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CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Oral Questions

Contents of ferry service report. Mr. McClelland — 291

Arbitration of elevator constructors' strike. Mr. D.A. Anderson — 291

Investigation of Oak Bay explosion. Mr. Wallace — 291

Contracts with computer firms re Insurance Corp. Mr. Smith — 292

Price paid for Gibsons Bowladrome property. Mr. D.A. Anderson. — 292

Charge for extended care. Mr. Wallace — 292

University Endowment Land. Mr. Smith  — 293

Motions. (See appendix for wording of motions)

No. 1. Mr. Gabelmann — 294

Mr. Bennett — 295

Ms. Brown — 295

Mr. Williams — 296

Mr. Rolston — 296

Mr. D.A. Anderson — 296

Mr. Lewis — 297

Mrs. Jordan — 297

Mr. Gardom — 297

Mr. Wallace — 298

Hon. Mr. Barrett — 298

Division on motion 1 — 299

No. 2. Mr. Gorst — 299

Mr. Richter — 299

Mrs. Webster — 299

Hon. Mr. Hall — 300

No. 5. Mr. McClelland — 300

Hon. Mr. Cocke — 300

Mr. Wallace — 300

Ms. Brown — 301

No. 3. Mr. Lockstead — 301

Mr. Phillips — 302

Mr. McGeer — 302

Hon. Mr. Lea — 304

Mr. Wallace — 304

Mr. Dent — 304

Mr. Speaker rules out of order — 306

Point of order

Order of motions on order paper. Mr. Smith — 306

Mr. Speaker's ruling — 306

Routine proceedings

Motions

No. 4. Mr. G.H. Anderson — 307

Mrs. Webster — 307

Hon. Ms. Young — 308

Crown Proceedings Act (Bill 13). Second reading.

Mr. Gardom — 308

Mr. Speaker rules out of order — 308

British Columbia Ombudsman Act (Bill 14). Second reading.

Mr. Gardom — 308

Mr. Speaker rules out of order — 309

British Columbia Auditor General (Bill 15). Second reading.

Mr. Gardom — 309

Public Scrutiny (Bill 16). Second reading Mr. Gardom — 309

Guaranteed Minimum Income Plan (Bill 17). Second reading.

Mr. Richter — 310

Mr. Speaker rules out of order — 310

Guaranteed Income Act (Bill 18). Second reading.

Mr. Richter — 310

Mr. Speaker rules out of order — 311

Income Tax Act (Bill 19). Second reading.

Mr. Richter — 311

Mr. Speaker rules out of order — 311

Motions

No. 6. Hon. Mr. Cocke — 311

Mr. Wallace — 312

Mr. Speaker — 313

Mr. Phillips — 313

No. 7. Mr. Wallace — 313

Hon. Mr. Hall — 314

An Act to Amend the Medical Grant Act (Bill 2). Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Cocke — 314

Mr. McClelland — 315

Mr. Wallace — 315

Mr. McGeer — 315

Hon. Mr. Cocke — 315

An Act to Amend An Act Respecting Medical Services (Bill 10).

Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Cocke — 315

Mr. McClelland — 316

Mr. Wallace — 317

Mr. McGeer — 317

Hon. Mr. Barrett — 318

Hon. Mr. Cocke — 318

Division on second reading — 319

Appendix

Motions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 — 321

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1973

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. Members, before we proceed to the orders of the day I would like to introduce to the House the Hon. Speaker for Oklahoma, Mr. Speaker Bill Willis and Mrs. Willis, who are on the floor of the House.

HON. A.B. MACDONALD (Attorney General): Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure to introduce the Rt. Hon. Norman Russell Wiley, Lord Advocate of Scotland and a Member of the British House of Commons for the Pentlands, near Edinburgh, who is sitting right over here along with one of his deputies, Mr. Joseph Moran, and it says here that in the last parliament Mr. Wiley was the only Scottish QC available on either bench of the House of Commons.

HON. L.T. NIMSICK (Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources): I have the unique pleasure today of introducing to this House 26 visitors from a coal-mining district in that great country of Soviet Russia. I hope that you will give them a real big hand.

Secondly, I have the honour to introduce a group from the steel workers union and also representatives from the B.C. Chamber of Mines, who are in the gallery here.

MR. SPEAKER: I understand he has taken up most of my gallery. (Laughter.)

Oral questions.

CONTENTS OF
FERRY SERVICE REPORT

MR. R.H. McCLELLAND (Langley): Mr. Speaker, I would like to just briefly address a question to the Minister of Transport and Communications. I would like to ask the Minister if he would deliver to each Member in the House a confidential memo relating to the facts in the ferry service report with which he was in discussion with the Hon. Member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace). Are those facts going to be kept as a secret between those two Members of the House?

HON. R.M. STRACHAN (Minister of Transport and Communications): I am going to prepare a complete statement on the whole situation and all of the proposals which I certainly will make available to all Members of the House.

ARBITRATION OF
ELEVATOR CONSTRUCTORS' STRIKE

MR. D.A. ANDERSON (Victoria): To the Minister of Labour, Mr. Speaker: in light of the strike vote taken yesterday by the Union of Elevator Constructors who voted in favour of strike action, may I ask whether the Minister's statement earlier this year, which was that the Ontario binding arbitration would also be binding in British Columbia, still stands?

HON. W.S. KING (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, the Ontario arbitration award by which the union and elevator companies had agreed to voluntarily be bound has not been handed down at this point. Until it is, I am not in a position to comment on what either of the parties may do with respect to that arbitration. They have given me a commitment to abide by it, and I presume that they will honour that commitment.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: Supplementary, Mr. Speaker: in the light of the strike vote, which I believe was 95 per cent in favour of the strike, is the Minister indicating to the House that there would be no change in the situation yesterday as opposed to perhaps the day before or the week before that?

HON. MR. KING: Well, Mr. Speaker, I think I answered the question quite clearly. I don't presume to anticipate what people might do. I have a commitment, as I indicated; should action which violates that commitment occur, I shall certainly deal with it at that time. I am not in the business of, nor am I interested in, anticipating problems before they occur.

MR. SPEAKER: I think the question is somewhat hypothetical.

INVESTIGATION OF
OAK BAY EXPLOSION

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Could I ask the Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources, as a director of Hydro: in the light of the explosion on Oak Bay Avenue, could he assure the House that all investigations have been carried out to make sure there was not any faulty technique? If there was any fault on the part of techniques used by B.C. Hydro, can we be assured that they will cease forthwith?

HON. R.A. WILLIAMS (Minister of Lands, Forests and Water Resources): I certainly share the Hon. Member's concern. It is my understanding that there has been a review through the Department of Public Works as well as Hydro, and we will take all steps to see that this kind of an occurrence will not be repeated.

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MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, could I ask if we are at a point where there is any more specific information available to explain what could have been a tremendous disaster, bad as it was with one injury? Could the Minister of Public Works, perhaps, bring us up to date on the investigation?

HON. W.L. HARTLEY (Minister of Public Works): …Our Director of Safety dispatched an engineer over to make a study. Yesterday afternoon I met with the fire chief, along with our inspector. A study is underway but as yet there is really no report. But I can say that we are very, very fortunate that no one was killed and we are very, very fortunate and should be very thankful for the efficient manner in which the City of Victoria Fire Department got in there and found the shoemaker who they didn't really know was in there. He had both arms and both legs broken. They were able to get him out before he suffocated. We were very fortunate.

CONTRACTS WITH COMPUTER FIRMS
RE INSURANCE CORPORATION

MR. D.E. SMITH (North Peace River): Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Transport and Communications. In view of the anti-trust ruling in Tulsa, Oklahoma, regarding the operations of one IBM and their monopoly operations, has the Minister given any consideration to opening up the computer requirements of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia to computer firms other than the IBM corporation?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I haven't read the particular finding of that quote. I read the newspaper reports but I think we indicated clearly as to why we found ourselves in the position we did with regard to utilizing IBM for the Insurance Corporation. The previous administration, for what reason I am unable to say, locked the Motor Vehicle records into an IBM procedure. Because of that we went to IBM. Now, in answer to your question as to whether we are examining other processes, just as soon as I can get free from the strictures placed on the Motor Vehicles Branch by the previous administration, I am certainly going to get free.

MR. SMITH: A supplemental question concerning the same matter, Mr. Speaker. Would the Minister be prepared to tell the House what commitment the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia has to the IBM Company with regard to fees and charges and for what period of time?

HON. MR. STRACHAN: I haven't got those exact figures with me, but we asked them to do a specific job for us and that's the job they are doing.

PRICE PAID FOR
GIBSON'S BOWLADROME PROPERTY

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: A question along the lines of getting the Minister of Communications out of the strictures of the Motor Vehicle Branch. May I ask the Minister of Public Works what price was paid for the Gibson's Bowladrome property which is to house the Minister and all his fellow bowlers in Victoria?

Interjection.

HON. MR. HARTLEY: No, it is not necessary to put that on the order paper. We paid the appraised value of $765,000.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: Could I ask, Mr. Speaker, whether there was more than one appraiser involved in appraising that property?

HON. MR. HARTLEY: Yes, there was. We got it for the lowest appraisal.

CHARGE FOR EXTENDED CARE

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, now that the Minister of Health is in the House, I wonder if I could ask him whether he would care to comment further on a statement which I believe he made public today to the effect that it is now government policy to raise the charge for extended care patients to $5.50 per day?

HON. D.G. COCKE (Minister of Health): Mr. Speaker, this morning I was approached by the press, who asked whether or not we were going to carry through with the $5.50 a day. I said, in light of the Premier's statement yesterday that chronic care is a high priority with this government — and naturally that is why I was asked that question by the press this morning — I indicated that yes, we felt it is very likely that we will have to increase the rate because these people are all on Mincome; we will have to increase the rate across the board. All on Mincome, Mr. Speaker, that are in extended care right now.

But the thing that has held us up is the fact that if it is going to harm anybody at all we have to have assessment committees, either locally or provincial assessment committees, to see to it that we reduce the rates for those people whom it would hit financially. So that's generally speaking our policy at this point. We are not raising any rates yet, and if the newspapers indicate that we are, then it is not quite true. This has to be when we go a step further in the delivery of chronic care.

Mr. Speaker, while I am on my feet, that Member will also be interested in the fact that I am announcing today that we have purchased the

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Richmond Heights Private Hospital.

MR. WALLACE: A supplemental question, Mr. Speaker. Would the Minister of Health care to just…I'm sure I know what he is saying, but I think there is misunderstanding on this side of the House that the assessment committees are intended to look after the 10 per cent of patients in extended care hospitals who may not be on Mincome. Is that correct?

HON. MR. COCKE: Well, Mr. Speaker, if it is 10 per cent it's rather high, Mr. Member. You will remember that Mincome is for those people who are handicapped and those people who are over 65. So that if there is anybody who is flat on his back in hospital, chronically ill, and he isn't in receipt of Mincome, then he is rather a rarity. He should be. So therefore the only people we are worried about are those people who are supporting somebody else in their family and under those circumstances we don't feel that we can charge them any more than….

MRS. P.J. JORDAN (North Okanagan): Just a clarification. The Minister stated that the only people you were concerned about were those who were supporting families and flat on their back, I think it was. I would ask you what is your intention towards young people who have been in car accidents, hiking accidents, and who are having a prolonged stay in the hospital, where the family itself is meeting and will have to meet this $5-odd a day. They themselves may not qualify for Mincome or welfare benefits and accordingly this cost would be a considerable drain on the family resources and deprive other children and the parents themselves of a normal existence in our society.

HON. MR. COCKE: Thank you, Madam Member. Mr. Speaker, what we plan to do with that, and that is why we are going to have an assessment committee, is anybody whom it is going to impair financially is going to be taken care of. There is no question about that whether they are young or old.

Now there won't be too many chronically ill young people. You are talking about people who have broken necks and one thing and another. Normally they qualify for Mincome but, if they don't, certainly we are not going to leave that as a monkey on the back of the parents of those people. The assessment committee will be realistic and they will certainly assess those people out, but that's it.

MRS. JORDAN: Mr. Minister, through you Mr. Speaker, you have mentioned that less than 10 per cent of the people in the hospitals in chronic care would qualify or be a matter of concern. Would you have figures available that you would be willing to file with the House as to how many people other than Mincome are in fact in this position in British Columbia this month?

HON. MR. COCKE: We certainly don't have those figures exactly available at the present time. You are talking about extended care people?

MRS. JORDAN: Yes.

HON. MR. COCKE: You see, the problem is that that doesn't really solve the problem. If you want those figures, we can get them for you fairly readily and I can file them before the end of this House. But that really doesn't give you the ballpark statistics that we are looking for, and we are talking of across-the-board chronic illness.

MRS. JORDAN: Oh, I was just asking in reference to the figures that the Minister himself used, and it would be very helpful.

