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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1970

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 the Constitution Act.

THRONE DEBATE

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound.

MR. L. A. WILLIAMS (West Vancouver–Howe Sound): Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Before making my contribution to this debate, may I say that I hope, before this sitting rises, either the Premier or the honourable the Attorney-General might indicate to this House the state of the health of Mr. Redel, and what actions are to be taken by this Government to prevent any repetition of the flagrant or perhaps misuse of power which we have read about this morning.

Mr. Speaker, as we close this debate, I wish to congratulate the new members who have participated. It was not so long ago that I made my first speech in this Chamber, and I know the task that was before them, and the relief that they now feel, that it is behind.

I might also say to those new members on the Government side that this would have been a more fullsome debate had they been given the opportunity of writing this Throne Speech, because the suggestions which they had to make to the Government during the course of their remarks were far more exciting as we approached the 70's than the content of the document His Honour read to us on the opening day. We have had too, during the debate so far, an interesting continuation of the victory celebration that followed the election on the 27th of August, but unfortunately, that victory has not in any way purged the problems which faced this Province on the 26th of August, and which faced it on the 28th of August, and which faces it today.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear! Hear!

MR. WILLIAMS: These problems continue, and there is no solution for these problems offered in the Speech which is under debate. It is noticeable I think, that in the Throne Speech that problems have been ignored, problems which this Government has consistently ignored.

I would refer first of all to the problems which confront the agricultural industry in this Province today. You know the production of food stuffs is vital to our very existence, but there is no protection against continuing loss of agricultural land from this Government. Indeed, what we see in the rich delta lands of the Fraser River, is an acceleration of that trend, and farmers are being displaced without opportunity of re-location and all the while, the honourable Minister of Agriculture apparently remains silent. No relief is offered to those who work the land against the continuing and oppressive burdens of tax that they must pay. All that we are offered is some suggestion that the Department of Agriculture will assist them in adopting better management practices, while the B.C. Federation of Agriculture has placed before the Executive Council of this Government, as it has in the years gone by, positive programmes for the relief of agriculture, and they remain unanswered.

In the field of education, we have a sorrier and sorrier situation, as each day passes. The problems which face us at the elementary and secondary levels are greater today than they were a year ago, and yet the Throne Speech offers nothing concrete by way of solution. I wonder, when we consider growth as our aim, how we answer the people, for example in Fernie, who daily see around them the construction of new homes for the families who will be employed in the coal-mining industries in the near-by areas, but who at the same time wonder where they will get the classrooms to house the children of those families, and where they will get the money to pay for the teachers that will be required to serve in those classrooms. Certainly no solution is offered in this Throne Speech, and that's a problem which apparently is being ignored. Daily we have correspondence coming to every member in this Assembly from mothers, teachers, school trustees, desperately concerned about the education of our young, but there is nothing in this Throne Speech.

In the field of hospitals and hospital care, and particularly in the field of extended care and chronic care, there is no relief offered to the problems which daily face our citizens, and I wish to deal just for a moment with this problem of chronic care. We don't have the facilities to provide for those aged people, desperately in need of care in institutions, and the Government has consistently refused to provide the facilities which will give them the standard of care which they need and which their families would wish for them. During this past summer, I was called by a constituent of mine, and asked for help. This constituent asked my help because she had been referred by the Department of Health to her M.L.A. and her problem was this, her father was in a private hospital. They had just paid a bill of over $1,000 for his care, and they were already three months in arrears. The father's meagre assets were all gone, and he was being maintained in this private institution by calling upon the where-with-all of his daughter and of her husband, both of whom were working, both of whom had their own family to care for, and this woman, said to me, "We can't carry on, what am I to do?" Mr. Speaker, this is a question which no member of this Assembly should ever be called upon to answer, because the individual members of this Assembly cannot give the answer. The answer lies over there.

I was encouraged yesterday when the honourable the first member from Vancouver Centre spoke about senior citizens, and if what he said yesterday is a change from what he may have said before I would only say this, that it is a wise man who freely changes his mind with reason, it's a fool who never changes his.

But in this field of senior citizens we must keep the senior citizens in the communities in which they have lived, to which they have contributed, and where their friends and families reside. Regardless of what kind of facility we may provide for them when we link them all together, senior citizen with senior citizen, we provide only a luxury ghetto. When the senior citizen is disrupted from his community, the community he helped to build, he and she loses something, something intangible, but something which is essential for their continued happiness and life. And when we place them away from their families and away from their friends, away from the community that they know and understand, we turn their face to the wall and let them die. But the Throne Speech offers no solution to this problem.

In the area of our local governments, our municipalities, we find nothing which provides relief from the crushing burdens which are placed upon them by this Government and upon their citizens and taxpayers who must raise the monies to carry out those burdens. This Government offers no solution

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for the unsold bonds that water works require, the unsold bonds that sewage treatment plants require. This Government offers nothing in this Throne Speech which will carry those municipalities on into the new decade.

We were treated the other day to an address by the honourable the Minister indicating that they had taken a survey and they had found that some municipalities were inefficient. But I recall that in my maiden year in this House I suggested to the honourable Minister that that was the responsibility of his Department, and that was in '67, and I repeated that request and suggestion in 1968, and finally in 1969 and '70 we get a report, but still no solution, Mr. Minister. What are you going to do? You had an inspection of municipalities section in the Municipalities Act for years, so the conduct of a survey in the last year or half year is certainly not something new and not a forward advance.

Nor, Mr. Speaker, do we find in this Throne Speech any solution to the rights of our citizens who find inequality before the law, or any solution to the lack of access which the citizen has to his own Government, or any right of redress or of grievances resulting from the action of that Government or any of its agencies. The honourable the second member from Vancouver–Point Grey spoke at length on this yesterday. No change, no real advance, no stride into the 70's. The Throne Speech is silent.

Now, the Throne Speech, of course, Mr. Speaker, was not all silent. There is a single line in the Throne Speech dealing with tenants' rights which indicates that we will be called upon to consider some amendments to legislation to protect further the rights of individuals in relation to rental housing. This is followed by a statement by the Attorney-General during his remarks in this House, in this debate, that we would have a new concept of law to deal with the rights of tenants. Well, I ask you, Mr. Speaker, or ask the Attorney-General through you, when are we going to get it? Why are you waiting? For four years members in this House have called for changes in the antiquated Landlord and Tenant Act, and for four years you remain silent. And now what do we find? The suggestion that there's going to be some further rights, and with that suggestion we find in our communities that the tenants are being served with notices of rental increases. Today, yesterday, the day before yesterday, the tenants are getting it. The landlords appear to be getting in their best licks while the opportunity still lasts.

In my constituency I have a lot of tenants. They're fine people and they are great contributors to the community, and yet in one apartment building every tenant has received notice that by the 1st of April his rent will go up and the increases range from $15 a month to $35 a month. The constituent who called me about these increases had a $28 increase, the third increase in three years, and the tenants are powerless under the present law. The urgency is now, Mr. Speaker. We should have the legislation before us now, Mr. Speaker, legislation which will give Province-wide application to establish Rental Review Boards and protections for tenants, but we must not have the inequities which are produced piecemeal by piecemeal in this Province.

This Government has established vast machinery to ensure equality of assessment for the owners of land. This Government has created many, many opportunities for home-owners. But we have no Government action whatsoever for the protection of tenants. I recall a speech given in this House, Mr. Speaker, two years ago by the honourable member from Esquimalt, and he expressed the view that the stable people, the worthwhile people in our communities, were those who owned their own homes, and this would appear to be the attitude of Government. The honourable the Minister of Municipal Affairs in his remarks the other day said that the Government will continue to put emphasis on home-ownership.

I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that the tenants in this Province are not second class citizens. In our urban areas the majority of the residents are tenants. They are young people, young married men and women, young couples. Some of them don't have the adequate funds with which to purchase homes, some by reason of nature of their employment find it unsatisfactory to locate permanently in a community, others by just personal desire would rather be a tenant. But they are still citizens of this Province and they are still entitled to the protection which the laws of this Province can afford.

I suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that when this legislation comes down we expect to see the repeal of the existing Landlord and Tenant Act and its replacement by a statute which is in fitting with the times, which will ensure that tenants will have a right to leases, or other security of their tenancies, which will ensure that as tenants they will have the right to privacy within their individual units, that they will have the right to challenge terminations at the whim of a landlord, and that they will have the right to protection from arbitrary and unjustifiable rental increases.

I expect to see this legislation establish a Review Board, a Provincial Review Board, functioning throughout all the areas and regions of this Province where tenants, who have cause to complain about the treatment at the hands of their landlord, can go for redress. A Review Board before whom a tenant may bring his landlord and call upon him to justify rental increase. Because it's not enough to say you know, Mr. Speaker, that if the rents go up then you can move, because the costs that are involved in removing yourself from one rented property and re-establishing in another are prohibitive, and they are a burden which only the tenant bears, and the tenant is forced to bear that burden too often at the whim of the landlord. It would afford the opportunity of the Premier of this Province, were he unsatisfied with the conditions under which he lives, to call upon his landlord to justify.

Mr. Speaker, all of these problems are with us and none of them are answered in this document, and it will therefore come as no surprise to you, Mr. Speaker, when we come to vote upon the Motion, that we will rise against it.

I would like to direct some remarks to a subject which has been canvassed from all sides of this House but which bears further consideration, and that is the subject of pollution and environmental management. The situation in which we find ourselves today, and it is clear to everyone now that pollution and environmental management must be our great concern if you think about it, results from our adoption, our adherence to certain myths.

The first belief that was held by man and which has since been shown to be a myth, is that man is superior to his environment, and we now know this is not the case. The second belief that was widely held and is now a myth is that of nature's super-abundance which can withstand the continuing abuse to which man has and is still subjecting it, and no one believes that any longer.

But we now have a belief, Mr. Speaker, that man's technology can reverse the desecration which he has wrought. I suggest to you that this belief will surely become the last myth, unless we turn ourselves now to the major and drastic changes in thought patterns which have governed our existence on this planet up until this day. Unless we

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undertake those measures which can halt and then reverse the activities of man which are upsetting the delicate natural balance which preserves us from a major ecological disaster, unless we assume the cost, both financial and social, which these undertakings require. In each day in the news we wonder when we will begin to make these changes in our thought process, when we will begin to understand the cost.

One hears of the concern about phosphate-laden detergents and the effect which they have upon the waters of this planet, and yet we find the unbelievable statement that if we take the phosphates out of detergents the ladies' wash won't be so white, and you'll have to scrap the dishwashers. This, Mr. Speaker, I suggest puts the question fairly. Do we want clean lakes, clean rivers or do we want clean wash and that's the choice which government faces when it talks about contractual permits and technological permits.

We were treated the other day to a dissertation on these two devices, and it was clear, I think that everyone understands the distinction between a contractual permit and a technological permit. But it's no answer, Mr. Speaker, because we've got a Pollution Control Act and we have standards, apparently, and yet we're told in answers which have been filed in this House that there's never been a prosecution under that Act. What's the use of standards? What's the use of permits if nothing is done? How far can you stretch the elastic before it breaks? That seems to be the basis upon which technological permits are issued — flexibility, flexibility, so that no one ever offends.

Mr. Speaker, this matter has been the subject of attention from all sides of the House and I don't wish to speak about it much longer. I would, however, like to relate to you a story about a 15-year-old, and it deals with this matter of pollution. This young girl, as many others, are concerned about this subject and this 15-year-old, when talking to me about pollution and the dangers to our environment, suddenly burst into tears and said, "What can I do about it? What can I, a 15-year-old child do about it? You're an elected member, you should be doing something about it." And I thought to myself that that young girl was speaking for all 15-year-olds, because she was concerned to know whether there would be a Province in which she could live when she was 30. When she spoke to me, I would like to think that she spoke to all the members of this Assembly, and to all those who hold elected responsibility. Perhaps her outburst was emotional, but it's only an aroused and angry people who will beat pollution, because in the end it is their problem, their country, their future, their lives — not ours.

I urge the Government to stop the talk and begin the action and to begin it here in this House, by the establishment of a special committee of the members of this House to examine and inquire into all aspects of pollution, causes, effects and remedies, in all areas of this Province, and to report to this House at each Session upon its activities, its findings and its recommendations. This committee would have power to call before it such persons that may be required, in order for it to discharge its functions. This committee would be a continuing one, not sitting only when this House is in session, but rather holding its hearings throughout the year in all areas of this Province, and receiving submissions from individuals and organizations in those areas. In this way, the people of this Province would be afforded the opportunity of communicating directly with their elected representatives in a forum which is designed to encourage the responsible without denying access to any. The activities of this committee will enable the members of this House to appreciate better the nature and extent of the problems of environmental management, and the adequacies, or otherwise of the policies of the Government for their solution. We will then be in a position to determine how well the technological permit is functioning.

Now, Mr. Speaker, there was one other interesting inclusion in the Throne Speech, which must not pass unnoticed, and it has been mentioned by others, and this is the suggestion that we will have presented to us this year a new Land Act, and I say Amen to that. The Land Act of this Province had its origins in the days when practically the only use of land was agriculture and, therefore, its whole direction is in that way. The time is long past when we required an up-dating of the policies of the Land Department in order to keep pace with the changing use and designs of land in this Province.

But I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, about one sentence in the short paragraph dealing with this new legislation. His Honour said, "I am certain the new Act will correct deficiencies, and improve procedures with respect to the disposition of Crown lands within the Province." I assume we are to have some streamlining of the procedures. But the streamlining with respect to procedures for the disposition of Crown lands, I didn't think that this Government needed any help in giving it away. If we are to have a new Land Act, Mr. Speaker, then we must have a systematic evaluation throughout this entire Province of our land resource, and the uses to which that resource in those various areas is best suited. If the best use is a single use, then so be it, but if the best use is one which affords the opportunity for multiple use, then multiple use must be permitted.

Before we streamline any procedures to dispose of Crown land, we must insist that this kind of evaluation is made, and that there are safe-guards in the legislation to prevent the hasty and improvident use or misuse of this essential resource. All of the actions of this Government show improvidence in the use of land, and these must be changed. If we are streamlining procedures, we must ensure that they continue to hold the land resource over the years, and for the future, not to give them away.

When you consider the disposal of Crown land, it brings me to a subject which has been before this House twice before in this Session, and with which I will deal, because it is in my constituency, and that is Cypress Bowl. The honourable the Leader of the Opposition has called for an inquiry into Cypress Bowl, and this has been denied or refused by the Minister. Well, if we don't have an inquiry then of course we don't know what the Government may have to say about Cypress Bowl. But fortunately the elected representatives of the municipality of West Vancouver were able to have an inquiry, and they got a report. They got the complete files of the municipality with respect to Cypress Bowl. They weren't refused and we can examine into Cypress Bowl from that point of view and see if it casts some light upon this contentious issue.

Before I begin, perhaps the members might be interested in seeing what the Cypress Bowl controversy is all about. You know, back in 1964, when this whole development began, the developer produced a brochure and this is what Cypress Bowl was to look like, and I'm sure the Government has seen it. This is Cypress Bowl composed of three mountains, Black Mountain, Strong Mountain and Hollyburn. Throughout this mountain you will find ski runs, wooded areas, hiking trails, other recreational opportunities. This was Cypress Bowl in 1964.

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Well, Mr. Speaker, this is Cypress Bowl today. There aren't any trails there, hiking trails or ski trails there. Just vast open stretches denuded of timber, snow-covered avalanche-producing forest-fire danger, and we wonder, Mr. Speaker, how it all came about. How could we have gone from the design which was produced in 1964 to the reality which was ours in 1970? Well, the original concept was presented to the municipality of West Vancouver as it was to this Government, and in 1964 the council of that day approved in principle the development, subject to certain conditions. One was that there was to be freedom of public access to and within the Bowl at all times, and secondly, that the road access was not to be the responsibility of the municipality. As you peruse this file, and I'll make it available to any other members who might wish to take the time, you find that the discussion went on with the municipality, and apparently with the Government, in a harmonious and a proper way. The great concern was raised between the municipality and this Government as to precisely the manner in which this would be planned, whether there would be a community plan adopted. The Department of Lands was involved, the Department of Municipal Affairs was involved, there was great cooperation on all sides.

In March of 1965, the municipal manager sent a memorandum to the Reeve and Council, which dealt with meetings between him and the company, at which representatives of the Provincial Government were involved. Mr. Bassett, of the Department of Lands, accepted the approach of a community plan, but he advised that the Province would lease lands to these developers only after the presentation and acceptance of a development plan, and only in accordance with that plan, and this would require the concurrence of the municipality. Well, that was all right, no one can complain about that. So as you go through the file, you find that the Cypress Bowl is slowly being developed, at least the plan is being developed, although no work is being done.

This continued on, Mr. Speaker, until it became clear in late 1968 that the Government was not to participate in the construction of a road into Cypress Bowl. The Department of Highways was not prepared to undertake the construction of access, and this was when the difficulties began. All this time the clearing was taking place, but when the decision of the Provincial Government was made clear it would not provide access, but that it would be the responsibility of the developer, then we went from a plan that would have brought Cypress Bowl into existence, and the developers began to cut and get out, that's what happened. They were a cut-and-run group from that point on, and the reports are here as to the timber that has been removed.

Now it is not to be thought, Mr. Speaker, that there was never any consideration given by the Government to put in the road to Cypress Bowl. Far from it, because the municipality of West Vancouver was in receipt of lengthy correspondence and requests from the Department of Highways concerning the location of the road access into Cypress Bowl, but that all changed in November of 1968.

Then when the trees started to come down, and the municipality became concerned about what was happening in Cypress Bowl, and the public demands increased and increased, the municipality finally responded to pressure and employed the services of an independent consultant. A Mr. Borgeson was engaged and he made a report and he found, for example, that on Black Mountain the clearing was excessive, on Strong Mountain the clearing was excessive, and he found that it was scarcely an area developed for recreational purposes, although it was not beyond redemption, but still the developers went on. Now I mentioned November 1968, Mr. Speaker, as being the time when the developers were told that they would have to provide the roads. Something else significant occurred at the same time. With the coming of winter the logging operations in Cypress Bowl ceased, because the snow was too deep. But also the right to log ceased, and could not be renewed without permission of the honourable the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources, and the Minister indicated in writing that the right to remove timber would not be renewed unless and until an agreement was reached with the municipality concerning public access. Well, in spite of that, Mr. Speaker, removal of timber did take place in 1969 and there was no agreement with the municipality concerning public access to the Bowl, and there isn't today. Yet the logging continued.

Then finally, Mr. Speaker, when these developers had removed all the logs and there was nothing further to be gained in that area, because public pressure was so great that timber removal would be impossible, they ran out of money and they had to seek some partners, and they found partners, and we all know about the Benquet incident. But the partners weren't going to come in and put up the million dollars they put up unless they had something tangible, and what was tangible, Mr. Speaker, were the leases to Cypress Bowl. We've never seen these leases, Mr. Speaker, but we know what developed when this whole house of cards collapsed. Was the suggestion that the purchasers had purchased believing they were getting the right to subdivide, and the vendors had sold without selling the right to subdivide, and someplace between the two lay the truth? Well, it's interesting to note that the file from West Vancouver contains copies of the leases, and we have a lease dated the 23rd of October between Her Majesty the Queen represented by the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources and Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources Limited for 299 acres, and the purpose is to hold the Crown land unto the lessee for residential and commercial development.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shame, shame.

MR. L. A. WILLIAMS: The 23rd of October, 1969, and we have another lease, Mr. Speaker, dated the 23rd of October, 1969, for 245 acres for residential and commercial development, and there is another lease, Mr. Speaker, the leases are signed by the Deputy Minister of Lands on behalf of the Crown and by two signatories on behalf of Alpine Outdoor Recreation Resources.

AN HON. MEMBER: Million dollar leases.

MR. WILLIAMS: And, there is a third lease dated the 20th of October, covering 88 acres for residential and commercial development, and it is found in the lease, on added pages, the terms of which are to form part of the lease and it is the option of the tenant to purchase these lands

AN HON. MEMBER: That's a million dollars.

MR. WILLIAMS: and the option is exercisable in respect of lands which have been fully developed in accordance with the purpose of the lease, including the installation of water, sewer, and power services, and construction of all subdivision roads to a standard acceptable to the Department of

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Highways.

AN HON. MEMBER: What kind of roads?

MR. WILLIAMS: Subdivision roads. Each of these leases contain this provision. I'll be happy to file this, Mr. Speaker.

All right, you want them all. You want me to read every page, the provisions, of the option? All right. "That the lessee shall, at his option, have the right any time and from time to time during the term of this lease, provided the terms and conditions of the lease have been fully complied with, to purchase all or any part of those portions of the Crown land either (a) which have been fully developed in accordance with the purpose of the lease including the installation of water, sewer, and power services and, construction of all subdivision roads to a standard acceptable to the Department of Highways.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shame.

MR. WILLIAMS: "(b) in respect of which, before any construction shall have commenced on the ground, detailed engineering plans of the development proposed by the lessee have been submitted to and approved by the Department of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources and that department has been supplied with an irrevocable clean letter of credit from a Canadian bank made payable to the Minister of Finance, or a performance and fulfilment bond of a guarantee or security company authorized to carry on business in the Province of British Columbia acceptable to the Minister. In either case for an amount to be approved by the Minister to cover and secure the capital cost of the installation of water, sewer, power services, and the construction of all subdivision roads which are shown on the approved plans of development." Is that what you want me to read?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes….

MR. WILLIAMS: No, I'm not worried whether the municipality had to apply. All right….

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Much shouting).

AN HON. MEMBER: Why are you afraid of an inquiry?

AN HON. MEMBER: That's an after-the-election lease. You wouldn't have dared to sign that before the election.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please. Order please.

MR. WILLIAMS: If you'll just bear with me, Mr. Speaker, while I turn up this vast file and find this elusive lease. Here it is.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please.

If the House will not be silent I will have to ask the member to either proceed with his speech or be seated.

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I'll continue the option portion, Mr. Speaker, for the record. "Prior to exercising this purchase offer, the lessee shall have the said portions of the Crown land surveyed out of the leasehold at his own expense by a B.C. Land Surveyor of his choice, under instructions to be obtained from the Surveyor-General. The purchase price for any land so purchased within the leasehold during the initial three year period of this lease shall be at the rate of $395 per acre.

AN HON. MEMBER: Wow!

MR. WILLIAMS: "and for any land so purchased within the leasehold after the three year period, but prior to the expiry of the term of this lease, shall be based on the current market value prevailing at the time of such purchase for comparable raw land acreage, and in either case there shall be paid in addition, the value of any milling timber existing on the said portion of the Crown land at the time right to purchase is exercised, plus the statutory Crown grant fee." So then, "That provided the Corporation of the District of West Vancouver and/or the Department of Highways obtains all the required access rights-of-way within a reasonable time to allow the development, the lessee shall develop the Crown lands in accordance with the following schedule." And there follows the schedule, and are you interested in the schedule, Mr. Minister?

Mr. Minister, that's a proviso. It is not in this lease and I'll read every word of it if you wish. No, it's not in there. Well, would you file the lease in the House, Mr. Minister. This is Area No. 5, I don't have the backing document on the lease and therefore it doesn't give me the number. It deals with a parcel on attached plan, but it's Area 5. It's the lease from which I was reading, Area 5. Thank you. Because the lease, Mr. Speaker, from which I have read makes no mention of municipal by-laws.

Mr. Speaker, if I can continue with my speech, I did not select the lease. The one I read from was at random. If the Minister has some documents he would like to file, then I think we should see them in this House, and maybe slowly and slowly and slowly we'll be able to get all the material out, as we did in this House a year ago in another matter.

AN HON. MEMBER: Why are you so afraid of an inquiry?

MR. WILLIAMS: But, Mr. Speaker, the matter of these leases and the attendant circumstances surrounding Cypress Bowl are not, however, what really concerns me about this entire matter. It's the basis upon which we could have gone from the plan I showed the members at the outset of what Cypress Bowl was to be, and a picture of what Cypress Bowl is today.

What happened? How do we embark upon these developments which are to provide us with outstanding recreational areas in this Province, only to find that when the trees are all gone, the mountains are bare, the company has no money, the snow falls, and nothing happens. Because, Mr. Speaker, it's happening elsewhere.

