something….

AN HON. MEMBER: At least he got something out of the deal.

MR. DOWDING: …Yeah, he got that out of the deal, a pen — they ought to enshrine that one. But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Speaker, one thing the Americans didn't tell them. That with the expenditure they were getting for up-stream storage, they also had a secret plan, and the secret plan was a good one. They would convert the main dam below the border at Grand Coulee into 9,000,000 kilowatts of energy for peaking purposes and add generators to it and use it for stand-by power, and they announced this a long time after the deal had been consummated and signed, and if these Ministers had known that, they could have held out for a great deal more money that would have avoided the rates going up today in British Columbia, if they had known that. The water storage alone was worth the money. What did we do as well? We gave the Americans the right to back up their water. We gave that away. We took $64,000,000 that was supposed to be put in a trust fund and the interest used and that was in payment for the flood control. Now what happened to that money? Spent it.

AN HON. MEMBER: They changed their mind on it.

MR. DOWDING: Oh yeah, they changed their mind. Why did they change their mind? They changed their mind because everything was going sour on the power deal, and I suggest that some of these things together explain why this Government is forced to swallow the very unpalatable pill that they themselves manufactured nine years ago. It's taken nine years to prove out whether their boasts were right, or whether it was empty wind. We now find their boasting really was not based on fact, not based on any efficiency in the development of their plans, and that the incompetence they showed is the reason we have no confidence in the Government and the announcements in regard to power in the Speech from the Throne. I urge you to support the motion.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Hon. First Member for Vancouver Centre.

MR. H.P. CAPOZZI: Mr. Speaker, we are hearing again this afternoon, and this evening, one of the perfect examples of comparisons of policies, and we are dealing today with the policy of power in the Province of British Columbia. Now we have heard over the past hour and a half a discussion on the general policies which have led to the development of power in the Province of British Columbia. Let us examine that policy in relationship to the vacuum provided by the policies on power as suggested by that party. If we had followed the dictates of that group over the past years, we might have had cheaper power, if we had any power at all. What we would be dealing with is not a question of power, but of grey-outs and brown-outs if not black-outs, and the indication of how their policy is working is the same way that the people examined them in the past election, examined their past policies.

Ask them what was their past policy on power, what did they recommend in the development of the North or the development of the eastern part of this Province. They were opposed, and now they sit in the great wisdom of the front row, they sit there in the front row to which they have been elevated by the loss of members, and put forth in this great platitude that they would have made a better deal if they had known what they know now. Where were they then? They wouldn't have made any deal.

We wouldn't be dealing with the power that is presently opening up industry in the North, we wouldn't be dealing now with the power that is now coming downstream, we wouldn't be dealing with the benefits that we will be accepting.

Mr. Speaker, it is going to cost us more money, it is going to cost us more money, the loaf of bread is going to cost us more money, but let us relate that loaf of bread and the cost of power, Mr. Speaker, with the salaries of the people in the Province of British Columbia that have been developed by that power. Let's relate the percentage of the same kilowatt power to the average salary earned by a working man in the Province of Manitoba with an N.D.P. Government or in the Province of Saskatchewan that went through an N.D.P. Government and finally got rid of them.

We are dealing, Mr. Speaker, with the question of at what stage do you begin the development of power in your Province, and it started with those policies which were put forward by this Government at a time when they said it couldn't be done, at a time when the Federal Government said it couldn't be done, at a time when the members of the Opposition said it couldn't be done.

If this House had listened to the people across the way at this stage we wouldn't be arguing about an increase in price for the cost of power. We would, as my friend just said, we would be using candle-power, which is extremely cheap, with the type of power — this candle-power policy — that we would have had with the N.D.P., because it follows the same general programme wherever they go. It is the knowledge that you have today that makes you make the better deals of the past — the same knowledge that would have let the good member from Coquitlam write a better deal on the coal, or sold it 25 years ago, or established the patterns that he would have with all the great knowledge that he now has when he sits in that great seat of wisdom.

AN HON. MEMBER: 20-20 hindsight.

MR. CAPOZZI: We have here the mention today of the great statement by the member who just spoke, in which he said that "now our chickens are coming home to roost."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. CAPOZZI: Mr. Speaker, our chickens are coming home to roost, and when they come home they will happen to lay our golden eggs, because this is the power that we need to develop the rest of our Province, and if we are debating at

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this stage on the power policies as compared to the vacuum policies, then I'll say let them be sour on power because we believe that this is the only policy that could have given us the power which we need today.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable First Member for Point Grey.

MR. P.L. McGEER: Well, that was high vacuum, Mr. Speaker. You know, you can always tell when an issue has touched the nerve end with the Premier because the House starts to sit at weird hours. But I think at the Premier's age that we should try as a House to keep it at regular hours.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please.

MR. McGEER: We're quite prepared to sit all night and discuss this or pollution or anything but we're only thinking of you, Mr. Premier, in advising regular hours because it gets a little more difficult as the years go by, and we understand this, to take the unusual hours that this House is so famous for.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Can we deal with the amendment?

MR. McGEER: I'd like to come right to that, Mr. Speaker, and I don't wish to deal with the rate structure and the capital financing of the B.C. Hydro at this time, except to say that if the Government is as proud of its policies as it said at election time and during the Budget Debate, then of course it would wish to call a motion on the Order Paper and formulate that committee so it would be able to show off to the Legislature and to the people of British Columbia.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are dealing with the Amendment and not with the motion on the Order Paper.

MR. McGEER: But Mr. Speaker, no, I'm not dealing with the motion on the Order Paper.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well I'd ask the member not to.

MR. McGEER: Fine, that's what I said, I'm not going to deal with it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: You can't do in a backhand way what you're not permitted to do directly.

MR. McGEER: But I want to deal with it. Right, Mr. Speaker, I quite accept that, and I'm doing my best to cooperate here, but I would like to deal with the capital financing and the rate structure of Calgary Power in the province right next door to our own, because this has nothing to do with the B.C. Hydro, nothing to do at all, but it is a fact that Calgary Power….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The Chair would have to rule that this is not permissible in this debate, because if you were considering rates in committee you would naturally consider comparisons as well, and I don't see any restriction in the motion to say that that would not be the case.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, with due respect, sir, I think that we were all trying to….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The member for Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. R.M. STRACHAN: I'm just asking when you're going to rule the whole thing out of order because policies would cause the raise.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Cowichan-Malahat knows the rules as well as any member in this House.

MR. STRACHAN: I know the rules, that's why I'm objecting to the ruling.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, I would ask the member not to abuse the rules then. The member for Point Grey.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, would it be out of order

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I took the necessary action then, and don't abuse the Chair.

MR. McGEER: I'm sure it wouldn't be out of order. I won't discuss the capital financing then and the rate structure of Calgary Power, in accordance with your direction, but I will say that the load growth of Calgary Power has been more rapid than B.C. Hydro. They pay taxes. There is no discussion in the Alberta Legislature about proposed rate increases for Calgary Power….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would ask the member not to deal with rate structure or capital financing. He knows his own motion on the Order Paper.

MR. McGEER: That's right, it's a very good motion too.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Please adhere to the rules of the House or else take your seat. Order please.

MR. McGEER: Could you keep order Mr. Speaker, please, thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm trying to, including the member for Point Grey.

MR. McGEER: Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm sure that if we pass by the Calgary Power and the unfortunate comparisons here with B.C. Hydro….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm asking the member to cease trying to do in a backhanded way what he is not permitted to do directly. And be should stop being facetious.

MR. McGEER: All right, Mr. Speaker, what's going to haunt the Government in years to come? It's not the capital financing or the rate structure. It's going to be the consequences of the power policies of the Government to the land in this Province. This is what's going to come to haunt the Premier and his Cabinet for a century to come, because well, you know, it's the new coalition. The member for Vancouver East referred to the old coalition gang and I agree, this is the new coalition gang performing, as the Premier understands so well from the days when he used to support that old coalition, a member of that, because it is a coalition. There's the former Conservative, and the Minister of

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Agriculture, a former Liberal, is one who came down to see the Premier before he crossed the floor to tell him the consequences of the power policies of the former Government, a Government that that Premier supported. He warned him, and what did he warn him about? I'm sorry the Minister of Agriculture isn't in his seat, because he warned him of the consequences to that Government of power policies which permitted the desecration of land in a park, Tweedsmuir Park.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. McGEER: Oh yes, and the Minister of Agriculture wouldn't deny that if he were in his seat. This is what the real consequence is going to be — not the pigeons coming home to roost with the power increase, as the N.D.P. is referring to this evening, and I'm not going to refer to, Mr. Speaker, but the consequences to the land. We've had nothing but land being swamped in this Province by the power policies of the Government. We've put under water an area which extends as far as from Roberts Bank to Hope, and I wouldn't want my name associated with that lake, Mr. Speaker. I wouldn't want my name associated with that lake.

We've had other valuable areas in British Columbia put under water by the B.C. Hydro, many of them irretrievably, and the Minister of Lands and Forests knows that. He's going to do the very same thing behind the Mica Dam. We sold out a lovely area of the Kootenays to the Americans with the Libby Dam, and now we're doing the same thing for power, as the member for North Vancouver–Capilano referred to yesterday. We're going to put that under water too — an area that should be a park. This is really what's wrong with the power policies in this Province, it's the contempt for land. What we should be doing is learning to respect the land in this Province, because that is our most precious resource, and with only two per cent of the land in British Columbia invalleys and in flat land that's fit for living, we don't want to put that under water. What the Minister of Lands and Forests should be doing, if he takes into account the value of our land, is asking the Americans to trade acre for acre for any land in our Province that's flooded, because it's alienated to our use. We should have been asking for acres from the United States for anything we put under water behind the Libby Dam or in the Ross Lake area. Why don't we start with Point Roberts? That's about the same size as the area of British Columbia that's going to go under water.

AN HON. MEMBER: The United States wouldn't go for a….

MR. McGEER: If that deal — you bet they wouldn't, not when they can skin us in Canada so easily, or in British Columbia. Acre for acre, and let's start with the acres we put under water for the Americans already.

HON. D.R.J. CAMPBELL (Comox): If you want to take Point Roberts, you can have it.

MR. McGEER: Yes, we want Point Roberts — absolutely.

MR. CAMPBELL: You do, eh…big deal.

MR. McGEER: It would be a big deal, but it's not the kind of deal you could pull off, not with your policies of drowning British Columbia, and there are other areas. A man with a shotgun tried to fend off the B.C. Hydro when it took its transmission line right across a beautiful lake in the area that we're trying to persuade people from all over the world to come to for our Winter Olympics. More acreage hacked off Goldstream Park in Victoria for transmission lines of the B.C. Hydro. Never any discussion, Mr. Speaker, about the value of the land, the uses of that land for future generations of British Columbia. The hydro-headed monster has gobbled it all up. That's what's wrong with the policies of the Government — contempt for the land — and the use of a Crown corporation that hides behind its Crown corporation privileges, that keeps its financing out of sight, that the Government takes no pride in its financial operations because it tries to hide them, and in its desperate efforts to keep the rates down and competitive with other places in Canada it's forced to do these things. Sending its transmission lines through our parks, drowning our lands and cheating future generations of their heritage in British Columbia. That's why we're supporting this motion, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: On the amendment the Member for Kootenay.

MR. LEO NIMSICK (Kootenay): Mr. Speaker, I couldn't help but take part in this debate, being that I've been in the House since the Columbia River negotiations and research was first started. When I listened to the honourable member for Vancouver Centre who knows nothing about the development of power in this Province, I couldn't help but get up and say something. The power policy of this Government is indicative of a private enterprise Government — a Government that is interested in the privileged few trying to operate a public enterprise. They didn't go into the public power business because they wanted to, they went into the power business because they found that it was to their political advantage to do it, and that is the reason why they did it.

AN HON.MEMBER: …Wenner-Gren.

MR. NIMSICK: The history of the power policy today. When I listened to the honourable member for Vancouver Centre say that if we knew ten years ago what we know today, he should be speaking to the Cabinet on that side of the House. Because what they know today if they knew it ten years ago, they would not have adopted the policy that they have carried on. You would not have adopted the policy you've carried on, because at that time we warned this Government what was going to happen, we begged them to try and develop the power policy for the benefit of the people of British Columbia and not for the benefit of the people of the United States.

When we look at the history of the Columbia, this is where the costs have come in. When the Premier sold the downstream benefits for five mills we suggested that they should bring back that downstream benefits for the people of British Columbia.

He sold it for five mills at that time for 30 years, and with the inflationary policies that are going on what will the power be worth in 30 years? He didn't take that into consideration. The Government got $273,000,000 for the power for 30 years, the downstream benefits, or Canada's part of the downstream benefits, for 30 years. The Americans got their part for nothing, so therefore they got all the downstream benefits for two and a half mills for 30 years. No

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consideration of inflation. I asked the Honourable the Premier at that time when they were talking about the Treaty if they had a clause in there looking at the escalation of the costs of building these dams, and he said we didn't need it, we didn't need it. This is the financial genius that we've been listening to, that the people of British Columbia have been gullible enough to listen to over the years. This is the financial genius, the financial genius of this Social Credit Government that they tried to lead the people down the garden path in the Province of British Columbia and did nothing about it.