HON. MR. COCKE: We'll give them to you.

MR. McCLELLAND: A supplemental question, Mr. Speaker. In your determination of chronic care, Mr. Minister of Health, could you tell us if the government plans to increase the rates as well for what is now known as intermediate care, or personal care? Will that be included in the chronic care spectrum?

HON. MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, at the present time there is no coverage for those people in intermediate care. There are three levels of chronic care: there is personal care, now that's the rest home level; there is intermediate care, which is the next level up and requires some nursing; and there is the third level, which is extended care. We do not cover those people who are now in intermediate care. The people to whom the Premier referred yesterday were that group of people who very desperately need help — those people whom we often find in nursing homes at the present time. But they are not being covered now.

MR. McCLELLAND: But are they going to be?

HON. MR. COCKE: That is what we are proposing, that we are going to cover those people as quickly as we can.

MR. McCLELLAND: At a higher rate? At the same rate?

UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT LAND

MR. SMITH: My question is to the Minister of

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Lands, Forests and Water Resources (Hon. Mr. Williams). Recently at Naramata, at a Man and Resources conference at which the Minister was present, he indicated the university endowment land was a wasted asset, I think was the way he put it, and that it would be used for housing in the future. Would the Minister outline to the House the way in which he intends to accomplish this and what he is going to do to replace to the university the income that it will lose from the endowment land if it is taken from them now and put into another supposedly higher use than at the present time?

MR. SPEAKER: Is this a statement of policy that is required on future policy, or is it…?

MR. SMITH: Mr. Speaker, he made a statement and I would like him to elaborate on…

MR. SPEAKER: Oh, he made a statement?

MR. SMITH: …how he intends to replace the income that will be lost to the university.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS (Minister of Lands, Forests, and Water Resources): As far as I am aware, Mr. Speaker, there is in fact no income to the university from the endowment land. There is no problem in replacing an income that the university does not, in fact, receive from the endowment land. The concept, however, is being worked on at this stage.

MR. SMITH: A supplemental question. If it is not an income, it certainly has a potential as an endowment land to the university and an asset. Will the Minister make a statement to the House what he plans to do for the university in that respect?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I'd be pleased to become involved in a private briefing session for a more productive question period, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: I might say, Mr. Premier, before we go on, I omitted — and I apologize — I forgot to introduce Representative Charles Elder and Representative Odum, both from Oklahoma, who are in the Members' Gallery.

Introduction of bills.

Orders of the day.

HON. D. BARRETT (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I move we proceed to motions. Motions and adjourned debates on motions.

MR. F.X. RICHTER (Leader of the Opposition):

I find it a peculiar procedure. Last night at the closing of the session we were advised that the Attorney General's bills and the Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance….

MR. SPEAKER: Well, may I point out to Members that today is private Members' day. There is no priority or precedence motion before the House, and in actual fact, whether you make the motion or not, we would proceed to motions on' the orders of the day.

HON. MR. BARRETT: It was my error yesterday in suggesting this. If you don't wish to go to private Members' day, which has been a matter of controversy for years in this House, then of course we will skip private Members' day. But that's the order. It slipped my mind last night. Private Members' day is the order.

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. D.E. SMITH (North Peace River): On a point of order. We know full well that the prerogative of the House leader and the Premier of the province is to change the order if he so desires with the consent of the House. We asked last night what the order of business would be today. We were given an indication of what it would be and then, just prior to coming in to this session, I was advised that this would be private Members' day, so….

MR. SPEAKER: I may point out to the Hon. Members that whether a motion is put to you now, we will come to motions in a matter of course and must deal with motions on private Members' day. That's the rule, unless there's a motion that has been adopted by the House that has priority over the normal order of business today.

Now if the Premier chooses to make the motion at this stage before we deal with petitions, he can advance motions ahead of petitions; it's up to you. I suggest that the motion is in order and that we should deal with the motion, which is that we proceed to motions. That is the question.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Motion 1, Mr. Speaker.

MR. C.S. GABELMANN (North Vancouver–Seymour): Mr. Speaker, I would like to move, seconded by the Hon. Second Member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown), that motion 1 standing in my name on the order paper be moved. (See appendix).

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MR. SPEAKER: I might point out that there is no need for seconders since we've changed our standing order on seconding of motions, other than the throne speech motion.

MR. GABELMANN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This motion, Mr. Speaker, is a very, very important one to the people of British Columbia. What it calls for is that we acknowledge, as Members of this Legislature, that we recognize that there would be some value in having an information service provided by the provincial government to be available to all citizens of British Columbia.

The way in which I envisage this procedure working, Mr. Speaker, is that the government perhaps could utilize a telephone number, perhaps a Zenith telephone number or some system like that — similar perhaps to the system that is now in operation in the Province of Saskatchewan — that would enable people throughout British Columbia, whatever part of the province they live in, to call a central information office to find out matters that are of concern to them.

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that these matters could concern individual problems that they are having with particular government departments. It could be problems that they're having with matters such as welfare rates, where they feel they are getting an improper deal, perhaps, from their own local welfare office. Or perhaps they feel that the Workmen's Compensation Board has dealt with them unfairly. In many cases they don't know where to turn; they don't know to whom they should go next to ask for advice or for information.

Many of us, of course, do have access to the system. We know lawyers or we know politicians or we know someone who can give us the answer. But there are many, many thousands of people in British Columbia who do not have that kind of access to the system. In many cases they don't even know that they could turn to their Member of Parliament or to their local MLA.

Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that with the wide distribution of information, there should be such a telephone number and such a service available. Then people would be able to phone who do have these kinds of problems with various government departments, or with the problems concerning their own livelihood or their own lives, that they think may be affected in some way by the government. They would be able to call this information service, and in some way an answer could be given to them directly, or the person could be referred to the proper agency or the proper official so that the particular problem could be pursued.

I also see, Mr. Speaker, that when the government is announcing policies, or making changes in policies such as, for example, the changes that we are now making in the Mincome provisions — that people who aren't clear because they don't understand the ads in the newspaper, or on television — people who aren't clear as to whether or not they particularly are eligible for such a scheme — could call and state their position, or be referred to the proper person.

So it could act as a vehicle by which people could have their own problems solved, Mr. Speaker, and they could also get information as to current government policy, whether it's policy relating to old people and income levels or whether it's policy relating to what the stumpage rate is currently on forest products.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to close my remarks by just saying that I'm hopeful that a number of other MLAs will debate this question; I think it's a very important one. It's one that I hope the House will adopt unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. W.R. BENNETT (South Okanagan): Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the concern of the Hon. Member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Gabelmann). But couldn't this better be dealt with by expanding the facilities for the service by the local MLA? If it's difficult for people to realize who their local Member of Parliament is, don't you think it would be more difficult to teach them a phone number?

I think that if we want service and information given to citizens of a constituency, we should provide office facilities for the local MLA on a year-round basis, and the phone services could be from the MLA's office. When he's in the area he could call through to Victoria or, when he's in Victoria at one of the many sessions, those facilities could be used by his constituents.

I believe that, taken to its furthest degree, this would be another Information Canada all over again and would not help the MLAs, particularly us new MLAs who have just had considerable discussion with our constituents. One of the things they specifically asked for was that the government do establish facilities for their representatives.

MS. R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): Mr. Speaker, I'd like to speak in support of this motion. Presently all the MLAs in this House are acting as ombudsmen or ombudswomen for their constituencies. But in point of fact, what happens is that when the House is in session, only those people who can afford a long distance call can afford to use their MLAs in this manner. Although a long distance call from the Gulf Islands may not cost very much, or even one from Vancouver may not cost very much, it's quite possible that the people of the Peace River or the people of Columbia River may never be able to use their ombudsman who is sitting in this House, presumably to be working on their behalf.

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So I would like to support the idea of a toll-free telephone that is in operation all year round. So even if the Members are not sitting here themselves, the departments that people would like to be in contact with can be reached.

Now I do not see this as another Information Canada. I do not think this bureau should try to be all things to all people. I think that the departments themselves would also have to continue to operate as information-giving departments. They would have to be responsible for giving out up-to-date information on new legislation that's coming out of their department and keeping the public informed.

I support the fact that there are still a lot of phone calls coming in about confusion surrounding Mincome and one thing and another. But I think that through the toll-free number these calls can be referred, and should be referred, to the departments concerned.

I would like to support what the last Member said, however, and that is that I would very much appreciate having an office in my constituency. Thank you.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS (West Vancouver–Howe Sound): Mr. Speaker, we will support the motion, by all means. We are happy to acknowledge the wisdom of having public information being available to all the citizens in this province with the least possible expense and inconvenience. As a matter of fact, I trust that the Members of this House, by acknowledging the importance of such a bureau, will at the same time recognize that the bureau must be under the control of a Member of the provincial government.

I trust that this will be the first step in the establishment of the ombudsman who will be the individual who, controlling this bureau, will be able to get the answer. Since my Hon. friend, the Member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Gabelmann), has moved this motion, and since I'm certain it's going to receive the unanimous support of all sides of this House, perhaps the Members of the Treasury Bench may see fit to approach the matter of ombudsman seriously and will provide this service as a necessary part of the ombudsman's responsibility.

MR. P.C. ROLSTON (Dewdney): Mr. Speaker, one of the things I would hope this would sort out would be priorities. It's pretty obvious to me that an MLA can be a pencil pusher and a person that processes Mincome and homeowner grants and bursaries for students and flood payments. And maybe that's going to continue. But surely we're also legislators. I would like to think that our priority is to know what's happening legislatively and research-wise in this province.

I would certainly support the motion, hoping that it would help people to get action immediately on a toll-free line to a central information bureau.

The other thing that, of course, occurs to me is that I think it's pretty necessary sometimes for the various departments of government to do a lot of their own PR. Agriculture has their own news sheet here. But it's simply information. The MLAs are given information stuff here. Presumably, rather than always going to the MLA and taking a lot of his time, it could go directly to the people.

So I would certainly support the motion, and would like to get on with the other priorities.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, for one horrible moment when the proposer of the motion was speaking, I heard Ralph Pashley interviewing Phil Gaglardi again on that "Ask Your Provincial Government" programme of the last government and I thought, "My goodness, we're going to have to do something very different."

Certainly it has merit and I agree with it. We certainly will be supporting the motion. But there are, of course, facts which I think we should bear in mind. One of which is that a very few people who would phone such a service will ever be able to distinguish what is city hall, what is the provincial legislature, what is the federal government. I think that if we do introduce such a motion, we try hard to make it an overall "ask your government" or "ask your legislators" rather than simply something which is restricted to the provincial government. Because it simply won't work if people phone that service and get the answer, "Go down and see city hall" or else "Write your MP" or do something of that nature.

It's true that an ombudsperson or an ombudsman or ombudswoman, whatever we may be, is partly our function; a great deal of it is our function. This service would tend to channel complaints, I think, directly to us or to the correct department in this civil service. But it's going to be something which is going to handle a large number of complaints and I think that we want to set it up on the widest possible basis so people don't find it just another way to get the run-around.

I think it's got real merit, Mr. Speaker, but when I saw the news release put out by the Premier's press secretary, Mr. Twigg, over the Premier's signature, dealing with events of the week which is going out, again I wondered whether or not we are entering the area of the provincial government getting involved in press releases and propaganda in a way which is a trifle questionable in terms of expenditure of public money. Of course, references to party affairs are obviously inappropriate for such a news service, but still even the government things can be slanted.

The mention was made by the Hon. Member for Dewdney (Mr. Rolston) about a press release by the Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Stupich). I received

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one the other day. I was curious about it because it referred to three projects for Indians in the Province of British Columbia. I checked it out and found that all $150,000 involved in these three proposals was federal money. Now, not to say that it shouldn't be announced by the Minister of Agriculture in the Province of British Columbia rather than Indian Affairs in Ottawa, but we are entering an area of tremendous confusion as to who does what. I feel that such a service will only be of real benefit to people if it goes further than simply provincial matters and if it's extended to include much more.

MR. D.E. LEWIS (Shuswap): Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak in support of this resolution, being a Member from a rural constituency. There are many parts of my riding — and I'm sure it's far worse than some of the other rural ridings — where the people are 100 miles or 150 miles from the closest government office. Often these people write to their MLA, the letter arrives at their home and then is redirected to Victoria. Before the MLA can get an answer back to them, it's often three weeks. I think that a service like this could handle departmental information in regard to highways, water rights, and all these departments. I think it certainly would be a great service to my riding.

MRS. P.J. JORDAN (North Okanagan): Mr. Speaker, I, like the former speaker from our party, appreciate the concern of the Member and what he should be trying to achieve in this motion. I think it's been a matter of concern for everyone, whether you are working on a voluntary basis in a community or whether you are working as a legislator in the Province of British Columbia, how do you get quick, concise, accurate information to people. But I think this is a good idea approached from the wrong way.