In my constituency, as well as Cypress Bowl, we have another operation known as Powder Mountain, and I want to know whether or not we can expect the same thing to happen there. Because I wrote to the Minister about Powder Mountain and I expressed my serious concern to him, and I urged him to conduct an inquiry into what was going on at Powder Mountain so we would know early in the piece as to whether or not this same thing would happen in Powder Mountain as happened in Cypress Bowl, and on the 10th of December, 1969, the Minister replied to me that he could see no basis for the suggestion of holding an inquiry. The fact of the matter is that the developers of Powder Mountain, and I'm not being critical of them, but the developers of Powder

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Mountain prior to the date of December 10th when you wrote me this letter, had already indicated that they were short of cash. Their words specifically were, "We're kind of short of cash, we're having to go on a wing and a prayer."

Now, if the developers at Cypress Bowl fell down because of lack of finance, and if the developers in Powder Mountain are falling down because of lack of finance, then we are going to have the same thing at Powder Mountain as we had at Cypress Bowl, and the policy of the Department of Lands, Mr. Chairman, of a lease-develop-purchase, does not prevent this from happening. As a matter of fact it encourages this to happen. You go in with a wonderful plan, a delightful looking artist's conception of what you will have when you are finished. You take out all the trees, and then you say, "I'm sorry I can't go on, I haven't got the money," and so you fold your tent and go away.

In my constituency, as well as Powder Mountain and Cypress Bowl, there are a dozen other areas equally as exciting for this kind of development. This is the kind of development we need to have in this Province if, as the honourable the first member from Burrard pointed out, we are to do the job in tourism with which we are capable. But no, we don't have the staff in the Department of Lands who can assess these plans, there are no financial commitments or guarantees required at the outset when they file plans of what the development will take place, there is no one who can look at those plans and say it will or it will not work. Assessment is what is required at the outset, Mr. Speaker, and when you have this assessment, then you can ensure that developments like Cypress Bowl do not take place, unless the plan is feasible at the outset, the developer has the financial ability and the contractual ability to carry out the job. Unless you schedule the programme in such a way so that within its capabilities, financial and otherwise, the job is done step by step, and if you once, once stray from the programme which is set out at the beginning, then the whole thing stops, and that is how you stop what occurred at Cypress Bowl.

But we've got Cypress Bowl in its condition today, Mr. Speaker, and what do we do about it? Well, the Government approved the scheme in the first instance. They thought it was a good idea. Did you never ever approve this kind of a development? Did the Minister say that he never saw this kind of a proposal? Never understood that this was what would take place on Crown land?

Yes I read it and West Vancouver approved it in principle. Did you not approve it in principle, Mr. Minister, through you, Mr. Speaker, at the outset? He's asking me questions. I'll ask him the questions. Through you, Mr. Speaker, I asked the Minister….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Be quiet, please.

MR. WILLIAMS: did you not approve in principle this kind of plan?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please sit back in his chair.

MR. WILLIAMS: What did you sign the lease for if you didn't approve the plan?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please. Will the member please proceed.

MR. WILLIAMS: We have a situation today where, denuded of its trees, the Cypress Bowl area is still reported by people who are qualified in the field, that recreational use and advantage still exists. While its real use may largely be lost, we can still save something out of it.

I say, therefore, that the Government has a responsibility in this respect, and this responsibility is to engage qualified consultants to go into Cypress Bowl and design a programme which will bring Cypress Bowl into use as a recreational area. Having obtained that design, the Government must then invite freely and openly developers who are prepared to carry out that Programme in accordance with the Government's design, if developers are not prepared to carry out that programme in accordance with the design, then this Government, either itself or through the auspices of the Regional Park District, must undertake it and bring it to fruition.

In addition to learning the lesson of Cypress Bowl and ensuring that it doesn't happen again, we must redress the situation which has denied us this, and left us with this, and it can be done Mr. Minister.

Mr. Speaker, I indicated that we could not support the motion which is before the House, and I move an amendment to this motion, seconded by the honourable the member from Kootenay, that the following words be added to the address in a reply to the Opening Speech, and I quote, "but this House regrets that the Opening Speech has failed to propose Legislative safeguards to preserve and protect public recreational areas and Provincial parks from arbitrary despoilation."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Kootenay.

MR. LEO T. NIMSICK (Kootenay): First, Mr. Speaker, I must say that I'm very pleased to have the opportunity again to make my contribution in this debate. I know that the banging of the desks sometimes doesn't mean there are true feelings in that respect. I've got to be very careful today, I've got my family in the gallery, my granddaughter and my daughter and her husband, and this is the first time that my granddaughter has been initiated into the Legislature, so I hope that she enjoys it. Right up there, right in the middle, she hid on you.

I would like to congratulate the new members of this House. I hope that some of them haven't got too long a stay, but nevertheless, I hope they enjoy themselves. I would like to say to them that they have joined a very exclusive club, a club that only allows 55 members in the Province of British Columbia, and as time goes on, you will find the life expectancy is quite short in the Legislature. Some of us survive, others succumb. The one point I would like to say to the new members, that although we might take some of them apart during the debates of this House, and they may feel kind of hurt about it, I hope they don't carry it out into the corridors.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear! Hear!

MR. NIMSICK: Because there is one thing we must remember, that when in this Legislative Chamber we are discussing questions on their principles, and while sometimes it may be sound very much like it involved personalities, I for one have never taken it in that regard.

Listening to the speeches that have been made prior in this debate, I find one point that seems to stick out more

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than any others. Every speaker from the Social Credit benches has been damning the White Paper on taxation put out by the Federal Government, almost every speaker. One who I was surprised that got up and stated unequivocally that the White Paper was wrong, and that was the Minister of Social Welfare.

Mr. Speaker, I would like the honourable the Minister to let the…. don't try and talk for somebody else, he'll have his chance today to talk for himself.

You cry about the small businessman. I'd like to know when this Government has ever been the support of the small businessman. You look at the small logger throughout this Province, and where has he disappeared to? All due to the policies of this Government. The small logger has disappeared throughout the Province, and the small businessman has got no protection, no protection whatever from this Government.

AN HON. MEMBER: And the Commonwealth Trust.

MR. NIMSICK: It was always big business and the honourable Minister of Social Welfare came into Fernie and he made that statement. He was for big business, and there is no question about it. So your tear-shedding is only a smoke screen.

The present taxes that are set up throughout Canada — no one, I'm sorry, no one, will say that they are set out on an equal basis for all people. Not one of the members that spoke on that side of the House spoke about the increased exemptions, the need for increased exemptions for the people on the small income. At the present time they are taxing income tax on the old age pension, and this I think, is ridiculous, I think everyone would agree. But you were worried about the business people, you weren't worried about the little people.

The White Paper has increased the exemption to $1,400 for a single person, I think this is too little, and to $2,800 for a married person. These are points that are good points, but they don't go far enough. They don't go far enough in the White Paper. The White Paper is a move to try and equalize the taxes throughout Canada.

Our tax structure has been built up by the privileged class, because it's a privileged class that has run this country for the last 100 years, and every time that somebody comes out to try and correct that inequality, then you hear the cry. The Chamber of Commerce cries, the mining industry cries, all the big industries across the country start crying, and they don't cry for themselves, they cry like you do for the little people. The people that are going to lose their homes or something. Listen, you haven't read the White Paper if you say the little people are going to lose their homes.

But they are trying, big business is trying to get the little people that have got the votes throughout this country to shoot their bullets for them. That's what they've got them to do — to talk on behalf of them — to protect them so that their privileged position will not be injured, and I say it's time, it's high time that we had equalization of taxation in Canada, because it's far from it at the present time. When you think by increasing the exemption only to $1,400 for a single man, and I would like to know who could get along on $1,400 in one year, and $2,800 for a married man, which is below the poverty level admitted by the Economic Survey of Canada. This is the exemption, this is the exemption that is allowed, and it's going to take 500,000 people off the tax rolls in Canada, 500,000 people off the tax rolls in Canada, and 3,000,000 people besides that are going to have a reduction in taxes due to the White Paper.

Now these are the people that I am concerned about, the people on the bottom of the ladder. Not the people that have been ruling the roost for all these years and many of them have had a hey-day, a real hey-day in tax protection. I say this, Mr. Speaker, to pick one little item, like most of you picked out of the White Paper and cry bitter tears about it, and say that you're going to ruin Canada, to me is wrong. Let's get, all of us, behind the deal of trying to equalize the tax burden throughout Canada.

We have had three speakers on that side of the House ask for increased taxes in British Columbia already this year. Increase in the Provincial taxes, 6 per cent the sales tax, increase in the gasoline tax, increase in the cost of hospital beds to the individual, and who is this going to hit? The people that you are crying about? That you are trying to let on that you're crying about the little people and make suggestions, and make suggestions like this, is rather ridiculous. You're only using the White Paper, and I'm sure Mr. Speaker, that the Premier has made this a point, so that he can have a whipping boy during his Budget Speech tomorrow. He will have a whipping boy to protect him from any mistakes or any drawbacks that come out in the Budget Speech.

AN HON. MEMBER: We don't beat women over here.

MR. NIMSICK: So much, Mr. Speaker, for the comments on the previous speaker.

I would like to deal now with a question that concerns my area very much. Last year I placed a Bill on the Order Paper asking that it was an action of not good conduct for a professional man to sign a restrictive clause in an agreement which would prevent him from practising, or anyone from practising, in the Province of British Columbia. When I listened the other day to the honourable member for North Vancouver speaking about the professional groups in this House, and the little empires they have built up around themselves, the privileges that they have had as to be a law unto themselves, I think it is time maybe that we did have a complete investigation into all these privileged groups in the Province of British Columbia. When he spoke of that question in regards to the medical profession, it brought me back to the Bill I had placed on the Order Paper, and my purpose in placing this Bill was because I felt that restrictive clauses in this Province were interfering with the right of these professional groups.

The professional group, especially in — we'll take the medical profession — they would like for the doctor to practise any place in British Columbia, and then later on comes along some little group that will deny that doctor the right to practise within some community. We had the sad experience in Cranbrook where a doctor was exiled from the area, that he couldn't practise within 10 miles of Cranbrook for 10 years. The honourable the Minister of Health at that time said that it was up before the Courts, so he didn't want to say anything about it, but he was watching the case. I'm sure he is still watching the case.

You people claim to be free enterprisers. You claim to believe in free competition. Now if you are going to deny a doctor the right to go down the street and set up a practice, that's not free enterprise or free competition, because you are afraid of competition. I say that it is wrong when a restrictive clause denies this right to a man.

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At the present time we have no resident surgeon in Cranbrook. We've got to send to Kimberley for a surgeon. This is the letter that I wrote to the Minister of Health, and I asked him a question. I said, What happens if the doctor at the present time that has to come down from Kimberley to do operations in Cranbrook, if he was out of town, or away some place, and there was an emergency and they had to call on the other doctor who has been exiled from Cranbrook, would he be allowed to go down, or would he be charged with a contempt of Court if he went down there in an emergency case? He neatly side-stepped that question. He didn't answer me, and I hope he does answer me before the end of this Session because I think this is a ridiculous situation to get into. I think that that contempt of court should be squashed, Mr. Minister and Mr. Attorney-General because it isn't in the best interests of the people of British Columbia that he should deny that doctor the right to operate in the City of Cranbrook, if necessary, even. He didn't sign the contract.

I say that we should bring a Bill in that we'd do away with restrictive clauses in any agreement in British Columbia. That would be free enterprise, that would be true, free enterprise, if we did away with these restrictive clauses in all agreements. These professional men, Mr. Speaker, are educated by the people of British Columbia and the tax-payers of British Columbia. This man came from that area, and his education was partly paid for, and I don't see why he should be deprived of the right, through economic reasons, because somebody wants to have a monopoly, to practise any place in British Columbia, once he's got the permission of the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

You would be very quick, if any case like this came up about labour, you would be quick to jump on them right away. Because I am talking about it, confirms the other groups, the other groups that you have set up as little empires in this Province. That's why you are not interested in doing anything about it. But I say that it's wrong, and let's make it so that none of them can have restrictive clauses, and we'll see how they like real free enterprise. How they like real free enterprise.

Coming to the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker, I was saddened when I noticed that Nancy Hodges had passed away. I was in this House when Nancy Hodges was the Speaker and I wish to say that Nancy Hodges, when she was the Speaker, she did a very wonderful job, and she did a wonderful job when she was debating in this House as well. Nancy Hodges stood head and shoulders above most of the men when it came to debating in this House, and we always enjoyed listening to Nancy, and I was very sorry when I heard that she had passed away.

In the Speech from the Throne that I had it didn't say anything about Mr. Matthews or Len Shepherd, but I imagine that that was an oversight.

Then they have got an item here, October 27 last, the Honourable Philip Arthur Gaglardi assumed the portfolio of Minister of Social Welfare. You know, I would have been a little bit shy in mentioning this point by the Government, because I think that the Minister — I know he is impetuous and quick to say things that he probably is sorry for afterwards, in other words he gets his foot in his mouth very quickly — and the first thing he did, the first thing he said was that he was going to get rid of the deadbeats. Well, you would take it from that, Mr. Speaker, that the Social Welfare Department was riddled with deadbeats.

AN HON. MEMBER: He threatened the whole Cabinet.

MR. NIMSICK: Riddled with deadbeats. Well, he should know what a deadbeat is, because he even spent a certain period of time before he got a job, and he got paid for it. So,

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, do you call yourself that?

MR. NIMSICK: He should know how it is, how it feels in these cases. When I hear the members praising the previous Social Welfare Minister, I don't think this is shared by the honourable Minister of the present time, because I think it was a reflection, Mr. Speaker, I think it was a reflection on the previous Minister when the Minister immediately said that it was all deadbeats in the Social Welfare Department. This was a reflection on the Minister. We haven't seen one go since that statement was made that I know of, that has been picked up and charged with being a deadbeat on the welfare rolls, and I think that if there is that many then something should have been done.

I think the former Minister did some good things. He tried to involve the local communities in dealing with these welfare problems, and I think this was good. One of them was in our area. I would like the honourable member for Nelson-Creston and the honourable Minister who represents Trail-Rossland, and the honourable member for Columbia River, if he is in here, I hope he takes this into consideration also, because it was the former Minister that invoked the system, the project in the Kootenays, the Community Resources Development Project, and this operated from last June. They didn't give it a very big chance to get operating very far, though, before the present Minister cancelled the whole scheme out. And don't forget that this scheme is in the Kootenays. It is being cancelled out.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's right.

MR. NIMSICK: It did a lot of good, even for the short time it was there. But it just shows you what he thinks, Mr. Speaker, what the present Minister thinks of the previous Minister's administration….

AN HON. MEMBER: Shocking.

MR. NIMSICK: ….because he is wiping this out. The first phase of this demonstration project, the major population areas of the Kootenays, Grand Forks, Trail, Castlegar, Nelson, New Denver, Creston, Cranbrook, Kimberley and Fernie, were surveyed to determine the major social services resources needed. And they did this. Now they have cancelled it out.

I would just like to read a letter I received from a lady in Cranbrook, and this is what she said, "Dear Mr. Nimsick: I am writing this letter to congratulate myself. In the last election I almost fell for 'the good life' line. The recent cutbacks on school construction, hospital construction, and child welfare have convinced me that my decision to vote for you was well justified and I would have kicked my own posterior had I voted Social Credit."

AN HON. MEMBER: That's from a lady?

MR. NIMSICK: And now, Mr. Speaker, last August, 120 children from social assistance families in the East Kootenays spent a carefree week at a self-help camp at Wasa Lake. Now there is one thing we must not forget, that this project was paid for by the Federal Government. The camp sponsored by the Department of Social Welfare in Victoria received

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enthusiastic support from churches and communities, and the man in charge of the project was more than pleased with the results.

The Department of Social Welfare decided to terminate the Community Welfare Resources Development Project in the Kootenays. This move, announced January 6th, has placed in jeopardy a total of 12 projects, three of them in the Cranbrook-Kimberley area, and some of them in the other areas as well and I think that this has been a mistake. I don't think that you gave the ideas of the previous Minister a chance to work, to really prove themselves, before you disbanded the whole plan.

The programme is far from non-essential, and I quote here, "Since our survey of the major population centres in the Kootenays conducted from May 1967 to August 1968 demonstrated the need for such services." Now, Mr. Speaker, I don't know why this was cancelled out. I don't think it should have been cancelled out without at least some conferences with the people concerned. I don't think it should be done arbitrarily by the Minister or by Victoria. I think the whole problem should have been assessed. It was a Federal project. The Federal were paying for it, and I feel that this should be continued on, Mr. Speaker. I would like to say to the honourable Minister of Social Welfare this should be continued on.

I would like to also quote what the Minister had to say when he was questioned about it. He was questioned about it from Nelson. "Gaglardi, contacted Saturday at his Kamloops church, said he had not read the story outlining the charges and did not want to hear about it. 'I don't know anything about what you are talking about, and I could care less,' Gaglardi said." Now this is from a Minister.

I don't think this is a proper way to treat a community, and especially this community. Nelson is a Social Credit community too, you know. I know you have come into my area and told the people that if they had a Social Credit representative you would be a lot nicer to them, but you are treating your own, this is the way you treat them. You wouldn't dare come into my community and treat me like this. "I don't know anything about what you are talking about, and I couldn't care less," Gaglardi said, "I am just trying to do a good job and if I can't do it, I can't." Well, I think that just about answers the question. The Government is simply not interested in this community. It doesn't care.

Mr. Bruch predicted that the termination of this project implies that in the future we can expect no improvement in the existence and quality of the social service programme and resources, and that Provincial Government will continue to repress and exterminate the few remaining vehicles by which communities can have some impact on the decisions which affect their lives, and this, I think, is a wrong way to treat any area. I think the least, Mr. Speaker, that he could — he could have been civil with the Nelson people when they asked why he was discontinuing it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Even you look good compared to him.

MR. NIMSICK: I have an article here, too, where the honourable Minister the other day said he was going to end, that the welfare programme was on the way out, that he was going to change the name first. In changing the name you don't change the programme, a rose by any other name is exactly the same, so don't change the name unless you want to change the policies, unless you want to make the Department a better deal. Here it is. The honourable the Minister said outside the House, Gaglardi said, "It is important welfare recipients have dignity and stature," and added, "The way to do that is to make them useful. That is all I want to see at this time."

You want to make them useful. You want to give them dignity. Do you mean to tell me that the mothers with children on welfare are not doing a useful job raising their families? You have got thousands of them, thousands of them, that are raising families on inadequate incomes, Mr. Speaker, I say that it is a mistake when you make statements such as that. I don't think you mean that people that are physically unfit are not useful people. We have got lots of people on welfare, and this is the real role of the welfare, physically unfit people that are unable to look after themselves. But to make a flat statement that you want to make them all useful is indicating that they are not useful, and you are putting a stigma on them that I don't think is good. I would like to quote an editorial from the news.

"Surely Mr. Gaglardi must realize that there are very few people who willingly live on welfare. It is not the life of Riley or even the life of an occupant of the Hotel Vancouver. People live on welfare because they are handicapped in some way, physical, mental, family ties, lack of education, and so on. Any social worker will be able to give Mr. Gaglardi a complete list. Mr. Gaglardi has been quoted as saying that the reason he didn't reveal the location of his Alliance of Businessmen offices was they didn't want to be bothered with kooks. That is the way that you speak of people that are unemployed and on welfare. Kooks, Mr. Gaglardi, are not so by choice. They are disturbed people, and that is why they are often not able to hold down a job. And that is why a firm would rather pay to keep them away from their operation than have them around for free."

I would like to make a few suggestions, Mr. Speaker, to the honourable the Minister. I would like to see him do a good job on this welfare programme. I think that mothers with children should be in a category by themselves. The mothers who lose their breadwinner in an industrial accident are looked after by compensation, and they get that pension by right and nobody looks down upon them for it. I say that mothers who lose their breadwinner through a car accident or a heart attack or even if he has deserted, they have a right, they should be receiving this allowance by right, and not have the stigma of social welfare placed on them, this is the reason, I say, that mothers with children should be taken out of welfare.

We know that welfare is a department that has been overly abused by the public of British Columbia. Overly abused by the public of British Columbia. You can go any place and you can find people making the same kind of statements as you made about deadbeats, and you try and trace those deadbeats down and you can't find them. I have done it myself if, and they won't give you names, they won't give you anything, but they still claim they are there, and I don't think that is right. That is the reason that I say we should take away, take the mothers with children, they have got a responsibility to be treated just as highly and on a high plane, just as mothers who lost their husbands in an industrial accident.

Secondly, I would like to say, Mr. Speaker, to the Minister, that the unemployed employable should be in a category by themselves.

Just a minute till I get through with you, Mr. Minister.

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You asked for constructive ideas, now I am giving you a few, I am giving you a few.

I say the unemployed employable should be in a category by themselves, and they should be given a job. The reason that you didn't, the reason that these people are on welfare is because our present capitalist system has deprived them of the right to make their contribution. The only people that should be on welfare, Mr. Speaker, should be the people that are physically unfit. This is what welfare means. The only people that should actually be on welfare should be the people that are physically unfit to look after themselves, and they should be on welfare. The rest of them should be looked after under the category where they belong.

I hope, Mr. Speaker, that the indication in the Throne Speech that they are going to get an increased allowance, that it will mean something, and especially to mothers. I have had more mothers with three and four children come to me, crying on my shoulder because they haven't got enough money to put the bread on the table, that they haven't got enough money. Now everyone of you, I am sure, if you went out of this House today and tried to live with three children, or two children, on $150 a month, that you would have one sweet time doing it.

Well, I say we should have at least one measurement. It should be a living allowance, but I think that the measurement for a mother with children, whether she has lost her husband in an industrial accident or whether he was lost by some other method, that they should be receiving an equal amount. I don't think we should have two classes of citizens in this regard, and we have them. We are giving a welfare recipient $150 a month but we give a person who lost their breadwinner in an industrial accident $200 and some, a month. Is that treating them all alike? I am asking you, Mr. Speaker, and I am asking the Government at this Session, now that you are indicating in the Throne Speech that you are going to increase these allowances, for goodness sakes let's make it one measurement for all people in that category.

I am quite certain, Mr. Speaker, in spite of all the cries on the other side about the people that have got to live in little shacks, in little one-room places, where people are getting $75 a month for welfare, and a single person who is physically unfit trying to get by on $75 a month, I am quite certain that those people that yesterday and the day before on that side of the House got up and made their contribution in the Throne Debate, and mentioned these things, and how these people are living, if there's a motion on the Order Paper put on there by the Opposition asking for an increase, they'll vote against it. They won't vote for it. They'll vote against it. That's how sincere you are. Sure it's easy, it's easy to get up in the House and make a speech so that the people back home are thinking that you're fighting for them. But unless, Mr. Speaker, as the saying goes, you put your money where your mouth is, then it's no good. It doesn't do anything.

Listen, Mr. Speaker, many, many times we had resolutions in the same category, but this would be turned down by your own group, and the reason that you wouldn't let it go through, and the reason that you ruled it out of order, is to protect your members.

I notice in the Throne Speech, too that they're going to extend the benefits of home-ownership to older houses. "To extend the benefits of home-ownership now provided by the Provincial annual home-owner grant and assistance to build new homes, you will be asked to consider legislation to provide further assistance to tenants by way of a grant or second-mortgage loan for the purchase of homes already in existence."

Mr. Speaker, it's like an echo, it's like an echo from last year, because I brought that question up when that Bill was on the floor, and I asked for an amendment to be brought in at that time. I didn't hear anybody asking for it, but you voted, you voted for that.

AN HON. MEMBER: How did you vote?

MR. NIMSICK: We tried to bring in, we tried to bring in an amendment on this, and it was no good. So you are only doing what you should have done last year, and what you were advised to do by the Opposition last year.

AN HON. MEMBER: It was too early to do it.

MR. NIMSICK: Too early to do it? It's never too early to do things for people. Except, Mr. Speaker, it gives a nice little plum to go out with at election time and to offer the people. You promised it last year, and of course you got to go through with it, but it was a nice little plum to say to the people, "You put us back in, we'll make this apply to older homes as well."