If they would have developed a policy, brought back the downstream benefits instead of taking that and selling it for five mills, and we built the dams with the money that we got for our share of the downstream benefits. The Americans didn't contribute one cent to the building of the dams in Canada. No, we built the dams with our share of the downstream benefits, the Americans didn't contribute one cent. They got something for what they paid to Canada. The $273,000,000 was our share of the downstream benefits. So, don't tell me that the Americans paid one cent toward the building of the dams in Canada. They got value for every cent and double the value, double the value, because we should have got not only five mills, we should have been sure that at least the total cost of all the dams would have been included in that price that we sold our share of the downstream benefits for, but we didn't do it.

This is the genius, this is the Government that understands finance, the Government that goes around this country at election time and tells the people that if it wasn't for their policy British Columbia would not be where it is today, and this is what they are trying to tell them. The Premier told us that $273,000,000 put in the bank, at five per cent or six per cent would develop to $500,000,000 so that we'd be able to build the dams, but he forgot that he had to use money to build the dams during that time, and that is the reason we are probably $150,000,000 short, that is the reason that we have got to flood….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I would point out to the member that capital financing and rate structure are not under debate at this time.

MR. NIMSICK: Mr. Speaker, I didn't say a word about capital financing, I was speaking about the amount of money that was received by British Columbia. I was speaking….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I might point out that what the member has been referring to and capital financing are….

MR. NIMSICK: There is no capital financing when you talk about the $273,000,000 that we sold the downstream benefits for. This is what I'm talking about.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm advising the member that he is dealing with capital financing at this time, and I ask him to stick to the motion.

MR. NIMSICK: I haven't said a word about capital financing, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'm speaking about selling the downstream benefits for $273,000,000 and taking that money and putting it in the bank and in so many years it will make $500,000,000 as the Premier had stated. That's what he stated, $500,000,000.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair sees absolutely no difference between the matter of capital financing and what you are discussing. May I ask you not to deal with that at this time.

MR. NIMSICK: Oh, Mr. Speaker, don't make me laugh on a subject like that. If we can't talk about what we received for the downstream benefits, there's something wrong. If we can't talk of what the Premier stated when he stated that

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. The Chair did not put that motion on the Order Paper, it was one of the honourable members.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shame on him.

MR. NIMSICK: But this isn't capital finance.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair interprets what you have just been speaking about as dealing with capital financing and I ask you to desist.

MR. NIMSICK: $273,000,000 we received for the downstream benefits when we should have received probably $1,000,000,000, because the land that was saved down around Vancouver, Washington or at Portland where the Columbia goes into the Pacific Ocean, back up beyond that, they'll make millions and billions of dollars out of the land that is protected by the flood control. We got $64,000,000 for flood control that was going to be used to repay that which was lost by the flooding of the Libby Dam. The $64,000,000 was to be used to clear the pondage at the Duncan Dam, clear all the snags and the trees, and none of this is done. The Libby Dam clearing is not done by capital financing by the B.C. Hydro. The Libby Dam is being cleared by the money out of the consolidated revenue. That's where its coming from, and, that's the power policy that this Government has adopted.

The Treaty that was signed in such a rush by this Government, don't forget the Liberal party had a share in it. The Liberal party had a share in signing the Treaty and they are responsible to the great extent for the power policy of this Government, and with collusion between this Government and the Liberal party at Ottawa, they signed this half-baked Treaty, this half-baked Treaty that was signed with the United States. We were anxious at that time to get cheap power to the United States. We gave jobs to the United States with the cheap power. There are three aluminum plants being built on the cheap power that we've given to them when we should be having that power now. It was the cheapest power that we'd ever get because they would have brought it back to the line and delivered it to British Columbia. You talk about the jobs that your policy has provided in British Columbia. Sure we provided a few jobs when the building of the Duncan Dam was going on, when the building of the High Arrow, and at the present time with Mica, and clearing the pondage at Libby, few jobs are provided there. But you don't talk about the vacuum that's been created when the job was finished at Duncan, when the job was finished at the High Arrow. You don't talk about the vacuum that's been created in business for those people around that area. You never made any provision for secondary industry to take its place so that these people

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would have jobs when they got through, because those dams did nothing for Canada. They didn't provide one kilowatt in the Province of British Columbia.

What did we lose? We lost cheap power, we lost all the flooded land. The High Arrow flooded thousands and thousands and thousands of acres. The Libby Dam is flooding thousands of acres. I remember one time when we were in Rossland, when I was on the council in Rossland, we tried to get a victory highway through the United States of a half a mile, and we asked the United States, and the Provincial Government asked them, if they would give up a little strip of land for this highway so that we wouldn't have to go over the summit, and they refused to give one inch of land to Canada, and don't ever think that they'll ever give an inch of land. They won't give you a corridor through the panhandle. They won't give you anything, but we're giving up thousands and thousands of acres of land to the United States with all the potential value that that land would have for perpetuity, and we're getting nothing for it.

AN HON. MEMBER: You're getting $5.50 an acre….

MR. NIMSICK: $5.50 an acre, yes, and a lot of it we're getting nothing for it. We're flooding Libby, all the area behind Libby and getting nothing for it.

Now I'd like to come to the bureaucratic control that your power development has reached. Reached to the point where you are not only going to tax, you are not only going to run into increasing the rates, but you are going to run into the fact that you are going to tax the people of certain areas of the Province of British Columbia by taking over the public distribution of electricity in the cities of Cranbrook, Kimberley and Fernie, and you're going to place an extra tax on those people, an extra tax on those people because you are not going to give them any bargain. The City of Cranbrook earned last year $220,000 from their distribution of power in Cranbrook, and if we take over that with their bureaucratic control, and to take over that power distribution in Cranbrook it means that the people will have to increase their taxes probably by 20 mills, and this is a terrible jolt to those people.

It amuses me, Mr. Speaker, when I listen to the Government and member after member criticizing the Federal Government for the arrogant way in which they treat British Columbia. How the Minister of Municipal Affairs talked about Delta, and how the Federal Government was treating them. Well, how more arrogant can they treat you than you're treating the municipal governments of Fernie, Kimberley and Cranbrook at the present time? These people were foresighted enough, many, many years ago, to set up the distribution of electricity in their areas and it has been a great assistance to them, and they're not charging high rates. They're not charging high rates.

All over these years, long before this Government thought of going into the public power problem, they developed that distribution system until today, after they have injected a great amount of the money that was developed in the local area — the same as the Honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs stated that the Federal Government was talking about taxing homes under the White Paper and taking out the money that was developed in the community — the Provincial Government, now, through the Hydro, is talking about taking this development out of these communities of Cranbrook, Kimberley and Fernie and taking what they developed to help pay for the misdemeanors that they have caused over the years. Through their poor power policy over all these years, now they are going to take away a nest egg from the people of Cranbrook, Kimberley and Fernie and force those people to increase their taxes so that indirectly they will be paying for the failure of this Government to carry on a proper policy. I say that this is wrong, because it proves again that this policy of the Provincial Government…. The U.B.C.M. even supports them on this, they don't think much of your power policy when you are going to arrogantly confiscate these distribution systems in the East Kootenay in order to try and help you out.

Another point is, I understand, that we've been selling power through the B.C. Hydro to industry at cost, and I can't see why they cannot….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member is dealing with rate structure, please come back to the amendment.

MR. NIMSICK: I can't see why they can't sell to communities such as Cranbrook, Kimberley and Fernie the same as they sell to industry, and allow them to distribute their own power, so that they can assist their own taxpayers, because they have carried on this for years and now they're going to change it.

There is no talk about taking over the West Kootenay Power and Light, no talk about that, because the Honourable Minister of Education sits in Trail. There's no talk about taking over the distribution system at Kelowna, no talk about taking over the distribution system at New Westminster, but you're talking about taking over the distribution system in three little communities that are struggling, struggling to keep their taxes down, and they're using some of the profits that they're getting from distribution of power to keep that tax structure down. You talk about the Federal Government's treatment of the Province of British Columbia, it's enough to make anyone sick, and it is nothing more nor less than to excuse the gross mismanagement of the power policy of this Government.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Leader of the Opposition.

MR. D. BARRETT (Coquitlam): Mr. Speaker, I can remember in the earlier power debates in this House over the last ten years when every seat in the Cabinet section of this House was filled. Not a moment was missed as we waited for the opportunity to hear this Government expound its power policy and have Minister after Minister stand up and tell us in this House how they had performed in Ottawa, how they'd done in Washington, how they were able to sign these great contracts and bring a bonanza to British Columbia. It's significant, Mr. Speaker, that not one of those Cabinet Ministers has taken his place in this debate, to stand up and defend the power policies now, Mr. Speaker…now, now! Oh, I can remember those pontifical renderations from the Minister of Lands and Forests, who used to get up and hold his glasses and throw them down in drama on his desk and say, "You don't understand, I've gone over this point before, we're going to have more power! Didn't you hear what the Premier said, I was talking to the Federal Government, they understand, and the poor little Opposition doesn't know anything about it," and the end result, Mr. Speaker, is high cost power in British Columbia, and they don't stand up and defend it.

Oh yes, and the performance of the Liberal group. It's

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really very, very interesting to see the new leader of the Liberal group get up and announce his policy tonight. Does he talk about the increases in power? No, no, no. He wants to go to Calgary, and you wouldn't let him go there. Does he talk about the fantastic bungling of this Government? No, he doesn't talk about that, he talks about the floods that the dams have caused. You know, Mr. Speaker, that party went down the garden path with the two-river policy of this Government every step of the way, and they're just as bad in this regard as that bunch over there. Just as bad. You know, Mr. Speaker, at least when the Conservative Government was in power in Ottawa, John Diefenbaker stopped the Kaiser deal on the Columbia, it was right after that. But as soon as the Liberals were elected, they made the same deal that this Government went down the drain with. It was the Kaiser arrangement.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. BARRETT: You know, Mr. Speaker, I remember hearing the former Minister of Highways, that great power expert, getting up and saying thousands of jobs will be created in British Columbia on our great dynamic policy. "And they were, " says the Attorney-General. I want to announce how many jobs have been created.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear hear.

MR. BARRETT: Let's hear how many jobs have been created. On the Duncan and the High Arrow Dam we now have….

AN HON. MEMBER: …(Undecipherable remark)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please be seated. Please be seated, please.

MR. BARRETT: If the member has contempt from the House he can leave any time he wants, Mr. Speaker. But I'm telling you this, those fantastic number of jobs in the opening of the North, the Duncan and the High Arrow Dams have created 16 jobs, 16 jobs, while the City of Bellingham has a fantastic growth of aluminum plants as a direct result of the sale of those downstream benefits, and we have high cost power here in British Columbia.

And the Premier, I remember those performances. You'll recall how the thumbs were tucked under, Mr. Speaker, and, "We went through the 19S3, 19S6, 1960, I defeated them all," he said, "and now they're going for my power policy." You know, Mr. Speaker, the best they can do for defense of their power policy is that inadequate member from Vancouver Centre who doesn't even know what he is talking about. You know, Mr. Speaker….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. There is no inadequate member in this Legislature.

MR. BARRETT: I am sorry. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a reflection on a member and would you please withdraw it.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I withdraw that statement. Despite what the public has been saying for years, there are no inadequate members in this House. But you know, Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, we saw the Minister of Recreation and Conservation today explode in a frenzy about a misinterpretation as he said, of his policy. Is anyone misinterpreting the policy of this Government that, through the Premier, said that we will have power reductions for ten years in a row? Where is Pharaoh? Where is he? The new Pharaoh of British Columbia who built pyramids out of those dams only to have the whole mess come clamouring down on his ears, and he isn't even in the House to hear one of the most important non-confidence debates in the history of this House. Where is he?

You know, Mr. Speaker, this Government has gone around this Province saying that we are going to do this with the power, we are going to do that with the power. You know, Mr. Speaker, it is a reversal of their policy. It is simply politics not progress. Politics not progress. We are waiting for schools and where is the money? We are waiting for hospitals and where is the money? We are waiting for industrial development and where is the money? It is going to pay the debt on that dam deal that you made in the United States. That is what it is going to pay. Three dams, Mr. Speaker.

You know, Mr. Speaker, they ran around — and there they are chirping, you know, Mr. Speaker — maybe the explanation will come from the Minister of Public Works. Maybe we are really debt free, Mr. Speaker. Maybe the explanation is that we don't owe money on this. Maybe, we don't have to increase the power rate. It is just a misinterpretation of the A plus B theorum. Maybe that's what it is. I welcome the Minister of Public Works to get up and defend what this Government has done. The increase will bring about new revenue of approximately $43,000,000 each year. Only $6,000,000 of that will go for increase in wages, the other $37,000,000 will go to service debt, a debt-laden province that generations after generations will have to pay, and this Government says we are debt free. Debt free, my eye. I remember the Premier giving that famous line — you will recall that — "Nothing is freer than free, my friends." Some freedom! Some friends! I know that after I sit down I will see the Ministers jump up and explain why the power rates are going to go up. I know that they will go out….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Power rates are not debatable in this debate. They are not debatable at this time.

MR. BARRETT: They are not going up?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: They are not debatable at this time.

MR. BARRETT: Oh, I thought you were enunciating policy. Mr. Speaker, it is my impression that at the end of the month the light bills will be going up, and they are not debatable. You have to pay them, Mr. Speaker, there is no other source for power in this Province, and they are not debatable. You are stuck with it. You know, Mr. Speaker, I call upon the members of this House who have been here long enough to recall the commitment and the promises, the pledges and the word of this Cabinet and its Premier to bring about power rates lower than they were ten years ago, to bring about industrial development, benefiting all of British Columbia, to bring about the construction of schools and hospitals, the development of the North and roads in this Province, through their two-power policy. I call on them — now to stand up and admit their mistakes, Mr. Speaker, because you don't dare speak on them, you stand up and vote on this motion and at least have some shred of reason left for the

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way that you have voted in this House in the past.