One of the grave dangers in what this Member has suggested in setting up a bureau is that in fact you're only setting up another bureau and another level of bureaucracy between the people and the government or their MLA, or getting the answers that they want. If you face the realities of the situation, a bureau such as this would have to be monstrous in size because I'm sure we can vouch that 90 per cent of the questions we are asked in the letters we get need a great deal of research before they can be answered. You may be dealing with land lots, specific lots, or specific pension numbers, and what you would have, really, is another level of MLAs running around doing this type of work.

We think that the matter of the toll-free line is good and that this should be instituted to the MLAs in their offices in Victoria. If you want a toll-free number that can be used freely around the province, then you don't have to set up a bureau to organize it — you can just advertise that number in the local newspapers and magazines. Box 99 in the Consumer Affairs department is an excellent example of how a number clicked, and everybody remembers box 99.

I think that what one would find is a duplication of services. The MLA may have spoken to the individual personally or this person may be writing to their MLA and then they will be phoning the bureau — then you have two people going to the various departments. We must accept that this information will have to come from the department and we'll be putting an added burden on our department in their workload duplication of services that isn't going to carry out the intent of this motion and what we all want to do.

Speaking as a rural MLA, I think we have found with being in Victoria for two sessions and travelling on committees, one of our major concerns is how do we keep our pulse and how do we keep sensitive to the concerns and the problems of the people in our area? To set up another level between the MLA, regardless of what party, Mr. Premier, through you Mr. Speaker, I think will make it even more difficult for the MLA to really be and stay involved in this essential part of our work. It's not what are people telling you at meetings, not what are you hearing through the paper, but what are the individual problems of the people?

I think also, Mr. Speaker, that we have to accept as MLAs that part of our job is in fact to deal with government departments — to deal with land problems, to deal with pension problems and to deal with workmen's compensation problems. If we set ourselves up as just a board of executives who sit in here and vocalize on legislation, I think we'll find that that type of vocalization will become more and more shallow because we'll be dealing with theory, and we won't have the backup experience and involvement that these problems of running around give us in dealing with local people.

I wouldn't accuse the Member of taking a good idea and using it for a political purpose, Mr. Speaker. But, I would ask, in recognizing that this side will not support this motion, that through you, the Premier of this province will take under consideration what we have said. That we'll not form another level of bureaucracy, but we'll do what he's often wanted to do, help us to be more sensitive and more efficient as MLAs and help us to — you as a government or all of us as a government — get answers more readily back to people. A personal visit from your MLA, or from somebody, on a problem is of much more value in 40 per cent of all our work than a telephone call from a pensioner which really just goes around the circle and comes back again via a telephone call. I think it would be separating MLAs from the people.

MR. G.B. GARDOM (Vancouver–Point Grey): Mr. Speaker, my comment to this motion really and truly

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is just this: it seems to me that air will do anything in this chamber to fill a vacuum. We're sitting at the highest legislative cost of any legislators in the Province of British Columbia and we're debating the merits of an invention such as a long distance toll-free telephone line. To me it's absolute nonsense. It's an administrative function; it's not something that should really and truly be the subject of debate in this House. It's just too bad that the government hasn't got its legislation ready and we could get on with the business of the public.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Speaker, this party would oppose the motion. I'm sorry that I haven't been in the House to hear all the comments, but my comment certainly would be that this is just another bureaucratic measure which really should not be necessary, If individuals are not getting the information which they need within a reasonable amount of time then, unfortunately, we, the MLAs, probably are as much to blame as anyone. If someone contacts their MLA by phone or letter…I'm amazed to hear one Member state that it might be three weeks before the individual citizen gets any contact, directly or indirectly, with the MLA.

I can see some merit in clause B of the motion for individuals living in distant points of the province, and I might be prepared to support that kind of motion or that part of the motion. But I would have to agree with the former speaker that if this kind of information bureau were to turn out to be similar to some of the federal efforts in this direction, I just shudder at the cost and the inefficiency of the similar body nationally. So that while I can see the intent behind the motion, and while I could support section B in total, I would have to oppose this motion.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, if I may try to put myself in the place of an MLA, and especially an opposition MLA — since I spent 12 years in that capacity — I would agree with the Member for Vancouver–Point Grey (Mr. Gardom) that it's purely an administrative matter. However, he must understand the atmosphere within which this motion finds itself on the floor of the House.

The Hon. Member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Gabelmann) came to me last session as a new MLA and complained, quite rightly, about the lack of office space, the lack of secretarial help, the lack of free phone calls as an MLA. Now, Mr. Speaker, I put to you the fact that for many years these things were not even discussed in this House and, as a matter of fact, we were not even permitted the courtesy of free phone calls or offices, because it was considered to be a political blank wall that we were dealing with.

In any other normal situation, the suggestion by the Member would have been acted upon immediately by this government; however, by acting upon it, considering the atmosphere of politics in this province, the first action would have brought yells and screams and hollers from the opposition benches — and I won't name names — but certain opposition Members would have seized upon this as another attempt by the government to propagandize. There is no need to reveal in public all the details of how difficult it was to get an agreement to have the MLAs receive $250 a month for the beginning of secretarial help. It was a major breakthrough of removing some administrative practices away from politics in this province.

Now that atmosphere, in my opinion, has not completely gone, and so it is necessary, in my opinion, to have a simple administrative matter like this debated in the House so that we can de-escalate the atmosphere that has existed around simple matters such as assisting MLAs to do their job. I can't help but comment on the note of irony that the suggestion of full-time offices and full-time secretarial help should come from the representative of the seat that formerly was the block to any kind of administrative assistance like this. It is a matter of irony, and I only commented on it on that basis.

Interjection.

HON. MR. BARRETT: You know, Madam Member, these areas, in my opinion, are outside of politics, and the purpose of the motion, as I said, is to de-escalate the kind of primitive criticisms that essentially emanate around actions like this, if a government were to move in without this kind of debate. Obviously, once committed in sharing these needs in a form such as this, we can move to a more mature level of administrative practice in this province.

For my own self, I see no reason why an MLA should not have an office and a secretary in his home riding — none at all. But, Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that considering the atmosphere and the structure of this House, had the government done that without this kind of debate, the immediate response would have been, "There they go, the socialists are wasting money again." Now I am not saying that I don't welcome opposition — I look forward to it — but what I am saying is there are some levels of primitive opposition that have to be aired and dealt with openly in this House so that we can, over a period of time, hopefully raise ourselves to a more mature level of understanding of what are administrative matters and what are political matters. The plea for office space and the plea for secretarial help, I hope, will fall on receptive ears in the Treasury Board. Certainly they are receptive to me, no question about it, and I hope, with all-party understanding, we can facilitate that for MLAs.

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In terms of a phone call….

Interjection.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Yes, and we now have an all-party exchange that it's a good thing, so we've done something that's matured this place a little bit more. We have removed this kind of administrative thing which the Member for Point Grey (Mr. Gardom) complains about so rightly. We have removed this administrative thing from the kind of primitive analysis that it would have received in the past. Now we have agreed, we can move.

In terms of a phone call, there is a difference, and the Member for North Okanagan (Mrs. Jordan) is absolutely correct. We have two sittings of the House now, plus we are asking MLAs to move around the province. If it will be helpful for a person who needs information immediately on a problem to pick up the phone and call directly to Victoria because they can't reach their MLA, and some information given over a phone, purely on the reaction to the specific question, and on an administrative basis, then I think it would be useful. But if this service is to be instituted, it has to be instituted on the basis of understanding that the civil servant who answers the phone is not involved in politics in any way, or any shape, or any form.

When we came to office…I am just asked now for a catalogue of all the information officers that were on civil service staff. Each Minister had two or three information officers in his own department, and we can show you press releases coming out like the bushel load, and information officers and various ministries who never met each other. If you go through your estimates in the past, those information officers were added on, and added on, to each Ministry. I am not interested in that.

What I am looking for, out of this motion, is a simple understanding that if we proceed, and people are hired by the Civil Service Commission, they should be skilled, they should be pleasant, they should be warm and understanding on a phone call and not just say, "Go here or go there, or write here or write there," but actually have some system of BF — of bringing forward the phone call — and perhaps even phoning back and saying, "You called a week ago, have you got the information you need?" Now that's purely administrative, and if the House agrees on this kind of thing and this atmosphere, I see no reason why we can't move to both directions. Offices, stenographic assistance to the MLAs, an information service; but the debate was necessary, in my opinion, because of the past political atmosphere. I think maybe we have raised it a bit in the debate today.

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 37

NAYS — 12

PAIRED

HON. MR. BARRETT: Motion 2, Mr. Speaker.

MR. J.H. GORST (Esquimalt): Mr. Speaker, I move motion 2 standing in my name on the order paper. (See Appendix.)

Mr. Speaker, this motion deals with the social services tax on books, children's sports equipment and printed material from the Queen's Printer such as Hansard and The British Columbia Gazette. The tax on books and printed material, Mr. Speaker, has been referred to as a tax on Plato but not on Playboy. When a textbook is purchased, the purchaser must state at the time that the book is for school use. I find, after talking to booksellers in this area, that the largest selling book items are those dealing with self-improvement and the furthering of one's own value to the community.

I ask the question if this tax is really a tax on knowledge, recreation and self-improvement in the context of the use of the printed book today. I would say that the committee, when it comes to examine this question, should attempt to determine how much revenue is derived from the social services tax on these items under examination and if this tax discriminates against the low income earner and discourages those particular people from using these items, Mr. Speaker, I put the motion to the House.

M R. RICHTER: Mr. Speaker, the official opposition will support this motion. We only regret

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that the mover had not gone further with his motion and asked for the removal of the tax as it exists on the various items.

MRS. D. WEBSTER (Vancouver South): I'm very happy to see this motion before the House. I must say that, having gone back to UBC a few years ago myself, we were put in the position where, when we bought our books at the university book store, we were charged the social services tax and we were given a little slip showing what the tax was so that at the end of the year we could recover that money from the tax. Most of us didn't bother keeping the slips and some of them collected from others so that they could make a bonanza on it.

I think it's a very poor tax on books. During the fall season when university students are starting to university, you can go into any bookstore in Vancouver, and if you have to buy a book that happens to be something that is on a university curriculum they will ask you if you are going to university or not. If you say you are going to university they don't charge you the tax; if you say you're not, they charge you the tax. I think it's a discriminatory sort of thing. There are a great number of people who buy books for serious reading; there isn't any reason why they shouldn't have the privilege of buying books without tax the same as university students going to university or students going to high school. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. GARDOM: I'd like to ask the Hon. mover of this motion if he would accept an amendment to eliminate the tax. Let's get on with the business — everybody in the House is in support of the thing.

MR. SPEAKER: It would take more than that, as the Hon. Member knows.

HON. E. HALL (Provincial Secretary): We've read motion 2 very carefully and I want to advise the House that there are a number of proposals of a similar nature arriving, if not daily, certainly regularly to the Treasury Board. The Treasury Board are currently looking into some of the taxation policies and some of the effects of relief, such as is indicated in motion 2 at this current time. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, most people having spoken, I rise frankly as a member of the Treasury Board and I want to adjourn this debate until the next sitting of the House so that we can have a look at it.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

Motion approved.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Motion 3, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. Member for Mackenzie (Mr. Lockstead) is not in the House. Could this matter be deferred?

HON. MR. BARRETT: Motion 4, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. Member for Kamloops (Mr. G.H. Anderson) is not in the House.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Motion 5, Mr. Speaker.

MR. R.H. McCLELLAND (Langley): The purpose of this motion is quite simple. Since there was no parliamentary procedure for a Member to submit a minority report with the report of a select standing committee of the House, I prepared a minority opinion and sent it with correspondence to the Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance (Hon. Mr. Cocke) and to yourself and to the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Hall) detailing my concern with a couple of the items, two of the items in particular, which were contained in the report to the House from the Select Standing Committee on Social Welfare and Education, basically with relation to the announcement made by the Health Minister today with regard to the provision of equitable care for various levels of health care services. It was my concern that those levels of care should be treated equally from a financial point of view, because I felt that the people should be allowed to move from one level of health care to another without suffering any financial penalty. Also, if we are to treat our Mincome recipients on the same level as those other people in society and give them their Mincome payments without any strings attached, Mr. Speaker, I felt that that report should have read differently. Basically, Mr. Speaker, what I'd like to have is the opportunity to have that minority opinion and the correspondence with the Health Minister tabled in the House so that it could be entered on the records of this House.

HON. D.G. COCKE (Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance): Mr. Speaker, we're going to break a 20-year tradition today. There has never been a minority position filed in this House in the last 20 years. Never. I tried as a member of committees in the past to file minority positions. We've never been permitted that, but we're only too happy, Mr. Member, to let you file your report. But remember that this is breaking new ground for this House.