Then you go into pollution, and this is an age-old problem. "A matter of prime concern in British Columbia today is the protection of our environment." You'd think it was the first time you'd ever heard about the environment. "There are many facets to the problem of environmental control. They range beyond those measures designed directly to minimize air, soil, and water pollution, to those so necessary in a programme of environmental health protection. My Government will continue to work toward the protection and preservation of our total environment, so that all our citizens may enjoy the beauties and wonders of our heritage as intended by nature. Reports will be made to the Legislature concerning the efforts and progress being made." What nice verbiage. I think, if it's anything like you said previously, it's like a lot of tripe. We in this House, year after year, even brought Bills in to put air pollution under the Pollution Board.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, Hear.

MR. NIMSICK: ….each and every one of you that were here at that time voted against it. Turned it down cold.

Bringing in Acts is like all these conferences they got all over the country. We've read about pollution ever since 1949. I'd like to quote a statement here, far back as 1947. "The question before a conference at Princeton University was The Fate of Man. Would he go the way of the dodo and the dinosaur, or would he take his destiny in his own hands and make a better creature of himself" That was said back in 1947, and since that time we've had conferences across this country, we've had committees going back and forth across the country, all talking about discussing pollution, but have we ever done anything about it? We've done nothing about it, nothing, nothing, because capitalism has its basis at the base of the golden calf, and if it's going to cost any money, don't do it. That's the way, that's the way capitalism operates.

We asked for air pollution control last fall in Natal. I went down to Natal one day last fall, and I couldn't see up the street for coal dust. There was a car that had just been washed that day that had an inch of coal dust on that car. I went to the health officer and I asked him about getting in touch with the authorities, and stopping the plant from

[ Page 203 ]

keeping on going until they clean up this situation, because the plant had ruptured. He said there wasn't a law in the land that would give him the authority to do anything. There wasn't a law in the land that would give him authority to do anything in regards to air pollution. Finally, I went myself to the head of the Kaiser Resources, and I had him close the plant down until he had it repaired. I say this, if this is an indication, what you've got in the Throne Speech, of what you're going to do this year, we'll be next year or the year after with the same situation.

Now you're talking about having the municipality passing a by-law. The municipalities, most of them, are in the pockets of the Chambers of Commerce. The Chambers of Commerce are the people who represent the industry that's creating the pollution, and if you think for one minute that they're going to enforce pollution against industry in these small communities, by local people, you've got another guess coming. Because people are interested in, their first concern is their livelihood, and all these companies need to say is, "We'll close it down, if you don't like it we'll close it down," and they all run for cover, the whole works. That is the reason we say we've got to have an authority far higher than that, an authority that might have to get a little bit ruthless at times in regard to pollution, and close a place down if necessary, and demonstrate to them that something has got to be done.

This Government has been a Government of more or less giving lectures for pollution, rather than controlling pollution. They give a permit to pollute any time. They give a permit to pollute, that's what you've been doing, and that's what you set up the Board for, so that if somebody wants to pollute they ask for a permit and they get it.

Now you're talking about drilling in the Straits of Georgia for oil. I don't know of a more ridiculous suggestion in my life than this. We've got situations in Kimberley, pollution situations and water pollution situations at Cominco, that have gone on for years. They've made probably a billion dollars out of Sullivan Mine, and yet if they spend five hundred thousand dollars to correct the gypsum part of the pollution, they think they've done a big job. I say that they should be given a deadline to clean up all of the pollution exactly the same as they were given in Trail.

I remember the City of Trail when there wasn't a blade of grass would grow within miles of that City. And what do they say to the Government? I'm sure somebody must have asked the Government at that time to have something done. Well, we can't do anything about it. But the fumes had a habit of going down across the line, and it killed the orchards down in the United States. So the United States, another country, they laid a charge against Cominco. Five million dollars, and they won it, they won it. They made it so expensive for Cominco that Cominco cleaned up the pollution in the Trail smelter. From that day on, I remember well, until they had the thing solved, while they were progressing towards solving it, if the wind was blowing up into Canada they would have everything going, if the wind was blowing down to the States everything had to close down, and they had a man on there 24 hours a day to see that this was done. Years ago.

AN HON. MEMBER: 1920, 1921.

MR. NIMSICK: Trail is like a greenery now. Trail is like a greenery now.

AN HON. MEMBER: The United States did this.

MR. NIMSICK: What I'm telling you is that pollution can be cleaned up. Trail is like a greenery, and the company did a very good job of cleaning it up, but they cleaned it up because it was profitable to them, or it was going to be more costly if they didn't clean it up. That's exactly what this Government has got to do in regard to pollution. The same with Kaiser Resources. They can put in a plant there for coking in Natal that would have no pollution at all. When you say that they should do it, they say that we intend to do it, but I think the Government should step in and say, we'll give you so long to do it and get it done.

The same as cleaning up the water coming out of the Mars Creek in Kimberley. When I first came to Kimberley I used to take my friends down to show them the Mars Creek Falls. For an interval I didn't do it, so I went down again, and when I went down I was ashamed, because there was nothing but a black mass coming over the top of those falls, and I say that this is wrong to allow industry to do this.

I know that many times you say that the people are the greatest polluters, but the people of Kimberley did do something. They put in a treatment plant to clean up their pollution, and I think that the same should be done in the other cases. The only thing with the City of Kimberley, it's operating as a service to the people, and it's the people that did it. I suppose if the people were taxed to pay for all the pollution control for industry, that they'd do it too. But I don't think that that's good enough. I think that it should come out of the profits of industry to see that they look after the pollution problem. The Minister of Mines the other day, when he spoke, said that about a copper smelter.

We have been advocating secondary and tertiary industries here because we feel that the resource industries do not make jobs. They make very few jobs, the resource industries. Unless we process that material in our own country we're not going to build up this Province the way we should, because for the same amount of jobs that a processing industry will provide or a tertiary industry, we've got to mine or extract ten times the amount of minerals to do the same job, and this is wrong.

We're shipping copper as fast as we can, copper concentrates to Japan just as fast as we can ship them. They're stocking it up ready to go and they're shipping it out there. It seems rather odd to me that a country that has got to import the natural resource can do the job better than the country who has the natural resource. We were promised a rolling mill in Kimberley a long time ago. They haven't got a rolling mill there for steel yet, but the same company has got a rolling mill down in Hawaii for steel.

I'm thinking about British Columbia, and when the honourable the Minister said that we had to put up with pollution if we had a copper smelter, I disagree with him. I don't think a copper smelter needs to pollute anything. We can process our ores without polluting the air or the water. Telling the people that you're going to have to put up with pollution is just another way of passing the buck, passing the buck, that you have no intention of putting up a copper smelter in the Province of British Columbia, or no intention of pushing that it be done.

We're so anxious to get rid of our natural resources that we don't seem to have time to do the processing. We're just anxious to get rid of them. I don't know why. I think it wouldn't hurt to once again quote the warning that the honourable member for Cowichan-Malahat stated the other day, the warning that we were given just a few days ago by the Ambassador of the United States, Mr. Adolph Schmidt,

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and I quote Mr. Adolph Schmidt, who is the States Ambassador to Canada, who has a friendly warning for British Columbians. "Guard the natural resources." Speaking to the Men's Club at the Hotel Vancouver, Wednesday, Schmidt said he had sensed an optimistic air of confidence in British Columbia since his arrival Monday. "But", he added, "I hope it will not be taken amiss if I remind you that my country, also, was blessed with the areas of great beauty and an abundance of natural resources. But in our eagerness to tame and develop our portion of this Continent, or more specifically to make our fast dollar…." Now don't forget, to make our fast dollar, "while the getting was good, we have in many cases been profligate in our misuse of these irreplaceable resources." This is a man from our friendly neighbour the United States, one of the places we're trying to ship all our goods to, one of the places we're trying to ship everything we can to, in a raw state.

We even sell a lake for $50,000 to a mining company, and I challenge the honourable the Minister of Recreation and Conservation, that is there any lake in this Province for sale to the individual? Is any individual able to buy a lake? For any price? Because anybody that wants a waterfront lot today cannot buy it, they have got to lease it. They've got to lease it, and they've got to pay a lot more per acre on a lease than what these people paid to have that lake, and I don't think that this is profitable.

We're giving out coal licences in this Province as if they are going out of style. I look through the Gazette and column after column, coal licences, coal licences that are asked for in the Province of British Columbia. I imagine that most of them are given, and I don't suppose, with half of them, that those who give the licence out know where they're going to go after the coal. It seems rather odd to me that we are the people who are looking after the resources belonging to the people of British Columbia. It seems odd to me that we can give a coal licence away, whether it's away up the Elk Valley or whether it's way out in the north country, then we can give them away, but the party that we give them to can sell them for a big price.

This happened in the case of the Crowsnest Industries. Years ago, not this Government, but a previous Government gave the Crowsnest Industries acres and acres of land, including coal licences. But, when somebody wanted to mine coal on this property, they didn't give it away. For a small portion of it they asked $56,000,000 for it, $56,000,000 just for so many thousand acres of it. Now why can't the people of British Columbia sell their coal licences for that kind of money, so that the money would go to benefit the people of British Columbia and not to benefit just a few private individuals. If we did that there wouldn't be as much argument maybe.

We give away rich mountains of copper, give it away without any royalty on it, rich mountains of copper. Why don't we sell that? Do you think those people that have those rich mountains, if another mining company came along and wanted to mine the copper, that they'd get it for nothing? This is what you call good business? This is what the people look upon. They look upon you as a financial genius or something, but I don't think that the people understand what you're doing with their natural resources. You fool them, you lead them down the garden path with a lot of fancy advertising.

We give away the Skagit, we give away the High Arrow, all the land in the High Arrow, we give away the pondage of the Libby Dam. It takes thousands and thousands of years of evolution to build these valleys, to build these rich valleys.You can't tell me that the land up on the mountainside is like the land down on the bottom, the bottom land in the valley, and we flood them and drown them and give them away to somebody else for nothing.

You know, I don't think that we Canadians or British Columbians, appreciate the value of the land. I remember back in the 30s when we had the Cascade Highway going over the summit, and the mountains were so high that we decided to survey a road that would be a lot lower. It had to go half a mile into the United States to miss the mountain peak. We called it the Victory Highway, and we went to the Government about it, to ask the United States if they would give that corridor through there, and let me tell you they wouldn't give us one inch of ground. That's how they appreciate their land. They don't give away what they've got.

I've got a letter here in regards to the pollution. "Dear Mr. Nimsick: I am becoming increasingly concerned about pollution. No doubt you can realize how frustrating it is for the average voting citizen to see how the present Government is shortsightedly allowing this beautiful Province to be despoiled by inadequate sewage disposal methods, by big business being allowed to disregard the most elemental standards of health and cleanliness, all because of the dollar. I read recently that a mining company located on the northeast of Vancouver Island has applied for permission to dump daily prodigious amounts of mining wastes into the Straits. As far as I know there has been little opposition to this and it is probably a foregone conclusion that they will be allowed to do this, if they are not already doing so. What a tragedy. Now the oil companies are in the process of applying for permission to drill on the offshore of those very Straits. Surely this cannot be allowed, especially in light of the tragic events off shore at Santa Barbara, California. Mr. Nimsick, it is my suggestion to you that you oppose this latest proposal of potential pollution to the fullest extent." I wish more people would have taken that stand on August the 27th, on August the 27th, and the people who were interested in controlling pollution may have had the opportunity of doing the job.

Now that our Minister of Highways is in I'd like to say a few words to him.

I'd like, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to say to the Minister now in regards to that highway from the Fort Steele Junction to the Fernie, Kimberley, Cranbrook Junction, I hope that you're going to carry out the promise that was made last summer that the contracts will be called. They were supposed to be called last summer but I haven't seem any action there yet. I hope that you'll improve the road to the fish hatchery. We've spent millions of dollars on making a wonderful tourist attraction down at the fish hatchery. Now our main area of tourists is Fort Steele, but the road from Fort Steele to the fish hatchery is nothing but a cattle trail, we might say. It's too rough for them, because they usually go in the bush to walk because there's so many rocks on it, and I hope that this will be done this year.

The highway to Kimberley needs to be updated. The by-pass on Van Horne Street in Cranbrook, and you know this one very well, has been promised for years, promised by the previous Minister, and it's not been done yet. But it takes more than promises, of course, I know to build highways. But I expect you, because I've helped you out in some of your areas, and moving into your area, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to say to the Minister I'm very pleased that he was able to get them to act on the Kitchener-Creston Lake. It did create a little bit of arthritis after the election, and it's been very slow in finishing, but nevertheless you've at least started.

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The Champion Lakes cut-off is another project, I think, that concerns not only the people in your area but the people in my area and the people across British Columbia. The Champion Lakes cut-off is long overdue. A great many more people would come to Vancouver through the Canadian route if we had the Champion Lakes cut-off, because it would shorten the route. The only reason we're not doing it is political. This has been a political football. The member for Trail and Rossland, and the member for Nelson-Creston, they want to channel the tourist trade through those two items. It's like a Y. I don't think they'll go to Nelson very much unless you get that road from Salmo to Nelson fixed up too.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. NIMSICK: And I'll help you out in that, too, if necessary.

AN HON. MEMBER: That dreadful bridge.

MR. NIMSICK: But the Champion Lakes road, the benefits to be derived from it by the people of British Columbia are so great that I don't think politics should interfere with it at all.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.

MR. NIMSICK: And we should go ahead with it.

I notice a little article in here too in regards to ferries, in the Speech from the Throne in regards to ferries. I come from the Interior but I like to do something for the people on the Island and the people around Vancouver too, and I say that the next step that this Government should make is to have free passenger service on the ferries — free passenger service on the ferries.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear.

MR. NIMSICK: The ferries are the part of the Queen's Highway across this Province and I see no reason why a person should be denied the right to come either from Vancouver to Victoria or vice versa because they haven't got a dollar in their pocket.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

AN HON. MEMBER: You let the seagulls ride free.

MR. NIMSICK: And you could quite easily, you could quite easily. The taxpayers in Victoria are subsidizing the fixing of bridges, the keeping up of the Deas Island Tunnel and all this. Why shouldn't we subsidize for the passengers going on the ferries in the same exact fashion?

AN HON. MEMBER: Bridge across Okanagan Lake.

MR. NIMSICK: And the bridge across Okanagan Lake. The ferries up in the Nelson area are free. Why shouldn't the ferries to Victoria be free?

At election time you know, Mr. Speaker, they told the people, in regards to education, that everything was in good order. They had lifted the freeze and it was going to be hunky dory from then on.

AN HON. MEMBER: Beautiful, beautiful.

MR. NIMSICK: But as soon as the election was over, the tune changed and they stopped even any school bylaws or any referendums being put to the people in December. Now I say that this, I think, is a mistake on the part of the Government. I think you could've at least let the referendum go through, and if you didn't want to fulfill the bill after that, at any time you were able to you could, but they would have had the permission. But now they've got to go through the whole rigamarole again if they want to get permission to build their schools.

We've got some pretty bad situations in our area, especially in the Fernie-Sparwood area. We had to open the old Michel school which was dust-ridden, at a great expense, and not only at an expense to the school board but an expense to the people sending their children there because it's a very dirty, dusty, polluted place. We need new schools, and you stopped the school board there from going to referendum to build that necessary school, and especially when the population is exploding in that area. I think it's a callous manner of treating the public in that fashion.

Game is another question in my area that's very important. The East Kootenay has been noted as the finest big game area in the world, but that is fast becoming a myth. When I'm speaking of big game I don't think that we should conserve or preserve or build herds of big game for hunters alone. I don't think there's a greater privilege than to be driving around and to see a mountain sheep or to see an elk or a deer. I think it's wonderful for the children, and this is something we must keep in mind, that we cannot look upon this resource as just a money-maker to fill the coffers of the Provincial treasury.

In 1958 the sportsmen went along with the biologists at that time to put antlerless season on, and when this was done they wiped out most of the local herds where people could see them. You can't see a deer, you can drive for miles today and you don't see any of them in that area. Ever since 1958, since they started the antlerless season, we've been on the downhill run, till last year was the worst year that they've had. The biologists still say it'll show up yet, but they've had ten or twelve years. And now they're taking a petition up there, Mr. Minister, through you, Mr. Speaker, to ask that the antlerless season be done away with, that we cut back on the seasons, that we reduce the number of takes.

I had one good suggestion where you would get a tag for a deer, and a tag for a moose and an elk, and if you didn't use the moose and elk tag for those game then you could have another deer. The sportsmen themselves are willing to give up this right until we know where we're going and how much game we've got left in that area. Otherwise we're going to end up with nothing. This talk about harvesting game as if you were harvesting a crop of wheat, it's not the same at all. I'm sure that if a farmer was to run his cattle, or a cattle rancher was to run his cattle the same as we are running the game, it wouldn't be long before he wouldn't have any cattle. Especially if he hired somebody and told them to go out on the ranch and shoot, indiscriminately, everything that was there, calves, cows, bulls or steers — shoot 'em all — and the first time they went out they got a big crop and he was pretty happy, he made a lot of money, made a lot of money, so the next year he got twice as many guys to go out and shoot the cattle and they come in with another big bunch. The same thing is happening in hunting. We're doubling the pressure and tripling the pressure of the hunting, and we expect the herds to remain the same. This is impossible.

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AN HON. MEMBER: They'd advocate shooting the bulls.

MR. NIMSICK: This is impossible, to keep the herds up, to my mind anyway, and I'm not a biologist. If you could go and pick your cattle, or the deer and the elk that you wanted to shoot that would have no effect on the herd, this would be different, but as I say, in the case of the cattle rancher, if he was to go out and indiscriminately get rid of his herds, it would end up that he'd have nothing, and that's what's liable to end up in regards to the game in the East Kootenay.

You promised the people there a land use study several years ago. We had the ARDA people in there taking a land use inventory. Last year I was given to understand that the land use — not in this House but outside of this House — that the land use inventory by ARDA is in now but it hasn't been made public, and I'd like to know why, and I'd like to know when.

While I'm at this, I would like to offer my congratulations to the B.C. Wildlife Federation for having won, shared in the winning, of the Owl Conservation Award. (Applause) This was presented by Alan A. McNaughton, P.C., Q.C., LL.D., who is Chairman of the World Wildlife Fund, and he said the B.C. Wildlife Federation has made a major contribution, over the past few years, to the cause of conservation and protection of wildlife, by creating public awareness of the urgent need to conserve our natural resources.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. NIMSICK: I think this is a big boost to the B.C. Wildlife Federation, because I really think, in this regard they have been trying to do a job. They received $2,500 of that award, and I hope that that $2,500 will go to do a lot more good. I'd just like to pass this around — and now you'd be lucky if you saw two on a truck.

Now I'm going to come to another problem that's probably interesting, a little more interesting to you maybe, and that is the election. I'd like to say a few words on the election.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. NIMSICK: I don't think anyone's got more right to say anything on the election than I have. (Applause) You know, I think that when there's big majorities there's very few people understand the Elections Act, or study it, very few people. It's when you're in a close contest that you really study the Elections Act and you find out how inadequate the Elections Act is. The night of the election, you know, there was great rejoicing in the Social Credit camp, not only in my area but in Victoria as well, I'm sure.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shame!

MR. NIMSICK: There was great rejoicing, great rejoicing, I was 48 votes behind.

AN HON. MEMBER: Shame.

MR. NIMSICK: This is what the honourable member for Nelson-Creston said commenting on Socred wins in Kootenay and Revelstoke-Slocan riding, Mr. Black said, "Now we have a solid voice in the government for the Kootenays."

AN HON. MEMBER: Ohhhhh.

AN HON. MEMBER: They never had one solid voice before.

MR. NIMSICK: We have a solid voice, and I'll be right with you for the Kootenays, Mr. Minister, but I'm very pleased — I thought you were my friend, I thought you were my friend, Mr. Minister, and after that night, after that night how you shattered it, my faith in you. The Premier tried hard, and all his cohorts, to take the Kootenay riding. The Premier was in there three or four times. He started out with this film at the taxpayers' expense. The Premier came in with his film "The Good Life." He came in and he got the taxpayers of Cranbrook to help pay for the dinner that was put on so he could show the film. He went to the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce owed a big bill for the dinner because not many turned out. So then they went to the City Council and they got some money from them to help them pay, and they did this in several places in the Province.

All the Cabinet Ministers came in one after the other, they were trouping through there, and they were telling them time and time again what a wonderful area it was, what a wonderful growth area it was, it was the fastest growing area in the Province of British Columbia, but it would be better if they sent in a Government representative. They did tell them this, and they even said you would get more if you sent in a Government representative. You were so convincing that you even influenced a bunch of gutless Liberals in Kimberley to go along with you. That's right. That's no reflection on the Liberals here, but I'm talking about the ones he was talking about last summer. He himself said they were a bunch of gutless Liberals up there, that knifed their own candidate in the back and went over to the Social Credit, and they thought they were going to defeat me by it.

AN HON. MEMBER: They were sure your friends in August.

MR. NIMSICK: In August, listen boys, when you had the slogans going it was that way.

But this Elections Act should be overhauled, because there are many, especially the Government members, who have utter disregard for the law.

AN HON. MEMBER: So have you.

MR. NIMSICK: The candidate, and the Cabinet Ministers of all people, to have an Elections Act and then to flaunt it in the face of the people like they did during that election. I think it was terrible. When you use the public's money for campaign funds through your big advertising, and nobody can tell me any different. It wasn't by accident that those big page advertisements were in the paper during election time. It wasn't by accident — it was done purposely and deliberately.

Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, a few years ago you passed an Act in this House depriving the right of trade unions, by majority decision, to use their funds for election purposes, and yet you could put your grimy hands into the pockets of every taxpayer in the Province and take the money and use it for campaign funds. You did it right and left, and you know it.

Section 164, just to give you an idea, section 164 of the Act. It says, "Every candidate at an election who corruptly, by himself or with any person, by any other way or means on his behalf, at any time between the date of issue of the

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writ…." and so on, "provided, or is accessory to the giving or providing, or pays, wholly or in part, any expenses incurred for any meat, drink, or provision to or for any person in order to be elected, or for being elected, or for the purpose of corruptly influencing that person, or any other person." That's 164, and this is what they advertised, "Phil Gaglardi and Harry Broadhurst will be in Cranbrook at the Stop and Go Inn — free lunch."

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh no, please!

MR. NIMSICK: I phoned up the returning officer that it was against the law and they didn't do anything about it.

I never buy a glass of beer for anybody at any time during an election. I never buy a glass of beer for anybody because I live up to the law, I live up to the laws. But your candidates went into the beer parlour and bought beer — they even bought me beer. Your candidates even tried to get my vote with beer and I say that if we are going to flout that section of the Act, then it should be out of there. It shouldn't be in there.

Then we came to the recount or the re-check of the ballots. I asked for a re-check on the night of the count. They told me at first that I couldn't get it. Then they said I could get it. Then they said I would have to have the request in writing, so I put it in writing. Then we came to the re-check, and they were going to limit me to one scrutineer at each box, and the Act says, and I'll read that too, section 121.

AN HON. MEMBER: Be sure your foot is out of your mouth first.

MR. NIMSICK: Prior to the final count, ….in the presence of the candidates or their scrutineers, and shall give to the scrutineers of the candidates appointed to attend at the counting…." And it says in here also, under section 68, in regards to scrutineers, "Every candidate or his official agent may, by writing under his hand, appoint a scrutineer or scrutineers at each polling-booth…." and I took it up, and you people sent in the chief electoral officer at the time of the recount to try and defeat me. I asked him, when I came up to the scrutineers, they sent for the police because I wouldn't agree to only one scrutineer, so they had to send for the police.

They sent to Victoria for an interpretation of the Act, and they hired a lawyer in Cranbrook to help out the poor chief electoral officer, to help him out. I told them, I said, "It's your decision to make, not the returning officer, not the local returning officer." He was a top man, and he didn't make the decision. He wouldn't make the decision, and you don't live up to these laws.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who was your lawyer? You had a good lawyer.

MR. NIMSICK: I actually didn't need lawyers, but I had a good lawyer just the same, I had my son.