Those of you who sat through — some of you sat through sleeping — but sat through, nonetheless, those hour after hour endless power debates when the former member from Castlegar-Slocan and the former Leader of this party, who still is a good fighting member from Cowichan-Malahat, and every other member in this House who stood up and fought this Government's power policy, and you have the audacity to say that none of this was predicted. None of this was talked about, we just found out about it now. Mr. Speaker, this vote simply reduces itself to one thing — when you vote against this motion you vote for one simple thing — cheap politics for expensive power. That is what you are voting for.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The amendment is that the following words be added to the address in reply to the Opening Speech: "That this House has no confidence in the power development policies of this Government referred to in the Opening Speech."

The amendment was defeated on the following division: —

YEAS — 17

Messieurs

NAYS — 36

Messieurs

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I declare the amendment defeated. So ordered.

The Honourable Member for Saanich and the Islands.

MR. J.D. TISDALLE (Saanich and the Islands): Mr. Chairman, I would rather eat than sleep, too, and obviously some are feeling they would rather leave this type of meeting so that they can go and sleep early tonight, but I think I would rather stay here and do the business of the House, and I appreciate very much the way the Cabinet treated the last resolution with the contempt that it deserved and didn't speak on it. I reflected on their way of not being in the House, that is all. The Opposition suggested, too, that reflecting on us that it was a matter of high power or cheap politics. Well, they can have the cheap politics on the other side of the House, we have listened to it all afternoon.

I have listened to a lot of irrational statements from time to time from the Opposition that are inflammatory against the United States, our neighbour to the south, and today we had some more of it. All this undermining the association that has gone on for 100 years and one that is to be envied around the world. Yet accusing that neighbour of not giving anything to Canada, while all during and after the war, too, assistance in many ways of research and assistance to Canada has been coming from the United States and probably there is reciprocity there. That is a good thing, and I think in an age in which we have heard a lot in this House, too, being spoken about that, this is the time to think about humanities and getting together and sitting down and talking things over, it seems to me a very peculiar habit of those who follow the ideals of socialism to always want to undermine and to cause friction, and I think we should get away from that. Get on with seeing what things we can agree on, where looking back over ten years or 20 years and trying to rehash the past will only probably stop us from living in the present and doing a better job in the future.

This House too often, of course, turns its attention to the past far more than it should. It should attend to the present and also to the future. I think that anyone who lives in the past is not going to have much present or future, and this is the reason I believe that the people of this Province turned back a majority into this House because we have been a people who look forward, contended with the problem of the present, and didn't try to rehash the mistakes of the past. In fact, when I came into this House about 17 years ago, I recall the Premier over and over saying to us not only in here but in private,"Look, I am not interested in going over the past mistakes of the Coalition or any of these other parties that have been in power in British Columbia or the would-be Socialists. Let's get on with making policy clear for now that the people can understand and proceed to look into the future." I have often thought that the Opposition reminded me somewhat — and this is just in fun — they remind me of the pygmy that is riding on the shoulders of the giant. They think they can see so much more because they are sitting up on the shoulders of a giant, and when it comes to the financial ability of our Minister of Finance and Premier, he is a giant in that world today, recognized throughout the world. In fact, recently people who have been over into the European countries which the Premier had visited, they purposely called this to my attention and said, "Would you tell them how much we appreciated when we went back to our own country," and the royalty of that little country are no longer recognized, but this man is a very well-known man to me and I don't bring his name into the Legislature here, how highly the Premier of this Province is spoken of. He said if there is any time that you could set up a representation from British Columbia and that little country — and I would be glad to talk to the Minister of Travel and Tourism and also the Minister of Trade and Industry on this — that the attention of that people in their schools, says this man who has been there, he is a capable man, he was in the Spanish Horse Academy, he was one of their top men there, and he said as he went back amongst the villagers of that community and of the cities and talked to the former royalty people there, that the one place in Canada they knew a lot about and would talk of in the English language, too — he said, was

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British Columbia and the opportunities here, and many, many of them would like to come.

Of course, over the years since the Berlin Wall, probably a million or so have voted with their feet for freedom, and I see recently that some 40,000 have voted with their feet, probably taking their lives in their own hands to leave the Czechoslovakian frontier, too, for freedom. We have something to cherish here in this land which is sought after in the minds of people around the world who hold it in high esteem, not because we disarm, not because we believe in pacifism, and I don't say that all people do. I believe that as the Great Teacher said that if the strong man of the house thought that he was safe and decided not to protect his house, it wasn't long before somebody stronger came along and took his house. I think the Man who spoke those words knew what he was talking about. I believe that to take on a fallacy or an unfortunate attitude, that because we are so highly respected that we don't need to show any attitude of defense is a very unreliable attitude and very inconsistent with the desires to protect our own people in our own land, on our own shores. I don't think you have to go around rattling sabres, but I do believe that you need to be prepared. Right now I don't believe that Canada could take on a group of army ants, almost. They could run you out of the country. I think that to train our people also in navy and the services would give us the opportunity for a strong merchant marine probably later on, and something could be said along that line, but I am not one to let down our guard in a time when there is a lot of discontent, a lot of severe strain on people throughout the world. We have on our own shores of our own country, every evidence of the incitement of civil disobedience and rebellion and rioting, and this is not the time to give way to license of those types of thought.

Now I wanted to say a few things about the attitude of the Liberals who, in the early hours of the debate of this Throne Speech, and also at the last of the other Session, they took on the idea that the matter of going through the formalities, or it was merely a formality, in discussing the Throne Debate. This is peculiar to the Liberal party and I think that the people have recognized it and I wish that the member would take it back to his stand. Not that we want them to correct their position, it is probably as well if they continue in that position, for eventually they will find the way that they hold the debate on the Throne Speech in aloofness is the same way that people are aloof to the Liberal party, because they can't get right down with humanity or with the needs of the people. So they will continue to be held aloof by the people in that little group, and eventually I am sure that they, in turn, will be diminished to nothing in this House. Because there is only one alternative to the socialistic concept. You can't have an either-or in-between attitude of which the Liberals are trying to stand on a very narrow partisan basis. There is only one alternative, and that is the stabilizing influence of this kind of thinking in the Social Credit Government that believes that the best a government can do for the people is the least government, and to incite and to influence and attract private enterprise and the freedom of the individual to make a choice, and to get in there and to fend for himself. I think that that kind of a society is the one that can best show its ability to cope with the socialistic aspects, because the great challenge of the age is to get the government to do more and more for you and to do less and less for yourself. This kind of thinking can eventually run the government into a lot of trouble — because you begin to invade the privacy of the domain of the individual to such an extent that he cannot begin to fend for himself again.

Well, I would like to turn my attention to the people in Saanich but before I do, I would like to say that the Opposition paid them a very high compliment in spending so much money out there and fighting so hard for that riding. It showed how important they felt the Saanich representation in this House was, and it was probably second to Kamloops in that sense of the word of giving the full steam of the Opposition, but the people did not listen. We rescued that community in the Saanich area from the socialists in 1953, and saved it year after year from the best attempts of the best men they could bring into the arena of politics. I appreciate the high calibre of men the Opposition trained each time for the position. In fact the man who ran against me was training for nearly a year before the election came around, and I appreciate their thoughtfulness in bringing good material in for a choice, but the people once more, as has been said in here, had no confidence in the Opposition and had no confidence in the Liberals out there. They've known them for many years and the good Liberal people, or liberal-minded, and the Conservatives and the N.D.P. came and voted again in large numbers for the Government and for the member, and I appreciate this very much, the generosity of the people in Saanich, year after year. Every time they voted for this Government, they've never lost.

I think that so often this is the attitude, Mr. Speaker, of the Opposition members when they are in the Opposition. They feel that the people made a mistake, and this is holding in contempt the judgment of the voters, and I don't suppose there is any more delicate and perishable commodity than public opinion, and thank God the Opposition have never discovered that. They treat it with contempt. They feel that it is not important to them after an election. You can say what you like about the thoughtfulness of the voters, you can discredit it, you can call it anything you like, and just in speaking about a government, too, you discredit the voters.

I can recall the first…. I refer to the first time that I defeated an N.D.P. or C.C.F. out in the riding, and I can recall his words over the radio as he said, "Once more the people have failed to think what they are doing and use their knowledge." Well, if there was anything reflecting on the ability of individuals, no wonder they never went back to voting for the N.D.P., and I hold with great respect the responsibility which the Saanich and the Islanders have chosen to place at my disposal to conduct myself in this House on their behalf.

I would like to talk to you a moment about some of the needs in the Islands. This is a time when just prior to the Budget, I like to put before the House, and before the Minister of Finance, although maybe it is all written up and printed and everything else, but we won't presume that, we'll presume that we have opportunity to change the mind and put into use policies that I desire to see. There's been a tremendous growth on the Islands, and someone said here on this side of the House even, that they didn't want British Columbia to be the California of Canada. I want to say this — we are very fortunate that we are esteemed and looked up to by the tourism as the California of Canada and I will always say that the Gulf Islands and Saanich are probably the Florida and California combined of Canada. Canadians are looking this way continually to come not only for retirement, but for investment and to take part in the destiny of this Province. But out in the Islands we have had such growth on them that my concern is for the protection and

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policing that goes there, and I would like to recommend that the police force be staffed further, because of the time element between the ferries and getting to these Islands and doing their job, because we are having quite an influx of different people who are very, very temporary in their abode and in their conduct. Some of them are coming in from America, not even declaring themselves, and certain ones have had to be apprehended and taken back to the border, and this is causing concern amongst the people who live there. I would suggest that we could do well to increase the staff of the R.C.M.P. on the Islands at this time.

I would like to say a few things in respect to that, when we talk about regionalism, because the Capital Region takes in the Gulf Islands, and hospitalization is one of its objectives and one of its responsibilities. At this time we are moving into a little turbulent water with regard to the Metropolitan Board of Health, and I think that the responsible citizens in the area that have been elected, like myself, and also the Minister of Health and Hospitals, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the Minister of Finance as well, there is no need to play brinkmanship with this kind of thing. I hope that when we meet with them tomorrow that we can have the full cooperation of the elected representatives of the different bodies in the capital region, and together we may come to a sensible solution that is for people and not necessarily regarding the expenses of the situation. We know this is something that neither can be taken or left, you must have a Metropolitan Health Board working throughout the area for the benefit of the people. I think that probably a second look from the side of the different ones who are objecting to the formula, that now we can come up with a formula that will be satisfactory and share across the board with those people out there, as we discuss it in a friendly and tactful fashion tomorrow morning. I also think that maybe the Minister of Health and the Minister of Municipal Affairs would lend their support, and let's not do any bracket calling back and forth to one another, but let's get on with a good sensible solution and I'm sure that we can come up with that.

Much has been said about the need for control over drugs, and I travelled last year and this year in some of the areas of the larger centres of the United States, purposely looking into their problem with the idea of reflecting what we could do up here, and I agree that many times it is easy to say, "What can you do about it?" We don't have to look to the United States for pathetic and terrible situations or listen to Mr. Linkletter's problem, and it certainly was a severe one and a terrible shock to the world down there, and I appreciate his tremendous interest now in doing something to draw the attention of everyone to the terribleness of drug addiction and what it does as a calamity in the community as well as in the family. We also, coming close to home, can think of what happened in Saanich just recently with the experiments that go on there. I am not prepared to take an individual and a family which I know so very well, to bring them out here and verbally carve up the family in any way on the floor of this House, but I need only to say that the tremendous impact upon the family life and the community life in Saanich and in the Victoria area has been something to behold. In fact, in the schools there was a sad note and a new awakening to the fact that so much of the rebellion, so much of the,"I am going to do my own thing," results in this kind of contempt for parental discipline, for the community discipline at large.

So often we think that we can discharge our responsibility tightly here and say things that reflect on law and order, saying how foolish certain laws are. Why can anyone deny me my rights to go into a beer parlour at a certain age? Why should anyone deny me this or the other thing? A society is made up of discipline and rights, and the fact that we can catcall across the floor of the House doesn't solve anything. We are speaking of a very serious thing in the lives of many, many parents and children today, and if I can bear on it any light from experiences that I had in going through the different places in the United States, and also dealing with some of the community here.

Last year I did my own sit-in for one day with the hippie colony right in town here, back in the Square, and I learned a good deal about their attitude.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did they learn about your attitude?

MR. TISDALLE: …No, one of a member sitting down for the day with them and discussing the problem as they see it. Amazing to say, and you'll probably feel I am repeating myself, and sometimes I think, having said it once to a community and addressed many clubs that, "Why say it in this Legislature?" Yet here is the place that I should bring my arguments to bear to try to persuade, and I'm sure you are open-minded enough to want to know, and may be persuaded that there is something that we can do as legislators, if it's nothing more than to speak highly of policing, highly of the responsibility of those in administration of the laws we make. How many times do any of us probably think that I am my brother's keeper to a degree, and we should say something to encourage him in a difficult situation rather than try to negate him and deprive him and do something to make him resist the law, and so I try to build these people up.