MR. SPEAKER: I want to remind the Hon. Member that it is contrary to standing orders, as they, exist, to file a minority report. This resolution, in effect, reverses that procedure in this particular instance but does not thereby change standing orders.

[ Page 301 ]

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this motion even though I agree with the principle which the Member explained as to why he did submit a minority report, but that isn't really germane to what we're saying. What is so important to me is: firstly, the Member has that right today, and the government has explained that he does; secondly, it explains to the House and to the public that, in fact, minority voices will be heard in this province; and the third point I can see is that maybe it enables the House to take a look at the need to change our standing orders, should we in fact have to "go through the time and procedure in the House so that a minority voice can be heard."

I would think that if the House learns from this little experience we can perhaps change the standing orders in the near future, which will make it routine, since we are able to have much more committee work, that any Member of that committee, of any party, can submit a minority report. I hope that will be the consequence of today's motion.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, I would also like to speak in support of this motion. I was the chairman of the committee of which the Hon. Member was a member. At the time when he filed with the committee his minority report, the committee was certainly quite willing to accept it because we feel that this is a democratic process.

In point of view, the issue of whether private hospitals should be permitted to make a profit off the sick was discussed by the full committee and there was a vote on it. As far as I can remember, and my memory may serve me wrong, this Member was the only person who voted in favour of that concept. The rest of the committee agreed with the report which was tabled, to the effect that no one should make a profit off sick people. And so I think that we should permit this Member to file his report. We should make it part of the record so that everyone should be able to read and know the stand that this particular Member took on this very vital issue of making a profit off people's illness. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: (Mike off.) …I'm sorry. As I explained, I must have the original resolution signed by the Hon. Member before me, not what is in the books, but the actual resolution.

AN HON. MEMBER: Well, it was filed with the Clerk.

MR. SPEAKER: The one that you file on the day of…

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. On the day resolutions are called and debated, the Member in charge of a resolution sends a copy signed by himself to the table and the Speaker.

MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, I'm sorry. I wasn't aware of procedure as well as I should have been. May I sign the motion and deliver it to the Clerk at this time?

MR. SPEAKER: Certainly. Tear it out and send it up.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Maybe somebody would like to talk for a minute.

MR. P.L. McGEER (Vancouver–Point Grey): I think I've seen it happen before.

HON. MR. BARRETT: He never expected to have it passed. (Laughter.)

MR. SPEAKER: If there are no further Members wishing to speak, the Hon. Member for Langley closes the debate.

MR. McCLELLAND: I'll be very brief, Mr. Speaker. I just want to remind the House that I, perhaps as no other Member on the former opposition did, used the proper procedure in the House in order to get this minority report filed. I want to thank the chairperson of that committee, because she's absolutely correct in her statement that the committee was to allow me to file this report before we realized that the procedure wasn't available, and I want to thank the Health Minister (Hon. Mr. Cocke) for his comments about accepting this report. All I want, Mr. Speaker, as the Member has pointed out, is to have my views known as well as everyone else's, and I stand behind them.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Motion 3.

MR. D.F. LOCKSTEAD (Mackenzie): I move, seconded by the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Dent) resolution 3 on the order paper. (See Appendix.)

If I may, a few words on this resolution, Mr. Speaker. First, I'd like to say that the resolution is worded in such a manner as to give the Minister of Education (Hon. Mrs. Dailly) flexibility in order to look into the situation of providing tuition fees or whatever for our students living in remote areas. It is my hope as well that Mr. Bremer, during the course of his investigations of the school system in British Columbia, will give this matter his serious

[ Page 302 ]

consideration.

In my riding, Mr. Speaker, which is some 260 miles long to the mainland coast, there are many, many small communities, isolated from each other by natural geographic boundaries. And because some of these communities are small, and because economic conditions are such for some of the people in these communities, it is almost impossible for some families to be able to afford to send their children to schools and to higher learning facilities in the lower mainland or elsewhere. I feel that tuition fees and living expenses, as well as travel expenses, should be provided for grades 11 and 12 and post-secondary students where the courses they desire to take are not available to them near their homes.

There's one particular huge forest industry in British Columbia which, in a small way, does recognize this situation, Mr. Speaker, and I'll just mention this briefly. This company provides scholarships of $500 to students who are deemed qualified. If these students have to commute, say from New Westminster, for instance, to Vancouver, they receive an extra $200. If the students have to live away from home, they receive an extra $400 as part of that scholarship. That is not very much, and I don't think it's nearly adequate, but it is a step in the right direction.

In particular, this resolution applies to native people not under the auspices of the federal government. The status person now receives from the federal government full tuition fees, travel costs, living allowances at Manpower rates and full medical coverage. Similar support should be extended to the sons and daughters of the 55,000 non-status people of this province. The First Citizens Fund now provides a maximum grant to a small proportion of the deserving non-status people, but the maximum amount is only $800 and is grossly inadequate in my opinion. It costs about $2,000 a year to attend university.

The Hon. Member for Vancouver South (Mrs. Webster), in her speech last week, discussed some of the problems and mentioned the deplorably low number of Indian people who complete grades 11 and 12 but do not continue to university. This in my opinion, Mr. Speaker, is primarily due to lack of funds. For these reasons, I hope that this House will support this resolution, and I thank you for your attention.

MR. D.M. PHILLIPS (South Peace River): I rise on behalf of the official opposition to support this motion. As the House is probably aware, I had a bill in the House last session in the spring that would have brought about the same end result. When the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Hall) closed debate on the motion at that time, he said that the government would be giving this some very, very serious consideration. I must say, Mr. Speaker, that actually I'm quite surprised the government hasn't moved sooner on this, I really am, because I thought they would have moved.

But in speaking in support of the motion, Mr. Speaker, I want to say again the same as the Member who has just been seated pointed out, that the high cost of transportation does work a hardship on many families who would like to see their children attend an institution of higher learning in the lower mainland. It's not only the cost of transportation, it's the cost of providing room and board.

Many students who would like to continue their education, after they graduate from secondary school, opt out because they know that their families cannot afford the extra cost. I feel that people in the remote areas who are actually pioneering — some of them are still pioneering in the remote areas of this province to open up this province so that the rest of the residents can live in the lap of luxury here in Victoria and in the lower mainland — should not only have access to institutions by way of financial support, but those people, as I have stated before, should be given a bonus.

But instead of that, Mr. Speaker, what do we have? We have the entire opposite situation where airlines in many instances, serving the remote areas, are ripping off the people who live in those remote areas. I refer to one airline, Canadian Pacific Airlines, whose charge for transportation between Vancouver and Fort St. John is by all means too much. I realize those airlines pioneered and did a lot to help open up the north but now they're making a good profit on those runs and they shouldn't be charging the people who live in those remote areas those high prices.

I was very interested, Mr. Speaker, to learn of the Minister of Education's (Hon. Mrs. Dailly) policy that she announced yesterday afternoon to take education to the more remote areas — in building up colleges in those areas. I'm certainly in favour of this.

HON. MR. COCKE: Maybe it would help you. (Laughter.)

MR. PHILLIPS: What's that? Yes, it might help me, I might go back to school, Mr. Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance (Hon. Mr. Cocke). That's a good idea. I think, as a matter of fact, there are quite a few of us in this House who could go back and have a little touch-up with our education.

Regardless of that, even if you take junior colleges to the remote areas, you are always going to have institutions like BCIT. I am sure that you are not planning on building two or three of those in remote areas. There will always be instances, regardless, where you will need to assist students to attend some of these institutions of higher learning.

I think we could also look forward, Mr. Speaker,

[ Page 303 ]

to having some of the students who maybe live on the lower mainland attending some of these colleges in the north. Not only would they go up there to take specific courses, but it would also give them the opportunity to go to the north country and understand what makes that country tick. Then they would have a greater appreciation of our province.

At the present time, for instance, the Dawson Creek Vocational School is the only vocational school that teaches an agricultural course. We have students from the lower mainland who go there, most of them under some other subsidized programme. We teach one of the best courses in pipeline welding in the Dawson Creek Vocational School and we should assist students from the lower mainland who want to go up there and take that course. We should assist them financially.

At the present time, under the federal Canada Manpower, people who are re-educating themselves to take different positions are subsidized by our federal government, both in transportation and in costs of living, to take these courses. Also, mechanics who want to upgrade themselves, or who want to go into an apprenticeship, are paid their transportation and board to come to the lower mainland to finish off this particular course. So we are doing this in some instances under the federal government, under Canada Manpower, at the present time.

We have stated before in this House, Mr. Speaker — I brought it up last year — that there is a shortage of dentists, a great shortage of dentists, in the Peace River area. And in some of the areas to the west of Prince George there is a shortage of doctors. I pointed out in this House that one of the reasons there is a shortage of these professional people in the north is that people who are born and brought up on the lower mainland who have access to the Faculty of Dentistry at UBC don't want to move out.

But, as I said in this House, if you take some of the students from the north, bring them down here and let them have the opportunity to learn dentistry or medicine, a large percentage of them — and I can get figures to bear this out — will return to the north country because they are acclimatized, they like the life up there, they have been brought up there. This will, in the long run, relieve the critical shortage of qualified physicians and dentists in the north.

So, Mr. Speaker, I certainly want to support this resolution again and, in supporting it, I want to urge the government to take some immediate action, because the problem is critical at the present time. The Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance (Hon. Mr. Cocke) said that he recognized the problem. He wanted to do something about it. I know he is receiving letters from some of my constituents about the shortage of dentists in the area.

This would help, I feel, if you take — you know, it's the old saying, "You can take the boy from the farm but you can't take the farm out of the boy." Well, if you take students from the north, bring them down here and train them, they will return. There is flexibility written into this motion, Mr. Speaker, and I hope this government will take immediate action.

MR. McGEER: I was just afraid for a moment there that the Treasury Board would be cutting off the NDP backbenchers before we had a chance on the opposition side to support them properly.

I want to thank the Member for bringing forward this resolution. The Member may not know this but this has been a very long-standing policy of a number of parties in this House, particularly the Liberal Party. It was Ray Perrault, the former leader of the party, who first brought it forward in 1960. It had been debated many times in the House when I first arrived in 1963. I can remember, Mr. Speaker, the days when the NDP supported this resolution.

Yes, I do, Mr. Speaker, very clearly. That was one of the many things they were going to get right at when they were government. The Premier — he was going to do something about it. All those northern Members for the NDP — they were going to do something about it. But do you know who wasn't going to do anything about it? That was the Member for South Peace River (Mr. Phillips).

I remember when he sat down where this Member was sitting — when those of us on the opposition side were asking for this very same resolution. He was deaf at that time. Couldn't have been less interested in equalization grants for university students.

MR. PHILLIPS: Oh, you'd better go back and look at your Hansard. I got up and supported it.

MR. McGEER: Yes, once you got on the opposition side.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. McGEER: I think it is an excellent idea, and everybody is for it until they have to put up the money. That's when their enthusiasm begins to wane. But, Mr. Speaker, just yesterday we went over the figures — they weren't denied — that the government will have $2 billion in revenue this year. The Premier could have increased his budget by $270 million. He can still bring in a supplementary budget. No programme, including this one — and I say this to the introducer of the resolution — no programme, including this one, need be held back in British Columbia for lack of funds — perhaps for lack of will.

I think that at a time when the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi) can have a desk that sleeps

[ Page 304 ]

three, the students who live in northern British Columbia can have a subsidy to improve their education.

Maybe in the future we might be able to get a higher level of debate in this very legislative chamber.

HON. G.R. LEA (Minister of Highways): I rise to support this motion. I can see where this kind of debate has far-reaching effects. Already we have the Member for South Peace River (Mr. Phillips) a member of the Social Credit party, asking that the government take over CPA to make things more economical in air fares for the north. We would like to thank you for that. CPA won't thank you for that. You will lose a little money.

Interjection.

HON. MR. LEA: I rise with mixed emotions for this motion, Mr. Speaker, because, as an uneducated bumpkin from the north, I have had the opportunity since coming down to rub elbows with all the educated people in the south. I'm not sure whether I'm speaking for the people in the north when I speak of the opportunity to come down and have that higher learning.

When I look at this House — you know, you have to look at the party breakdown. I would suppose that in the Social Credit Party with their 10 Members and in the New Democratic Party with our 38 by ratio we may have less people of higher learning than in the other parties. And look how badly we have done, compared with the parties with all the higher learning. It's mixed emotions.

But, seriously, I think that this is a topic that does cross party lines and the lines between cabinet and the backbench and private Members, because it really is a motion that deals with rural Members and rural situation and urban Members and urban situations.

For years in this House when the opposition parties were trying to get this through, on this side of the House, sitting on the cabinet benches, were many rural cabinet Ministers who did have deaf ears to the plea. I am hopeful, as a rural cabinet Minister and Member of this House, that my urban colleagues will listen — even those who are from the rural areas — and will join with me. And those in New Westminster and Surrey — I'm sure they will join me in asking for this motion to be accepted.