I think they wrecked them throughout the Province. I think that it shows, when you see how many section 80 ballots were cast — there was one damn, darn poor job done with the registration. I think they are appointed by the Social Credit party, the enumerators, and I feel, in my own mind, that they quite likely slid over those who were not Social Credit. This is my feeling, and they quite likely slid, because otherwise they didn't do a good job. Otherwise they didn't do a good job. They should have done a better job. There should have been nobody voting section 80 hardly, in that election, they should have been all on the list, and so I'm not holding anything back for that.

But I think we should have a complete overhauling of the Act, and those sections that, if you're going to ignore them, if you are going to disregard them, then for goodness sakes make it for all people. I try and live up to those sections and you break them, so I don't think that that is right. That's one thing I can say without fear of contradiction, that I do not break the law at election time, or any other time, if I can help it. You people talk about it.

When the final ballots were counted at the re-check, when I was six votes ahead, I said to them, I said, "Now I'll withdraw my request…."No, but listen, at the final count before the re-check was counted, I was six votes ahead, "So I'll withdraw my request, I'll withdraw my request for a re-check because she said it was going to take too much time" So up marched the candidate for the Social Credit. "I want a re-check, I want a re-check." I said, "You can't have a re-check." (laughter) So the chief electoral officer gets on the telephone again to the Attorney-General's Department and asked him about it, and asked him about it, so when he asked him about it the Attorney-General's Department upheld my decision. They said the only thing that you can do is to not accept the withdrawal, so he got his re-check too, and then I was 12 votes ahead.

But you know, you people talking about the labour people being your friends, I am dubious about how many, because I'm sure that I must have got 100 per cent of the workers on the Kaiser project in the absentee vote, and your rejoicing was short-lived. I gave you an opportunity to rejoice for a few days but that was all.

Then you run around the country with this slogan of calling us Godless socialists. The whole programme of Social Credit was that they called us Godless socialists. I was taught that Christianity was the brotherhood of man, and I ask you, in a political sense, does not Socialism advocate the brotherhood of man, too? Every day you recite the Lord's Prayer in this Chamber at the start of the sitting, and if you study it carefully, it says, "It will be done on this earth as it is in Heaven." Now I pray to God that they don't do a job in Heaven like they are doing on this earth, because it would be one heck of a job.

So capitalism, you know, does not use the resources of the world for the common good, but for profit. They build obsolescences into almost every article so that it will not last too long. You will have to buy another, and our natural resources are used up that much quicker. The faster and faster they use them up the more profit is made. They care not whether it is used to burn people to a crisp in Vietnam or to destroy it, the goods that's made, as long as the price is kept up.

Socialism means to make use of the world's vast resources for the benefit of all, aided by science and universal planning, free of exploitation as of the present time, and as in the past centuries of slavery. Planning implies the conservation of natural resources and their efficient use. Also care of all its sources of water supply, minerals, forests, agricultural land, and the wealth of sea-food, our parks, etc. Socialism is to stop the stupid waste of men, money and resources. This is the very essence of Socialism. I ask you, is this the Godless Socialist Plan?

You know, the Scripture says that, "Ye will be persecuted by those that call themselves Christians," and I think this

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applies very aptly to the Social Credit Government. You were not particular as to the tactics you used to win this election, but problems of poverty, unemployment, waste, and pollution are still with us. They have got to be solved if the human race is going to continue, and in order to solve them you will have to break out of the limits that capitalism has placed upon you. I was watching the T.V. when the Federal-Provincial Council was in progress, and every one was like a herd of cattle in a corral, milling around, moving from position to position, but solving nothing. Before you will solve those problems, you will have to break out of that corral, and follow the road to Socialism.

While there are a few little items in the Speech from the Throne that might be considered good, a few little politickings, it offers no solution to the real problem of our social problem. It does not indicate that the Government understands, or wishes to understand, the underlying causes of our problems, or to set out upon a course that will solve them. When this final motion comes, after the next speaker, when the final motion comes, I ask you to vote "No" to the Speech from the Throne.

Now, dealing as the seconder to this motion, I would like to say that this Government, further, has proven itself a champion in desecrating our land. The Strathcona Park, they gave it to the Western Mines. They gave part of the forestry to somebody for a piece of land up in the top end of the Island. They gave away Divide Lake, they exchanged timber for land, they flood the Skagit Valley, they ruin the Elk Valley — they will be ruining it right up to the National Parks if they can possibly do so, and they're giving away. We've got to have a more definite programme of land use in the Province of British Columbia. This motion, Mr. Speaker, this motion affects all members, regardless of party, in this House, and regardless of constituency, and we call on members on all sides to support it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Minister of Recreation and Conservation.

HON. W. K. KIERNAN (Chilliwack): Mr. Speaker, I would first of all like to thank the mover and seconder of this amendment to the Speech from the Throne, because it provides for me an opportunity to give a full report and history on park development in British Columbia, and also to lead the old and the new members through the intricacies and the problems, the prospects and the results of many long hours of deliberation. I thank you for inviting me to make this address, and for providing the opportunity. Because no subject has been less understood or more maligned than park policy in the Province of British Columbia.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Shouting)

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

MR. KIERNAN: I want, however, I want to have the opportunity…. However, Mr. Speaker, if somebody else wants to make this speech, fine. But I suggest, leave it a little while.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Minister has the floor.

MR. KIERNAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to advise the House of three matters related to park policy that have direct bearing, in fact, on the amendment that was just moved.

First of all, I wish to advise you that pursuant to the Park Act, 1965, by the authority of that statute, the Lieutenant-Governor in Council has been pleased to provide a Class A park in the Skagit Valley of 3,700 acres. The Order-in-Council pursuant to this statute is here. The park will further have, encompassing the area, a recreational area of 32,000 acres which will be known as the Skagit River Recreational Area and established under the Forest Act.

I might explain, Mr. Speaker, for those who do not know where this part of British Columbia is located, that the Skagit River, which rises in British Columbia, passes under the Hope-Princeton Highway and flows across the international boundary into Ross Lake, is located approximately 25 miles easterly from the town of Hope. The Skagit River Valley has long been under observation by our parks and recreation people, and we felt that if the raising of the reservoir as proposed by Seattle Light and Power should proceed, that it would provide us with an additional 6,000 acres of usable recreational water in that period of the summer when that type of facility is in demand. Whether or not the Seattle Light and Power proceeds with its programme, the long-term planning for parks in this Province still dictates that we ought to establish the substantial Class A park in the Skagit River Valley, and this is what we have done. I don't propose to spend a long time, I don't propose to spend a long time on this. The date is the 3rd day of February in the year of our Lord, 1970.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the park here is of considerable importance, but I don't propose to spend a great deal of time on this particular park this afternoon, because I think the honourable members who have indicated, at least on the opposite side of the House, that they propose to support an amendment to the Speech from the Throne, ought to have brought to their attention the process of evolution in park development in the Province of British Columbia, so they may be able to understand some of the complexities confronting whoever may be vested with the responsibility for parks, and some of the positive and constructive actions that have been taken, not only to eliminate those problems, but to assure that they do not again reoccur in the future.

However, there is another administrative matter that it is proper I bring to the attention of the House, because it deals with another Provincial park, and incidentally there are 276 Provincial parks. There are also 2,632 map reserves for future park development if detailed assessment, in the process of the development of the Province, indicates that those map reserves ought to be developed for parks. So I think you can realize now that we're dealing with something in excess of seven million acres of real estate. That is not inclusive of the million acres of National Parks within the Province, of the parks presently being put together by the Regional Districts, of the parks that are presently municipally or city managed, but simply the Provincial parks system.

I would also advise you that at the time the Department of Recreation and Conservation was formed in 1957, there were 106 Provincial parks in the Province of British Columbia, which was double the number that had existed in 1952. Just as a matter of interest, in 1957, Mr. Speaker, there were 106 Provincial parks, which means of one new Provincial park each month for all of those years intervening between 1957 and today, or 144 months, 144 new Provincial parks, plus 5 over and above one a month, and you tell me that that is not an aggressive and positive park programme.

Now, my friends, to come back to an administrative

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matter, and I want to point out to you that one of the responsibilities of ministerial office is that you make decisions. It may be that they are not pleasant decisions, that doesn't excuse you from making them, that's your responsibility. You know, the big problem with many people in the world today, they can't make decisions.

Having examined the casualty record at Mt. Seymour Provincial Park, and finding that although the tobogganing represents only a minor portion of the use, it is accounting for far the major portion of the accidents. In view of the fact that there is not a proper area at this time in which we can properly manage tobogganing, and that the tobogganists will not restrain themselves from getting into the ski areas, I have no alternative but to ban any further tobogganing as of today until proper facilities can be provided.

I want to tell you that that is not a simple problem in Mt. Seymour Park. It's immediately adjacent to the greatest concentration of population to be found in British Columbia. Within an hour and twenty minutes drive out of Mt. Seymour Provincial Park there are today, Mr. Speaker, 1,100,000 people. I had hoped that some of these other developments such as Cypress Bowl, such as Whistler Mountain, would slacken off some of this load that we have at Seymour, because the load is at times almost unmanageable. The fact remains that Mt. Seymour has only two things to recommend it. One, that it is readily accessible even though the road is bad at times, and two, that it is immediately adjacent to a large metropolitan area. The terrain is bad, the snow conditions are less than optimum, and the air is fresh.

Now, Mr. Speaker, we have directed our attention, as well as to Mt. Seymour, to other areas that were within reasonable reach of the Greater Vancouver Metropolitan area, and we have created extensive developments at Gibson Pass in Manning Park. We have added to the facilities and we didn't make the mistake, Mr. Speaker, when we built the road from Manning Park Lodge into Gibson Park, we did not make the mistake that was made in building the road into Seymour. After the war, that is the last war, it goes back a ways, there was great interest and pressure for the development of the mountain playgrounds on the North Shore. Because of this pressure they said, let's stick in a road so we can get up and ski on Seymour, and they put in a road simply to minimum standards. Since then, from our limited park budget, we have been slowly and tediously reconstructing that road and resurfacing it to standards that are acceptable to present day requirements.

When we built the road from Manning into Gibson Pass, and I must admit we had more favourable terrain, we built it to adequate standards, and I can simply illustrate the difference to you when I say we plow the road from Manning Lodge to Gibson Pass ski area six miles with an ordinary road grader. We plow the road to Seymour with a $45,000 Sicard snow plow, we rebuilt the old one, we bought a new one, and we moved the machinery shed up to the top of the hill so we could plow down instead of up. You know we keep trying, we're making progress, but the terrain and snowfall are very much against us and it is one of the more difficult areas to maintain.

Now, our problem in relation to tobogganing is simply this, in order to have tobogganing that is reasonably safe you've got to have a pretty sizeable cleared area, because if you have only a narrow belt and you get 27 tobogganists, 3 of those flying saucers, and 16 bobsleds going down the place all at once you're not going to have a toboggan run you're going to have a sausage machine. This means you've got to clear hundreds of acres if you are going to accommodate the kind of volume of people that wish to engage in that type of activity, and also the accident records show that tobogganing is far more dangerous than skiing.

Well, I think I ought to make it perfectly clear since somebody has raised the question, are we closing all the parks to toboganning? Now I don't know anything I said that would lead anybody to conclude that I was talking about other than Mt. Seymour Park, but just for certainty, I'm only dealing with tobogganing at Mt. Seymour Park. I'm only dealing with it in the interests of public safety, I am doing it reluctantly, but, nevertheless I'm doing it because it has to be done. Now I can't make it clearer than that.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's a small point.

MR. KIERNAN: Well, tomorrow it would be a very large point because my friend, it may not be a very big point at this moment but I want to take you to another little point and then we're going to come back and we're going to analyse this whole business of park development, park control, and so on.

I just wanted to point out again in relation to parks, Mr. Speaker, and especially for the second member for Vancouver East for his benefit, that the only way a park can be established in British Columbia, whether it is by purchase or from Crown land, is by an Order of the Executive Council signed by His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor. There is no other way. If the land is donated it still must go through the Executive Council. If the land is purchased it still must go through the Executive Council, and have an Order specifically setting out the boundaries, the classification of the park, and authorizing it to become a park. Now, I think that's fairly obvious, but apparently some people lose sight of that fact or never got around to reading the statute.

I want to deal with one other matter that is of current interest, it's a very little matter perhaps in some people's eyes. In other people's eyes it's very important. In my opinion every lake, every valley, every stream in this Province is important. I think we have one of the finest recreational potentials to be found anywhere in the world. I think, consistent with the population of 2,000,000 people, we are doing a tremendous job of developing it. I think that recreational development ought not to be the exclusive prerogative of government, but that there is a place for free enterprise or private enterprise, if you wish, and I think that unless we can encourage more private development of recreational areas that we are not likely to catch up with the demand. Certainly this has been illustrated time and time again. Grouse Mountain, Whistler, Mt. Baker, a mixture of private and public developments, some straight private development, some straight public development.

But, I want to deal very briefly with a matter related to parks that has apparently caused a great deal of concern, and that has to do with the little park reserve area known popularly as Divide Lake. Now, again, most of you won't be able to find Divide Lake on the map and unless you happen to have been there — you can find four or five of them as a matter of fact — most of you don't know where Divide Lake is.

AN HON. MEMBER: We'll never find it now.

MR. KIERNAN: Most of you don't know where Divide Lake is. Well, then what is its — fill me in — what is its proper

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name?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please address the Chair.

MR. KIERNAN: Maybe the member would be good enough, maybe the member would be good enough to fill me in, Mr. Speaker, as to what the recorded name of the lake is, if it isn't Divide Lake.

AN HON. MEMBER: It is Empty Lake.

MR. KIERNAN: There are four or five lakes. That's right. Quiltanton. The member that lives in the area knows what he is talking about. He has probably been in there. Now then, let's take a look at Quiltanton Lake.

AN HON. MEMBER: Look at it quickly before it evaporates.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. KIERNAN: No, it isn't going to evaporate. You see, Mr. Speaker, and this is just an observation related to the amendment we are debating, I listened with great attention to the speaker that seconded the motion, and in an hour and 45 minutes of dissertation he spent five minutes on parks, and yet the whole substance of the motion was directed to parks and recreation areas. Now that is observation number one.

Observation number two. In the five minutes he spent on parks he mentioned two, Wasa Lake, and his complaint there was some arrangement that he objected to in relation to the youth camp there, but he was quite complimentary about Wasa Lake park. The other one was Champion Lakes which has a beautiful black top road to it, and what did he want to do with Champion Lakes? Well, he only mentioned it because he wanted a highway built through it, so that instead of a nice pleasant place to camp and picnic, which is on the end of a black top road, he wanted to put a main highway through it so it wouldn't be safe for kids or anybody else.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, now….

MR. KIERNAN: Well now, you have got rid of Champion Lakes cut-off, and all that I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is this. I think that amendment was a little bit facetious, certainly insofar as the support offered by the seconder was concerned.

But let's come back to Quiltanton Lake. It is 157 acres. On it, we had a map reserve of 38 acres, bearing in mind that we have 2,632 map reserves in the Province. We reserve Crown land wherever there is an indication that it might be desirable as a park or recreation site at some time in the future, because we have had unhappy experiences, expensive experiences, in some of these more easily-settled areas, that we have got to go back and buy up the land that should really have been set aside for parks in the first place. So on the basis of that, for several years now this Government has been on a programme that as soon as the surveyors go in, our park planners go in right along with them, and before the road is ever opened up we have got map reserves, through the courtesy of the Minister of Lands, on all of the attractive areas that we think we might possibly need. Because if you have got a reserve and find, on careful analysis, that really the 27 reserves you have on Babine Lake are about nine too many, and you ought to cut it back to 20 potential parks, you can always cancel out the seven. But if you didn't have those reserves and you found that you wanted a key area like Rathtrevor Beach on Vancouver Island, then you have got to go and pay good money for it, if you have left the thing beyond the time it passed from Crown hands. So we learn. We certainly are not making the mistakes that were made by previous Governments. I am not saying we don't make our own original mistakes, but we at least are not making the old ones.

Now, to come back to this 38-acre park reserve on this 157-acre lake, it is right in the middle of what is probably going to emerge as the major copper complex area in British Columbia. There is another area that I can think of that will run it a close second, at least, if not exceed it, but at the present time it indicates that it will become a very major area. Now here we are with one of our 2,632 park reserves on this little lake right in the middle of an area that is festooned with mineral claims and where development work, exploratory work, has indicated that there is a massive low-grade ore body. Obviously, it is no place to develop a park in the middle of a mining operation. We surely have that much intelligence. For one thing, the aesthetic quality of being in the middle of a mining operation is hardly the one you look for in park settings.

Now, the next question then is, if we are not going to utilize this map reserve, and ordinary intelligence dictates that we shouldn't use it, then the best thing for us to do, as far as our Parks Department is concerned, is to scrub out the reserve. That we did.

Now, on the question of the mining company who has these claims staked all around us, hundreds of them, on the question of the mining company making a grant to the Provincial Department of Conservation and Recreation of $50,000 for park improvement in the area, the statute provides for such grants. It says, "The Minister shall receive them and spend them to the benefit of the people of the Province of British Columbia." It lays it out specifically. Grants of money, grants of land, or grants of any nature that are useful to the parks and recreation programme.

Now, these people expect to conduct a very sizeable mining operation in that area. They expect that they will be employing a substantial number of people. They expect that those people will want to go boating and swimming and water-skiing in their time off, just like anybody else. Why is it any more untoward for a mining company to make a grant of $50,000 to develop a park — at Lac Le Jeune, incidentally, is where we decided the money should be spent — than it is for Consolidated Mining and Smelting to make a grant to the establishment of the sports arena at Trail?

Now, let's come to this question of the lake. Because, you know, so many people, especially the Opposition, they add one and one and they get six, it happens time and time again. The only thing that the Parks Department has done to this date is authorize the cancellation of a map reserve on Quiltanton Lake of 38 acres, being one of 2,632 such reserves in the Province. In return, we have received from the mining company $50,000 which we have spent on the Lac Le Jeune park, developing facilities that presumably will be used by the mining employees of that company, as well as the citizens of other parts of the Province.

Now, what the disposition will be in relation to the question of draining the lake has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that we surrendered our map reserve, because

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you can't fill a lake, or drain a lake, or divert a river, or divert a creek in this Province without first of all applying for a water licence. When you apply for a water licence it must be posted, it must be given an opportunity to state their objection. That is the point at which this lake is at the moment. Certainly, if I were sitting with some property on the shore of that lake, if I were sitting on the shore of that lake with some property, I would object, surely, and certainly the Indian Reserve that abuts the lake, they have every right to object, and they have.

But what I am saying is this, Mr. Speaker, that time and time again I find people, especially in the Opposition, jumping to conclusions by adding one and one together and coming up with six or nine. You take a little fact and you add a substantial volume of fiction and you come up with a sort of soup that is neither intelligent nor digestible.

I would like to tell you something, Mr. Speaker, about the emergence of the park programme in British Columbia. At the time I became Minister, several years ago now, back in 1963, I realized we were having some problems in terms of parks, but I didn't have anything approaching a clear understanding of why these problems existed. For the first six months I spent most of my spare time studying how these parks had evolved, and how the problems came to be built into them, and what we ought to do to eliminate the problem. Now, some of these larger parks were established many years ago but they were, in most cases, simply lines drawn on a map as a result of little or no detailed analysis, and with no clear concept of what it was they sought to do. But simply because here was a big chunk of wilderness, it would be nice to create a park, name it in the honour of somebody, and what we will do with it, of course, leave that to posterity to figure out. Now there were parks created simply on the basis that it was nice scenery and it was inaccessible. There was parks created simply because it was nice scenery and it was inaccessible. There were other parks created because they felt that well, if the neighbours had a park, and the National Government had a park, we ought to have a park.

Now, my friend, I would suggest that if we are to have an intelligent discussion that we not try to compare ants and elephants. I am simply saying that the idea that you can compare Stanley Park with Strathcona Park or Garibaldi Park or Tweedsmuir Park or Wells Gray Park is purely nonsense. But since you want some comparisons, I will give you some you can try on for size. Tweedsmuir Park is 2,300,000 acres. Stanley Park is 980 acres. Tweedsmuir Park is twice the size of the Province of Prince Edward Island, twice the size of the Province of Prince Edward Island. Wells Gray is bigger than the Province of Prince Edward Island. Strathcona is larger than the usable valley floor in the Fraser Valley, so is Garibaldi Park, larger than the usable land in the valley floor in the Fraser Valley from Hope to the sea. What I am saying is, when you suggest you can compare Stanley Park with Tweedsmuir or Wells Gray or Garibaldi or Strathcona you are trying to compare an ant and an elephant, and there is no, there is no, there is no comparison. There is no valid base of comparison.

I would like, also, to draw to your attention — and I remarked because the neighbours have a park and the National Government has a park, then we ought to have a park. Hamber Park was created alongside a National park adjacent to a Provincial park, and the whole thing put together amounted to more than 5,000,000 acres all in one single mass. Now, when a 1,500,000 acre park is bigger than a Province of Canada, does it make sense to put 5,000,000 acres of parkland all in one place? I say it doesn't. I say the acreage that you like to talk about as being taken out of the park system was, for example, that portion of Hamber Park that had nothing in particular to recommend it, and we preserved Fortress Lake and 50,000 acres surrounding it because the only key feature in Hamber Park was Fortress Lake.

Now I want to tell you also that at the time we disposed of that acreage from Hamber Park we created Bowron Lake Park. Bowron Lake Park, for those of you that know it, has everything to recommend it. We cancelled, before my time — I say we the Government cancelled before my time as Minister, a park up on the Liard River of 1,000,000 acres. Now I don't know how many of you have seen the Liard River but certainly, if the member from Atlin were here, he would tell you that 1,000,000 acres of park land on the Liard River is a fine…. Oh, I am sorry, he was hiding behind his leader or somebody's leader. But I think the member from Atlin at least could tell you that most of that Liard River basin is mosquito swamps. Well, I am not particularly in favour of mosquitoes, nor are most of the people that use my parks. What we have been doing for the last several years is directing our attention to not only carefully re-assessing the existing large parks, but progressively adding to the park system those key areas that have a meaningful purpose to serve, either in terms of recreation or in terms of ecology or in terms of both, but not depending solely on Class A parks for future recreational requirements.

We have, under the authority of the new Park Act in 1965, been creating recreational areas. We created the Bugaboos, Nancy Greene, International Ridge, to name only three of the recreational areas established in this last year. Cultus Lake is a Provincial park of 1,600 acres. Between the Provincial park and the municipal park we practically encircle the entire perimeter of Cultus Lake. There are two exceptions. The Department of National Defence has a water training section to train the troops from the Camp Chilliwack, and there is a small holding known as Linden Beach at the far end of Cultus Lake. Other than that, we entirely encompass the lake. We have developed something over 300 campsites, numerous picnic sites, and limited hiking trails within the area. In adding International Ridge recreational area to the Cultus Lake park complex we, in effect, provided an additional 5,000 acres in which riding trails, hiking trails, primitive campouts, even Skidoos on those rare occasions when they get snow, can properly have a place in which they may be utilized for the enjoyment of the public.

Now the advantage of creating a recreational area is twofold. First of all, while there are occasions when it is essential that we have exclusive use of an area for park purposes, and this exclusiveness arises from one of two needs or a combination of the two, exclusive use is required where we go into intensive development. Obviously, if you have got a campsite or a picnic site or a boat launching area or a parking lot, you don't want anybody cutting down any trees in those areas. In fact you have cut enough down when you created the room for those facilities. So in that situation we need exclusive use. The other situation is when there is an ecological feature to be preserved. Now an ecological feature may require as little as an acre or as much as 20 or 30,000 acres because one factor is ecological preservation is that you must preserve a large enough area so the natural regeneration unaffected, as near as humanly possible by man's activities,

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can take place. It will vary depending on the purpose for which you have established your nature conservancy or ecological reserve.