As we were talking, they said, "Well we don't like this society we are living in, we think that it's phony, it's something that has nothing to do with reality." I looked at the fountain that was out in front of them there, that the taxpayers had provided, and I said,"You are really enjoying that in the sunshine," and the seven or eight of them, and one very lively spokesman said, "Yes, it's wonderful, it's stimulating and how interesting it is to meditation," and I said "That's right, it's wonderful," and I said "This grass with your bare feet you're all walking on — you're really enjoying that?" and they said, "Yes, it's great." One girl said, "You're going to get your suit all green, would you sit on my jacket?" I said, "Thank you very much, that's really nice and kind of you, I understand that you have an understanding for your fellow man." We went on to discuss jobs and work and all of the things that they resisted in society. Then I said, "You know, every time you walk on the sidewalk, every time you enjoy this grass, every time you meditate and took at the fountain, that you're voting for a disciplined society. Every time you walk on that sidewalk you're voting for the society you're in." One of them spoke up and said, "That's what I hate — I wish I didn't have to walk on that sidewalk. I wish I didn't have to sit on this grass, because it means that I'm approving in a way." One of the men got up and he was well educated and he said, "I haven't worked for six months. I went out into the woods up here in the Sooke area and I went on welfare but," he said, "for my part today I have heard enough. I am no I longer going to stay with you, Sandy, I'm going out and look for a job." I found that gradually they drifted away because just using the logic and reasonableness.

Someone said here today that our tradition was built on a

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reasonableness and then he immediately started to destroy that tradition by saying that a Government of large numbers was a reflection on democracy. Again he reflected on the intelligence of the society. We know that they cannot go to the polls and pre-determine before how many are going to be in the Opposition, and how many are going to be over here, but when it has happened, anyone who is in this Legislature, using the privileges here, reflects on the people's intelligence. It's not worthy of sitting here then. I just don't understand that. I think we are responsible people, and we should not take it lightly what the people have done in endeavouring to divide up the responsibilities of this House. You've got your jobs to do. I've got my job to do.

I'll always remember the professor who was teaching me one day, and it was regarding theology. He said, a lot of people belong to the church and they think just warming the pew, you'll start in the pew. Maybe you'll start in Sunday School, then you get up to the pew, and then you get a little further and you teach a Sunday School class, and then he said you go on and become an elder, and then you go on to becoming maybe a layman pastor, and then you go on to become a pastor, a bishop, and so on. We were all sitting there looking, about a hundred of us, and we wondered what he was coming to and he said, you know, that's not so, there is really no difference between all of you. He said all it is that God has given you a little bigger bucket to fill, you got a little more responsibility, that's all, so get out and do your job. —

That's what happens in this House. We've got people who have more responsibilities, and I don't envy them, I'm telling you. It's hard enough to do my job in a little way out there, than to be in the high responsibility of this Cabinet, and others in this House, and I don't envy the Leader of the Opposition. It's a tremendous job to take and run that position with all the opposite views that are within his own ranks. He has one terrible time to keep harmony on a position, and then also to take a position that's honest with himself and honest with the people, and sometimes that must be tremendously difficult….

MR. BARRETT: No, it isn't.

MR. TISDALLE: It isn't? Well, I don't believe in being a contortionist.

Mr. Speaker, when can we come back down to dealing with human lives again? There was a tremendous outcry about cyclamates in pop, and you would swear that this was the most terrible drug that ever hit the market, but very little is said about drug addiction without there's all kinds of people getting on the side of drugs. Professors and many others that I've talked to in high positions, doctors, say, "Let's go soft on soft drugs."

Well, I went into the drug community of Portland, and I went into the underworld community of some of the other areas, and do you know, that one young man that's been off eight and a half months, he said to me, "Take me down with you to California, " and I said, "Why do you want to go?" He said, "Because I've learned this, that you can't stay off drugs and even be in the marijuana crowd, because you are in the criminal element." So I took him, we drove for two and a half days I guess, didn't hurry. His family write me that this young man is endeavouring to stay away from drugs, but his last words to me, as he got out of the cab of the truck, were, "Now that I know you, I know what you stand for, and I didn't realize you were in politics, and have had the responsible position you've had." This man was 21 years old, married, his wife had two children, and he was leaving her, because she was shooting the hard drugs. They were staying in the underworld and he said, "I dare not stay there. I'll be in gaol with them if I stay, and I've made up my mind, I'm getting off it." He's written me since and it was tremendous the letter that he wrote, and he said, "Now I want you to undertake, if you can, to send somebody around to talk to my sister, because I know she is on hard drugs." But what he said to me when he got out of the cab was something I'll never forget. He said, "Mr. Tisdalle, there's one thing I'm going to ask you," and he was a very mild-mannered man, but he wasn't a hairy man. He had got his hair cut and he was shaved, now he looked altogether different. "There is one thing I want to ask you, please don't go soft on soft drugs."

You know, I was with another man who is a very wealthy man, he is a millionaire who has given up everything he had in the world of business, and now uses his Cadillac to pick up the hippies on the road and take them to wherever they are going on the pretense, when he says, "Are you going to Santa Barbara?" and they say "Yes, I'm going to Santa Barbara," or they say where they are going, and he says, "I'll go with you." This man has had testimonies back from Vietnam I have never seen the like of. People who were led to an absolute knowledge of the reality of why they are here, and that's one of the first things that I find the young population today are looking for. They want to know the why and wherefore, not so much the how, but why.

This man that I sat with in the hotel room with many others, and I was the dwarf amongst five that were in there, all six foot four, huge men, I've never seen giants like it, men who had dedicated themselves to Christian witnessing, to do something for this community now that was threatening to overthrow almost the equilibrium of our society, and I found that the resources they were using tremendously affected the young community. He said that whenever he had opportunity to drive with three or four others, he said, "I've seen a commitment in my cab and these are the letters from Vietnam and others who have come back and said: ‘What you told me changed my whole life and my whole career and I am now changing others… One Chinese lad said to him when he was getting out of his car, he said "Have you got some money, sort of anything that can take me to a barber, I'd like to have my hair cut, I'd like to clean up and be different." and he said, "You don't have to do that, you don't have to do that to be a follower of what I have told you." He said, "Look, I did this, I wore these clothes and did this because I wanted to be different so that people would recognize I was different," and he said, "now I don't need to be different, I'm different on the inside, I'm different on the inside, I don't need to be different on the outside," and I found that with the community wherever I've gone.

But we adults, we mature people, so-called, are going soft on soft drugs and are actually saying to the young community, "Look, we haven't any answers, we don't believe there's any cornerstones, there's no guidelines, there's nothing. Go out into the wilderness, pull up all the survey pins and start over." Many of the professors today are recommending this kind of a line. I am telling you, the vacuum that is in the lives of young people today is something to behold, it is tremendous, and it's a terrible thing for those of us who know better.

I was glad to listen to the man from the Opposition the other day, who quoted the very well known 18th Psalm when he said, let me see, how does that,"The heavens declare His

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glory and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day to day uttereth speech, and night to night sheweth knowledge." and then it goes on to say, "There are no speeches nor languages where His voice is not heard." I thought how wonderful to hear that, because our young people need an answer, and if I never serve in this House again and I never speak to you people again, it doesn't matter to me. I am going to say to you people here and wherever I am in life, it doesn't mean that I have to be in a high position to say this, but everyone of us, it is time we began to say the things that build people up instead of tearing them down.

I listened to the former member from North Vancouver, he's not here any more, and he made his last speech on Sunday Schools, and it was a tremendous speech if you remember Gordon Gibson. It was a fantastic speech. I sat down here and I said, "Gordon, go ahead, give it to us." and he said,"Mr. Member," if you remember, he pointed his big finger over at me, growled at me, he said, "Mr. Member, you should be making this speech, not me." "Gordon," I said, "you make it better than I do." There are a lot of you people here make a speech better than I do, if you'd only go out and do it. You know the last, I think it's the last verse of that 18th Psalm is a very important one, too, if I could remember it. Maybe I can, maybe I've got it here. David said this, and he was a king so I'm not ashamed to quote him, he said, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto Thee oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer." Of course, the 23rd Psalm is an excellent one, too, for all us who are talking about pollution. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and all that dwell therein." We forget that, we've completely forgotten it and negated it, we think we can carry on without that.

We say our prayers in here, we listen to the dedicated people bring the prayer to us, we completely forget it and go on about our way, bickering and shouting and trying to undermine each other. This hurt this afternoon. I tell you this afternoon I would hate to live in a penthouse in this city, I'd hate to live in a penthouse anywhere in the city right now, because almost anyone who lives in a penthouse could be considered to be reflecting on his position. Then I'd hate to advertise anything for rental, if I wanted to be this naive in my thinking, but today somebody almost begged us to be naive in our thinking like this. To undermine and to start slander against people, slander against people, that we would think that someone advertises an apartment block, and then we went along and we heard a mathematical equation of that if a person is earning somewhere, I don't know, $20,000, $25,000, as Cabinet Ministers do, at the end of 17 years they can only accumulate $260,000.

You know, I know little people, I know a man out here, I won't mention his name, but he came from Hungary eight or nine years ago. When he came on the train across this land, he said, "I looked and I saw out the windows people in dirty overalls getting away from the railway track, and in different businesses, and that men who had been digging, it looked like, climbing into great big cars and driving away." He said to me, and this is only a few days ago, he said, "Our tongues hung out, we couldn't believe it. When people told us that they owned those cars, and maybe they had some payments on them, I said, 'you're lying to us.'" Today he owns a motel, a large motel. We've sold him many things in this city. He's quite relatively wealthy from nothing, from nothing. Surely if people who are earning good salaries and with business acumen, and being in this country for years, lawyers and so on, cannot multiply their wages into more than just common savings, they're just not going to run their job very well, that's all I can say.

This man went on to say, "I got my mother and people out of Hungary last year, I took them into our Super-Value and Safeway, and I put the cart before my mother here and we pushed it down and I reached over and I took this and I took everything off that I wanted, and she said, ' Oh, nowhere is the place where you can do that.' We walked about the shop and the do-it-yourself store that is open in Hungary," he said, "at the end of every ten-foot counter had to be a policeman on both ends to stop them from stealing." What a wonderful society of trust we live in, and people come over here and marvel at us and we breed distrust this afternoon by what was being said. We breed distrust. I'd be afraid, frightened to get into a position of responsibility outside this Government because somebody would accuse me of doing it wrongly.

I listened to someone the other day who is our good friend, the member on the other side sitting at the end there, from Burnaby North. She made a great plea for the equality of women, it was wonderful, wonderfully said. But I want to show how our mind contradicts us when we sit in the position of socialism, because socialism means that I'll be all things to all people, and I don't necessarily mean it too well, and I want you to get this. We heard the speech on the discrimination against women that there shouldn't be any, and I presume like a Deputy Minister it should be maybe a woman. I'm just using that as an illustration, she didn't use it. But what's the discrimination that came then, in insinuation, that someone had got a job on political discrimination, an ex-politician. Now if I'm going to be accused of being a second-class citizen because I ran for politics and I can never hold a job again, I say that's a hex on ex-politicians. It's unfair, and we shouldn't do it, if we really are against discrimination then we won't talk about people who may have stood for political places and then find themselves getting a job, as long as they can discharge the job. Now she asked for the same favour for women, she said it's not whether they're women or not, it doesn't matter the sex as long as they can do the job. Well, shouldn't we be as fair to an ex-politician? I hope you'll be fair with me if I'm ever an ex-politician. I hope you are.

I'm just talking bread and butter politics, Mr. Speaker, today. I feel that this is probably what has gone wrong in our society. I sat at a meeting the other night with many of the so-called hippie world, and when we get down and use that equation of Glasser, that it's therapeutic reality, I think that's the word, therapeutic reality. I listened to a darkie talk, Peters, the other day give me a tremendous uplift as he went over this, and I have read the book and that doesn't do me too much good, but I think that being a politician means that I speak with my own words and not too many of other people's. You know, that if we've come to this mechanization and automation here so well, what's to stop us from deciding to tape our speeches and stay home and send the little box here and do it for us? You could get an awful lot of good quotes, I am sure, and the Speaker would have a wonderful opportunity of keeping order because there'd be no crossfire. You couldn't really tape that in. But you know, we could get to that place if we're not careful.

We've worshipped at the altar of education and it hasn't done very much for society. I didn't mean that to be a blanket statement, let me clarify that. Of all the people that have been turned out of our universities in this enlightened age, I have yet to hear one of them come out and have a new

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policy, absolutely new, that's never been thought of at all, as how to remedy a situation where we have too much money chasing too few goods or too much money chasing too many goods. This is an economic confusion to the economists today, that we have so much ability to produce, that we have everything we want and yet the prices are high, and yet that we have too much money and so the politicians want to drain it off and create hardship. The educational systems today have completely failed to deal with this problem that I believe is as old as man since he stopped the barter system. When he had the barter system, he had little trouble with his credit because he had to take along to market what he owned. Today you don't have to, and I'm not against a computerized reckoning of a man's wealth if it will hurry things up and get us away from the cash registers. I don't think there is anything wrong with it, and I'm not at all allergic to using something different to dollar bills. If we have to come to a weighed measurement of a unit of some sort that has to be computerized, maybe we're coming into it with Chargex and all these other things. I'm not opposed to it as long as it is regulated.