There are many reasons why we can't keep a stable work force in the north. One of the reasons is the lack of opportunity for higher learning. People there who are working and have children who are ready to enter university oftentimes leave so that they can move to an urban centre to take advantage of the university situations in Victoria and, more specifically, in Vancouver.

In a time when we are trying to disperse our population throughout British Columbia so that we don't have a congested-population situation on the lower mainland and Vancouver Island, I think this is one small way, although an important way, that we can get people to live in the north.

Right now we have a 35 and 40 per cent labour turnover in the north. In some situations and in some industries it is as high as 60 and 65 per cent turnover. We must work to stop that.

I agree with the Hon. Member for South Peace River (Mr. Phillips) that the best way to get professional people to stay in the north is to bring people from the north south, train them, and I think they will go back. But when we get urban people coming up for a short time, they don't really have the interests of the rural scene in mind. They stay for only a short time and then they leave. I think it would be to the benefit of all rural British Columbia if we could get our rural people in, get them trained and then have them come back to rural British Columbia where they will live with a certain amount of happiness. Because that is where they are from and that is where they would like to remain. So I support this motion wholeheartedly.

MR. WALLACE: Coming as I do from the rural riding of Oak Bay, I also would like to support the motion. The point has been made, but it cannot be repeated too often, that our society is lacking in professionally-trained people who should be available to serve in the north, preferably on a voluntary basis. But I cannot share the optimism of the Minister of Highways, who has just spoken, that if you bring the rural individuals to the city and train them as doctors or dentists or dieticians or some similar profession, I don't think it follows that they will go back. That really isn't something that we need debate, but it is well worth trying.

The fact is that undoubtedly the person in the rural area as of now does not get a fair break compared to his city neighbour, and that's the point we're debating. There seems little doubt to me that every incentive, both financial and otherwise, should be made available to see that the resident of the rural area does get the same opportunity of education, period. Never mind higher education.

I had an inquiry from a school teacher the other day wondering how the schools in the rural area can cope with the children of immigrants who don't speak a word of English. The point was made very clearly to me that, in the bigger centres and the urban centres, there usually can be one school in the general area which can provide the kind of instruction in English to some of these children who land here from different countries. The particular country this incident related to was four children from India. The parents could speak English but the four children couldn't speak a word of English. And this example

[ Page 305 ]

wasn't so far away; the gentleman who raised the matter with me was in Campbell River.

It just occurs to me that maybe not only is it a question of giving financial help and assistance, it is also a question of looking in a wider spectrum at the whole concept of education in the rural areas to be sure that services and facilities be made available so that, as far as is possible, the child doesn't have to leave the rural area or come to the city. Who knows that it is an advantage for a person who has grown up in a rural area to come to a city? He may have no wish to come to a city, with the mess some of the cities are in, the exposure to crime and alcoholism and drug addiction and goodness knows what. I would have to question, if I lived in a rural area, whether it was fair that my son or daughter had to leave my home community.

Again we are talking in general terms. It is quite obvious you can't have a college and a university in every rural city, but I think the point has been raised in this House before — and I welcome the Minister of Education's statement just yesterday — that indeed regional college systems will be expanded. There will be this very genuine attempt to widen not only the scope of college education, but to bring the colleges a bit closer to some of the citizens in outlying areas.

As far as the training of professional people is concerned, I think this is also intimately related to this motion. I can only conclude that children living in the distant areas have less opportunity to be accepted in faculties in UBC. Furthermore, I hope this motion will serve to encourage the government to continue the programme it has already announced of enlarging the medical school at UBC — and someone else commented on the lack of dentists up north.

So I would certainly support this particular motion, but I would have been a little happier, Mr. Speaker, had the government brought in some form of specific legislation. I think that it is a pity where every Member of the House, I would think, supports the concept, and yet we debate it in the form of a motion from a government backbencher. I would just say with regret that I think the Minister of Education should have known long ago, and does indeed know, that proper legislation could have been implemented this session.

But nevertheless, I certainly support the concept.

MR. H.D. DENT (Skeena): Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the motion that this government consider the advisability of implementing legislation to provide equalization grants for students living in the remote areas of the province.

A number of arguments have already been put forward. It has also been mentioned that some steps, both by the federal and the provincial governments, have been taken along the way to try to achieve some kind of equalization of opportunity for education.

However, I just want to reiterate one or two of the arguments and then, briefly add a couple more, because this is a problem I've been concerned with for a long, long time.

I started university in 1949; I went for two years and I lived at home in Vancouver. I worked in a gas station part-time and some of the time in a cookie factory, making chocolate eclairs. Now I was very lucky. Not only did I get some free chocolate eclairs, but I had the opportunity to go to university by getting some money, together with what my parents were able to put up.

I was able to go, but it was touch and go whether I could make it or not. And it was because I lived in the city that I was able to go. I could live at home and I was provided with free room and board and so on.

Now there are many young people in the country who can't do that. Even if they could make chocolate eclairs, they still couldn't hack it. And so it is essential that they get some kind of financial help so that, together with any part-time jobs they might have or other things they might do, they can afford to go.

I taught in the interior for many years, in the Okanagan, in the Cariboo and also in the north, and it was the same situation all over. There were many young people who graduated from grade 12 with high marks and tremendous potential, and yet they are still sitting up there, most of them doing jobs far beneath their potential in terms of contribution to society. They should have gone to university and they should be making a far better and bigger contribution than they are making.

Now there are three other arguments I just want to mention. One is that we live in a world-competitive economy. The fact is that educationally Canada is falling behind some of the other countries, and that means we are going to fall behind technologically. Therefore, it is very important that we consider our young people as part of, you might say, the national development or the development of our total economy and of our potential culturally and so on, so that they are educated to make the contribution and we will take our proper place in the world situation.

A second point is that, as each individual student goes up each step — I noticed this: I went back to school twice. I went '49 – '51, I was out of university for a while and then I went back again a few years later. And the thing that I noticed was that each time you went a little bit higher on the educational ladder, more opportunities opened up to you. Anyone who has gone through an educational process knows very well that, as you go a little bit further ahead educationally, the options that are open to you for employment and for cultural opportunities increase. I think that is easily the most important human argument, that all young people in this province

[ Page 306 ]

should be able to avail themselves of an educational opportunity so that they can have the same options open to them, economically for employment and culturally, that everyone else has got; at least so that they can develop to their highest potential. Thank you.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. Members, I cannot, under the duties of my office, proceed without referring to the standing orders and pointing out to the Hon. Members that the resolution would be out of order in the hands of a private Member and without a message from His Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, under standing order 66.

I remind the Hon. Members that it is not merely a question of approval from a Minister of the Crown, but this requires the expenditure of moneys and it is prohibited to the Legislature to do so by reason of the British North America Act, Section 54, which first recites the provisions relating to the expenditure of public moneys for the House of Commons, and I quote from that section 54 of the BNA Act, 1867:

"It shall not be lawful for the House of Commons to adopt or pass any Vote, Resolution, Address, or Bill for the Appropriation of any Part of the Public Revenue, or of any Tax or Import, to any Purpose that has not been first recommended to that House by Message of the Governor General in the Session in which such Vote, Resolution, Address, or Bill is proposed."

Section 90 of the BNA Act, which was adopted by this province in the terms of union and which is adopted or constitutionalized in section 2 in the Revised Statutes of British Columbia, section 90, also says that:

"The following Provisions of (the British North America) Act respecting the Parliament of Canada, namely — the Provisions relating to Appropriation and Tax Bills, the Recommendation on Money Votes, the Assent to Bills, the Disallowance of Acts, and the Signification of Pleasure on Bills reserved — shall extend and apply to the Legislatures of the several Provinces as if those Provisions were here re-enacted and made applicable in Terms to the respective Provinces and the Legislatures thereof, with the Substitution Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, for the Governor General, of the Governor General for the Queen…"

Secretary of State, and so on.

Therefore, I must rule the resolution in its present form out of order in line with all the previous decisions of the House.

HON. L. NICOLSON (Minister Without Portfolio): Point of order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: On the point of order.

HON. MR. NICOLSON: In this ruling, the motion calls upon the government to "consider the advisability of," and does not call for expenditures of the Crown.

MR. SPEAKER: That's quite correct. If the Hon. Member will refer to a vast number of motions which have been put before this House over the years, almost from its inception, where a motion requests consideration or advisability, it is out of order under standing order 66. Those decisions are available right up to the most recent date. I cannot thereby carve out a new formula unless the constitution is changed.

MR. GARDOM: Well, I'd just like to suggest one thing perhaps, Mr. Speaker. With the unanimous consent of the House perhaps we could have an expression of sympathy for the House Leader. (Laughter.)

HON. MR. BARRETT: Thank goodness we're not bound by all other precedents.

Thank you for your ruling, Mr. Speaker. Resolution No. 4. (See appendix.)

MR. SMITH: Point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: On that point of order, you mean?

MR. SMITH: Yes, Mr. Speaker, earlier this afternoon the Premier as House Leader called for resolution No. 3 and he called for resolution No. 4 in rotation of the way they appear on the order paper.

MR. SPEAKER: They're supposed to be called in order, right.

MR. SMITH: At the time the person who was to move resolution No. 3 was not in the House he called for resolution No. 4. That Member was not in the House when he called for it. I believe if you refer to standing order 31 on page 9 of our standing orders, you will find that in dealing with this question, where a resolution or a motion is called and no one stands to their feet, I would suggest to you to move adjournment of the debate to the next sitting of the House on behalf of the Member who was not present. It would require unanimous consent now of this House to go back to resolution No. 4.

MR. SPEAKER: Well, I point out to the Hon. Member that, as a courtesy to the Members who were absent the motion was allowed to stand and no one objected at the time. Therefore, it follows, if you read standing order No. 31, which says:

"(2) Orders not proceeded with when called, upon the like request, may be allowed to stand,

[ Page 307 ]

retaining their precedence; otherwise they shall be dropped and be placed on the Order Paper for the next sitting after those of the same class at a similar stage."

I could have allowed the motion to be dropped from the order paper but there was no objection, and, as a courtesy to the Hon. Members for the House — which I hope I can continue — when a Member is absent from the House I presume that when he returns the Members will not object if his motion is then called.

MR. SMITH: Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm not objecting to the fact that the Member should be allowed to present his motion. All I suggest to you is that under the standing orders of the House as I read them, the House Leader should ask for unanimous leave of the House to return to motion No. 4 because of the fact that ordinarily it would drop from the order paper.

MR. SPEAKER: It says: …"otherwise they will disappear from the Order Paper." I'm hoping something will happen before they disappear from the order paper.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, may I ask unanimous consent of the House to call motion No. 4 — although I don't believe that's necessary and I don't know if that's your ruling.

MR. SPEAKER: In any event, I will ask for that leave. Shall leave be granted?

Leave granted.

MR. SPEAKER: Proceed. Motion no. 4.

MR. G.H. ANDERSON (Kamloops): I want to move motion No. 4 standing in my name. Although it's not necessary, the Hon. Second Member for Vancouver South (Mrs. Webster) wishes to second it.

This is one of the cases, Mr. Speaker, where a law was passed at a time when it was needed, perhaps didn't go far enough, but was a good step forward at that time to cover a particular problem. The particular Act, the Small Loans Act, Canada, which was passed many years ago, has a limit of $1,500. As long as someone goes to a lending agency and wants to borrow less than $1,500, he runs into no problems as far as exorbitant rates of interest or exorbitant conditions or writing costs or anything that they want to tag on to it as extra charges since these are strictly controlled by the law.

But the time has passed when this should be left at $1,500. I feel it should be raised much higher than it is because of today's higher costs and inflation, and because there are many, many people in British Columbia who are approaching finance companies particularly and are being talked into taking more than the $1,500 limit, in case it should be required.

They are asked if their furnace might need repairs or their television set might need repairs. Rather than settle for this amount or to pay off another small loan they have, they could borrow $1,600, $1,800, $2,100 and pay very little more over the period of time. In this way the company avoids entirely the provisions of the Small Loans Act, Canada.

It has come to my attention, Mr. Speaker, many times in my riding. I know that the standard answer of the finance company is that we don't force anyone to take any money. Mr. Speaker, if it was constitutionally possible, I'd like to introduce a bill in the House, or urge the government to introduce a bill in the House, to do away with finance companies altogether. I think they're a blight on the whole landscape, not only in British Columbia but in all of Canada.

They're deliberately putting on extra charges after talking some applicant for a loan into getting over the $1,500 limit; and for this he suffers for a long time thereafter. Even if he should be able to get a hold of cheaper money at a better rate of interest and go down to pay off the note completely and be clear of these people, he finds there is a charge even to do this.