But I do want to point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that this question of parks has many facets to it because you go all the way from a small area where you have most intensive use — why, I have seen some of our picnic sites where there are as many as 1,000 people crowded into a couple or three acres because they were having a big company picnic or an association picnic. On the other hand, you may have areas where the active recreational use only represents a population density of two or three people to a square mile. In fact, since we have opened up Bowron Lake Park and put in comfortable portages, made some facilities available for camping, and given it a little publicity, the complaint we are now receiving is, "this is a wonderful park, it is a beautiful canoeing experience, but there is getting to be too many people going around," and yet the density in terms of people would be less than a dozen to a square mile. So you see, when you come to consider this question of parks, you are dealing with a very wide range of needs, a very wide range of environment and, certainly in this Province, a wide range of geography.

Now why do we have any problems at all in this park business? Well, I have indicated to you that as a safeguard as near as possible against having to go out at some future date and buy expensive property on the waterfront, on the Cassiar-Stewart Road, and many other parts of the Province, in order to avoid that, we have been on a very aggressive programme of map reserves and have built up an inventory of over 2,600 of them. This doesn't mean that every map reserve is designed to become a park, but it does mean that we can be sure it won't be alienated, it won't be sold or parted from the Crown's control without first consulting with our Department, that we have first chance at it.

Somebody staking a mineral claim within a reserve area would not be in violation insofar as the staking is concerned, but he would still be subject to our requirements if we felt we should exercise them, that his mining operation be carried on in such a way as to minimize the damage to the reserve so that we could transfer the equivalent elsewhere. In a map reserve it is not under the jurisdiction of the Park Act, and we cannot stop a person staking or mining in a map reserve. We can stop them cutting and trenching and that sort of thing, but we cannot stop them staking and, carried through to its ultimate conclusion, I don't think you could disallow them utilizing the mineral rights. But we can ask for compensation and receive it. We did stop them logging, oh yes, on a map reserve because it is reserved for possible future recreational requirements.

Well, we have been utilizing this system since about 1957 and certainly at the time I took office, took over this Department, there was in excess of 1,400 map reserves then, now it is up over 2,600. Now this doesn't mean that we still don't have to buy land, on occasion, but it does mean in the new areas of the Province, as they open up, we are reasonably well protected as to our park requirements 20, 30, 40 years down the road.

But in this business of appraising park requirements, you must bear in mind that much of British Columbia is, in fact, wilderness. Now, I will cite a very simple example. Last week an aircraft on a flight from Vancouver to the Okanagan Valley disappeared. Presumably it is somewhere in a rather narrow north-south belt between here and the Okanagan Valley. All the ingenuity that can be mustered has been put into the search for that aircraft and they haven't found it yet, and if that isn't wilderness, so help me I don't know what wilderness is.

The fact remains, Mr. Speaker, that much of British Columbia is wilderness, and in all likelihood will remain wilderness, remain in its natural state forever. So when we are selecting wilderness as parks for the purpose of preserving ecology, and that is one of the prime reasons of setting up nature conservancies, to preserve the ecology, then it ought to be a very deliberate and selective process. In other words, what you are preserving ought to be preserved because somewhere down the road the fact that you have preserved it will make it unique. Certainly you need room for all sorts of outdoor recreation, certainly you need room to expand and ever expand your park system. But if all you are preserving is wilderness for the sake of preserves, then any practical analysis of the Province of British Columbia surely dictates that at least half of the Province is going to remain wilderness at least for the rest of this century, simply because nobody knows of anything else to do with it. When you get up in an aircraft and fly up the west coast of British Columbia, about 20 miles inland what do you see? An endless sea of mountains and reaches beyond the horizon, and there is not much likelihood that human habitation is going to destroy that.

So in our programme of establishing nature conservancies, we have deliberately directed ourselves to those things that are liable to disappear from the natural history of this Province if we do not preserve them, and secondly, those areas of outstanding scenic value where it ought not to be permitted that anything that detracts from that value will be allowed to take place.

So, basically, your programme is on three fundamental facts, ample room for outdoor recreation in a desirable environment, preservation of the natural history and the ecology, preservation of outstanding scenic areas.

Now, I have said this outside of the Province and people have laughed, and they say, "Why, you come from B.C. You're prejudiced." There is very little of British Columbia that wouldn't meet park standards in many parts of the world. Just stop and think about it. There is not much of British Columbia's 366,000 square miles that you couldn't say, "Well, gee, this is like a park. This has park qualities." So, I think, in part, our problem here is really — and I don't think I am bemused by the beauty of our own Province — I think virtually the whole Province is a park. I think our problem therefore is that we don't like to see anything happen to any part of our Province that detracts from that beauty.

I want, Mr. Speaker, to bring another factor to bear on this discussion. It is rather a unique situation in Canada that insofar as the actual land title is concerned, between 90 and 95 per cent of that land is still vested in the Crown. People have interests in it. They may have forest management interest, they may have mining claim interest, but the actual title to the real estate, to the actual land is still to at least 90 per cent and probably 95 per cent, vested in the Crown, vested in the people of this Province.

Now, what this creates for us is a great degree of flexibility, except in those areas that were settled very early. In the rest of the Province this creates a great degree of flexibility for us in terms of establishing new parks, and I assure you that I have no intention of slowing the pace of one new park a month for the Province of British Columbia, at least as long as I am the Minister of this Department, and I simply again refer to the fact that that has been the

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performance record over the last 12 years. I see no reason why we can't keep it up. But I think we also have to understand that in the process, and I am not critical of what our predecessors did in terms of setting up these large areas, except to say that they weren't very selective. They didn't have a clearcut concept of what it was they wanted to do, and without having a clearcut concept, how could they do other than what they did?

But we are now in a different era. We are in a period when we must very carefully examine all land policies in the Province of British Columbia. That is why two actions, one already taken and one yet to be taken, are important to this discussion of parks and recreational lands.

The first action was the establishment of Resource Ministers' Committee last year. The first step was the establishment of the Resource Ministers' Committee last spring, a year ago. Now that includes the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources, the Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources, the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, the Minister of Recreation and Conservation. The Resource Ministers' Committee. Now this Committee has already directed the technical committee, which is the Deputy Ministers from the various departments plus all their support staff, to two specific problems. The first was the question of land alienation in several of the land districts, Prince George, Terrace, through to the coast. The second was to the technical question associated with the land in the Libby Reservoir. Now, this is the kind of action that brings together not only the Ministerial policy group but all the technical people in the field, be they agriculturalists, biologists, agronomists, or what have you, into actual zeroing in on a specific situation, and from that specific situation, bringing to us policy recommendations. Only by coming to grips with the specific, can you establish gradually the effective ground rules for the general.

Now this, of course, is important, because I submit to you, if you will look at the geography, the nature of the land that we call British Columbia, you are obliged to realize that only a small portion of that 366,000 square miles holds the key to the development, really, of the whole 366,000 square miles. I could name the areas for you, but you can now recite them for yourself, I'm sure — the lower Fraser Valley, southern end of Vancouver Island, the Okanagan Valley, the Kootenay Valley. But pick it out, probably seven per cent of the total land mass, and yet what is done within that seven per cent will be vital to the whole atmosphere, the whole ecology, the whole climate, if you like, of the Province of British Columbia in the future. Now we understand that, and we convey that to the public at every opportunity, but of course, it's a bit of a new concept and it takes a while to sink in. Because bear in mind, we've got 1,100,000 people concentrated in less than one-quarter of one per cent of the land mass, so they get 90 miles away from Vancouver and they're in the wilderness. Then they go back to Vancouver, the lower Fraser Valley, Chilliwack, and they say, "Gee we're getting crowded," and some of the problems that they see arising as a result of crowding in a local area colour their thinking so that they relate that to all of British Columbia.

I think the next factor that we have to consider is that we've got to understand that the wilderness is not limitless, that we can't abuse it. But at the same time, we also ought to understand that where most of the people in British Columbia are living, it is a pretty small portion of British Columbia, and when you get up into the northern half of the Province, with the exception of that Peace River area, your population density is one person to 27 square miles.

I didn't realize I was receiving mail, but I'm quite agreeable to the message. You see I thought perhaps, having been given this opportunity to discuss parks, we ought to go into it a little bit in depth.

I want to take you to another question…. I tell you, you fellows sure led with your chin when you put that resolution on the books.

Mr. Speaker, I want it clearly understood that I am quite capable of handling the problems of my department, but I also think you ought to have some understanding of those problems. I would like to take you now to Kokanee Glacier Park, which is just outside of Nelson. Kokanee Glacier Park, as I recall, is about ten miles square, about 100 square miles… Well, somebody has raised the question of specifically how big is Kokanee Glacier Park. Now I just happen to have the documents with me, and since the question has been raised, Kokanee Glacier Park is 10 miles on each boundary being 100 square miles, being 64,000 acres, established in 1922.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the honourable Mr. Speaker, I beg your pardon…. oh no, when it comes to parks I'm good for at least five hours, and if you give me a couple drinks of water….

Kokanee Glacier Park, when it was established in 1922, was a Class A park. It was established as a Class A park in 1922. You know at the time it was established, and bear in mind, Class A means inviolate, fully protected, Class A park, no one dare touch a hair of that maiden's head. Now, all right, I'll tell you about it. They put the park right down over the mineral claims, Crown-granted mineral claims, mineral claims of record, made no effort, or had no intention of buying out or liquidating the mineral claims, called it a Class A park. Then I'm supposed to prevent people exercising the rights that they have within that park, rights that superseded the park. What kind of facetious nonsense is that in terms of policy? Yet they persist in calling it a Class A park, when there were over 100 mineral claims in the park at the time it was established. It is known as the silver-lode area. They felt there was nothing inconsistent with mineral claims in a Class A park. Yeah, they established the park right over the top of the mineral claims. They established Manning Park right over the top of mineral claims and timber berths.

This Western Mine that people are concerned about and, frankly, I'm concerned about in Strathcona Park, is mining on mineral claims that were Crown granted, Crown granted in 1920's, a grant of indefeasible title in 1920's, and then the Minister is supposed to prevent those people from exercising their indisputable right.

AN HON. MEMBER: Remark not decipherable.

MR. KIERNAN: My friend here, you know, I find his level of intelligence very intriguing. Very intriguing. I also find his level of debate very intriguing. I was very appreciative of his presentation to this House Tuesday. It certainly demonstrated how not to make a speech in this House if you have any respect for the rules of this House.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear! Hear!

MR. KIERNAN: It certainly demonstrated, Mr. Speaker…. Oh you can't take it eh? Can't take it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Can't take it, can't take it.

MR. KIERNAN: Mr. Speaker, I am speaking to this

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resolution, this amendment to the Throne Speech, simply because they thought it would be smart to move an amendment and keep me off the floor this afternoon. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, and, Mr. Speaker, I'm appreciative, I've had a chance to speak to you on this subject in a very limited manner this afternoon. Since the matter ought to be more fully explored, because I think it is essential that we correct some of the misconceptions that have been put at large, I think we ought to understand in the future, when we criticize, that we are doing an intelligent job of criticism. For that reason, Mr. Speaker, I beg to move the adjournment of this debate until 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 Honourable the Minister of Recreation and Conservation on the amendment.

HON. W. K. KIERNAN: Mr. Speaker, we have had a few minutes of consideration directed to general park policy and the broad guidelines within which we seek to operate, but I think to provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject, we ought now to turn our attention specifically to the various Provincial parks in the Province and examine the question of the application of broad policy to the specific situation.

I thought, perhaps, while it won't be necessary to go through the whole 275, Mr. Speaker, I thought perhaps we might deal with 50 or so, because I think most of the basic factors can be explained and examined in some detail by directing our attention to about 50 of the parks. While I wouldn't pretend that that was totally exhaustive of all the factors, I think it would give a reasonably comprehensive picture of what it is we are dealing with, and some of the problems, but also the magnificent possibilities that we have within our grasp, and are developing within the park system.

AN HON. MEMBER: ….Strathcona Park?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member please address the Chair?

MR. KIERNAN: Well now, the good member has directed a question obliquely through the Chair I believe, Mr. Speaker, and I therefore, propose to zero in on Strathcona Park on Vancouver Island, as a starting point for some specific examination. Strathcona Park, as my records indicate, was originally established about the year 1911 as a wilderness park. The area at that time was 5,004 acres and the park itself was at that time totally inaccessible, except on foot or by aircraft.

Now, of course, 1911 sounds like a long time ago, most of us here weren't even born then, and certainly the guidelines and the concepts that they had available to them, in 1911, were very limited. After all, park systems even in the United States were not far advanced at that time, and some of the leading conservationists were only in the process of developing the concept that such magnificent trees as the California Redwoods ought to be preserved. So while 1911 is a long time ago to us, again in terms of nature, it is a comparatively short period. Now the park was used to a very limited extent by those who could either afford the cost of a charter flight in, or those really hardy souls who were prepared to sling their pack on their back and take off down the trail into Buttle Lake and Strathcona Park.

Now when the park was created, it was a bit of a geographic monstrosity, because certainly while it is suggested that Buttle Lake is the key to Strathcona Park, although in my opinion there are lesser lakes that are also highly important in Strathcona, but while Buttle Lake was presumably the key to Strathcona Park, half of the lake was in the park, and the other half was outside the park, or roughly that division.

It was also one of the anomalies of what transpired down through the years, that while this was supposed to be an inviolate wilderness park, again the park was created over the top of existing timber berths and existing mineral claims. While some effort was made to extinguish some of the timber berths, by trade or by purchase, in vast areas of the park no effort whatsoever was made to extinguish the timber berths or the mineral claims, and in fact in 1917 the park was thrown open to unlimited staking and recording of mineral claims. Not only that, but to further compound the situation — and remember this was supposed to be an inviolate wilderness park — to further compound the situation, not only was it permitted to stake and record mineral claims, but they were also Crown granted in the 20's, which meant that the owners of those claims had certificate of indefeasible title to the mineral that might lie below the ground of the claim as far as anyone was prepared to penetrate into the bowels of the earth.

Now this, then, was the kind of ridiculous situation with which not only myself but my predecessors had been confronted. Here was a park that was supposed to be totally inviolate, with timber berths in good standing, with mineral claims in good standing, and with Crown granted mineral claims in numerous sections of the park. In fact, the mineral claims upon which Western Mines operation is presently being conducted were original Crown grants in 1922, the Lakes, the Wolfes and the Phillips blocks of claims. It's true there were only 22 claims Crown granted at that time in total, but 22 mineral claims happens to be 1,100 acres is a much larger area than the total area that Western has in any way disturbed up to this date.

Now the question has been raised, why should we permit anybody to stake any more mineral claims around those Crown grants, and I think this is the contention that is raised against the actions that we have permitted to take place. Most people who are honest will admit the claims were Crown granted. Short of buying them out, you can't refuse them to exercise the rights that were conveyed by the process of Crown granting. But why should we permit any more claims to be staked?

Mining law in this Province is different than a system that exists in some U.S. states. In some of the United States they have what they call the apex law, which simply means that if you stake a claim on an outcropping of mineral, and you can follow that mineralized vein down into the earth no matter how far it goes, in theory even if it went for 100 miles as long as you could establish beyond question that it was a continuation of that same vein, you were entitled to the extraction of the minerals. That was the apex law. Having once found it, it's yours, regardless of where it goes.

Now, the system that applies and has historically applied

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in this Province requires that unless you have staked the surface above that particular portion of mineralized area, regardless of the fact that it is the same vein that you staked on originally, you may not follow that vein beyond the border of your mineral claim, which is a vertical line along that border down into the ground. Now then, if you understand that situation and recognize that these people work entirely within their legal rights to mine on those Crown granted mineral claims, there was no purpose in preventing them staking other mineral claims in Phillips Creek, because the mining operation was going to take place on the Crown grants anyway, and certainly the people who were operating on the Crown grants could not realistically be disallowed from following the vein, certainly within Phillips Creek basin.

Now, of course, when the question arose, could they go beyond Phillips Creek basin, the answer was no, without equivocation. We know that the mineralized zone extends over from the Myra Creek into the adjoining basin, and I'm sorry, I have been confusing you, it is the Myra Creek basin where they are operating. Phillips Creek is the next creek over the height of the land, and it was in Phillips Creek that they wanted to stake additional claims because the mineralization again showed on the surface in Phillips Creek. But they were told because of the Crown grants in Myra Creek, we would permit them to mine there, but they could not go into Phillips Creek regardless of the fact that the mineralization extended there, and that they or nobody else could stake claims in Phillips Creek. To settle that question once and for all we set up that whole area as the Big Den Nature Conservancy with absolute prohibition against anyone mining, cutting trees, or interfering with it in any way — I beg your pardon, that is the Central Nature Conservancy, and it is 215,000 acres. The Big Den is the northern conservancy, which is 29,000 acres. We've made additions to Strathcona Park.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. KIERNAN: Forbidden Plateau, 28,000 acres. We acquired from Hydro some lands at The Narrows as a gift, and we have converted them to a campsite. We acquired additional lands on Buttle Lake by trade and by purchase and added them to Strathcona Park. We recently raised 12,000 additional acres in Strathcona Park from Class B to Class A because we were able to extinguish the one existing alienation and therefore we raised the whole area to fully protected status, with the result that there is in excess of 300,000 acres in Strathcona Park that has no alienations in it, that is fully protected by nature conservancy status, and therefore there will never be any question of alienations within those areas.

In those areas where alienations exist, the timber berths' existing mineral claims, unless we are prepared to spend money and a substantial amount of money to buy out those existing rights — and I suggest that we would not be substantially enhancing the park picture, the recreational picture, or the nature conservancy picture for British Columbia by spending that money — but unless we are prepared to spend substantial sums of money, then we must be prepared that these people will exercise the rights that they properly have.

Now this is just a review of one aspect of one problem in one park, and I don't intend, Mr. Speaker, to burden you with all the details of all the problems in all the parks. I simply want to tell you, I simply want to tell you that I am fully prepared to do it, if that is what you desire, and that I am sure you are convinced by this time that I am not going to support the amendment to the Speech from the Throne.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The First Member for Vancouver–Point Grey.

MR. P. L. McGEER (Vancouver–Point Grey): Well, Mr. Speaker, the black day in this House, as far as parks were concerned, was in 1965. That was the date we passed the Parks Act, and at that time the leader of our Party, now in the Federal House, had this to say about section 6 of that Act. He said, "This measure fails to provide adequate protection for the public against lobbyists of every description." That section 6, Mr. Speaker, gives not to this Legislature but to the Lieutenant-Governor in Council the right to establish Class A, Class B, Class C parks at the discretion of the Cabinet, with no reference to the Legislature and no reference to the public of British Columbia, but with all the opportunities that have gone on regularly since that day for these lobbyists of every description to appear and make their deals with the Cabinet, and to chip away the heritage of British Columbia.

Mr. Perrault had this to say, "Too much discretionary power is vested in the Cabinet to determine park boundaries. This Bill would deprive the Legislature of any real power to protect our parks. With the fantastic demand for parks and recreational areas, there is simply not enough protection of the public interests contained in this Bill. We are going to vote against it." And we did. Ever since the day that this Bill was passed and the power was taken from this Legislative Assembly, we've been on a downhill track as far as parks in British Columbia are concerned.

You know, Mr. Speaker, today we might as well put outside on the front lawn of this Legislature a great big billboard, have it on the Legislative lawn, and put on it "Parks for Sale, Parks for Lease or Parks for Swap — cheap prices, get 'em while they last and apply within." Not to this Chamber but to that secret room down the hall where the business of British Columbia is really conducted.

I'm not impressed, Mr. Speaker, with the Minister's announcement earlier today that we were going to have 3,700 acres in the Skagit Valley set aside, February 3rd, 1970, the Order-in-Council. Not even a deathbed repentance. A desperate attempt to salvage something. Is it going to be under or above water? We don't want you to try and establish a park after you're prepared to ruin an area. Why didn't you think of that in 1967, when you were dealing away this lovely valley to the people of Seattle? No, it's only when the members on the Opposition side of the House start to put the pressure on that you begin to respond at all, and it's always too late. That's the problem it's always too late.

What good is it going to do to put a Class A park after it's flooded away and the beauty is gone and the ecology is disturbed? What's the purpose of that? It's like making a Class A park in that mess up in Williston Lake, or a Class A park of the mess that was made of Stave Lake. Ruin the area and then make a Class A park of it, after you've made your deals against the public interest. Cheap — $5.50 an acre. That's what you give it away for, and then you put a 3,700 acre park on what's left.

We heard earlier today, when our member moved this Motion of non-confidence in the Government, defending the position he took with Cypress Bowl, telling us, when he read

[ Page 216 ]

the leases and the control they had over that in the West Van Municipal Council. When did the West Van Municipal Council find out about it? Well, Mr. Speaker, here it is. A letter to the Municipal Clerk dated December 2nd, 1969, "Reference is made to your letter of December 2nd, 1969, requesting copies of the leases issued" — signed Ray Williston. When did he tell them about those leases? In December. The West Van Municipal Council had to ask what was going on. After he'd taken a recreational area and signed it away, and did he know what was going on? You bet he did know what was going on. Benguet wrote in September — those million dollar leases were given a few days after the Minister had received his letter from Benguet, and within a few days of that, Alpine had peddled them to these interests. Million dollar leases out of our park land, and the West Van Council, Mr. Minister, had to ask you what those leases were about. I've got your letter. Do you know what date it says? December 4th. It's got your signature on it. They had to write and ask you for it, didn't they? Well, the file is right here.

But the point about this, Mr. Minister, is the wheeling and dealing that went on behind those Cabinet doors with the Benguet interests and with the Alpine Recreational people. The Attorney-General cancels it, but only after the heat is put on by Opposition members of this Legislature. No, No, not by all you backbenchers, not by this group that were pounding their desks for the Minister of Recreation and Conservation as he gave that feeble defense of his guarding of the parks in this Province.

How prophetic Mr. Perrault's words were. "This measure fails to provide adequate protection for the public against lobbyists of every description." And we have had lobbyists of every description coming in after our parks. We've sold them and traded them and leased them, and we've done it at bargain basement prices. Well, I think some of you people ought to go to mining promoting and real estate developing, because that is what you are good at. Not protecting the parks of British Columbia, not leaving something for future generations…. "Just wait until Tuesday," the Minister says. Well, you will have an opportunity to say, right this evening. We have got an amendment on Cypress Bowl.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's not a recreational area.

MR. McGEER: It is a recreational area. It is a recreational area. Or it was. Now it is a wasteland. Stump Valley.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you speaking on the amendment?

MR. McGEER: Certainly I am speaking to it.

AN HON. MEMBER: ….preserve and protect public recreational areas.

MR. McGEER: ….and parks and public recreational areas.

AN HON. MEMBER: Provincial parks, too.

AN HON. MEMBER: He's not really sure.

MR. McGEER: Could you preserve a little order, Mr. Speaker?

We have been speaking for some time on an amendment and I think the members on the other side of the House, at least, ought to know what it is about. I hope some of them from the Cabinet will get up and defend the action they have taken. The Lieutenant-Governor in Council, the judge and the jury of our parks, and boy, how they can execute that Executive Council. One after the other, Divide Lake, Cypress Bowl, Strathcona. Here is a swap, Strathcona logging rights traded for new parkland. Ten million in logging rights for land valued at $300,000. Swapped. That is the kind of deal you strike with these lobbyists of every description who come and see you behind those closed doors, making deals of all kinds for our parks — some for mines, some for logging rights, some for a little bit of electricity south of the border. That is where our recreational areas are going in this Province and it is open season….

Wait till we hear this. What will we hear? We just listened to the Minister for two hours give as feeble a defense as he has given in this House of the way he has conducted his Department over the years.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, now.

MR. McGEER: We heard him say, that in 1965 when he proposed that Bill, and when our party voted against it because we could see what was coming, and has it come?

AN HON. MEMBER: You should make your speech out of headlines in the Vancouver Sun.

MR. McGEER: Well, Mr. Speaker, one park after another. Strathcona. We are going to hear about these parks. Still no park at Cathedral Lakes. Powder Mountain, a second Cypress Bowl. It is a recreational area.

I just don't think that the Minister understands this amendment. He doesn't understand this amendment, and I don't think the members on the other side — not only do they not understand the amendment but they don't understand the recreational and park needs of the people of British Columbia. They don't understand how to put proper legislation in and they don't understand how to guard against our future. It is being sold away to every lobbyist who comes along and makes a deal behind those doors.