But, I think that the great argument in this House has been pure and simple that if we only had the money we'd have all the answers. That isn't all the answer by any means, not any means. If a shortage of housing, and let's take this point for a moment, if a shortage of housing was a direct result of high interest rates, then why didn't we have a surplus of housing in 1960? Ever since I've been in this House one of the claims of the Opposition is that we've been short of housing, and this is not a claim of Opposition, it is a fact. Ever since the war either there's been shortage of housing when rates of interest were four and a half per cent, then five and a half per cent. In fact, there are some mortgages still being resold that are being paid off at five and a half per cent. It's not that, it's not the shortage of money, but it's the system that cannot balance its purchasing power with the need. As long as we are going to use an artificial transfusion, and that's all it is, we are going to say to the taxpayer, we are going to help you out, Federally or Provincially we're going to put in a needle in this arm and one over here, we're going to give you a transfusion from the economic body, and that's what many of the programmes have been. The fact is that I don't know of one Federal programme, you name it today, that has successfully lowered the cost of living. Every one of them has come home to roost and increased the cost of living and housing as well, every one over the years.

I wanted to get back to the drug problem and then I'll come into this, but we lead into these things as we speak to you because they come to mind, the one on discrimination. I think that if there is anything going to be done for society today, and it's not just being hard and harsh, but it's every one of us in our own way in our own community beginning to talk about the things that really matter. I've seen so many people that are happy and have very little that I'm ashamed of myself, so happiness does not consist of things that a man owneth or possesseth, but it's an attitude of the inward heart.

I read the paper this morning and I looked through it and I could find nothing, I couldn't find one article — and I sure didn't go to the financial page — unless I went to the funnies, that I could really say you were glad to read it. You go on to television, all those mediums of communications, and it's all this calamity. We seem to be a calamity-oriented people. I listened to the debate over the last week and a half and I heard the Opposition cry blue ruin all the way. First it was over-population, explosion of population, it is a terrible thing. Then the population is going to create pollution, and the pollution is going to drown us. Well, why worry about population then?

Then we get the other people who say well all of the detergents, and they are a problem, all of the chemicals for weed control, all the chemicals for bug control, all these insecticides. I read quite a lengthy comment one day from the hydrologists who worried that we would starve to death because we were depriving the land of its natural resource, and that all of the synthetic fertilizers and so on would eventually deprive the food of any benefit and we would starve to death. Well, maybe some of you feel that way tonight, seeing we are going on without our supper or our dinner as you wish to call it, but you….

AN HON. MEMBER: Speak for yourself.

MR. TISDALLE: You had yours, did you. Thank you.

But it's so ridiculous when you think of it. Population explosion, starvation, all of these things should make us wonder whether we're just crying wolf! wolf! for the sake of getting our name in the paper, wanting to be seen, because we have a new idea. Because when we go back over the population of the world, and you find huge cities that even probably outnumbered the cities of today, they seem to have managed all right and weren't liquidated by pollution or by contamination, they were liquidated usually by going very soft, and someone stronger than they came along and liquidated them, and took over. I think that you could take 22,000,000 people in Canada and probably put them on all Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, and have the rest of Canada bare, if you wished to. We have such a small, puny population in Canada, that the world around us really has a right to say, "What right have you got to that much elbow room when we haven't got it." I hear this hoggish attitude going on and on as though we begrudged our fellow man living accommodation, a living area. Do you know that Russia has over 8,000,000 people, I think, in the north lands, and we have 64,000, 64,000.

I went into the desert areas down in California, and camped in amongst the people that were travelling there, and I found that people on $20,000 a year, $10,000 a year, were living in homes in desert areas that were 120 miles away from their jobs and on the freeway. They had now been able to develop the accommodation that was acceptable to living in that kind of community. Yet I hear people say we don't want to be like California, with over-population. But we envy them their ability to put consumer goods on the market at a price that we can't afford to put on the market, because they have a tremendous consumer market. You can't have it both ways. You can have your wide vacant areas and develop tremendous resources, hundreds and maybe 1,000 miles away from your major communities and still have things cheap, or inexpensive, as the word might be. The Opposition certainly takes the opportunity in those cases to say, "Well, if the Government did it you could do away with the middle man, and you could make it cheaper." But, eventually, it comes down to the hard facts of life that you must have a large enough consumer market to make an article in a numerous enough quantity that it becomes less expensive, because the original outlay for the plant is divided out over the whole production unit, and when you do that you will find that your costs come down.

Then we go around the world and we start our wide programmes of self-help and then we sit back and we say,

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what are we going to do now because those areas are having longer life, and the children aren't dying, and we've got an over-production so we better ship them the pill now, and we start playing God with these people around the world. Who are we to do this?

I think our answers could be found again in the monetary system that we are prone to allow to take its course and rob from the young and take off the table from the aged because of our taxation by expropriation, and then we try to redistribute our shortages and what we have not. The financial system, and I don't care what you call it, should be made capable and able to distribute the goods and services that we are so able to produce. Surely this vehicle that trade and commerce travels on, can be made to work without robbing from the fixed-income person and putting people on forced unemployment and then saying we'll pay them a working salary, no matter how you call it, whether it is an unearned increment or whether it is a guaranteed salary, I don't care what you call it. I have yet to find the person who didn't enjoy a job, if it is a job that he liked at all and could be put into, enjoyed working, because it brought him out into the community of his fellow man. But when we say that we believe in a policy of finance, Federally, or I don't care what level you are today in life, if you say that you believe in a policy that believes in putting people out of work, I don't buy that policy. I don't buy it.

You say that inflation is a terrible thing, but if we all woke up with amnesia tomorrow morning we wouldn't know what inflation was. You wouldn't be any different than it was in 1929 when hamburger was ten cents a pound and you didn't have the ten cents. I can remember taking 12 dozen eggs to town and Dad coming back with two and three cents a dozen. That's what they brought. Money is money at any time, but when we argue about the symptoms, purely the symptoms, we can get a lot of mileage out of it, and we can get a lot of headlines in the press. I'm not interested in the headlines, I'm interested in talking to people who have dedicated themselves to responsible government and say we believe there is an answer. But if we are going to argue about symptoms, then we are arguing about the symptoms of drugs and all these things, instead of coming to the hard core. The fact is that this system has been weighed in the balance and found wanting, as far as the financial system is concerned.

When our educational units can turn out people who will begin to deal with the cause and not the effect, then they will go to the source and say the financial institutions must serve the people. I'm not talking about taking over pension funds from the unions — that bit of soft soap and sugar-coated candy the other day was certainly politics — that's of no consequence to take over the savings of little people, or of the pension funds or the life savings or life insurance. That is not the answer, all you are doing is taking over responsibilities that other people are now discharging reasonably well. The cause is that the financial system today has been bogged down with fogey ideas and ideas that are not practical, the idea that you must bleed off purchasing power when there is a shortage of purchasing power, that you must then inject it again in social welfare programmes, because you caused the programme to be social welfare oriented. I asked a grade six group the other day if they would consider that a sound policy, and they said anyone would understand that kind of mathematics as not being sensible. Surely older people, surely politicians, can see we are hoodwinking the people constantly when we talk about the shortage of schools, of housing, of hospitals, of jobs, and all of these things when we, in turn, say there is not enough purchasing power. We've got to take more taxes from you and we've got to turn more of you loose on welfare, we've got to make an austerity programme for hospitals, we've got to do the same for schools, and we're right back where we started. No wonder we seem to be chasing our own thoughts.

I'm a small man, a small person probably, but I have never had any time for the person who is small about small things. It's all right to be small about big things maybe, but we're being small about small things. We want to be small about our policies. We can't see over each other's denominational political fences and see that in the philosophy and in the ideas of monetary reform there is good reason to take a good look at it and use the vehicle. I can't be too strong on it.

Capital city beautification. Mr. Minister, the capital city has been improved immensely time after time because of the generosity and the forethought of this Government on a capital city grant. I only ask you to take a little look further out than the City of Victoria. I like what I've seen that you've done, with the cooperation of Saanich and the City, in respect to the Gorge Improvement Area, but there are many other areas that could be improved, and one of those areas is the beautification of the Elk Lake area. That corridor that serves as the main entrance now into the City of Victoria should be improved with a capital city grant. I feature there as seeing some day that area will be concrete all the way along the beaches, those weed trees will be removed, a promenade will be put out there for many people to be able to enjoy, instead of just the birds. It almost looks like a game preserve today, with a little bit of an area at each end where people can get in and out of, which is muddy. The whole area could be improved in a tremendous way to make that a real gem in the approach to the City of Victoria, and I think that a capital city grant should be directed towards that.

I would also suggest that the Highways Department do a better job along there. I believe we should be looking at it in conjunction with town planning. I'm not particularly happy with the slow manner in which we seem to build highways on this Island. I think of the Trans-Canada highway which was a long while in building, and I remember the first three miles, Mr. Speaker, out of Tsawwassen. It took a year to build those three miles, and I hope it doesn't take as long to incorporate the safety features in the four lanes and the over-passes on the Pat Bay Highway.

I'm coming out strong today, Mr. Speaker, in favour of connecting up the arteries into this city, which are actually severed out at Town and Country, and Mayfair. I make a strong plea to the Government to pull out those old maps that you had drawn on behalf of the Pat Bay Highway and the interchange for the Trans-Canada, and dust them off and take a look at our commitments back there when the former Minister of Highways had many talks and many understandings with these people in this area. I had them also. I had the understandings that a second artery would come into this city and it would be somewhere in the Rose-Blanshard Street area, and I saw those plans and approved. In fact I went before the joint Commission of the Department of Highways and the City of Victoria and there I made my submission that we should get away from the intersection of the Trans-Canada and Pat Bay where it is now oriented, because it is a bottle-neck and could cause a decadent area of a shopping centre, that it should be moved over behind the shopping centre and connected with the McKenzie Avenue area. The Commission at that time said well, this is a new project for us, we'll go out and take a look

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at it, and they came back and they recommended actually what I had suggested.

I once more repeat myself here for the benefit of the new Minister of Highways, who is maybe not in his seat at this time, but we should definitely construct a second artery into this city, and tie it in with an intersection at McKenzie Avenue. The reason I say this is that Saanich, along with the Provincial Government, has done a commendable job of reconstructing and acquiring land for McKenzie Avenue. McKenzie Avenue is really the only true east and west perimeter road for this capital city of 160 or 180,000 people, and any city that hasn't got an east and west artery cannot grow, it will have heart trouble and arterial sclerosis, probably. Hardening of the arteries, I should have said. I meant it that way, that's why I said it. That's a new disease for highways, that's a new disease for cities. Hardening of the arteries of this city of Victoria is very evident, so I would like to see the intersection and the McKenzie Highway. I want the Highways Department to take special note that they go out and they take a look at McKenzie Avenue and join it into the Trans-Canada, and make it the Trans-Canada, so that we can have, at last, a truly proper interchange of a cloverleaf between a Trans-Canada and Pat Bay Highway. You never will have it where Town and Country is, because you will create decadent areas around the shopping centre and they will destroy themselves because they can't get the consumer to come off the highways there, so we should move that out to where it should be. Even now, the city finds that the Gorge A-1 and the present Trans-Canada inadequate.

I agree with the member for Nanaimo that four lanes to Nanaimo is a must, very shortly. I appreciate the new signs of the Minister of Highways to a degree, but I can't help but think that some day someone is going to come along and say underneath that sign that says "Building for the Future", some one is going to put a sign underneath it, "You haven't caught up with the past," and we haven't when it comes to highways on this Island. I'm being as kind as I know how to say this, that we are doing a good job, but we are really about five or six years behind.

I know that the Minister of Highways is doing everything he can to speed that piece of road out there now, but we should be on the four lanes out even into Colwood, and I speak on behalf of my colleague that sits near here, because I recognize that you go out in that area. The congestion is just simply out of this world, the people don't realize it until you drive out there, and realize at 4:30 and almost any time of the day you have a congested piece of highway that does not lend itself to safety and the movement of traffic. I don't think there is a piece of highway in British Columbia with more accidents per mile. There are more fatalities I would say on the Pat Bay Highway per mile than anywhere else. You really kill them out there, and a lot of them are unnecessary. Now if we would not delay the overpasses and I understand some of the overpasses may be delayed, but it is important for the safety of people that overpasses be built as quickly as the highway is there, because the corridor becomes a very fast and swift moving traffic and it's impossible to get across it safely.

I would like to make a proposition here this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of…. I expect to be a little bit longer, but that's all right with me, if you want to leave, that's fine. We've heard a lot about the drilling in the offshore here, and I noted that the land in this area of British Columbia, and the recreational services, have been very well protected by our parks system, in spite of all that has been said here in this Legislature. Parks have been one of the finest ways of retaining areas that lend themselves to recreation and sports and all the other amenities that we people want for our tourists and also for ourselves. I'm suggesting here, Mr. Speaker, that we should take an example of what that has done on land, and probably under the Department of Recreation and Conservation, design a new policy on water. There are many, many mountains and many areas of our parks that will never be traversed even with a helicopter landing somebody on them, and yet they are there in the parks. But we have never done anything really, strictly in respect to waters that are recreational.

Now that we are constructing more and more dams, and there are a lot of new bodies of water, or basins, I would like to see the Department consider setting up a new classification called an aquatic park. Then we could begin regulations that would determine the characteristics of that aquatic park for years to come, and stabilize some of the areas that we are in danger of losing to maybe offshore drilling or whatever other type of commercial endeavor might take place.