I wish the Hon. Member for North Vancouver–Capilano (Mr. Brousson) was in the House today after hearing him speak on his attitude and opinion on some of the — as it's been said today — rip-offs that are pulled in the mortgage field. This is the type of rip-off and direct evasion of the law that's been carried out in this province time after time after time by these finance companies on people who are unaware of what is being done to them until it's too late.

For that reason I urge the House to unanimously endorse this motion.

MRS. WEBSTER: Mr. Speaker, as seconder of this motion I'm very, very happy to speak on it too. I think the Member for Kamloops (Mr. G.H. Anderson) has brought out quite a number of very good points. But let me say that it distresses me when I think that people get themselves into debts to such an extent that they have to go to a social worker or someone else to help them find some way of being able to straighten out their affairs so that they can once more operate in a viable fashion.

Loan companies are becoming such lucrative businesses now and they're doing it absolutely on the backs of the poor. Their interest charges are far too high and the poor people, because they have some of the same needs as people in the middle — and upper-income groups, when they find that they cannot borrow any more than a small fund, they go to these loan companies. So actually, the loan

[ Page 308 ]

companies are being predators who are preying on poverty.

Secondly, you have only to turn on your television occasionally, you've only to listen to radio from time to time to hear the advertisements. The ones that come on with the greatest frequency are the ones that are determined to pressure the public; their business is growing so rapidly. One group of such businesses is the large loan companies.

The finance companies that pressure people make it sound exceedingly attractive. I can easily understand people who are in debt. They hear that their debts can be consolidated in one loan — all they have to do is pay so much per month. But they forget that everytime they do that the interest goes up and up and up.

This is the sort of thing that a bill of this kind could prevent to at least some extent for people who really need cash in a way to be able to finance themselves.

HON. P.F. YOUNG (Minister Without Portfolio): I rise in support of this motion. Last spring I was privileged to attend a conference in Quebec city of Ministers of consumer affairs from all of the provinces of Canada. All of these Ministers representing these portfolios complained of the same feature in the Small Loans Act, Canada and all wanted the $1,500 limit raised — and raised substantially — for the very reasons that the Hon. Member for Kamloops (Mr. G.H. Anderson) and the Hon. Member for Vancouver South (Mrs. Webster) have stated.

I know they would appreciate the thrust of the unanimous passage of such a resolution from this House in British Columbia. It would strengthen their hands and I am sure that they would follow through. If all 10 provinces can give this sort of direction to the federal government, we can eliminate this very grave problem.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, by leave of the House I would like to proceed to the public bills in the hands of private Members.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, I call Bill 13.

CROWN PROCEEDINGS ACT

MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, there is not one law reform–minded individual or law-minded group in the province who hasn't espoused and advocated, almost to the point of coming to blows with the government of this province, for the need for, and unqualified democratic right of the citizen to have the same rights against his government as his government has against him.

I think it is preposterous, Mr. Speaker, to find in a so-called contemporary, democratic society — and this socialistic one at that — whereby the government is making continuous references to the rights of the little man (he needs some rights and less lip service,) but he is not given that almost legally-sacred right of access to the courts of our land. I say that by continuing to deny this right to the citizen, we have merely done one thing in the Province of British Columbia: we have replaced the right flank of despotism by the left cheek of despotism. I move second reading of Bill 13.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, may I ask for your rulings on the appropriateness of this bill being in the hands of a private Member?

MR. SPEAKER: I have to rule upon it, pursuant to my duties, and…

MR. GARDOM: With reluctance.

MR. SPEAKER: With great reluctance, naturally, since it is my bill that you have stolen from me. (Laughter.) However, those were other days, and now I must rule upon it in view of the fact that it does affect the Crown prerogatives. In that sense, it is out of order. The decision on this is found in…

HON. MR. HALL: In many places.

MR. SPEAKER: In many places, including the Speakers' Decisions, volume 3, page 17 and page 19. If the Hon. Member will peruse those with me, I think he will agree that my decision is right.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, may I call then on the next order of business which shall be Bill 14.

BRITISH COLUMBIA OMBUDSMAN ACT

MR. GARDOM: I would just observe, Mr. Speaker, that the Speaker, when he was a Member of the House, followed the suggestion from Mr. George Gregory, and Mr. McFarlane also utilized it. We are delighted to see that over the years the Hon. Speaker saw the wisdom of the Liberal ways, and he, himself, decided it was a most acceptable measure. Would the Speaker only have more power in the government than he has today, I am sure that we, perhaps, would have a Crown proceedings Act in the Province of British Columbia.

Bill 14, Mr. Speaker, deals with the establishment of a commissioner of grievances. This is another plank in the programme for protection and assistance of the individual: an ombudsman to help Joe Q. Citizen wade through the morass of bureaucratic delay through the webs and the tangles of regulations and

[ Page 309 ]

red tape. I say, give the people of British Columbia a break and let them have a trained, staffed, politically-independent servant. This should be denied no longer.

The British Columbia Human Rights Council has made some very interesting observations concerning this and they have circulated statements to all of the Members, drawing to their attention that three years ago in their conference on an ombudsman entitled, "Let Justice Be Done", they very, very much supported this measure. They say that during the three-year period the population in B.C. has increased, government departments have multiplied; business and industry have expanded, and community institutions have become more elaborate. By virtue of that, as well as other reasons, this has resulted in a far more complex society with many more problems evident in all sectors.

It is interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that the patron of the British Columbia Human Rights Council is the Hon. Attorney General (Hon. Mr. Macdonald). I would say that he's some saint. He has just been like Icarus; he's flown too close to the sun, and he's really flopped on this issue. I move second reading.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, may I draw your attention to section 8, 9 and 10 of the bill and ask you to rule again on the appropriateness of the bill being in the hands of a private Member.

MR. SPEAKER: The bill does require public expenditure in section 8. That's a departure from the bill which I drafted when I was a Member. But in view of that circumstance, it has been ruled on a number of times in this House, and I cannot depart from the Speakers' Decisions on that point because of standing orders.

HON. MR. HALL: Bill 15, Mr. Speaker.

BRITISH COLUMBIA AUDITOR GENERAL

MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, it wasn't possible under the earlier administration to secure proper and detailed accountability of this province's revenues and expenditures, and specifics of its financial direction. Unfortunately, the present government has not cured the problem but compounded it.

We find the present government is taxing more. The costs of its operations are burgeoning and it is bringing in far more open-ended and financially unprojected programmes then in the history of the province. We find commissions taking tangents all over the lot. Boards are operating almost totally under regulations. Contracts have been let without tender. New Democratic Party supporters are slipping into the public service. Crown Corporations are acting almost wholly within themselves. These corporate giants are not necessarily going to be "jolly green giants." They are without any effective legislative check or balance or the availability of proper scrutiny and public accountability.

I would just like to suggest to the House that there are more chicken houses than ever before being created here and that usually brings in more foxes. But we still don't have a Fido. That's what we need — a good, well-trained and completely politically-impartial and independent watchdog with power to shepherd inquiry into the finances of the province and nip in the bud any abuses of government spending, improper accounting practices, lack of value, and overall financial inexpertise.

I would like to move adjournment of this debate.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, I would like to call Bill 16, and I may be a little quicker on my feet. (Laughter.)

MR. SPEAKER: Bill 16. The same Hon. Member.

PUBLIC SCRUTINY

MR. GARDOM: I'm watching to see if he is going to move, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, years ago, prior to his principles becoming props for office, there was a Member of this House who had a little bit of snow on the roof, but he was very young in spirit and he had a lot of reform in his heart. He was reasonably muscled for action. He advocated the very legitimate theory that government shouldn't be done in the dark; everything should be right smack out open in the sunshine. It was a very simple and effective premise. It was borrowed from another jurisdiction, but all of the Members, Mr. Speaker, really warmed to the suggestion that the sunshine should be let in. The writers and the editorialists and all of those who live by the lip very much heralded his stance.

But I can tell you one thing, the warmth from such esteem must have melted him, because, much like the water did in the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz, the great stance of this former reformer apparently has disappeared. He hasn't moved an inch since he got into the driver's seat.

As I said before, we have a government more in the increase in the field of regulation, in the field of control, and in bureaucratizing.

But still we find government done in the dark. Still we find boards and commissions and tribunals being permitted to secretly meet and consult, and secretly report and investigate. Now first of all we had proposed in this House, Mr. Speaker, the sunshine law. Then in the spring session we had the sunshine law revisited, and I see that we have today, under Bill 16, the sunshine law again revisited.

[ Page 310 ]

I do hope, Mr. Speaker, in the very unlikely event that this bill is not successful today, that we shall have to have the sunshine law resuscitated once more in the future.

HON. MR. HALL: As took place in the fall session, the Member was given assurances that the government is looking at this kind of attitude — the thrust of the principle of the bill. Indeed I think that many of the actions of the government have gone a long way towards meeting the paragraph that starts off the bill. However, the Attorney General (Hon. Mr. Macdonald) is working diligently on this.

Mr. Speaker, I move adjournment of this debate to the next sitting of the house.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. HALL: Second reading of Bill 17, Mr. Speaker.

GUARANTEED
MINIMUM INCOME PLAN

MR. RICHTER: Mr. Speaker, in giving the purport of Bill 17, Guaranteed Minimum Income Plan, this Act would amend the Guaranteed Minimum Income Assistance Act in order to provide a safeguard for thousands upon thousands of British Columbia pensioners who did not receive the benefit of increases for the old-age security supplement paid by the federal government.

The effect of not passing this federal supplement along to the pensioners of British Columbia resulted in over 10,000 pensioners being stripped from the Mincome rolls after the previous, approximately $17 increase granted last year — obscured as it was in the provincial Treasury.

This amendment would ensure protection for the British Columbia residents under Mincome by making it an obligation of the provincial government to have any federal increases reflected immediately in an increase in the Mincome payments to British Columbia pensioners. Surely, Mr. Speaker, this is only fair.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, I ask you to rule on the section 2, which puts an impost on the Crown.

MR. SPEAKER: I note that this was ruled out of order on the same grounds last session, as found in the Journals, page 41, 1972.

HON. MR. HALL: Second reading of Bill 18, Mr. Speaker.

GUARANTEED INCOME ACT

MR. RICHTER: Mr. Speaker, in giving the purport of Bill 18, Guaranteed Income Act, once again we offer this Act to this House. The Social Credit government was the first government in Canada to endorse the principle of guaranteed income plans for all Canadians. Indeed, at successive federal-provincial conferences this idea was urged upon the Government of Canada.

In presenting this bill again, Members of the House will recognize that the inflationary spiral has been such that the previous floor set on the guaranteed income in the bill presented this spring has risen to reflect an 8 per cent increase in the cost of living index. With respect to the senior citizens over 65, to meet the impact of the inflation would now require an 8 per cent increase over the $225 originally presented with the bill last spring. This would bring the guaranteed income proposal, with respect to senior citizens, to $243 — reflecting the cost of living index between June of 1972 and June of 1973.

Further, since that time, particularly in the area of food, shelter and clothing, further increases have taken place and it is now proposed to lift, then, under this bill the guaranteed income support for those persons over age 65 to $250 per month.

Members will recognize as well that the amendment proposed in section 4 made it mandatory for the Lieutenant-Governor in council to increase the ceiling amount specified in the statute to reflect growth in the gross national product as applicable to British Columbia, and to reflect as well any increase in the food, shelter and clothing components associated with the cost of living index as determined by Statistics Canada.

Surely it is incumbent upon this Legislature to handle the inflation question in a straightforward way, eliminating all the red tape associated with Mincome, discharging our responsibilities to ensure that the inflationary tactics of the government do not cause harm to fall upon those who cannot meet the problems of inflation by themselves.

I move the second reading, Mr. Speaker.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, I want to rise on a point of order to ask you to rule on this bill in the hands of a private Member. Normally we say it would provide an impost on the Crown. The trouble is, when I look at section 2, I see that a family unit consisting of an individual and spouse would only get $4,320; we're already giving him $4,800. So maybe it's less than an impost on the Crown.

However, I do think it's out of order in the hands of a private Member.

MR. SPEAKER: I think it purports to place an impost on the Crown other than the present Act — or on the people.

[ Page 311 ]

HON. MR. HALL: Maybe on the people.

MR. SPEAKER: I had better rule this out of order in view of the fact that in several sections it does impose a burden on the people and an impost, contrary to standing order 67.

HON. MR. HALL: Second reading of Bill 19, Mr. Speaker.

INCOME TAX ACT

MR. RICHTER: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the mirth of the Hon. Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Hall), particularly on such a serious matter. However that's what we can expect from that side of the House.

In giving the purport of Bill 19, An Act to Amend the Income Tax Act, Mr. Speaker, I say that there is no good reason why the owners of homes should not have available to them the same income tax provision as those that can use commercial-industrial rental costs as an offset against income tax or corporation tax.