This is why we appeal, not to the Cabinet, but to the backbenchers in this House, Mr. Speaker, to try and get some protection back, to assert their rights as they can do, and as they gave away in this House in 1965 in a moment of shortsightedness, because the backbenchers could have defeated that Bill at that time. We'd be the richer for it here in British Columbia, no, not in cash value, we probably wouldn't have got the $50,000 from Bethlehem Copper. We might not have got the $5.50 an acre from Seattle Power and Light. We mightn't have got the $300,000 worth of land for $10,000,000 worth of logging rights. Perhaps none of these things. But we'd have something for the future, and that is what this Legislature should dedicate itself to. We shouldn't be mining promoters, we shouldn't be real estate developers, we should follow up the responsibilities that the people gave to us as legislators. And they didn't give us those responsibilities to pass them on to a Cabinet that wheels and deals behind the public's back, and when we find about it only when it is too late, the Minister shakes his head. Are you going to make the trees grow back in Cypress Bowl? Are you going to make the trees grow back?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

[ Page 217 ]

MR. McGEER: 70 or 80 years. It only takes a few minutes, you know, to sign an Order away and a long time to recover. That is the problem with the Cabinet. So, Mr. Speaker, I would appeal to the backbenchers in this House to assert themselves this evening, to take the courage in their hands that the backbenchers on the Government side lacked in 1965 when this Bill was passed.

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

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment. Will the member please be seated.

MR. PETERSON: The honourable the leader of the Liberal party well knows that he cannot attribute lack of courage to present or past members of this Chamber, and I would ask him to withdraw out of respect to the members, some of whom have gone to their just reward, who were here in days gone by as well.

MR. McGEER: I think that, Mr. Speaker, I wasn't appealing for lack of courage, I was appealing for courage. That was the whole point.

MR. PETERSON: You were attributing lack of courage. I ask you to withdraw. Unconditionally.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: If that is the intent of the member's statement, I wish he would withdraw.

MR. McGEER: Well, it wasn't the intent, but if it would please the Attorney-General I would be very pleased to withdraw the intent.

Now, Mr. Speaker, if I can go on, to point out that I am appealing for courage and I think this is what the backbenchers of this House this evening can do by voting for this amendment which will give power back to the Legislature to set the future course of British Columbia as far as parks and recreation is concerned.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Are you ready for the question?

The Honourable Member from Yale-Lillooet.

MR. W. L. HARTLEY (Yale-Lillooet): This has been a day of victory for the Opposition. (laughter) And if the private members on the other side….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

MR. HARTLEY: If the private members from the other side had spoken out and opposed the flooding of Skagit Valley, as the members of this side of the House, they too could take pride in that 3,000 acre park that was announced this afternoon. But no, they sat silent, as they always do. They didn't display the courage that they have just been invited to do. On this side both parties spoke out.

Not only is this a credit to the Opposition, but this park should be given a particular name, because I have had more letters on this issue during this Session than any other issue. I have even received a poem from a doctor which I shall read before I am through. It arrived in the mail today. The fact that the wrath of the people has been engendered by the flooding of one of the most beautiful valleys near to Vancouver has, I hope, brought this Government at least partially to their senses. Now it is the people, through their voice in the Opposition, through their letters, through their letters to the editors, through petitions, that have caused this new park to be formed and, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that this park be "The People's Park."

Now I have a lot of respect for the Minister that spoke this afternoon. I always listen when he is speaking. But there was something wrong today. He was off-base. He wasn't at home. He was telling us, in announcing this 3,000 acres park, holding that out as a substitute for the 6,000 acres that have been drained. Now, why is it that the people are upset about this lake being flooded? They are upset because, in flooding the Skagit Valley, they are doing away with the spawning grounds of the trout from Lost Lake. Trout do not spawn, cannot reproduce ordinarily in a lake, they have to have a stream so that they can go up the stream, lay their eggs, spawn in the gravel. Now by raising the lake, you do away with the spawning beds. True, the stream running into the lake is one of the finest fly fishing streams in all of British Columbia. That is flooded and done away with.

HON. W. K. KIERNAN: They fly fished in the flat valley….

MR. HARTLEY: Yes, that is correct. I have been there, Mr. Speaker. What the Minister says is correct. They fly fished in the flat, in the valley area running into the lake, and there is nothing to stop them fly fishing in the area, in the Skagit River running out of the lake. But the parts of the stream that meandered and provided the best spawning grounds and the best fly fishing are now going to be flooded.

Also, the area that provides the fine spring and summer pasture and range for the deer, where the doe deer have their young and where they look after them when the flies are bad at the low altitudes, this is all going to be flooded. So we are doing away with the spawning grounds, with the fine fly fishing area, we are doing away with the area that the doe deer have used to raise their young. This was such a fine area that the Game Department built a corral and the conservation officers could go up there and trap deer and tag deer and keep records of the movement of the deer throughout the Skagit Valley, and some of them would travel an estimated 200 and 300 miles up into the Tulameen. So that we flood this area and then they set up a park.

Well, why did people go there? They didn't go there to be just lost in a wilderness. They went up there to enjoy this beautiful valley, a valley that is entirely different in ecology to the rain forests that people travel through leaving the Trans-Canada Highway and travelling for 30 odd miles over the summit and down into the Skagit Valley. They went there to see something different. We have now announced a park up on the hillside, on the side of a mountain, mountaintops, but we are going to do away with the very purpose, the various points of interest the people drove those miles, and went up there and picnicked, camped, and fished, and so on. So we have really done away with a great deal of the purpose for a park.

So, with this, Mr. Speaker, I would appeal through you to the Minister to do all in his power to cancel the agreement with the City of Seattle. If we can't cancel it then let us try and re-negotiate it for some other form of power. From what I read, and what I understand, many of the conservationists in the United States are greatly concerned about a portion of Northern Washington being flooded, just as we are concerned in British Columbia. So I believe, in the best interests of conservation and recreation and environmental beautification

[ Page 218 ]

in British Columbia, I believe if the Minister will approach the authorities in Seattle through the International Joint Commission, I believe consideration will be given at this time.

Now, there was one other point on the flooding of this lake. The Minister was utterly talking down to us this afternoon, and normally I don't think that the Minister of Recreation does that, at least not intentionally. But the fact that he raised the points that were already on the Order Paper, you heard him asking us, he said, "Nobody knows the proper name of Divide Lake. You are talking about Divide Lake." And so on. Then he lectured us about water rights. Now, I had made a note to speak on this because, quite frankly, I was very much shocked when the Minister of Mines spoke last week, I believe on the 29th of January, and he said, "Divide Lake will be drained," and then he mentioned how the mining corporation, Bethlehem Mining Corporation, had plans for the ore body under there. Now, I couldn't really believe it but this is the way it is quoted in the paper. "Divide Lake will be drained."

Now when I heard this, and coming from the Minister of Mines, I was absolutely shocked. First, the Minister of Mines was raised in the Interior of British Columbia and I thought, well, he should know something about water rights. He should know something about just what a stream and water rights on that stream means to a cattle rancher. Just as it is of great value in the Creston, Princeton, Osoyoos areas, it is of great value up in the Highland Valley, and the Foleys and some of the other ranchers have had water rights on that stream for better than three generations. The water rights on Witches Brook and Divide Lake or Quiltanton Lake go back well before the turn of the century. Some of the oldest rights that we have in that area, and yet the Minister gets up and says Divide Lake will be drained.

Now, I was concerned because when I knew that such a deal had been made with Bethlehem over the 20 and 30 acres in the park reserve, I was concerned that that lake might be drained. I checked with Water Rights and I found that an application had been made, and I kept in touch with Water Rights. I made a point to see that some of the ranchers protested that, because unless a protest is made, then the lake could be drained and no one would have a thing to say. But a protest had been made, and to hear the Minister make his statement like that, it did shock me.

AN HON. MEMBER: It should be a decision of another department of….

MR. HARTLEY: That is correct, Mr. Speaker, that this is a decision that really should be made by another department altogether, one of the departments of the Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources. Now the Minister talked down to us about not knowing the name of this lake. If he had been on his job and read the questions on the Order Paper that had to deal with water rights and parks and so on, he would have seen that we had the name of the lake spelled out on the Order Paper.

So I think this has been a very bad day for the Minister of Recreation. He got up and tried to filibuster and, as I say, I have always enjoyed listening to him. I enjoyed listening to him this afternoon but, in trying to embarrass us he showed — yes, some of you private members weren't here when I started, but I say that this has been a good day for democracy in this Province. Through the voice of the Opposition, my friend from North Vancouver–Capilano, because of the many petitions that have been sent in from mainly the Fraser Valley, Vancouver, but from throughout the Province, we have had a new park announced, and we are asking that that park be called "The People's Park".

AN HON. MEMBER: Call it "Kiernan's Folly".

MR. HARTLEY: Call it "Kiernan's Folly"? No.

I have another proposal that I would like to make, Mr. Speaker. It is not right, and I am sure the Minister of Mines, the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Recreation and Conservation, no one man or no one woman wishes to feel that they have to play the role of the god, that when a decision must be made to set aside land or to allow a park to be mined, or logged, I'm sure no Minister wishes to have to make that decision unto himself.

For that reason, I believe that we should have a land use and environmental commission, so that when these decisions have to be made, the Minister of Mines doesn't say a lake is going to be drained, the Minister of Water Resources doesn't say a lake is going to be drained. A group of five responsible people, who understand and appreciate the values and the beauty and the factors that go into making the real values and the aesthetic values what they are. They would meet, they would weigh this, they would get reports from the various departments and from technical people, the ecologists, and then they would advise the Minister. The Minister could still make the announcement, but he doesn't make it off the top of his head the way the Minister of Mines did on draining Divide Lake.

As I've mentioned, we've had a lot of correspondence on the flooding of Ross Lake, and the flooding of Skagit Valley, and in today's mail I received a poem, and it's to do with our parks, Mr. Speaker, entitled, "Beautiful B.C." "Beautiful B.C. car-plates do say, Please do not take the best away, First Buttle Lake for power forsake, And this dam does not quite destroy this jewel set in a mountain splendor. Is it your wish, use tailings to destroy the fish. This is your land, do you care? Okanagan mother's milk flows free with D.D.T. In beautiful B.C. Not satisfied? Well, try Boundary Bay, Those ducks and geese are in the way. Skagit River, nearby free, for Seattle's electricity. Penned in within we poison ourselves, with alcohol, or drugs, or gasoline fumes. Scientists say, hold your fears, no oxygen in 30 years. Darwin was wrong, the Social Credit movement claims man came from monkeys, Man, a monkey never came to save the world, Now why or when, monkeys must evolve from man. Thus ends my song, don't worry bud, our Premier is tuned in with God. So we are told. Dr. Michael Livingston."

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Alberni.

MR. H. R. McDIARMID (Alberni): Mr. Speaker, it is of interest that the honourable the leader of the Liberal Party should hold up this particular article "Ten Million in Timber for $300,000 worth of land". I don't think he knows really anything about Strathcona Park, apart from his ownership of some shares in Western Mines at one time or another….

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, Oh….

MR. McDIARMID: ….and the article that he mentions here is on Thursday, September the 25th, and I would like to say that I was concerned about this trade, and immediately made some inquiries from the Ministry of Forestry, and I

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found competent appraisers had valued the worth of this timber and that the figure of $10,000,000 was completely erroneous.

Now, it is a rather interesting thing, you know they all accuse us of looking after our friends, and if this figure were right, I am surprised that he didn't look further to say who we have been giving this great deal away to, because we have here, it says here, other directors of Raven Lumber, these are the people who were supposed to have gotten $10,000,000 worth of timber, are James Luckhurst and Wallace Baikie of Campbell River. What do you know, Wallace Baikie is a member of the Liberal party. I don't really think, if we followed that through, we would likely be giving $10,000,000 away to the Liberals.

You know, Strathcona Park, part of it, falls in my constituency, and I am aware of some of the timber rights that were traded away, and some of the land which we got in exchange for it. The land that was acquired at Cape Scott is much the same sort of country that you will find at Long Beach, and in various beaches along the west coast of the Island, where I lived for many years. You know, if is a funny thing, we have Haig-Brown complaining, as usual, about getting trading, and of course one of the things that they always want and they are always crying for, is that there isn't enough wilderness. But when you make a trade for a wilderness area, one of the great complaints is that there isn't a road in. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that you can't have it both ways, although they seem to want it that way a the time.

You know, subsequent to this article, the ten million for $300,000 worth of land, one of the Sun reporters flew in by helicopter to this area, and here is a picture of her on that most beautiful area, and that headline of course, isn't on the front page — somewhere back of the front page, and it says, "Cape Scott, a Park Worth Waiting For. The only sound was the thunder of the surf surging up a beach of pale gold sand. Elk graze knee-high in hay meadows beside the sand dunes, and wild ducks skimmed over the placid waters of the lagoon. That was B.C.'s proposed new provincial park here at the rugged northwest tip of Vancouver Island on a sunny October day last week. But there's a catch……

You know, Mr. Speaker, in my professional capacity I have had to deal with people being up the stump from time to time, but this is the first time I've found myself in that unfortunate position…. (laughter) I'm sure that the member will forgive me for that.

But just to continue, "There is a catch. Cape Scott is as inaccessible as it's beautiful. There is no road, and the surf makes boat access very hazardous." But you know, here is one of the great things about the Government, is the ability to look ahead. If we'd had the same foresight about Long Beach, we wouldn't be looking forward with the Federal Government to having to buy it back for perhaps six or seven, I don't know how many million dollars are going to be involved, but a good many millions.

I think that the idea of getting this property, this most beautiful and attractive property now, before there is a road into it…. yes, but you have to pay fair market value, and that's one thing about this Government it's fair, fair market value. And the fair market value of that land is a tenth of what it will be in ten years when there is a road there, not only a tenth, probably one-twentieth today of what the is going to be when there is road access.

This is a sort of forward- thinking policy that we have as far as the parks department in this Province today, and I would certainly be the first to vote against that amendment.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Second Member for Vancouver East.

MR. R. A. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the honourable the member for Port Alberni has dealt with this question. I would like to deal with it as well but, you know, I referred earlier in the debate, Mr. Speaker, and suggested that we might compare the honourable the Minister of Recreation and Conservation to Available Jones. The man that does make park land available in British Columbia, and I think that is still a fair comparison.

You can't help but think of Wells Gray Park, where there are 80 square miles being logged, 80 square miles that the Crown has turned over to one private developer. Eighty square miles of land to be logged at the most cut-rate rates imaginable, lower than the Cypress Bowl deal. The Cypress Bowl, and that's been covered thoroughly. Strathcona has been dealt with to some extent. Tweedsmuir in the Chilcotins, where the mining boys are allowed to run rampant, and Kokanee, where the mining people are working as well. They are all available for a price.

Rathtrevor Beach, the honourable the Minister mentioned Rathtrevor Beach, the deal for Rathtrevor Beach — 112 acres at Rathtrevor Beach on this Island traded for 50 square miles of logging in Wells Gray Park. That's what the trade was, and the Minister can talk about trading ants for elephants. He should talk about trading ants for elephants, that's what he is doing all the time. The equivalent of 60 Stanley Parks are being destroyed now in Wells Gray.

But what about this latest deal, the Cape Scott deal for its logging rights in Strathcona Park, the trade there? 576 acres at Cape Scott, and how many acres to be logged in Strathcona? 5,260. Another ant and elephant deal, Mr. Speaker. And the value. The Minister estimated the value of the Cape Scott land, he said conservatively, at $300,000, and when he said he sort of based it on values at Long Beach. Based them on values at Long Beach, and Long Beach has road access. Long Beach has long been a substantial recreational asset that people have been flocking to for a decade. Long Beach is not comparable, whatsoever, with Cape Scott. Cape Scott is five miles from the nearest road. You have to take a helicopter to get in there, and he says it's worth $6,000 an acre. How did he get that kind of figure out of the air, Mr. Speaker? If he is going to be charged with managing the public parks resources in this Province, he should at least hire evaluators to advise him, and he is obviously not doing that. He's not getting proper technical information, maybe he doesn't even want proper technical information.

Let's make some comparisons. We can't compare it with Long Beach, let's compare it with other land this Government is buying. Where is this Government buying a lot of land these days? You're buying it in Delta municipality for the superport, while you're using the powers of expropriation that the Crown has. The price you're paying there? $2,750. You've got a tunnel that leads to it, you've got a causeway there, you've got a superport. The Municipality has sewers, it's got water, it's got all the municipal services needed, and what are you paying there? $2,750, and yet at the north end of the island, completely inaccessible, the Minister says, why, we got it at a steal — $6,000 an acre — it's clear who is doing the stealing.

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Now the Minister says — well, it's just the beginning of Cape Scott, we want more. We would like to see this area expanded. He says we want 30,000 acres at Cape Scott. Now all you've got is 526. If you are paying those kind of values…. Oh, I know there's a lot of Crown Land up there, Mr. Minister, I've been in your territory. I've been in your territory. But if that kind of price were paid you'd be talking about $180,000,000 to buy the Cape Scott park. That's what you'd be talking about.

I think we might reflect on what one of the local people says up there. Deal with some of the independent loggers and their commentary on this kind of dealing. But let's deal with the elected man, the man who is the Chairman of the Regional District up there. What does he say? What does he say? This is Mr. Ron Ellis, the Chairman of the Comox Strathcona Regional District. Says Mr. Ellis, after this deal was announced, he says, "I have run into three instances this week where developers are looking around for prime parkland that they can purchase and then use to manipulate for a Government deal." And that's been the pattern in the park, Mr. Speaker, there has generally been a middle man. There has generally been someone that has grabbed what was obviously a potential park site, and then dealt somehow with the Government in a form of a trade. That was the deal at Wells Gray, two times around. It has certainly been the pattern in Strathcona Park. You know, if I had to summarize what the Cape Scott deal looks like to me, I would put it this way. It's like trading Stanley Park for Siwash Rock, that's what the Cape Scott land deal is like.

But the honourable the Minister gave us a kind of runthrough, a catalogue, during his earlier filibuster and I think it's worth while dealing with some of the figures he mentions. He started talking about the total park figures in British Columbia, and he told us well, when the parks are this big, good Lord, you can't manage them like a park, this is a terrible idea that people have in their minds.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: May I point out that reading papers is not practised in this House.

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, ha, ha, Mr. Speaker, the honourable the Minister said, the parks we've got in British Columbia are simply too big, and you can't think about them like parkland. That's the trouble with the public, they keep thinking the parks are parks. Well let's compare them with some genuine big parks. Let's look at the National Parks in the Rockies of British Columbia and let's look at what kind of areas we are looking at there. The smallest one is near Revelstoke, Mount Revelstoke,100 square miles; Kootenay Park, 543 square miles; Yoho National Park, 507 square miles; Glacier National Park, 521 square miles; Waterton Lakes National Park, 203 square miles. What about the ones we all know so well — Jasper National Park, 4,200 square miles; what about Banff National Park, 2,564 square miles.

Now he was comparing this with Prince Edward Island, he said, "Good Lord, we've got Provincial parks bigger than Provinces." Well, what's the size of Prince Edward Island again? It's 2,184 square miles, and yet the National Parks I'm talking about that are essentially in British Columbia and Alberta in the Rockies total some 8,638 square miles. That's four times the area of Prince Edward Island. That's four provinces. That's four of those Maritime provinces in the National Parks in British Columbia and Alberta in the Rockies. Four times, and I ask you, my friend, where, where, are the mining operations in the National Parks? Where's the 80 square miles of logging in the National Parks. Where's the 80 square miles? Where's the dumping of tailings in the lakes? Lake Louise is a very deep lake, why aren't they using it for tailings?

My God, you know multiple use…. the Minister says that multiple use is our approach in British Columbia, we want a multiple use approach to development. The only place we really get multiple use development is in the parks of British Columbia, the area that should be, the areas that should be sacrosanct in British Columbia are the areas that are open. It's those areas that are really the "B.C. for sale" areas. That's the problem with this Government.

We should take, we should take the lead from the Federal Government in preserving this great heritage, because to a great extent many of these lands in British Columbia are in great national assets that deserve the same protection that the National Park gets at the hands of the Federal Government. You could do well, you could do well to learn from the Federal Government in this regard. The people of British Columbia, at the hand of this Ministry, are the losers. We're losing our parks in British Columbia. We've lost a third of the area since this Government took over, we shouldn't lose any more. The purpose of this debate is to bring this issue to the fore again and indicate that this Government is not concerned about preserving this great natural heritage that we have.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for North Vancouver–Capilano.

MR. D. M. BROUSSON (North Vancouver-Capilano): Mr. Speaker, I was naturally very pleased to hear the comments of the honourable Minister earlier, when he spoke of the Order-in-Council of February 3rd, 1970, and I can't help noting, of course, it was the day after I spoke in this House at some length on the subject of the Skagit Valley. I am delighted that some action has taken place. He has pledged, I understand, in this Class A Park, 3,700 acres.

Now on December 11th last he announced, the Minister announced, the establishment of an 888 acre park in the Skagit Valley and he indicated the park area could have been larger had it not been for an International Joint Commission Order dating from the 1940's, and so on. "We would have," in quotes "we would have preferred that this funny situation didn't exist, but now it is just a matter of doing what we can and cope with the situation." Well fortunately they've had some second looks and we now have a park of 3,700 acres. That's a total of six square miles.

Mr. Speaker, I proposed a park along the International Border at that point of something like 30 miles, 30 to 35 miles long by 15 miles wide. That would be 450 square miles, because that is an area that fully justifies being developed. It's directly north of the American North Cascade National Park, and it's fully justified in development as a great international recreation facility.

I would like to also make another comment on the price that we paid, I'm sorry, the price we are receiving from the City of Seattle. The original International Joint Commission Order of Approval does date back to 1942 and it says the raising of the dam and so on is approved subject to the following conditions. The City of Seattle shall adequately compensate the Province of British Columbia, and it goes on in some length, provided that the Ross Dam shall not be raised beyond the height at which the water impounded by it would reach British Columbia unless and until a binding

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agreement has been entered into between the City of Seattle, the Government of the Province of British Columbia providing for indemnifying British Columbia, and private interests and so on, for any injury that may be sustained by reason of the city's operations in the Skagit River. In other words, Mr. Speaker, the implication I take from this, I think it's quite clear, that British Columbia could have charged, negotiated any price they wanted, that they thought was adequate to adequately compensate them.

I'd also like to point out to the Minister, through you, Mr. Speaker, the area that's to be flooded will still be far better as a recreational facility, as a stream, as a river, than it will be as a lake. That's a mountain valley, Mr. Speaker, this is a mountain valley 1700 to 1800 feet high ringed by high mountains, fed by glacial water, and I don't think this makes a very attractive recreational lake for swimming, boating and this sort of thing. Of course what happens in the fall and through a very large part of the year, will be water drawn down, leaving a sea of stumps and this is what I would prefer not see next to our new park.

It seems, Mr. Speaker, as if the present Minister of Conservation and Recreation can find only problems and stumbling blocks in the development of our parks. I think the responsibility of this member in the Government should be to fight for more park areas, for better park areas. Instead, Mr. Speaker, he spends a good deal of his time finding excuses for not developing parks.

For instance, listen to some of his remarks about Boundary Bay. This goes back to last December. He says the Provincial Government will move slowly and carefully towards the development of Boundary Bay. He said that goods and services to people are contingent upon economic growth. The Province must be concerned with development of industry, he said, if tax money is to become available to do the things the people want Government to do. Now, Mr. Speaker, I think there are other members of the Cabinet that will speak for industrial development. I think we have a Minister for Industrial Development to speak in this area. I think the Minister for parks should speak for park development.