I recognize that many of these areas already might be said to be too late, but I don't think it's ever too late to start a good idea, and I feel it is a good idea to set aside bodies of water or areas of salt water that would lend themselves to special regulating for recreational purposes to come. I will be suggesting, in a motion before this House, the description of an aquatic park, and I trust that I may get support for it, at least give it your consideration.

I want to say something, now that I'm on salt water, on commercial fishing here, and this is important, again, as we are dealing with lives and not fish. We are dealing with fishermen. I wonder, as we look back over the Sessions and the department or the committees that have sat on this subject, and we had one committee in this House, whatever happened with the recommendation of a Deputy Minister of Fisheries. I hope that we're not, I maybe shouldn't say gun-shy. I hope we're not hook-shy, that we would steer clear of this, because I believe the fishermen of this area would look a long while to Ottawa to give them a fair deal because the river policy in Ottawa has been anything but friendly to our fishermen.

I can recall bringing in the motion in this House to set up the 12-mile offshore limit, and it was about a year later before Federally, in Ottawa, that they decided to do that. I think now that it should be more than that, from shoreline to shoreline and should go maybe out to the Continental Shelf, I believe, for the protection of our fishing industry.

I hope that the Government will consider setting up a Deputy Minister of Fisheries because the fishermen need someone fully acquainted with their problems sitting at the bargaining table on international affairs. I know the Province cannot bargain in international affairs, but I believe we should have a listening post, and that listening post should be a Deputy Minister. It seems as though Ottawa today, in dealing with international fisheries agreements with Russia and Japan, in which we are not successful apparently in some areas, it is like a guppy alongside a whale. Maybe the Provincial Government could become a leader in that respect.

I would like to talk about housing methods and housing for a moment, in respect to zoning. — I have listened for a week and a half, so I am going to make you listen a little longer. Mr. Speaker, at least I know you are listening — I journeyed to many housing developments in other parts of Oregon and Washington and California, and I spent three weeks pretty well doing this, and talking to them about the

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new materials. My first recommendation would be this, that the Government take men from its Public Works Department and other areas of building, and get associated with the National Housing Association in the United States, the National Home Building, and that they endeavour to follow through as to what is happening there.

Last year in Houston, Texas, in the Agrodome, 50,000 builders visited the showcase of the use of materials. 50,000 builders, not people who were just interested, these were builders, 50,000 were at that symposium or convention. It goes for five days. I know the plumbers will say, "Well, we get all these materials here. We know all about them." But let me tell you this, that in talking to the biggest building outfit probably in the United States, that they are most ardent in attending this kind of convention or symposium on house building and home building. They set up a full-fledged apartment block right there and it is there for four or five days and torn down afterwards, to show in a showcase what is really happening in the building world.

I was with a building contractor in the little town of Eugene — 77,000 people they have — he starts a new house every Monday morning. I found that in that community they could build a home and sell a three-bedroom home for nearly $4,000 to $5,000 less than we are selling in this community here, because of the methods of construction and the ability to construct at lower cost of labour. The labour costs were high but the production unit was higher.

I think that we are not investigating near enough the use of new materials. I saw insulation materials that I have never seen here. I saw the use of concrete tile on roofs that I have never seen here, and they never need repairing again, they are life-time, and do not seem to be as expensive, and yet they are contracted on down there. Surely we can use some of these ideas up here. But I am wondering why we haven't got people in the Departments who are bringing back the information.

I would like to talk to you about air pollution. I sat in the Legislature of the California Legislature at Sacramento, had hours of discussion with the chairman of the committee on air pollution, and was there when he introduced 18 Bills on air pollution. But it takes time to tell all of these aspects of information, and they said, "We would never think of one of our members doing this without he was paid and sent by the Government to do it, and you did it on your own, at your own expense." I think that we are short of information on this side of the House and the other side of the House because we haven't the time or the money to do the research.

I spent time visiting universities. I went to several universities and had personal tours of the whole university and took many hours. I could tell you of the different things that are happening in universities that we are now starting to do here now, that they are turning back from. That we are now starting to do here that they are turning back from. We are following years late what they have proven are not good policies. Education is the same. They have thrown out the new math in most of the schools and we are picking it up here. It is time we got back to some basics.

But anyway, on housing, I want to recommend this, that I saw down there Philip Morris, and I am not a proponent of the tobacco company, but if Philip Morris can go into the housing business and decentralize their operation, then why can't MacMillan Bloedel? MacMillan Bloedel have a wide corporation of integration in the building materials, yet I have never seen them in the financing and land assembly and production of housing. That is something they could do that would be a tremendous help to our communities. I am calling on the ex-Minister, who is now a senior officer in that company, to take a look at housing and see if we can't get into it by private corporations the same as the huge corporations are doing in the United States. I wonder what has happened to Crown Zellerbach, B.C. Forest, why aren't they into the communities of building. They have got money to spend on many areas, why can't it come in here? So I am asking the corporations that are making use of our building materials and exporting them in huge quantities, to take a look at our housing and see if they couldn't get involved the same as Leisure World down in the United States.

While I was there Sweden was there, of all countries. Swedish people, I should say, were there looking at Leisure World and saying, "Won't you come over and do the same in our country?" I was with one of the directors at the time, and he said, "We are continually besieged with people who are coming here and saying, 'Won't you start this kind of retirement centre in our country."' I said, "Why don't you come up to Victoria in British Columbia and do the same thing here?" and he said, "We couldn't possibly do it. Why don't you get your big corporations up there that are in this logging industry or in your timber products and get them to do it?" So I am asking why not, why not?

Well, I would like to talk about native Indians, the natives. The newest thing going on there now is self-help and I want to compliment them. I was disappointed the member from Atlin did not speak on behalf of his people, but we all speak on behalf of them, so that is no reflection on it, he probably didn't have time. But I like what I see is going on in the communities of the native people. The self-help attitude is taking hold. I was out not long ago to see one of the directors of programming for development of his reserve or reservation, and I would like to see that they be called "title lands" instead of "reservations." I think we should get away from some of this Name-the-Culture that breeds contempt almost.

I would like to see the Highways Department, and I know they are cooperating very well in one area especially where we have a huge gravel pit now, and I like our legislation on protection of these areas for reclamation. We have promised to go in there and put it all back into grass. Maybe we could put in swimming pools or something in there, too, and create an environment that would be conducive to tourism on behalf of these people. Maybe we could look with a little more astuteness at helping, where we are going to do something anyway, let's do a little more with it and help these people to engineer their own development. I like what I see going on in the community of the natives. They are opening up their reservations for the people to see what they have, and I hope that we can cooperate with them on engineering, on town planning, on development of industries, on tourism, and all of the other things that could go along to making their life an easier life.

So, with that, Mr. Chairman, and because there was so much controversy here this afternoon, I appreciate the opportunity of speaking on behalf of the people of Saanich and The Islands. They are tremendous people. In fact, the best people live in those communities. The rest wish they did. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Richmond.

MR. ERNEST LeCOURS (Richmond): Mr. Speaker, I

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haven't as yet had my dinner and I am sure there are many other members who are as anxious to get home as I am, so I wish to assure you that I will be brief and to the point. I have been rather amused listening to the members of the Official Opposition who, in their frustration and bitterness at having received such a shellacking last August 27th, tried to take it out on the Government members when actually they are angry at the voting public. But the voting public was too wise to be taken in by their lie which is easy for them to see through. While they try to make us feel guilty for having such a large majority, they should feel ashamed for having such a poor turnout because of the poor policies that they project.

On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, I wasn't at all amused by the display of poor sportsmanship and the display of, I think, injustice put on by the members of the two Opposition parties in refusing to unanimously support the nomination of the Speaker. The Speaker has earned for himself a reputation for being most fair and most impartial in the six to seven years that I have been here, and I am sure he deserved the support of all members of this House. I hope the Premier will take a cue from what they have done this year and not extend to them again the courtesy of asking them for their support in moving resolutions from the Government side.

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to be back in my place again representing the Electoral District of Richmond, by a much larger majority. I am especially happy to see so many new faces on our side and I have been greatly impressed by the words of wisdom and the many new ideas expressed by our members as well. I would like to congratulate the mover and seconder of the speech in reply to the Throne Debate, and to congratulate all the new members for doing so well in their maiden speeches. I am sure that over the years you will contribute a great deal to the effectiveness of this House.

However, there is one thing with respect to the election that I am not happy about. I think that the electoral processes require some overhauling if we are going to have less trouble at election time. Now, I know that the enumerations were taken prior to the campaign and it was quite satisfactory in many ways. However, there are some ways in which it was not satisfactory. There are people who have been dead for years, and some who have left the community for years, who are still on the voters' list, and they are on the voters' list in spite of the fact that the people told the enumerators they were no longer there. I think there is something wrong with the system and I think that there should be something done immediately about revising and up-dating our electoral process.

I have suggested in the past couple of years that we should use a voter identification card. I am more convinced than ever, Mr. Speaker, that this is the solution to our problem. If everyone had a voter identification card bearing his picture, his name and address, and the number of the polling station at which he is supposed to vote in municipal, provincial and federal elections, it would eliminate all need for voters' lists. It would especially eliminate what has taken place in this past election, where people have boasted of having voted in two different electoral districts, and I am sure it would make it much simpler for everyone to present a voter identification card at the polling station. By checking the picture of the person against the card you know that he is a registered voter, you take the card and punch it, give him his ballot, and that is the end of it. There is no chance at all of anybody voting twice, there is no chance of anybody being left out. They can vote anywhere in the Province regardless of where they are at the time of the poll, and they can have their vote conveyed to their proper electoral district. I think this would be very handy as identification for other purposes, as well, and it would solve the very troublesome problem we have had in the past few years.

AN HON. MEMBER: A passport….

MR. LeCOURS: It would be used much the same as a passport, that is right.

I would like to compliment the Government and especially the Minister of Public Works for the improvement to lights and mikes in the Chamber. I have been one who has complained bitterly about the poor mikes we had here in the past where you had to speak right into them if you wanted to be heard, and I am very happy to note that we have very efficient mikes at this time. The lighting situation is much improved, and I want to thank the Government and Minister of Public Works for that.

But I think it is about time we had some decent accommodation for the M.L.A.'s in this House. I am rather tired of getting back in a little cubbyhole with a stenographer, although they are quite good-looking stenographers, in order to dictate the letters which we have. I think we should have proper accommodation where we could do our work and dictate our letters in comfort, and I think it is time this was provided.

I am happy also about the fact that the proceedings of the House are being tape-recorded. I hope that something more than that will be done. I personally, would like to be able to have a transcript of what I say in the House, to be able to preserve it for my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, and I hope the Government will do something about making the transcripts available to the members at their own expense, if necessary.

I was most pleased, Mr. Speaker, to find that Richmond figured prominently in the Throne Speech. There was mention made of the fact that in December of 1969 we opened the Motor Vehicle Inspection Station in Richmond, the first of its kind in the Province and a prototype for others in other areas. I am sure that we are very grateful to the Government for providing this facility which is one that we have needed for a good many years. I am especially happy because we sort of sneaked in ahead of some of the older and larger municipalities who also were demanding it, and I thank the Premier and all the members of the Cabinet for acceding to our wishes in that respect.

We also had some mention of Richmond with respect to the soon-to-be constructed Workmen's Compensation Board Rehabilitation Centre which eventually will house the project valued at $15,000,000. I am very happy to find that this is in Richmond, one of the fastest-growing areas of the Province, and I am sure it will be acknowledged by the people of Richmond in future elections by showing their pleasure at what the Government has done for our municipality.

AN HON. MEMBER: Bouquets…. more bouquets….

MR. LECOURS: Well, not all the things I have to say are in the way of bouquets, Mr. Speaker, I have some other remarks to make as well.

I'm very happy, though, to note that at this Session almost every member who has spoken thus far has mentioned pollution. At the last Session, I believe, that with the exception of one slight mention by one other member on this side, I was the only member who spoke on pollution on two

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occasions, once at between 2:30 and 3:00 in the morning. I've said on this side, Mr. Member. There were some on the other side who spoke on it, but very few. However, at this Session everybody has become aware of pollution. I'm very happy about that because the question of pollution is one which is very serious and we have to decide right now to do something about it unless we want to pollute ourselves and destroy ourselves into oblivion, and I am not at all happy with the situation as it is now

For example, I think that perhaps the advisers of the Government are not quite up to scratch in some respects, and I say this with one particular idea in mind and that is with respect to the Iona Island Sewage Disposal Plant. I know that the municipality of Richmond protested loudly and long when this plant was proposed for Iona Island on the shores of Richmond, and they appealed to the Cabinet, but eventually the Cabinet agreed that the plant would go in there anyway, and they set down certain regulations, but those regulations were insufficient. Now I think that the people who are advising the Government probably recommended that this would be a satisfactory arrangement, but I assure you, Mr. Speaker, it is not satisfactory. If you go out to Iona Island on any day at low tide the stench is unbearable, and this is what we have bordering our shores in the fine municipality of Richmond. I don't think it's good enough, and I think that it's time that the people who supply the Government with information on pollution be well qualified to do their job if those in the past have not been.

I'm happy that there's now a new Director of Pollution Control. I'm happy that the other one is no longer there because he was responsible, I believe, for the Iona plant. I think that we should step up the quality of our advisers on pollution control and make sure that what we do is compatible with the Province that we're trying to develop.