There's no good reason either why the provincial government cannot enter into an agreement with the federal government under the Income Tax Act to permit the British Columbia agreement to contain a clause which would bring relief from the provincial income tax to residents of British Columbia by permitting them to exempt property taxation and interest payments on mortgages for the purpose of calculating their income tax.

Surely, Mr. Speaker, the province could take the initiative here and provide a welcome, further-forward initiative towards the encouragement of owner/occupier of a residential dwelling. Mr. Speaker, we on this side of the House will continue to emphasize home ownership rather than the provision of housing owned by the state and rented or leased to an individual.

Perhaps the greatest foundation upon which our individual freedom rests is the feeling of security which comes in relation to the state when the individual owns his own home. This idea has been expressed throughout centuries of common law in the idea that man's home is his castle, and was his guarantee against first the lords of the feudal England and now the often overpowering persons of the modern industrial estate. I move second reading, Mr. Speaker.

HON. MR. HALL: For the same reason, Mr. Speaker, I think this bill is out of order.

MR. SPEAKER: The bill purports to interfere with the revenues of the Crown and, by exempting certain persons, should that be achieved under the Act proposed, would place a further burden upon other citizens without the sanction of a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor. In view of that circumstance I must, under standing order 67, rule it out of order.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, may I ask leave of the House now to proceed to Public Bills and Orders?

Leave granted.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, in asking leave of the House to return to motions there was no clear reason why we should finish with two motions still on the order paper.

MR. SPEAKER: We'd have to obtain leave at this stage of the House since we passed a motion, if I recall correctly, moving on to bills. We've certainly got leave of the House to move on to bills. We'd have to have leave again.

MR. WALLACE: I was trying to speak on a point of order before the vote was taken.

HON. MR. HALL: I wonder if the Member would accept my assurance that we'll be having more private Members' days. The motion has not been on the paper very long. I don't think many Members have had an opportunity to judge its full worth. Indeed, it was because of the presence of the motion before yours that I stopped to allow all Members to have sufficient time to individually look at it and caucus the motion.

MR. WALLACE: Well, Mr. Speaker, the point is that there is some urgency, and perhaps the Minister would comment. There's some reasonable degree of urgency attached to discussion of the Minister of Health's (Hon. Mr. Cocke's) motion, No. 6, (See appendix) and it would seem to me, in the light of time considerations and the element of urgency that we should consider it now.

MR. SPEAKER: I think, in view of the circumstances, I'd have to have the unanimous leave of the House, since we've departed from that order of business. I'll ask on behalf of the Member: shall leave be granted?

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, in that case, I've no wish to impede the progress of the House at all — other than that I think we should give lots of these things full consideration. I therefore call motion 6, Mr. Speaker.

HON. MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, motion 6 is put

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to the House at this time merely to change the wording of the motion that was passed at the last session of the legislature in order to enable the committee to do their work. It was the unanimous position of all those people of the Vietnam committee that we could not work with the motion worded as it was. And therefore I'm putting this now and with an assurance that there'll be a report from the committee in the very near future.

MR. WALLACE: I appreciate the attitude of the Hon. Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mr. Hall) and the manner in which he responded to my request.

The House should realize that the committee deliberating on the proposal to provide $2.25 million to help the children of Vietnam was, as indeed the House was, very eager and unanimous to proceed with the implementation of some programme which would meet the terms of the resolution. And I should say, Mr. Speaker, that this committee has laboured on at least four occasions for many hours listening to people who have been in Vietnam and who have had a considerable degree of experience, not only in providing help to that area but in the whole field of providing help in areas where there has been warfare or disasters all over the world.

The committee soon discovered in its deliberations that the original motion referred rather specifically to the building of facilities. In the evidence that came before the committee, our original impression, when the motion was passed in this House, was that in fact warfare had come to an end in Vietnam and that a truce had been reached. It was soon brought to our attention that the situation was very unstable and that indeed a great deal of disruption and destruction was continuing in that country. For this reason, initially, we felt we would not be meeting the responsibility of this House or the interests of the taxpayers of British Columbia by providing money for buildings which might be no sooner constructed than blown up into little pieces. So that the emphasis on the building of facilities created something of a difficulty in our early deliberations.

Beyond that, we proceeded to hear evidence, as I say, from various people who were well acquainted with the Vietnam situation, who pointed out to us the difficulty I guess which foreign aid of any kind has encountered from the first year it started. That difficulty was in getting assurances that the money spent would in fact reach the recipients for whom it was intended.

The corruption in Vietnam, and particularly the corruption of the South Vietnamese government under the presidency of President Thieu, is something of which no objective individual could be very proud. The press reports as recently as September 14 show that the government in South Vietnam is very corrupt but that President Thieu is not about to change his ways. For this reason, once again, this all-party committee — and I'd like to emphasize that this all-party committee worked on a non-partisan basis as well as any of the other all-party committees to which credit has been paid — tried to find a way of implementing what this House had unanimously sought to implement for the children of Vietnam.

We had two very substantial problems: the fact that the situation was not a peaceful one, despite the supposed truce; and secondly, the corruption in the country is of such dimensions apparently that we would have considerable difficulty finding means of getting the help to the children.

We also had to decide, and I think we decided wisely, that we were dealing with three separate areas, the north, the south and the provisional revolutionary government, and that it would be only reasonable that we try to ensure that help reached all three segments of that country.

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order.

MR. SPEAKER: On a point of order?

MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I don't wish to stop the Hon. Member for Oak Bay, but the committee has not completed its deliberations. We have had one in camera session and I expect that there will be further meetings. I'm afraid that his remarks to this House are extending beyond those which one would expect in the circumstances.

MR. SPEAKER: If there is a committee sitting on this question at the present time, I would recommend to the Hon. Members that the debate on this question be adjourned if it bears upon…

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: It doesn't?

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: Well I'm concerned also. May I point out while we're on the point of order, that the resolution itself is somewhat vague in that it does not later tie down for anyone, in this House or out of it, what is meant by "personnel and/or materiel as indicated by the policy developed by a special committee of British Columbia legislators and representatives of interest groups, such as the Red Cross."

The wording of this is rather vague and there's no way of identifying it from the resolution, such as if it said, "policy tabled in this House on a certain date," or in some way identified it for the purposes of the House and the debate of this resolution. Would the

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Hon. Minister of Health (Mr. Cocke), on the point of order, indicate if this is clear?

HON. MR. COCKE: Well, Mr. Speaker, on the point of order, and of course not having that clarity of legal mind, it seems to me that we're tied in with the $2.25 million; I think that pretty well sums it up. But at the same time, you don't want to be tied up to that amount. You have no alternative but to not exceed that amount but maybe we don't want to go that high. And so it's up to this committee to supervise very carefully the expenditure of those moneys. That really is the intent.

Now, it's also up to the committee to come back to the House and report, which is what they'll do of course. There will be an interim report shortly.

MR. SPEAKER: This is not an official committee of the House and there are no terms of reference from this House to any special committee that I know of in our votes and proceedings. What I'm getting at is that the resolution in its present form is, in my respectful view, necessary of some amendment to avoid the irregularity of the motion in its present form. I'm not referring to the amount of up to $2.25 million, but how the identification is made in the resolution in the words, "by the policy developed by a special committee." We have no knowledge in this House of any such special committee, nor is it incorporated in our terms of reference. In those circumstances, the resolution itself might be ruled out of order as too vague.

MR. WALLACE: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, would it solve the problem if the debate were adjourned, contingent upon this committee bringing in a report? I respect the Hon. Member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Williams) correcting me if I was in error. I was not attempting to debate the merits of the resolution so much as to point out why in fact the committee has not reported. If this is the only way to solve this dilemma — if you would guide us, Mr. Speaker — perhaps a motion to adjourn, assuming that we will then bring a report in which will explain the reason why we had not reported sooner. So I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.

Interjection.

MR. SPEAKER: On the point of order?

MR. PHILLIPS: Yes. I was sort of dumbfounded in listening to the Member for Vancouver–Howe Sound state that this committee had had in camera meetings when, as you pointed out, this House has no record of such a committee. I'd like the Member to advise the House when the committee was formed, by what authority they're meeting in camera, and…

MR. SPEAKER: I don't think it deals with the point before us. I know of no committee of the House that is dealing with anything of which we're seized. Therefore, that is not the point of order. The motion is to adjourn this debate.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. HALL: Motion 7. (See appendix.)

MR. WALLACE: This motion is put forward for one very simple reason and that is to have the various details clearly made public as to the present planning of the government regarding a new passenger ferry which will sail in the Strait of Georgia.

I might preface these remarks, Mr. Speaker, by saying the Minister has explained to me privately some of the factors that have led to a degree of misunderstanding, and I appreciate that I was afforded that courtesy. But the private discussion did not in any way change the issue, nor in my opinion does it change the need for this motion to be debated and passed.

The information which became available regarding the proposed new ferry was such as to indicate that there would be a reduction in the lifesaving equipment on the new ferry. The details I was able to find out on the existing ferries showed that, on an average, there are 1,250 people on the ferry, including crew, and that there is lifesaving capacity for that number.

The information that I was able to find on the design for the new ferry was to the effect that there would be a maximum complement of 1,500 people with a lifesaving capacity of 1,106. The first impression, or, at least, the evidence as figures show it, means that there are some 400 persons on board that ship for whom there would be no lifesaving equipment.

The other discussion that has taken place in the oral question period regarding this matter of the proposed new ferry touched upon other matters which are perfectly valid. The answers, which the Minister gave clearly and in good faith, were to the effect that the ship would have a double-bottomed hull and would be of a three-compartment design and would have several other features which he said would give the ship great safety.

In our private conversation the Minister pointed out that that is the whole concept: that the ship will be built in such a safe manner that there will never be a need for lifesaving equipment of the amount existing on previous vessels.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Titanic was supposed to be the safest ship ever created by man, yet they needed all the lifeboats on the maiden

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voyage. The Andrea Doria was a very large vessel that was supposed to be unsinkable. In a lesser sense we have been told that with proper radar and the navigation aids of the modern world we shouldn't have collisions; yet two or three days ago we had two freighters colliding. I won't go into all these details; we all know of the disaster.

Therefore, the reason for this motion, Mr. Speaker, is to ask the government to reveal to the public…and the government's attitude may well prove to be founded on common sense and good advice. But, unfortunately, I feel that judgment should be made beyond just the confines of the B.C. Ferry Authority.

The concept that a ship can be built so safe — and this is just talking about ship's safety; I'm not talking about human error — that the day will never come when you don't have to get everybody off that ship, I think, is a very serious and potentially dangerous concept.

The rationale, which the Minister explained, was that the ship is only sailing between the Island and the mainland and that it is never far from assistance by other vessels and can summon assistance, as indeed happened when the Russian freighter rammed the ferry in the Active Pass area. Nevertheless, I think the public of British Columbia, along with visitors and tourists to this province will, in fact, be sailing on a ferry ship on which there will not be adequate lifesaving equipment to get all the people off that ship if there were some sudden disaster — by something of the order of 400 people.

The other point — and I'm sorry that the Minister and I got rather angry at each other on this point — is on the mechanism for giving the personnel and passengers access to the waters should there be a disaster. It is dependent on liferafts and, instead of being lowered with the passengers in the liferaft, the proposed design is to throw the rafts into the water and have the passengers clamber down rope ladders to get into the rafts.

The lifeboats will only be two in number, merely designed to be available for incidences such as someone falling overboard or the ship happening across some incident where they can afford rescue help to someone already in trouble in a boat.

I think if the government believes in its concept that the ship will be so safe that you don't need all this lifesaving equipment…and I accept and I am willing to look at this and have it considered. But if that is their concept and believe in it, I would submit that there is nothing but good can come of exposing this to the light of day and having various authorities, naval authorities and otherwise, look at the facts and figures and the concept. We should then have some public dialogue as to whether indeed this seems a sound concept for the future design of this ferry.

I did mention, in the course of questioning, the Minister's authority. Ottawa was mentioned at great length — the Canadian Steamship Authority — and I think it should be important to just mention that that authority fulfils a very necessary function, but seems to spell out minimum requirements. It does not necessarily mean, because this government or any other government, in building ships, can meet the requirements of CSI, that necessarily we had a completely safe situation.

I have made some enquiries and the interesting thing is that the Andrea Doria, a huge vessel that sank after a collision, had precautions and lifesaving equipment well in excess of federal requirements. Yet that ship went down with considerable loss of life.

At no time am I suggesting that the Minister or the government is being careless or thoughtless or inconsiderate towards the lives of the people using the ferry. I've never said that and I certainly don't imply that or say it now. I am simply saying that they are following a concept which they believe in but which, I think, has potentially serious consequences. As such, it is entitled to be brought right out in the public view and should certainly be debated in this House.