I wonder why the Minister has been so reluctant to get on with the Long Beach National Park. I quote February the 3rd, his interview from the Times. He says, "I think our problem is that once we enter into an agreement spelling out the three areas we would, in fact, be freezing the three areas." Well here's the whole problem, Mr. Speaker, they don't want National Parks because they're frozen then and they have to protect them, and they have to keep them as parks. However, the Federal Minister concerned in this case says, "that the Federal Government would not reject Kiernan's earlier stand that acquisition of land for the island and trail sections of the park be delayed until the Long Beach portion is in operation. But he said all three parts of the park plan must be included in the over-all agreement which Ottawa hopes will be signed later this month." But the Minister (Kiernan) says, however, "Quite frankly, some problems are still turning up," and he's not very optimistic the signing will take place. In other words the Minister for Parks is still finding stumbling blocks and objections in going through with the National Park at Long Beach. I'd like to read a little bit of some of the comments from a column of Anthony Westell's in the paper January, 1970, talking about the Federal policy on park development, and I think there's a philosophy here we in British Columbia can learn something from. "The Federal Cabinet is being asked to give a go ahead to a broad development programme which will more than double the system of National Parks, adding about 40,000 square miles in the next ten years. Today, new projects are under way or being explored in nine provinces and in the far north. Some areas," doesn't this sound familiar, "in some areas it is now a race to take sea coast, beaches, forest areas and lake land into the public parks programme before they are bought up for private enjoyment by Americans escaping from their own overcrowded and polluted environment." Doesn't that sound familiar. "The statistics are interesting that support this programme for national park development. Since 1930 the population of Canada has risen from 6,000,000 to 21,000,000. The number of visitors has jumped from 500,000 a year to 11,000,000 in 1969, but in the same period the number of parks has increased only from 14 to 19, the acreage only from 28,000 to 29,000 square miles. The result is that park acreage for a visitor has slumped from 12.4 to .67 and the point is rapidly approaching when numbers of visitors will have to be limited to prevent overcrowding and the spoiling of the parks. And, the situation may reach critical proportions as Americans are turned away from their own congested park systems, pour into Canada in search of recreation." And so on, outlining a complete policy by the Federal Government to rapidly increase the area of our National Parks.

Here's an interesting comment about the Province of Ontario. Perhaps it sounds familiar. The Ontario government has always believed that mineral development, logging and power dams can be operated within a park system, and has been unwilling to cede land for National parks in which such developments are banned, accordingly there are only three National parks on Federal property in Canada's largest province. But, with the rising pressure of urban population and the increasing concern about conservation, Ontario's attitude is changing and Chretien is having exploratory talks with Queen's Park at this time. In other words the Province of Ontario is changing this position and is becoming much more sympathetic, they're realizing the crisis that is developing in their whole park philosophy.

Earlier in the week, Mr. Speaker, I tried to show something of the relationship between the problems of conservation, parks, pollution. The solution to these problems needs a new kind of philosophy, a new economic approach, I think a new set of priorities. Just recently the Sierra Club was organized in British Columbia, and it's interesting to read what some of the Americans who came up from the Sierra Club said about what they found in British Columbia. "To the Americans at the meeting, British Columbia seems to be still living under the myth of super-abundance which the American west went through when our own natural resources were thought to be inexhaustible. Exploitation of the environment is rampant in British Columbia with no apparent concern for the consequences which invariably follow."

So as a result, Mr. Speaker, because of this kind of philosophy, a new organization has been formed in the United States called The Friends of the Earth. Of course F.O.E. spells a very interesting word, "foe." And, I think a little bit of their philosophy is worthwhile listening to, because it's the kind of philosophy I think British Columbia needs in considering their park systems, conservation problem, and pollution problem. "We have to develop soon a deeper devotion to conservation as an ethic and conscience in everything we do. We have to be willing to spend gladly as much on saving things here and abroad as we have been

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willing to spend, too often without a shudder, in destroying things here and abroad. The war we have to fight is the war against smugness and apathy about what is happening to the land.

We cannot go on fiddling while the earth's wild places burn in the fires of our undisciplined technology. We cannot be frightened out of our spirit, or counseled out of using our strength, or spend our funds defaming people. These are games people can no longer afford to play. We are going to build an arena for a better game, a rewarding one in behalf of our one last ecosphere."

Again, I want to thank the Minister for reacting to the campaign on the Skagit Valley. I hope he will realize that he hasn't done enough yet, that the finest part of the valley is still being lost to water power. I hope he will use his influence talking to the people of Seattle and Seattle City Power.

I'd like to raise another point in this connection, Mr. Speaker, I explained, and I want to mention again the wonderful advantages, the ideal location for a great international park running along the north side of the border to match the North Cascade National Park in the United States. It is my information, Mr. Speaker, that some of the officials of the United States Federal Parks System have come to the park officials of this Province in the not too distant past, and suggested that cooperation and working together across the border to develop this kind of facility would be useful and desirable. Mr. Speaker, I regret very much to say that the American Federal Park officials got a very cool reception from the park officials of British Columbia, and this is why I support this amendment.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for New Westminster.

MR. D. G. COCKE (New Westminster): Mr. Speaker, we've heard a good deal today about decisions with regard to resources, and these resources being our park and recreational resources. Near the end of November this Government announced that the order to halt the logging in Cypress Bowl had been given. Now, two weeks earlier I had heard from one of the people working in that area that the logging was over. Now we're not suggesting anything more here than that there's a problem with regard to communication or something, because this logging was carried on like a farmer carries on swathing on a prairie farm. It was swathed out.

Now indiscriminate logging in parks and recreational areas should not be tolerated, we all know that. Why was this logging allowed when it was obvious that it was not being done in a way that would lend itself to a ski resort? Why was it not stopped at that point? This was a recreational area. Ski resort architects should have been consulted because ski resorts we need. Ski resorts — yes, we say, but swath logging — no. You know, I have heard something about the fact that even the Government agreed with this private development, and so on and so forth. Now I say that even if they did agree with private development, why did they permit logging to go on when it became obvious that it wasn't matching the design? What a park this could have been. It would have been a playground for the whole lower mainland.

You know, we just heard it suggested a few minutes ago, or a little while ago, by the Minister that the area is overcrowded and can't stand tobogganing, and so on. But you know, we're not going to be allowed, or we're not going to be able to permit our people to toboggan in the area that has been logged off in Cypress Bowl, because now that area is susceptible to landslides, erosion, and all of the things. I talked to a person not long ago and he said that that area will white-out just like an area that is completely bald. Now white-out is a time when you just can't see where you're going, and if you get white-out in an area like that, where there's no markings at all, people are going to be lost and then Heaven only knows what's going to happen.

Now money lost or made on this development is not relevant, I don't believe. It's what happened to the public recreation area that is relevant. Now according to the Municipal Ranger, Jack Wood, insufficient stumpage was charged. But as I say, it really wasn't relevant, but it would appear that it wasn't enough to permit improper logging, but we did it cheaply.

I suggest possibly that if the United States continues fooling around in Amchitka, this might be our only salvation. We can use that area as a beach if, in fact, part of the fault line gives us any trouble because of this Amchitka situation. Now you know, that's about the only thing you can use blank area for is beach. Public parks are a heritage and this Province needs more and not less of this kind of recreational area.

I've heard, Mr. Speaker, from this side of the House that the young, the youth, should be cared for. I say that youth more than anyone needs parks, youth more than anyone needs ski areas and all of that kind of recreational area that will keep them interested in the more healthy aspects of life.

Mr. Speaker, I support this resolution — let's make some rules and make sure that we do not violate them.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Columbia River.

MR. JAMES R. CHABOT (Columbia River): I was not going to speak to this amendment, but because of some of the wild and erroneous statements being bandied around this Chamber, I thought that it's only fair that someone rise in this House and correct some of these figures that were quoted by the fourth member from Vancouver East.

He talked about Cape Scott and the comparison between the values of land in the Delta municipality and this wilderness area of Cape Scott, five miles away from an access road. He talked about the 574 acres that the Government is making into a park, and he quoted the figure of $6,000 an acre, and you better be sure, you'd better do your arithmetic and start doing figuring before you quote some erroneous statements like that. Then he made the comparison with Delta as the Government allocation on expropriation being $2,750 an acre as compared to $6,000 up at Cape Scott. Now really, if you take a piece of pencil, Mr. Member, and a piece of paper, or ask one of your friends to help you if you can't multiply — that's $600 an acre.

I talked about, I should say we've heard a lot of talk about the National Parks. In my constituency we probably have more National Parks than in any other constituency in this Province — we have three. We have the Glacier National Park, Kootenay National Park and Yoho National Park, 1,571 square miles of National Parks. We don't only have National Parks, we have two Class A Provincial parks as well. We have Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park, a beautiful park. It has no access into it at the present time. The closest access is in from Banff, about a 12-mile hike, but the other access from British Columbia through a National Park is about a 22-mile hike, and I hope that this park never does have public access. Because all the alpine grass and the flowers would be

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completely destroyed by providing public access.

We have another Class A Provincial park, in a recreational area which was established only last year, an area which I have advocated becoming a National Park, Provincial park, Class A park, for some considerable time and that's the Bugaboo Glacier Park. I'm very thankful, and the people of my constituency are very thankful, that the Government had the foresight to make this a Class A park. We have very little available land in my constituency that isn't held by some park, some either Class A park or a National Park or a recreational reserve, or reserves of other description.

But I'll never forget, during the last election, the N.D.P. proposing that more Class A parks should be located within my constituency. In fact the bulk of the little available Crown land that is left that is prime agricultural land with a little development, they advocated that become a Class A park. Now really, as far as my constituency is concerned, there is a limit as to what you can turn into parks.

We were very grateful last year for a development on one of the recreational reserves that was established along Lake Windermere. This is an area which I have been pushing for some considerable time. We now have a large public beach which will meet the need of our ever-growing tourist trade in the Windermere Valley. But I've listened here about the standards which the Liberal party has talked about and some of the N.D.P. members over there as well, about the National Parks and some of the policies of administration of some of those parks. I'm sure not all are aware that within Glacier National Park there is active logging. There are Crown granted timber berths within Glacier National Park, and they've been logging them right along. Right along.

AN HON. MEMBER: Do your homework.

MR. CHABOT: Mind you, there was recently a proposal made in the House of Commons — du Jean Chretien, the Minister — that the National Government buy these timber berths, that logging be halted within the Glacier National Park. I think, if this was to come about, the millions of dollars of taxpayers' money that would cut out this logging.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you against that?

MR. CHABOT: I certainly am.

AN HON. MEMBER: Against what?

MR. CHABOT: I certainly am against the Government investing millions of dollars to stop, to buy out these Crown granted timber berths. I certainly am, because I believe, because I believe that the money that they would utilize for this purpose could best be spent somewhere else.

I've listened this afternoon at great lengths to the Minister tell us what the Provincial Government's policy is as far as parks are concerned. We were told of the number of parks that existed, the Class A parks and the reserves that existed in this Province in 1952. We were told of the Class A parks and the reserves that were added in the year 1957 when the Department was established, and we were told the number of Class A parks we have at the present time, along with the recreational reserves, one a month for 144 months. I think this is a tremendous contribution to the park lands in our Province. Not only have they added to parks and recreational reserves, but they've added to acreage as well, and this is a very important thing to remember.

I think that this motion, or this amendment we have before us is really a matter that should be voted on now, and that should have been voted upon at least two hours ago, and I'm sure, Mr. Speaker, it'll be just a band, the small band across the floor, that will support this amendment. There won't be any support from this side of the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Cowichan-Malahat.

MR. R. M. STRACHAN (Cowichan-Malahat): I am very pleased to have an opportunity of discussing the park situation in the Province of British Columbia. I'm rather surprised that when the member from Alberni was speaking he didn't repeat his criticisms of this Government in its attitude towards park development that were reported in the Victoria Times as of January the 20th, 1970.

AN HON. MEMBER: Waffle, waffle, waffle.

MR. STRACHAN: The headline says "Cabinet slammed for park delay. Dr. Howard McDiarmid, Social Credit M.L.A. for Alberni, Monday criticized the Provincial Government for stalling creation of a national marine park on Vancouver Island's West Coast. Just back from an Ottawa visit, McDiarmid told reporters the Federal Government is prepared to go ahead with formation of the park at Long Beach but the B.C. Government is dragging its heels, is dragging its heels, he said." I expect, Mr. Speaker, that when the time comes to vote on the amendment, that member will put his vote where his mouth is and get up and vote for this amendment.

I am happy too, Mr. Speaker, that the member from Nowhere who just happened to raise his voice.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just one moment, please. Will the member for Nowhere sit down.

MR. STRACHAN: Well, perhaps it just seems he's the member from Nowhere cause he's never here, but I'm glad to see him in his seat tonight and I welcome him to this debate.

I think the Minister went into some length about the park laws in British Columbia and the creation of certain parks under law. What the Minister failed to emphasize is that these parks are not inviolate, that this same group of people over here who reduced the park acreage in this Province during their term of office from 11,000,000 acres to 7,000,000 acres can switch, change, trade, sell, give away every one, every acre of park land that we have in the Province any time they please without referring to this Legislative Assembly.

Here's a report of a speech the Minister made in which he clearly enunciates that policy. The headline says, "Untouchable parks a myth, says Kiernan." Untouchable parks a myth, and they're certainly proving it, they're certainly proving it, that there's no park in British Columbia that could be held inviolate as long as these people are in charge of the pie. He said in this article, and you know he picked the wrong park to talk about when he talked about Strathcona Park, he said pre-existing land and mineral rights must be acknowledged as valid claims in Class A parks, and he left the impression that because of these pre-existing claims there was nothing that could be done.

Mr. Speaker, this Government has expropriated more land in this Province from private citizens, it has expropriated more claims from private citizens than every other Government in the history of the Province. Pre-existing

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mineral claims related to the construction of the various dams in the areas that we flooded. Isn't that true, Mr. Minister? There were mineral claims, Crown granted mineral claims, there. Did you leave them there? Did you say you couldn't go ahead with what you wanted to do because of a pre-existing Crown granted mineral claim? Of course you didn't, of course you didn't.

AN HON. MEMBER: Big government move here.

AN HON. MEMBER: ….a distortion.

MR. STRACHAN: Of course you didn't. That's not a distortion.

AN HON. MEMBER: Not a distortion, it's the truth.

AN HON. MEMBER: You're quoting the Minister, that's a distortion.

MR. STRACHAN: You know, the Minister talks out of both sides of his mouth at once. The Minister flaps his tongue at both ends. Kiernan said, this is in 1967, "Kiernan said the public has done needless violence to the countryside during the past hundred years." This Government has done more needless damage in the parks of this Province in seventeen years than the public did in the previous hundred. He says, "We have built roads, bridges and shopping centres that have mined and gouged our wilderness." Mined and gouged our wilderness he says, and he continues to allow private companies to mine and gouge the wilderness. In 1967 he was saying it was a terrible thing. "It is obvious that to continue down this road will only continue to a destination that is neither desirable nor acceptable to us." Mr. Speaker, the Minister by his every action in recent years, this Government by its every action in recent years has completely repudiated that statement made by that Minister in 1967. Eleven million acres to 7,000,000 acres.

Mr. Speaker, I don't care how many park reserves they put on, when the privileged group come to knock at that Council door and want to mine or log in these parks, this Government will let them do it. That's the record. These are not park reserves, Mr. Speaker, do you know what those are?

AN HON. MEMBER: Commercial warehouses.

MR. STRACHAN: Do you know what those are? That's a stockpile that will be handed out to the privileged groups when they want it. That's what it is, that's what it is.

AN HON. MEMBER: You bet your life.

MR. STRACHAN: It's putting a fence around areas of this Province. And with the history of this Government, when the privileged groups come and want that area to mine and gouge and log, your record is — they'll be allowed to do it. They'll be allowed to do it. Strathcona Park. The Minister gave us the history of Strathcona Park. I know the history of Strathcona Park. It is true that there were 22 pre-existing Crown granted mineral claims related to the area that's now being operated by Western Mines, granted in the year in which the Minister said, Mr. Speaker, in previous speeches this Minister has indicated that to have bought out the Western Mines claim would have required millions and millions and millions of dollars. I think the figure he once used was $7,000,000. I think that's the figure he once used — $7,000,000 to buy out the Western Mines claim.

The record of this particular area of Strathcona Park is that these 22 claims were all that existed until that Minister became the Minister of Mines. Then as Minister of Mines he granted the other 162 leases all around those original 22, so that it became an economic unit able and capable of being mined. He created the economic unit as Minister of Mines. Then he became the Minister of Recreation and Conservation, reeled off the Parks Act, then step by step allowed that company into that park under the new regulations that he himself had guided through this House deliberately, knowing that this would happen, and Mr. Speaker, he says, well we couldn't spend $7,000,000 to buy out their claim. He created that claim, he created that claim.

Do you know how much the original 22 claims were worth? Here's the Annual Report of the company. Are they lying? "Mining properties at cost acquired for cash and amounts attributed to shares of capital stock issued in consideration for the properties, $193,000." A hundred and ninety-three thousand dollars is what…

AN HON. MEMBER: Millions and millions.

MR. STRACHAN: ….it would have cost to prevent the gouging of Strathcona Park. Did he read that Balance Sheet? Did he inquire into that company? There's the company's own Balance Sheet. That's what it would've cost. You had no compunction about moving into the southern interior of this Province and expropriating mining claims? There's the Balance Sheet — $193,000. No sir, I'm not smiling at that. For $193,000 this Government that will trade, sell, or give away any time the resources of this Province, allowed this despoilation of Strathcona Park.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. STRACHAN: We talk about the old parks. We talk about Cape Scott. He talks about the trades that have been made, Rathtrevor Beach for this and something else for that. Mr. Speaker, do you know what I'm curious about? How does a logging company, a company engaged in logging, happen to know that if they buy a piece of land at the northern end of Vancouver Island, that the Government will buy it from them or trade them in order to make a Provincial park?

AN HON. MEMBER: They weren't crazy.

MR. STRACHAN: Does a logging company just go out and buy a piece of waterfront property that has no logging value, and then suddenly discover that by accident they've bought a piece of property that the Provincial Department of Recreation and Conservation is interested in acquiring for a park in return for, in return for the right to log in some other park? Who is the broker? Who is the broker? Who is the go-between? How would a logging company find that out?

AN HON. MEMBER: What a gamble, eh?

MR. STRACHAN: This is the way in which the parks and the natural resources of this Province are being handled. That's why I'm voting for this amendment.

You know, the member from Kamloops, the Minister of Social Welfare, said once it would be a sin, it would be a sin

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to prevent the mining companies from getting into Strathcona Park. That's what he said, he said it would be a sin. The Minister says it's a myth to think that parks are inviolate, they're proving it every day.

For the sake of $193,000 they jeopardized the water supply for the whole Campbell River area. Just on July the 28th of last year we were told that Buttle Lake pollution was ruled only temporary. There was some pollution at the lake just last year, and we were told it was only temporary, but the fact still remains that this Government has such a record in handling of parks and I'll never forget the way the whole Strathcona Park episode was handled.

This Minister failed this Province as Minister of Recreation and Conservation. As long as the laws of this Province are as they are, the Minister can't brag about how many acres are in parks unless the law is changed so that parks cannot be traded, swapped, given away and drained, battered, or logged, or mined without the permission of this Legislative Assembly. The record of this Government is so miserable that we've got to support this amendment.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Nanaimo.

MR. F. J. NEY: Mr. Speaker, I'm just going to say a few words here. You know, I've listened tonight to quite a few remarkable statements. We've seen the figure 6,000 reduced to 600, but one of the comments that I thought was most dramatic was the one where the Government exchanged $10,000,000 worth of timber for a $300,000 piece of property, and I'd just like to point out, that if you know anything about logging at all, you'll know that it costs money to log forest country. In this particular area where they had made this swap it's extremely rugged terrain, very, very tough logging conditions, mostly hemlock, and they'll be extremely lucky if they can get by with their costs to cut 97 1/2 per cent of the selling price. These are facts, not just irresponsible wild statements.

And another thing, they wanted this timber in order to keep their mill going, in order to keep loggers employed, in order to keep families having a steady salary coming in. This may not mean anything to some politicians, but it means a lot to the people of British Columbia, because half the money in this Province is generated to the logging industry, and logging is not a bad word in British Columbia. It's the thing that's keeping, to a great degree, the economy of our Province going at a good pace, and every time you downgrade logging in our province, I don't think you're doing a service to the loggers who have to be kept employed in this Province.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Member for Burnaby-Edmonds.

MR. G. S. DOWDING (Burnaby-Edmonds): I don't suppose that if the deal that that logging company was trying to work upon the Government was such a bad deal that they would have entered into it. To suggest that someone must go running to their defence, and that it's a great idea that parks should be created by trading timber from other parks is, of course, opening the door to the proposition that every time a logging company wants to log a park they have a right created by precedent by this Government to approach the Lieutenant-Governor in Council and demand their rights, their commercial rights, that you have now imposed by your conduct upon the parks of British Columbia. You've done this in such a way — I would point out that when you do this, when you do this you are suggesting that favouritism is the way this Government works.

Well all right, let's go back on the record here and see what the Minister himself had to say at a time when he was not trading parks. In 1965, a speech made by the Hon. W. K. Kiernan, Minister of Recreation, February, 1965, his statement in this House on the second reading of the Parks Act. What did he say, Mr. Speaker? He's talking about the acquisition of park sites. He said, "The cost of some of these acquisitions, however, is rather startling, particularly when it is realized that in some cases the properties in question were acquired from the Crown for a few dollars an acre within the last two decades, and we are now asked to pay not hundreds, but thousands of dollars an acre for these same upland and foreshore properties." Very good speech, very good speech. Now here's what he says, and I agree with him. He says, "A bit more foresight would have precluded their alienation in the first place." Then he said, then he went on. No, I agree entirely with it. Except he departed from that principle.

He goes on in his speech, Mr. Speaker, and says, "If they were not required for public use then the properties in question could be leased, so that if they were required at some future date no breach of faith would exist when the lease was not renewed. This has been Government policy for a number of years and has proven very beneficial in preserving the right of public access and enjoyment. This process cannot turn back the clock, however, in relation to those areas that have already passed into private hands." Now, he's not only said that on that occasion in that speech, he's also indicated about the value of waterfront land and the value of our lakes. As a matter of fact, in making his speech in July of last year at Lake Cowichan the Minister, as reported in the Victoria Daily Times on July the 24th, in dealing with the question of lakes and preserving them, said, "We are coming to the point where recreational waters are not just secondary but primary importance." he said. That's the Minister of Recreation said that. Exactly. If his actions only suited his words, the amendment wouldn't be on the Order Paper.

But then, but then what I pointed out to you, Mr. Minister, a few minutes ago was that you have established a precedent in dealing with commercial outfits and giving concessions to them that you have no right to do, because by doing that you will invite some other commercial outfit to say, how can you discriminate against us when we want a lake or when we want some timber or when we want to make a deal? You mean that you believe in discrimination? Is that what you're saying? I'll tell you this. You have established a price, you have established a price for a lake, called Divide Lake, or call it what you will, the lake that you are apparently announcing will be drained and given to Bethlehem, to Bethlehem Copper Corporation. Mind you, I don't know how the Minister of Mines or the Minister of Recreation has any right to announce to the public, as was said in this story that was in the Vancouver Sun on January 30th….

AN HON. MEMBER: We accept no responsibility for stories in the Vancouver Sun.

MR. DOWDING: Oh, you don't? "Recreation and Conservation Minister Kiernan confirmed a deal Wednesday in Victoria." What deal? That the mining company had applied to buy this lake? Did you confirm that they were

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doing this? Was the paper not telling the truth?

HON. W. K. KIERNAN: I did not.

MR. DOWDING: You didn't confirm it?

MR. KIERNAN: I did not.

AN HON. MEMBER: You didn't deny it. You didn't deny it.

MR. DOWDING: Well then, are you saying this story is untrue?

MR. KIERNAN: I am saying that the interpretation of my discussion with the reporter last night was transcribed at the re-write desk, and no longer related the facts that the reporter and I discussed.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are they getting that lake or aren't they?

MR. DOWDING: At any rate the paper says….

AN HON. MEMBER: Did you know? — just shake your head.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes or no?

MR. KIERNAN: I don't know. They've got an application before the Water Rights Branch, and when the Water Rights Branch deals with it, then we'll know.

AN HON. MEMBER: You've got the 50,000, you've already spent the 50,000.