The way I see it now, Mr. Speaker, we have about five Ministers who have their finger in the pollution pie. At one time or another each one seems to contribute in some way towards announcing Government policy with respect to pollution, and this leads me to believe that maybe too many cooks spoil the broth, when there are five Ministers who have their hand in the pollution situation. I feel that the Ministers have been shilly-shallying around long enough, and I think it's time that we get some definite policies and I think it's time that we get one Minister of Environmental Control who is responsible for all environmental control and who knows what he's doing. As a matter of fact, with the five Ministers at the game, Mr. Speaker, I feel that they are playing the old shell game with the people of this Province, and sometimes I feel that maybe there's a hole in the table and we don't know where the shell goes. But I am anxious to see something definite done, and I think full-time pollution control Minister.

As a matter of fact, the way it is as I see it now, it's much as if you were to pass legislation requiring prohibition and then turning your back to the bootlegger, letting him bootleg as much as he likes as long as he isn't selling it illegally. This seems to be the situation as I see it with respect to pollution. We have, I think, a pretty good pollution control law but it seems to stop there. There seems to be a lot of lip service but not very much application.

I know that we are surrounded by pollution in Richmond on the south arm of the Fraser and the Iona plant, and now we have coming up the other plants on Annacis Island which are going to be another menace. I would recommend to the Ministers involved and all the Ministers that they make sure that Annacis Island is required to install something better than primary treatment, because primary treatment is not good enough. The stench stays there and all it does is look a little bit better, and that isn't what we want for the municipality of Richmond.

I am very happy, Mr. Speaker, to note that the Government has recently appointed a Consumer Affairs Officer. I had the pleasure of speaking with this gentleman yesterday. I find that in the month of January he has handled 85 complaints. I think this is a very good thing. I think it win be very helpful to the people of this Province, and I am sure that it will be well worth the effort that the Government has put into supplying this officer to help the people who get caught up in the various binds in their dealings with the different trades.

In that regard I would also like to compliment the Vancouver Province for a feature which they have on their front page daily, "The Action Line." I follow it quite steadily and I have noticed that they have been able to accomplish a good deal towards helping people who have had difficulties with suppliers or businessmen of various sorts, in rectifying something that was wrong. I hope that the Consumer Affairs Officer will make reports available to the press from time to time so that those who are guilty of the offenses that people complain about will be exposed, because that's the only way you're going to stop them.

I was very happy, of course, with the Government's position with respect to the liquor laws of this Province. My maiden speech included some reference to the liquor laws and I am happy that the very fine Board of Inquiry was appointed and that they are now proceeding with their report.

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you get yourself as Chairman of the Liquor Control Board?

MR. LECOURS: I haven't quite arranged that yet, I'm working on it. I'm very happy that they're preparing their report now and I hope the Government will act on it as soon as possible because I think we should be prepared to cater to the tourist trade of the coming season, and I hope that our liquor laws will be revamped and modernized for the tourist trade.

There is one other thing with respect to the Attorney General's Department which I would like to comment on, and that is the handling of conveyancing at the Land Offices. I receive many complaints from developers and individuals with respect to the slowness of the completion of the deals through the Land Office in New Westminster and elsewhere, and I think that the Government should give some thought to either increasing the staff of surveyors in the Land Office, and other personnel required for this purpose, or engaging outside surveyors to speed up the job. I don't think it's good enough when developers, who are putting in for subdivisions, have to wait three and four months for their subdivision results to come back to them and they're paying sometimes as much as $10,000 a month interest on the money that they have borrowed to develop the land. This is very expensive, and I think the Government could eliminate a lot of this unfair delay if they would increase the staff or engage outside surveyors to help them in this work.

I want to compliment, the Minister of Health for his efforts with respect to the retarded children, Mr. Speaker. He gave a promise some months ago that he would eliminate the backlog of retarded children waiting for entry into

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Woodlands by the end of the year. Now he didn't quite make it, because there was some unavoidable delay, but he's made a valiant effort and I'm sure the people of this Province all appreciate his fine effort in that regard, and I think that within a few days now the backlog will be caught up with, and this is very commendable. I have been concerned over the years about the retarded and all handicapped children, and I was quite critical in the past of some of the Ministers of Health for their inaction, and it's a nice change to see the Minister applying himself so assiduously.

However, I think that there are some avenues that should be pursued a bit more urgently in respect to those things which affect the Minister of Health, and I think especially with respect to the construction of new hospitals. I know that in Richmond's case, I think it took 11 years from the time they started to ask for a hospital until the hospital was constructed, and that's much too long to meet the needs of anything as important as a hospital. I know the people are now waiting long periods of time, in the same way. Plans are drawn and you might wait four or five years before the plans are okayed and you can start construction, and maybe more than four or five years. I don't think that's good enough, Mr. Speaker. I think we should make a real effort to provide hospitals — I don't think we can ever provide them as much as we need them. I don't think any area will ever provide them so that you don't have any waiting period at all, but I'm quite satisfied if we increase the pace — my good friend from Oak Bay, Mr. G.S. Wallace says we can — well, we're a rich Province, it's true, Mr. Speaker, and maybe we can. But I would like to see the pace increased in any case much greater than it is now. I think that if a real effort were made by the Government, I'm not saying by the Minister of Health, I know the Minister of Health would do it tomorrow if he could, but the Government must give him a hand, provide him the funds and get this work done.

I notice that with respect to the retarded children this brings to mind also other handicapped children. I was talking to some people in Vancouver this morning over the telephone with respect to the parents of children with hearing handicaps. In Vancouver last night there was a meeting of the parents of children with a hearing handicap, and they have decided that they should go ahead and try to construct a private school to provide adequate education for their children, at a cost of perhaps half a million dollars. They expect that the Minister of Health, in his goodness, is going to provide them with one-third of the cost, which he may or may not. Even if he did, I would not be satisfied, Mr. Speaker, because I don't think that any parents, especially parents of a handicapped child, should be required to divvy up out of their pockets to provide a school to educate their children.

It's bad enough that the parents of handicapped children have to live with the handicapped 24 hours a day, without asking them to do what you do not have to do for the normal child. I think it's disgraceful, I think it's absolutely disgraceful, that the situation has reached the point where these parents should ever even entertain the idea of building a private school to educate their children. Surely to goodness we are a responsible Government. I've heard that remark often from the Government benches. We're a responsible Government, let's be responsible. Let's provide all the children of this Province with whatever education they require, no matter what it is, provide them with what they require, and we have that responsibility and I don't think we can shirk it by letting them do it themselves. These parents, Mr. Speaker, are moving on their own now out of desperation, because they want to see their children grow up to be successful citizens and as nearly as possible normal citizens, and we're leaving them to bear the load and asking them to go ahead at a cost of approximately $1,000 per year per child plus the capital cost of construction. I think this is absolutely ridiculous, uncalled for, and I call upon the Government to do something immediately about this situation, to step up the provisions that we have made in the past for handicapped children, especially for the deaf and blind.

I haven't visited the Jericho Hill School, but I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Emmett Casey, the Director of the Western Institute for the Deaf, and when Mr. Emmett Casey says that the situation there is not good I believe him, because I know he knows what he's talking about. I would urge the Minister of Education, especially, to send people in there, to have people who know and people who care to have a real hard look at that situation and come up with some answers because they are badly needed, Mr. Minister.

I won't be much longer.

There's one other thing, Mr. Speaker, that I have been concerned about, and on which I have had a number of complaints, and that is what has been termed the chaotic state of probation services. This is the term that is used by probation officers — the chaotic state of probation services. Now I was very much in favour of the Government's idea of trying as much as possible to keep juveniles out of the courtroom. I think it's a very fine idea, and I think it should be practised whenever possible, but it can be carried too far, Mr. Speaker, We've reached a point now where the juveniles think that they are "home free," that anything they do is okay because they're not going to be prosecuted. They're being turned over to probation officers for placement and the placement is not there for them, they do not have the resources to place them. Unless we're going to move ahead and provide an adequate number of receiving homes for these youngsters, then we are sort of putting up a stone wall for these probation officers.

I think it's time that we looked at it from a different point of view, and I would suggest to the Attorney-General that it might be a good idea to appoint a committee to look into the matter of juvenile delinquency and the handling of the juvenile situation, because I am sure that as it is now it is not satisfactory.

I know that some people are complaining about the fact that juveniles can go along drinking on the streets and all the policeman can do is take the bottle away from them and let them go — this is what I'm told — that there's no punishment whatsoever. They'd go around an hour later and they've got another half a dozen beers and they're doing the same thing again. I hear, also, that they can drive without insurance because they know they're not going to be prosecuted, whereas anybody above the age of 18 will be prosecuted and fined $250. If you fine them, if you take their driving license away, they don't care about that, they drive without a licence, because there again they think they're "home free" and nobody is going to prosecute them for driving without a licence.

I think we have to be more realistic in our approach to juvenile delinquency. We have to treat each particular offense with the severity that it deserves. I don't believe in being severe with them all. As I say, the minor infractions should be treated the way we're doing it now, through probation officers. But those who are guilty of severe offenses and who

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are making life miserable for the public and for the police should be treated in a way that they can be properly punished if they will not conform to the laws of society.

With respect to the removal of the traffic offenses from the courts, which will soon be the case throughout the Province, I think that this may be a good thing. However, I have always felt that if the courts and the police had been a bit more concerned about justice in the past, if the people who were accused of traffic offenses had not been abused in the past by many policemen and many of our courts, this would not have been necessary. It's going to mean a considerable loss, I believe, to the municipalities in the way of fines, and I hope that the Government will see that a close eye is kept on this situation, so that if it's necessary this plan can be altered to meet the needs of the time.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I have dealt only briefly with all these matters because I will be dealing with many of them again during the Estimates of the various Ministers. I thank you for your courtesy and I'll be back later on.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Skeena.

MR. DUDLEY LITTLE (Skeena): Now, Mr. Speaker, whether it works or not I'm getting tired of bending down into that mike. The former Minister of Highways used to stand up and try to tie a knot in his mike, and I'd have to put a book under the front of the desk to bring my mike in close enough to be heard, and this is a relief to be able to stand like this, believe me.

I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Speaker, on your re-appointment to that high post that you hold with such dignity, and always lend such dignity to the post in your fairness. I would also like to congratulate the new members in the House, because certainly this is the Session in which you learn that one good clear-thinking member just can't change the course of this House in the short time that you thought you were going to do it when you first came in. I can remember the Minister of Lands and Forests saying that he thought, when he came down here first, it shouldn't take him more than six weeks, and he's been all those years since, and he's been much more effective than some of the rest of us. Sometimes we just wonder whether we change the course of anything or not.

I am not going to go after the Opposition the way I should, I would just like to say, Mr. Speaker, that since I was here last, we had visits from the leaders and from the members of the Opposition, and I was so happy to have them come up and visit us in Skeena because it helped me so much with the campaign. The people up there are hard-working, sincere people, and when they saw these people running around behind the stumps, and trying to contact some of the loggers and tell them these wild tales, this is something you can't do with a logger, because a logger is familiar with a story-teller and these fellows were spotted immediately. So consequently, Mr. Speaker, I come down here representing most of the people living in Skeena, with a clear majority over both other parties.

However, Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak for a moment on bridges that are urgently needed in the area. I remember one time, when I was chairman of the Chamber of Commerce in Terrace, the Liberal Premier at that time came through and he told me that if I would promise not to tell anyone about this, that he would have $22,000 more that year for roadwork in Skeena. But this was only on the condition that I didn't say anything about it, because he said if they ever heard about it in Vancouver I'd have to drop this programme right away. I can remember when the Social Credit Government came into power they said we're going to hard-top the roads from Vancouver to Prince Rupert, and many of us at that time didn't believe them, but I just wanted the members to know that the contract has been let and the last gap to be filled is in Skeena, and this gap is all under contract now. There are 32 miles left to do and 16 miles of it was completed before the weather put the contractor off the road.

Of course I don't want the Minister of Finance to think that because we now have a little hardtop up in that area that that's all we need, because we are in real trouble in bridges. We have a bridge three miles west of Terrace, and this bridge funnels down to a one-lane traffic. We had a fire on this bridge a while back and I know that certainly the people would have added fuel to the fire and said burn, if it hadn't been that this would have isolated us entirely from the west, so unfortunately we had to put the fire out. This is a bridge that needs to be replaced. I would like to say in all sincerity before this House, that we have two or three bridges in that area where, unless they are replaced in the near future, we are going to have logging trucks landing right in the river. These bridges are so rotten now that the engineers in the Department don't even know what is holding them up. We have made a nice start. We have two bridges now that they are working on, and if we can get a programme going on some of these other wooden structures, then by that time I think perhaps we'll be able to ease up on the Minister of Finance. The other bridge is just east of there, a single lane structure, and the Department has all the figures on this.

We have large events in the north now. First of all we have rodeos and logging-day sports and stock-car racing and so on, when we have 3,000 and 4,000 cars going out on a Sunday afternoon to a stock-car race. When these cars come back through this single-lane traffic across the bridge, they literally pile up there for miles and there is no possible way of them getting across. They finally have to contact the R.C.M.P. and have them put a man on the bridge so he can run the traffic straight through and forget about the traffic that wants to come the other way. So I am hoping that we will be able to find in the near future that we have a replacement of this Skeena River bridge in Terrace. I'm sure that the Minister of Finance doesn't know about this, but I'm sure that the Premier is familiar with the need for this new bridge, so if I can get the Premier to speak to the Minister of Finance, I'm sure we will make some headway. You know, the sort of a meeting that was held by the chairman of the Liquor Control Board going down the street.

Then we have to the north of us the Nass River, and the need for a bridge across the Nass. Somehow I feet this is going to be done by the Department of Lands and Forests, because it's on a tree farm licence, and I can't see the Department of Highways building a bridge on a tree farm licence. So I'm hoping that the honourable member from Fort George, before the Session is over, will come and advise me that he has had the go-ahead on this bridge and that I'll be able to carry this good news back to the people of the north.

We also have another bit of a problem, which I don't want to speak on too long, but it shows what can happen between three different departments of Government when there is confusion, and I think that this can be straightened out probably without too much trouble. I want to impress upon

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the members of this House that Terrace is known as the cedar pole capital of the world. In Terrace recently we cut the world's longest cedar pole and this wasn't the longest pole by five feet, it was the longest pole that had ever been cut in the world by 25 feet. It was a 160-foot cedar pole in perfect shape, and to meet the specifications, and I'm talking to the specifications in which cedar poles are cut, you must realize that when a pole is laid out on the ground, if you take a tape line from top centre of the pole to the butt, there must be a portion of the pole laying in that line all the full distance. When a pole is eight inches in diameter on the top and perhaps three feet in the butt, and tapered in such a manner that a line is on top of that cedar pole for the full distance, then you can imagine what a remarkable tree you have there.

However, the smallest top that you can have on a pole over 70 feel that is saleable, is eight inches. But the Forestry Department, because of their utilization programme, and this has to be complete utilization, have insisted that they haul them down to. three inches at the top. I think that probably this is the fault of the ranger in Terrace, because the Minister didn't really confirm this. However, when you take the distance from the eight to the three inch diameter at the top of the pole, this adds 15 feet to the length, and you have to consider the fact that these poles are very, very long anyway.

Then you have the Highways Department come along, and they want to cut the over-all length of the load. They have a straight load now at a limit of 60 feet. You can get a permit by the month to haul special loads up to 100 feet in length, and they want to cut this to 90. So if you've cut it from 100 to 90, and you take off another 15 feet of the pole that's no earthly use to you on the end, which would bring it back to 75, and then you take off 15 feet of truck and the length you would allow for your bunk-swing in manoeuvre, you will now have it down to 60. Now isn't that wonderful — how are you ever going to get a 160-foot pole in a 60-foot over-all length?

However, I pointed this out to the Department of Commercial Transport, and they said, "Well, we have a solution for this, we think. We've looked into this and we knew you had a problem there." I said "What's your solution?" "Well," they said, "we figure you can work from two o'clock in the morning until six a.m." If you can imagine taking poles of 160 feet in length around the bends and turns we have in the road up there in the dark, at two o'clock in the morning — well, fortunately, I was able to get them to change their thinking on this and restrict the hours from which they hauled across the bridge. So I am happy to say that Terrace still carries on as being the pole capital of the world, and perhaps we'll cut another pole longer than what we have already done.

However, I want to carry on and speak with Highways and the trouble that we are having. I would like to say one thing for the former Minister of Highways, I dealt with him for nine years, and there never was a time when I couldn't pick up the phone and phone him and say that certain contractors hadn't been paid, and would he see that these people were paid. Unfortunately, this didn't come to my attention soon enough for me to get in and stop what happened here, so just for the information of the House I want to tell you what can happen on our highway contracts.

We have a contractor here named McPhail Construction Company Limited and they have a contract for the rock work out of Prince Rupert. Unfortunately, Prince Rupert not being in my riding, I didn't know about this in the early stages. However, a Terrace contractor went down to do the work. He took down a yarder loader, which is a very large machine that literally picks up logs and puts them on a truck, and three men, and took on a contract that was based on an hourly rate, and had an account with Headwater Pulpwood Limited. Headwater Pulpwood Limited was a buffer company that was set up by McPhail Construction, so they were working for Headwater Pulpwood Limited, and their account reached over $5,000, it was, $5,197.50, and they, had to stop work because they felt they couldn't carry on any longer without pay. This was all done before this was brought to my attention. Then they notified the Department of Highways in Victoria that they had worked on this contract, that they had worked for Headwater Pulpwood Limited, and they had sent them an itemized account and had a lawyer draw this up and sent it in properly to the Department.

So there were letters exchanged between Headwater Pulpwood and between McPhail Construction, and finally we have a letter from a Mr. A.E. Rhodes, Comptroller of Expenditure with the Department of Highways in Victoria, and this letter is sent to Cecil Pratt who is a Barrister and Solicitor in Terrace. It refers to project McPhail Construction Limited, Headwater Pulpwood Ltd. and Schaffer and Kawinsky Contractors Ltd. — Your file number so and so. Dear Sir: (This is from our man here in the Department in the Buildings)"Your letter of the 22nd ultimo to the Director of Construction has been forwarded to this office for reply. As your client is a sub-sub-contractor your action in notifying McPhail Construction Ltd. of the amount outstanding is quite proper. This will be the only source available for satisfaction of the account, and I trust that the General Contractor will have sufficient hold-back to satisfy the claim. Unfortunately, labour and material payment bond, incidental to the contract, affords no protection below the sub-contract level, and there is nothing that the Department can do to assist you further in this regard." If you can imagine anything as ridiculous as this Government having a member of a Department who will tell people who have done work on a contract, that there is nothing to do to protect them for payment of their account.

You must understand, if you are not familiar with contractors, you must understand how easy it is to be a sub-sub-contractor. If my friend here from Columbia River took a contract from the Government to build a stretch of road, and he turned around and he went to his friend from Richmond and he said, "I need three cats on that job, will you put them on there, we'll pay you the going price." The friend from Richmond says, "Yes, I'll have three cats on the job." The friend from Richmond has two cats and he comes and he gets the third cat from me. This means the friend from Richmond is guaranteed payment from the Department of Highways, and I have no guarantee at all that I'll be paid.

In this particular case, this was the plan, this was the plan, and I'll tell you why I say that. I bring that to the attention of the House because I want the name of the McPhail Construction Ltd. struck off the list of the contractors that can do work for this Government, and here is the reason I want it struck off. Because when the contractor loaded the machine and shipped it back to Terrace, Jim McPhail, who is a member of this firm said, "If the S.J.4 is taken off the job, then I don't think that contractor should be paid." At any time, if a contractor can intimidate a sub-contractor like that, I think it's time for the Department to move in and see that never again we have this contractor working on our highways in, B.C. This is the worst case of intimidation and slippery

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work that has ever been brought to my attention since I've been in Government, in ten years, and to think that we have a man in the Department, a Mr. A.E. Rhodes, who would stand up and support this kind of action.

Just think what could happen to contractors. If contractors are bidding on road work, and they know that they can set up other companies and not pay these people, this will be the policy, rather than the exception to the rule. They'll work under these deals, and it will be impossible for a fair-minded man to deal and have a contract, believe me, when the Minister of Highways Estimates comes up, I'll want satisfaction on that particular account, and I don't think there is any way that firm should be able to carry on with Government work until this account is paid.

Not everything is all bad, you know. I would like to mention for a minute the Motor Vehicle car-testing deal that comes through the Province. These people come up with a mobile car-testing unit, they set up on a back street and they give your car a thorough test and if it's in A-1 shape, you get a sticker for your windshield. If not, they list the faults that you have with the car, and the deficiencies, and you still have time to go and have this repaired and come back and have a sticker put on your windshield, which would indicate clearly that your car is fit to be on the road. The only thing that's wrong with this is that I think now that this has carried on for a few years and people are familiar with it, we have many who dodge this inspection. I think it should be made compulsory for every car on the road in British Columbia to go through these tests and unless they're put in shape and can display the sticker they should be put off the road. I think it's the only safe way.

And now, Mr. Speaker, if it hadn't been that some of the members said I had to speak for two hours to antagonize the Opposition, I could wind this talk up fairly soon, but I have quite a while to go yet.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who told you that?

MR. LITTLE: I want to speak for a minute on education. We heard the Attorney-General get up in the House and state that the engineers in Vancouver had pulled a legal strike and that some 130 engineers had thrown out 70,000 students and 3,000 teachers at a cost to the City of Vancouver of $155,000 a day, and to me I think this is absolute nonsense. I don't think there's any need at any time for the school boards to get in a position where they should have to negotiate with anyone in the middle of a term. I believe that the school boards should be told to smarten up and that all contracts should terminate on June 31st, and it gives them two full months.

AN HON. MEMBER: June 30th.

MR. LITTLE: Thirty days hath September, April, May and November — no it's got to be 31. Anyway, they should all terminate on June the 31st.

AN HON. MEMBER: 30th.

MR. LITTLE: …. two full months. This allows them time to negotiate their new contracts, and if their new contracts are not completed, the school shouldn't be opened until they are. When a school is opened in the fall we should be sure of the teachers and all other employees. Of course we have so many fancy names you can't even recognize them now, the garbage collectors are now sanitary inspectors, so it's hard to just know who you're talking about on these contracts, but whoever they are their contracts should start when school opens in the fall.

As far as the teachers are concerned, these people like to call themselves or consider themselves professional people, and I even ran against a principal, well he was almost a principal, of a high school in Kitimat, and he said he was a professional businessman, and actually I consider he was neither. There is, after all, a code of ethics among professional people, and the code of ethics is that they'll police their own organization. If they can't properly perform or if they don't look after their work as they should, then they lift the certificates from these people and they're not allowed to carry on until they're re-instated. But this is not the situation you find with teachers, unfortunately. As a matter of fact they're so busy protecting one another and trying to cover up for their shortcomings in many cases, I don't say in all cases, but in many cases, that they don't have time to properly perform their duties. We saw, and I hope you'll remember these words because I'd certainly like you to tell the teachers about this, we saw the political action which was taken by the B.C. Teachers Federation group in the last election, and we saw them spend money on your political action, in which teachers have no choice. They have contributed to this particular fund, and then they couldn't even support it at the polls, because I named a lot of teachers on my nomination papers that certainly didn't vote N.D.P.

I think that regardless of what happens from here on in, we should just stop and think about the person that we should be really concerned about, and that's the student. Last year we had teachers under contract and they threatened to walk off in Kitimat when they were on contract. Instead, they settled that one and what did they do, they walked out in Powell River. I don't think it should be allowable for a teacher who has a contract to walk out at any time and leave students that aren't being attended to. So it's my hope that we have something on this from the Minister of Education, so that we would be able to have contracts drawn so there would be no interruption in the programme for the children during the whole school year.

Now I'd like to speak for a minute about the people of the north. In the north, you know, we've had many people who've been there a long time. We have people who are on the shores in Tweedsmuir Park and other places, and they've sat there and watched their lake rise and they've watched dams being built and they still live in the same old shack and have their candle and their coal-oil light. But just for the first time recently some of them are beginning to be able to hook on and get hydro power, and this has been a big step. You should see some of the letters I've had from people at Skeena Crossing and Cedarville where the power went in, and fortunately they think that this was all done because of me and I didn't try to change their opinion in this regard, but they write and tell me how happy they are. All these people pay their bills, and when they pay these bills what are they doing? They're subsidizing the City of Vancouver and the lower mainland on their bus fares, and this ties in so that when you pay a power bill you are subsidizing the City of Vancouver, and so on, and we're getting mighty fed up with that.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Might I point out to the member that hydro rates are not debatable at this time.

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MR. LITTLE: We talk about it, but what we should do is stabilize the hydro rates and by doing this we should keep it where it is, we shouldn't allow a price increase. I, for one, if this comes to a vote in the House and we have a price increase for power I will vote against it, I'll have to vote against it, unless they increase the rates for hydro….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please, order. The honourable member is discussing hydro rates.

MR. LITTLE: No, Mr. Speaker, I'm not speaking about that, I'm talking about Kemano. I got through that. I'm talking about the public….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Chair does not appreciate a member being facetious.

MR. LITTLE: When you speak about Kemano, Mr. Speaker, you're speaking of one of the largest power plants in the Province. You're speaking about one of the largest power plants in the Province when you speak of Kemano. I remember them telling me when I was there, there's a room, in that powerhouse in the mountain, that was large enough, taken out of the mountain, to float the Queen Elizabeth. This is a huge hole in the mountain. It has marble floors, it has air conditioning, it has elevators, it has offices and it has complete panels in which everything is so automatic that one man runs 1,200,000 horsepower himself and, because they don't dare leave him there alone, they pay someone to sit there with him as a companion. This is how automatic the spot is, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to point out to the Government that Alcan have now changed their policy, and if you've been following the papers, you’ll see where they're opening a huge new plant in England. They're down in Australia and New Zealand and they're moving throughout the world opening new plants, and it's obvious that they have no plan at the present time for expanding this plant in Kitimat. I'd like to remind the Government that there is a power plant in this mountain and it's made for two tunnels, and all we would have to do is put in ten miles of tunnel that they did for theirs and take over this other half of this power plant and there's 1,200,000 horsepower there waiting for us to use. As the north develops I'm sure the day will come when this Government will take a look at that and get in and develop this huge project to its maximum the way it should be done. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

On the motion of Mr. H.P. Capozzi, the debate was adjourned to the next sitting of the House.

The House adjourned at 9.28 p.m.