MR. DOWDING: Mr. Speaker, this Minister says he's already got the 50,000 and he's spending it on Lac Le Jeune, and you're making, you're making the duties of the Comptroller of Water Rights to be more or less an exercise. You are suggesting that you've taken the money and spent it before the Comptroller has even had a hearing, even decided whether Bethlehem Copper will get this lake, or whether the Indians in the area will have the first rights to this lake, or whether, indeed, anything will happen to the water rights that existed.

Mr. Speaker, the honourable gentleman in this House this evening told us that he had received the $50,000 that he's applied it in Lac Le Jeune in improvements to campsites before he even knew — before, now he says — he even knew whether this lake would be evaporated by Bethlehem Coal. Well, there's somebody going to come back on your doorstep asking for the $50,000 if they don't get that lake.

AN HON. MEMBER: What a way to run the store.

MR. DOWDING: And I want to point out something else.

AN HON. MEMBER: Even misquoting himself.

MR. DOWDING: Do you know, do you know any other lakes in British Columbia like Divide Lake, around the same acreage, that you have for sale? Because if you have you should list them. There are a number of reputable agencies that are interested in recreation lakes. They would like to buy a lake, and if they could buy one for $50,000 — recreation development companies, they want to.

You sit down and listen.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Will the member address the Chair, and will the other members extend the courtesy of the House to the member.

MR. DOWDING: Well, it's true you can't make wine out of lake water, you've got to have running water, but I do know recreation companies, there are recreation companies that would be only too happy, Mr. Speaker, to get a lake like Divide Lake for $50,000, and if you're going to start selling them off to Bethlehem Copper Corporation, what about some of these local companies that would like lakes? Now….

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please.

MR. DOWDING: I'll bet you Block Bros. would buy it, I'll bet they would. They bought 108-mile Lake, Watson Lake, they bought that. They didn't pay $50,000 for it. You look up the records and find out what they paid for the acres they got at 108-mile House. Those lakes, they got two big lakes there. Maybe our friend from Nanaimo may know somebody who wants to buy a lake.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order please.

MR. DOWDING: Today, Mr. Speaker, today we have a new policy in this Government — to sell lakes for $50,000. Now this is not, does not square with the announced Government policy that no lake frontage and no lakes are for sale any longer in British Columbia. Now, what is the truth? What is the policy of this Government? If you can depart from established, declared policy since 1965 in four brief years, what guarantee does the public have by 1975 that there will be a lake or a park that is safe in British Columbia? This is why I recall only too vividly when the Parks Act was amended in 1965, we stood up and opposed the Minister on section 6 of that Act, in fact we put an amendment on, the Official Opposition put an amendment on, that would require that the parks could not be alienated or disturbed by the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, but would have to be brought before this Legislature, and a committee of this Legislature, before any disturbance of parks and boundaries occurred. In so doing the public would have the protection of public hearings in this Chamber or in the Committees of this House.

But what did the Government do? They assured us, and that Minister assured us, that they could trust the Lieutenant-Governor in Council, that the treasury benches over there could be trusted to preserve our parks, our lakes, our beaches, and that if section 6 remained in the Act, that there was nothing to fear. All our worst fears have come true, and we are getting indeed the exchange of private ants for public elephants. That kind of a trade is going on, and the reserves that have been placed on public lands in British Columbia have indeed become storehouses for future trade by this Government, whenever the right carpetbagger comes by.

I suggest that the private members in the House, from whatever side you come, have a duty to support this amendment, because what does the amendment really say? It says that we will preserve and protect our parks and public recreation areas by legislative safeguards, and if you make that declaration in this amendment the Government will be

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forced to provide those legislative safeguards if they want to remain in office, and those legislative safeguards, I suggest to you, require the revision of section 6 of the Parks Act, to take out of the arbitrary hands of the Cabinet benches the power to dispose of the parks and the preserves of British Columbia that we owe as a heritage to children yet unborn in British Columbia, if we are truly to remain beautiful British Columbia. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Second Member for Vancouver–Point Grey.

MR. G. B. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, I think one of the things that concerns me most in this debate and in this matter is the almost totality of Ministerial and Cabinet discretion and power, and I think, Mr. Speaker, that we are in the age of public awareness. There is a concerned public. There is a questioning public, and we certainly have a public in British Columbia who wish to be informed, and they wish to be consulted, and they don't want to have decisions made on the Q.T. or behind anybody's green door. I think they'd like to have these decisions that have been put together at Ministerial level, and it seems at individual Ministerial level, be something that would result from say a public hearing. Because I don't think anybody would question the fact that our parklands in British Columbia are perhaps the biggest come-on for tourism that we have, and it's probably going to end up being the biggest industry in our Province, providing thousands of jobs and millions and millions of dollars of revenue. It involves just about every citizen in the Province, and all of these people, they have an interest in the when and the where and the why and the how and in what manner and at what cost of these things.

The principal complaints that have been raised from the Opposition side appear to be related to unfortunate decisions on the part of a Minister, and I think a lot of this could be avoided if we had something like a Parks Commission in the Province, a Parks Commission which would be independent of Government. They could hold hearings and, following those hearings, they could furnish recommendations, and the reason for those recommendations, and they could see that B.C. isn't sort of willy-nilly sold. In the final analysis, Mr. Speaker, Government has the responsibility, no one I think is questioning that, the Government has the responsibility to enact and not enact, not any question of a doubt about that, but along the line, Mr. Speaker, I think if the public were in the show, if they were a part of the action, these things were aired and they had an opportunity to have their day and to have their say, that we wouldn't be running into the majority of the problems that we have been running into.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable First Member for Vancouver East.

MR. A. B. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to add to the debate by giving an example of what is happening in one park, because the facts of the matter, and they have been well brought out by the Minister in his own speech, are that in the Province of British Columbia, in parks, whether they are Class A or Class B, in the discretion of the Minister, mineral claims can be staked. There is no statutory protection whatsoever against miners and stakeholders going into our parks and staking mineral claims, and then when they stake the mineral claims, can they develop a mine out of those mineral claims? Well the answer to that is yes they can.

I want to refer to another park, Tweedsmuir Park, in the northwest I suppose you'd put it, running up toward Burns Lake in the Chilcotin where, and the records are perfectly clear, since 1963 up to 1966 which is the limit of this search, no less than 64 mineral claims were staked within that Class A park, 64 of them. And, this is after the advent of Social Credit in 1952, needless to say, much later than that. Staked with the approval of this Government. Mineral claims staked in the park. Then what happens when the mining promoters want to peddle their stock based on these mineral claims? How do they do that, because the public will say, "We're not going to buy your stuff on Howe Street or anywhere else, you're in a park." The answer is, of course, that they've changed the park boundaries to accommodate the promoters….

AN HON. MEMBER: Right.

MR. MACDONALD: …. and I think it's disgraceful that the Minister should criticize the lack of foresight of our forefathers who, he said, didn't know much about the boundaries. They drew them willy-nilly in the old days and they didn't see all the implications. Well, this Minister sees the implications, and when people go into the parks and stake mineral claims, then they simply change the boundaries of the park to accommodate those promoters.

Tweedsmuir Park is an example of the mad cartographer at work to, yes, to enable the mining promoters who have staked the mineral claims to be outside of the park. Because there you have it, you've got the park as it was before 1963, the period I am talking about, and the mineral claims not yet staked, and there you have the mineral claims in pink staked within Tweedsmuir Park, see, here the yellow is outside the boundary. The pink are these mineral claims staked between 1963 and 1966, and lo and behold, what happens next. The fast pencil of the Minister goes to work and redraws the boundaries of the park, using far more foresight than our forefathers used to have and they zig out here, look how it zigs around to take in those mineral claims and keep them outside of a Provincial park. It comes away out here, and then goes away back in to the original boundary and comes peeking out here.

I don't want to labour this, Mr. Speaker, but I say that the people of British Columbia are afraid of the fast pencil of the Minister of Recreation and Conservation…

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear.

MR. MACDONALD: …and, they have every reason to be afraid, because when a mining promoter comes along with the gift of grab he, in the discretion of the Minister, he can stake his mineral claims in the Provincial parks of this Province, and the Minister will redraw the boundaries of that park to satisfy those promoters.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's the record.

MR. MACDONALD: We want, let us be perfectly clear what we want, Mr. Speaker. We want no alienation of parkland or the resources within parkland, except by Act of this Legislature after hearings by a Legislative Committee. That's the kind of protection that the people of British Columbia want. They are tired of hearing about how this park is logged and there is mining in that park and they want the kind of Parks Act that offers real protection, and they are

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afraid, as they have every reason to be afraid, of the elastic boundaries that are changed by this Government to accommodate promoters moving in our parks.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Honourable Leader of the Opposition.

MR. D. BARRETT (Coquitlam): Mr. Speaker, I won't be too long, I'll be shorter than the life of the parks in this Province. First of all, I'd like to just review what we have been told in terms of the Minister's philosophy relating to parks. The Minister said clearly, on April the 30th, 1965 and I quote, "The belief that a park is inviolate is a myth." That's what he said. Many B.C. parks had pre-existing land, forest, mineral claims when they were established. We've been all through this.

AN HON. MEMBER: Several times.

MR. BARRETT: Right, and we've proven several times, Mr. Speaker, on every single one of the parks we've talked about, that there's not been one satisfactory explanation for the alienation of those parks. We went through Cypress Bowl, Ross Dam, Strathcona Park, Divide Lake, the lake that isn't going to be drained but may be drained with the 50,000 spent anyway, Tweedsmuir Park where the boundaries were redrawn to accommodate the mining promoters. Then you wonder, Mr. Speaker, why some of the outstanding citizens of British Columbia who are not politicians make the following statements, and I quote. "I hate all B.C. stands for. I hate all B.C. stands for," he said, this man said, "Perhaps I should admit I hate practically everything British Columbia stands for today. The shoddy, uncaring development of natural resources. The Chamber of Commerce mentality that favours short term material gain over all other considerations. The utter contempt for human values of every kind. I hate and despise the trivial provincial mentality that denies the act of Canada. The way you treat the Provincial parks compared with the Federal parks. The way you attack Ottawa." And he goes on to point out the devastation of the natural resources of this Province and the parks of this Province at the hands of the Minister who's forgotten that he is now Minister of Recreation and Conservation, and is still behaving as if he is the Minister of Mines. He's never forgotten that experience, and we're evidencing it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who said that?

MR. BARRETT: Roderick Haig-Brown was the one, Roderick Haig-Brown was the one who I attribute the first quote to.

You know, one of the more amusing things tonight, was to hear the Minister announce as a performance of his good deeds in the parks field, 144 new parks in 144 months, a new park a month for 144 months, Mr. Speaker, and you know what's been going on while we've been getting every one of those new parks every month? The acreage in parks in British Columbia in 1958 was 8,418,780. The acreage of parks in British Columbia in 1968 was 6,474,175 acres. We lost a total of 1,944,600 acres. While we were creating one new park a month we were losing 16,205 acres a month of parkland in this Province. Mr. Speaker, at the rate of 16,205 acres per month we can't afford any more new parks the way he is going. Who is he trying to kid, Mr. Speaker, who is he trying to kid? 16,205 acres a month and he's got the gall to stand up in this House and say he's got a progressive park policy — Progressively right down the drain.

There is no philosophy of park development in this Province. The City of Vancouver spends $3,000,000 a year on the maintenance of its parks alone, and this Province spends for all of its parks two million point two per year, Mr. Speaker. While they talk about the fantastic percentage increase every year, and we'll hear about it in the Budget tomorrow. 1952 when the world began, and we go through the whole performance of percentage increases. The parks budget in 1952 was just under a million dollars, and in 1969 it's 2.2 million dollars. The City of Vancouver has almost one-third more for parks budget per year. Ah, it's a different set-up. People go into parks in Vancouver but they don't do that elsewhere. What kind of nonsense is that, Mr. Speaker? I would rather that a park sell hot-dogs, Mr. Speaker, than sell mining claims, than sell mining claims. I would rather let a park have a zoo than a drained lake, Mr. Speaker. I would rather that a park had riding trails instead of mine stakes all over it. That's right, Mr. Speaker.

What we have the responsibility for in this department, and what this amendment means, is either you're committed to continue the fast buck policy of park wrecking, not recreation, park wrecking under that Minister, or you're going to stand up on your feet tonight like the member from Alberni who has accused the Government of stalling, and vote for this and some park protection for the people of this Province.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the following words be added to the address in reply to the Opening Speech, "But this House regrets that the Opening Speech has failed to propose legislative safeguards to preserve and protect public recreational areas and provincial parks from arbitrary despoilation." All those in favour of the amendment say Aye. Contrary minded No. I think the Nays have it.

The amendment was negative on the following division:

YEAS — 16

Messieurs

NAYS — 33

Messieurs

[ Page 229 ]

PAIR:

Messieurs

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

The Honourable Minister of Recreation and Conservation.

HON. W. K. KIERNAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I've waited a long time for this opportunity to exchange a few words with you, and of course having the option of concluding the debate on the Speech from the Throne, sort of provides the opportunity, as it were, to summarize the essence of the debate, and I propose to do that at some length. I didn't say what length — I said some length.

Mr. Speaker, I suggest this debate has been informative, it has been humourous, it has been wide-ranging, and some of it has been a little bit extraordinary, a little bit, shall we say, of the ability of imagination to triumph over fact. I think it does demonstrate however, Mr. Speaker, the complexities of our modern society, and I want to commend, at least, some of the members, and especially all of the new members who have spoken in this debate, and in their own way made a contribution to the democratic process. I would like to commend the new member from Revelstoke-Slocan for not only a very ably prepared address, but an excellent presentation as well. The new member from Vancouver-Burrard, who has demonstrated his very wide and detailed knowledge of the travel industry and its importance to the future of British Columbia. I think it is only fitting, also, that I commend the first member from Vancouver East, because while I didn't agree with some of the things he said, I disagreed quite violently with some of the things he said, I certainly felt that he presented his arguments objectively and in an understandable manner, so a person could either agree or disagree with him quite readily.

I think, also, I should commend the second member from Vancouver-East for so ably demonstrating how a speech ought not to be made in this House. That speech, Mr. Speaker, was a demonstration of politics at its very worst. It was designed and intended by innuendo to destroy not only confidence in the democratic system, it was an understandable and very clear-cut abuse of the freedom and the privileges of this House. Because, if we fail to understand that every measure of freedom must, in our society, be balanced by an equal measure of responsibility, unless we understand that, respect it and act accordingly, then the democratic system cannot provide, Mr. Speaker, and it is that kind of an address that is so destructive of the democratic system.

I would like for a moment, Mr. Speaker, to look back on the decade of the 60's, because I think it is useful, occasionally to take a look at where we have been as we chart our course into the future. If we wanted to be gloomy in the 60's, we certainly could have found ample reason. Because there was a week in the history of this world, while the Cuban crisis existed, when the question whether or not the world we know would survive on the brink of oblivion. If you look back at that situation, you can recall the tension that hung not only throughout the free world, I'm convinced through the Communist world as well, as the two great powers stood on the brink of locking horns over a political issue. We have seen in the decade of the 60's, the nightmare of world leadership, of the dire days of shall we say, of world powers fought out in the swamps of Vietnam, where a nation that is able to muster the mightiest array of technology, and all that it implies, has been unable to bring to conclusion a war that is mean and dirty and hard-fought and yet contains within it a principle that we dare not sacrifice. We have seen in Biafra the same situation that the United States went through a century or more ago, civil war, where people war against themselves, within their own nation, striving to find their path into the future.

We have seen a period where the advances in technology have never been equaled in any time in human history, and where, beyond question, the advances in human understanding. So if we wanted to be gloomy, there was plenty in the decade of the 60's to be gloomy about, but I want to say to you that we should not believe that any problems we face in our society are beyond our solution.

While there was every situation necessary but the last final decision to have created an atomic war, we did not have an atomic war, and I say to you that having avoided it, having been able to by-pass it, there is no reason to believe that we cannot avoid it in the future. We are awakened now to the dangers to our total environment that could be brought about unless we change our direction as a world. Not as a Nation, not as a Province, but as a world, because surely it is brought home to us that this world has shrunk many times to the point where now what happens in Siberia is important in British Columbia. I think also, we are alert now to that other time-bomb, the population explosion. Three factors then, the hydrogen bomb, the ecological breakdown, and the population explosion, could be said to menace the survival of society as we know it beyond the turn of this century. But if we have been able to solve our problems and offset that deadly hand of doom to this state, why can we not go forward in confidence.

I speak of the world situation, Mr. Speaker, because you cannot form intelligent judgment, even within our own area, if you pretend that we are functioning in some sort of a vacuum and are not affected by what takes place elsewhere in the world. Our Province is still primarily a wilderness and that fact, while I think it has been debated this afternoon, simply remains a fact of life. Our economy is still primarily resource-based, and we may direct our attentions and have directed our attentions to broadening that basic economy, but at the same time, let us not fail to understand that the basic under-pinnings of our economy are, in fact, still found in the natural resources of this Province, that our standard of living is related to the use of the natural resources, and that most of the service industries in this Province are only able to function and have their being, because of that basic natural resource backbone to our economy. A fact of life.

We are growing in population of twice the national average, and in the last year we have created jobs, new jobs at three times the national average. We have expressed concern through this debate for the quality of our environment, health, inflation, cost of living, land use, employment, public safety, to mention only a few. Again it clearly illustrates how diverse our society has become, but let us not in our examination of the problems of our society, ignore the fact that we have made tremendous progress in many fields. I say it is well to examine the problems that remain to be

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examined, but let us not become, shall we say, down-hearted simply because we haven't solved every problem of our human society.

I had planned, originally, to speak at some lengths on environment. It is a vast subject, and I am only going to offer a couple of remarks in relation to environment because I think we have had a very good debate today, and I don't wish to detain overly long. We have heard it suggested and even recommended in this debate, that a single Minister be charged with the preservation and protection of a quality environment. If you would stop and give that a little thought, you will realize that most of the Ministers in the Government in some way have functions within their departments that bear on this question of quality environment. The Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources, the Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Municipal Affairs, and occasionally the Minister of Recreation and Conservation, the Minister of Agriculture, and I think you can even find in the other departments, factors that bear on a quality environment. Now here is the practical proposition. If you vest a person with a responsibility, you ought, in all fairness, Mr. Speaker, give him the authority to discharge that responsibility, otherwise you are simply placing him in an impossible position, where he is confronted with all the problems, and does not have the authority to provide the answers. On the other hand, if you are going to give one Minister over-riding authority over virtually every other department of Government, then you are back to one-man government, and surely that is not what you are advocating. Within the Government's Resource Minister Group we have those Ministers who are directly involved in matters that can be said to play a prominent part in a quality environment. We work together, we recognize that we haven't all the answers, but between us we can muster and do muster some of the finest technical staff in the Civil Service to be found anywhere in the world. I think, therefore, you are much wiser to have this type of a function in terms of dealing with environment, rather than trying to burden one Minister with what would, in fact be an impossible undertaking for one person to assume that kind of responsibility.

I did want to speak briefly about economics and inflation, because I think we ought to understand just what is taking place in our economy, and I am only going to give you a couple of brief examples that I think clearly set out what has taken place. If you go back to the statistics, Dominion Bureau of Statistics Report, and follow back over a few years their tabulation of the cost-of-living index for all services across Canada, and do a little examination of those figures, you will come to some very interesting observations. You know, in the period 1953 to 1956, a four-year period including both years, the cost-of-living index rose at half a point a year. From '57 to '60 the cost-of-living index rose at one point a year. From '61 to '64 inclusive it rose at 1.3 points a year. '65 to $68 inclusive it rose at three points a year. In 1969 it rose 5.8 points, just a fraction under six points in one year, which is 12 times the rate of increase that took place in the '53 to '56 period. In other words, the snowball syndrome is very evident, the faster it grows the faster it rolls, the faster it rolls the faster it grows. While a little inflation may be a pretty heady thing, we have to recognize that once it builds in this kind of momentum, it goes faster and faster and faster.

Now, there are only two basic commodities in this question of inflation, the cost of money and the cost of services. That is all that makes up the brew, the cost of money and the cost of services. Now, insofar as money is concerned, I think the policies of the National Government for the 12 preceding years, or 11 preceding years, to this year, were disastrous, because they piled one deficit on another. When we were fighting no war, not faced with any national calamity, year after year they consistently failed to live within their income, and pyramided that debt to astronomical proportions.

The other fact, I think, that we have to recognize is that to a degree we are all guilty of aiding inflation. We are all guilty because we demand too much too quickly, and if we want to cool this thing off a little bit we certainly shouldn't be firing people because that just creates unemployment and creates more problems. But if we want to cool it off a little and we need to cool it off — if we want to slow this back down to a livable standard, back down to what it was in '53 or '56, half a point a year, all we have got to do is exercise a little discretion as individuals, as a society, as organizations, as a nation. Certainly there are world forces that impinge upon our economy over which we have very little control. But if we understand that this is a period that calls for a little discretion, a little forbearance, we can bring this thing under acceptable control without having to create real hardships on anybody.

But I say to you that one of the most unfortunate things that has occurred for the good of our economy is this "buy now, pay later" Chargex. I have always thought it was rather a foolish thing for people to "fly now, pay later." But occasionally you may have to fly and you haven't got the money. But with this Chargex, let's have no illusions about what it is. The merchant pays from four to six per cent for the service, so right away you are going to increase the cost of your goods by four to six per cent right there, and anybody going in to pay cash for a major commodity, who doesn't bargain to get that four to six per cent taken off his bill, ought to give serious thought to bargaining that way, because it is coming to him. And the other factor, I think, is that we ought to understand that while it is very easy to arrange for that bill not to be paid by the due date at the bank, have no illusions, when you borrow that money you are paying 1 1/2 per cent per month or 18 per cent a year that you will pay if you let that bill be paid off over the period of a year or more, you have inflated the cost of those goods to you by more than 20 per cent.

Now I think these are the things that we, as people, ought to seriously consider and we ought to act accordingly. There is no use one section of society pointing at the other fellow and saying, "He is causing inflation. He has got no respect for the needs of the country." We are all involved. Let's act like responsible people and do something quietly and positively about it. This Government will never subscribe to the idea that the solution to inflation is to start firing people, right? That is only taking one kind of a problem and turning it into another kind of a problem that is even worse. The Social Welfare Minister may be a little misunderstood but he has the interests of the people of this Province at heart and he is working at it.

I could be tempted, Mr. Speaker, to go back to some discussion of parks, but I am going to resist that temptation (laughter and applause) except for one observation. 157 acres in Divide Lake, 6,000 in the new Ross Lake Reservoir. I wonder what you could do with that equation in your little minds. Think it over. Think it over. In your big minds.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a good debate. I am sure that in their hearts all the members on both sides of the House

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would really like to support this motion, because this is a Speech for progress, for confidence, for trust, for brotherhood, for the future of British Columbia. I tell you, my friend, never in the course of human history has there been greater need for altruism in our ideals and objectives, but never in the course of human history has there been greater need for clear honest judgment for assembling the facts and dealing with the facts. Our problems never have been solved and never will be solved by wishful thinking. Let us therefore muster the facts, and in kindness and tolerance, one to the other, let us go forward into the 70's, because they can be bright indeed.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Bravo, bravo.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please. The motion is that "We, Her Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, in Session assembled, beg leave to thank Your Honour for the gracious Speech which Your Honour has addressed to us at the opening of the present Session." All those in favour of the motion signify by saying aye, contrary minded no. I think the ayes have it. Division has been called.

The motion was agreed to on the following division:

YEAS — 33

Messieurs

NAYS — 17

Messieurs

HON. W.A.C. BENNETT (Premier and Minister of. Finance): Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Honourable the Attorney-General, That this House will, at its next sitting, resolve itself into a Committee to consider the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty, and that this Order have precedence over all other business, except introduction of Bills, until disposed of.

Motion agreed to.

MR. BENNETT: Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the Attorney-General, That this House will at its next sitting, resolve itself into a Committee to consider the Ways and Means for raising the Supply to be granted to Her Majesty.

Motion agreed to.

MR. BENNETT: I am very happy to move adjournment tonight, seeing everybody is in such good humour, the evening before the Budget. I move the House do now adjourn.

The House adjourned at 9.00 p.m.