HON. MR. HALL: Mr. Speaker, in speaking on this motion I want to first of all pay tribute to the fact that the Member has cleared away a number of thoughts of ours in the backs of our minds that there was a serious argument going on about things that were extraneous to the central core of this. I also want to thank the Member for making it clear and placing it on the record that there were no inferences to be drawn, no implications of anything going wrong.

I want to assure the House that the Minister, the Member for Cowichan-Malahat (Hon. Mr. Strachan), is second to nobody in desiring safety and so on for our ferry fleet.

Due to the unavoidable absence of that Minister from this debate, however, I must respectfully ask that we adjourn this debate to the next sitting of the House. I know that the Member will not let it escape our attention, not indeed will the Minister.

I move adjournment of this debate to the next sitting of the House.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. HALL: May we move to public bills and orders? Second reading of Bill 2, Mr. Speaker.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE MEDICAL GRANT ACT

HON. MR. COCKE: Well, Mr. Speaker, Bill 2 is quite clear. Bill 2 indicates the government's wish to see to it that people who are suffering hardships,

[ Page 315 ]

people who are suffering an impoverished condition, people who are unemployed and in a bad spot, are going to be treated more fairly by the Medical Grant Act.

You will recall that previously, under the Medical Grant Act, a person, in order to get assistance with his medicare premium, had the assistance based on last year's income. Theoretically, and as was often the case, a person could have made reasonably good money last year and this year be out of work or suffering some form of hardship, and not be eligible for assistance. We felt that that wasn't fair. We have been agonizing over that for the past few months in our department and we finally decided to move in this direction.

Mr. Speaker, just as a sort of a sidelight, as you know — or you wouldn't know because you never move from your chair — but, as some of the people in the House know, I had flu early this week. I had a chance to watch television. I was watching a television show called "Dr. Welby."

This television show showed a person with a very severe heart condition in the United States — facing a $20,000 bill. It started ringing in my mind that years and years ago this party pioneered hospital insurance and pioneered Medicare, and it made me really proud. We are still moving in that direction.

This is the hardship clause. I can't imagine anybody on the floor of this House that would have any dissatisfaction with this particular procedure.

What we're doing is modifying the medicare plan so that it better meets the needs of the people in this province, those people who have real needs. I therefore move second reading.

MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, the official opposition will agree with this bill in principle. However, in committee we will be suggesting at least one amendment to clean up what we feel might be an undue situation with regard to red tape and perhaps some abuses of the bill. But we will be voting in favour in principle, Mr. Speaker.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, this party will also be supporting the bill on the clear basis, as explained by the Minister, that there are indeed cases of hardships still occurring because of the basis on which the present relief of premium is calculated. I would like to commend the Minister for this bill.

MR. McGEER: Naturally, like all Members in the House, Mr. Speaker, we'll support the legislation. We sympathize a little with the Minister in his wish to be completely fair and to see that no one is without medical aid, and also with his being placed in the dilemma of doing other than making individual judgments as to what amounts to hardship in a given case.

We should recognize that the bulk of payments to physicians in this province under the Medical Grant Act comes from other than premiums. It comes from general taxation and from the income tax.

One wonders whether the premium system itself is the wisest way to collect the remainder. It is an imposition on the Treasury to think of doing away with premiums altogether. Yet this kind of situation demonstrates that part of the payment for medical care is an unsatisfactory one. We can only see how this works out in individual cases.

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. Minister closes the debate on second reading.

HON. MR. COCKE: Well, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank those representative Members from the other parties for their support of this bill. I believe that most know that this particular contribution is a provincial contribution — that is, the assistance for premiums. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I move second reading.

Motion approved.

Bill 2 read a second time and referred to Committee of the Whole House at the next sitting after today.

HON. MR. HALL: Second reading of Bill 10, Mr. Speaker.

AN ACT TO AMEND
AN ACT RESPECTING MEDICAL SERVICES

HON. MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, Bill 10 is a bill with two or three amendments to the Medical Services Act. In the first place, it changes the title of the Act. We thought that we could clean up that title. The original title, as you know, is "An Act Respecting Medical Services." We feel that Medical Services Act would be more in keeping.

Next, there is a section dealing with our power. As you know, some time ago we indicated that we wanted to coordinate and finally put the carriers into one organization. So what really the next part of the Act does is assist us in doing this job. Therefore all three carriers — that's the medical plan of B.C., the MSA and CU&C — will become one plan by July, 1975. So we're able to carry out that aspect of things under this new section.

Mr. Speaker, there's another section that deals with the whole question of — that is the amendment to section 10 to section 3 of this bill — what it does here is give us an opportunity to provide for preventive work under medicare.

We understand that we have health services in this

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province. But we don't have doctor-related plans. Now at the present time we have a fitness conference that's being funded by this government. The fitness conference is doctor-coordinated and doctor-run. It relates itself to what I consider to be saving under the medical plan in the future by assisting people to make better judgements around nutrition and health and fitness.

Under our present legislation, Mr. Speaker, we don't have the opportunity to develop innovative plans. We feel that this particular section can provide us with that kind of opportunity.

The last section deals with people who are advisers to the commission. It gives them protection under the law to advise without being in a position where they might be tied up with some sort of litigation — where they might be sued for giving some advice. Mr. Speaker, we feel that this is very, very necessary. I also feel that it's necessary for some of my committees, that are advising under other sections and other Acts, to be protected from outside litigation as a result of some advice that they might have provided in all good faith.

Mr. Speaker, with that I move second reading.

MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, the official opposition's position is that this bill should be considered very carefully in committee stage. There's no way that we can oppose the concept of promoting either physical fitness or preventive medicine. But the bill, Mr. Speaker, follows a pattern which seems to be being established with much of the legislation being introduced by this government.

Instead of bringing in detailed bills which zero in on a specific problem, too many of the bills which are coming before this House seem to serve as an umbrella which opens up far-too-wide opportunities for direct government action. This bill is like many of those.

Also, in our opinion, Mr. Speaker, it seems to anticipate the report, to some degree, of the Health Securities Research project, because the bill certainly provides the vehicle by which the delivery of health care services in this province can be substantially altered.

There is strong hint, Mr. Speaker, of a move to totally centralize medical services in this province under the provisions of this umbrella bill.

There is also a strong hint, Mr. Speaker, that this umbrella is being established to shelter community clinic operations and perhaps, by a process of elimination, even the introduction of salaried doctors on a wide scale.

The bill is very, very broad in concept. While the keynote theme of the bill, Mr. Speaker, appears to be prevention, or promotion of physical fitness, I think that the real range of the bill is much broader than that and is, in fact, almost unlimited.

The official opposition isn't too happy, Mr. Speaker, about the open chequebook concept outlined in section 3. I think, too, that there will be a serious problem later on, under the provisions of this bill, in trying to identify good faith because I understand that in legal parlance good faith is very difficult to either identify or understand.

So once again, that section, Mr. Speaker, would seem to be much too broad. It might even be considered an invitation to slander or gossip-mongering. It offers too much protection, in our opinion.

We will, Mr. Speaker, be offering some amendments to this bill in committee which we will detail at that time. But I think that this bill must be carefully considered at the committee stage.

MR. WALLACE: As the former speaker has just said, there are two or three principles to this bill really. It's particularly important, I think, that I identify our party position. There is every enthusiasm in this party to support the concept of better methods of financing research and the provision of information that will prevent disease and sickness. This, indeed, is a principle in this bill which is most acceptable to us. While we might have some reservations as to the lack of specific details as to how the moneys will be provided and spent, we in this party do accept the good faith of the government with this particular principle.

The principle that bothers me and bothers the party I represent is that principle in section 2 which really opens up the possibility of a completely different turn of events in the provision of medical services. I'm referring particularly, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that at the present time we have three medical service plans, or at least three carriers, as they are called — the MSA, the CU&C and the B.C. Medical Plan.

And what is most important in our view is that these boards which operate these three plans have representations from a cross-section of society.

We've heard a great deal in recent years, both provincially and federally, about trying to give the consumer better representation on various boards and various positions where he should indeed have a legitimate say in how a certain service, or distribution of goods should be carried out, particularly where this involves the expenditure of public moneys. And I would pay credit to the present Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke) and his department for the way in which these three carriers have been working well in cooperation with the commission. If you ask the medical profession, I am sure that 90 per cent of them would feel, that taking all the difficulties into consideration and human nature being what it is, the plans are working well.

But I must re-emphasize that the boards of these

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three carriers do have people elected and appointed to them to give the voice, the input from the consumer, from the taxpayer, from the doctor and so on. And the principle in section 2 clearly leaves the door wide open for the government to dispense with that concept, and for a totally-appointed government agency or committee to take over where these three boards of direction have worked extremely well.

I'm not saying this will happen. I'll be very interested to hear the Minister's comments when he closes the debate, but I think that knowing him as I do, that he would recognize this legitimate concern that the efficiency and effectiveness of medical care services depend very greatly on avoiding centralized bureaucratic, government-oriented control of these services.

I certainly want to make one thing very plain, Mr. Speaker, I accept the great responsibility that government has to achieve the maximum possible use of the taxpayer's dollar in providing medical care services. This is not in question. But I ask the question: is it necessary for government in a central way to take over the distribution of services and put it entirely in the hands of civil servants? I certainly hope it is not the intent of this legislation to open up that possibility.

I am sorry to say, Mr. Speaker, that in my view it does indeed do just that. In fact the note on the back of the bill states that the commission can operate a medical plan without an independent carrier. That would make it very clearly possible for the government, and through it the Medical Care Commission, to dispense entirely with this concept, which I think is very important, whereby boards of management, with local input and people with great personal interest in their local services, can participate.

In passing, I might say that this is my one reserve also about today's very welcome announcement about the private hospitals. I would hope that some board of management could be accepted in the same concept as I am talking about the board of management of the B.C. Medical Plan, or MSA or CU&C, that we just do not hand over the total control and administration of the provision of health services to civil servants without input from local population and from a cross-section of society, since the provision of health services touches every citizen in the province. I think planning and administration would be that much better if we can be assured of input from the various people that I have mentioned — professionals, consumers and educationists. So it is because of this tremendous concern on my part regarding that principle that I would welcome the Minister's explanation when he closes the debate.

I welcome particularly the principle that puts the emphasis on preventive medicine. The figure is something in the order of 5 cents on the dollar that is spent on preventive measures. The Minister himself mentioned nutrition. I just learned today that the report of the nationwide survey, which is being done on nutrition, has been postponed for some six weeks or something; but I also learned privately that the results will be rather devastating and the finding of this national body is that, nutritionally, people are in generally bad shape.

In passing, I would say also that some of the people in the health field, and perhaps the Minister can enlarge on this also, but there are people in certain realms of the health field who give advice who are not really qualified so to do, particularly in the realm of nutrition. We have no regulation in this province which stops anyone from setting himself up, for example, as a dietitian.

Every province in this country has a registered association of dietitians and nutritionists, or some similar name, who have to prove that they have had proper training. I shouldn't get off on this tack but I just say in passing, Mr. Speaker, that this this kind of principle embodied in the bill to enchance the knowledge which the public will have as to how they can maintain their health and prevent disease is all-important if for no other reason than that we are becoming so technologically able to treat almost every kind of disease, but if we can't do more to prevent it the budgetary problems will probably become insoluble.

Finally, the principle of protecting people giving evidence and advice. While I recognize the Member for Langley's (Mr. McClelland) concern, I think that generally speaking, in this field of health care, the kinds of people from whom the Minister would be seeking advice are generally such that the risks involved in protecting them from prosecution, in my view, would be very minimal.

I am not saying that the situation could not arise, but I've asked comment from people in the professional fields who might well be in this position and they feel that the risk involved in giving this protection from litigation is extremely small. I recognize that it may exist, but I certainly feel that I can support that principle and I would be very happy if the Minister would simply, in closing the debate, go into some length to describe my apprehension about the principle in section 2.

MR. McGEER: Mr. Speaker, I believe that it has been an inevitable end result, ever since the government moved into the Medicare field, that all the carriers would be merged into one administrative group. And I don't share the fears of the Member for Oak Bay. I think that where you have a carrier that is simply acting as the fiscal agent and the doctors send their bills in, the best thing to do is to gather it under one roof and make it as efficient as possible. This is one of those instances where the government really

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can be more efficient than a bunch of separated little individual agencies — even if there are only three. I think it applies to giving out licences for automobiles, and the postal office; I see it in that light and don't have any worries about it.

Moving on to the second principle of this bill, which is contained in section 3, it is an interesting concept, Mr. Speaker, and certainly one that we can support. I think that probably most Members realize that doctors are really poor when it comes to health. They don't understand health; they understand sickness. They are like, say, cabinet Ministers: they talk a good game and then practise it badly. They say it is good to keep the weight down and get lots of exercise, but then you don't quite achieve that. Doctors are the same way. They smoke and… Really, where they are good is when somebody comes in with a disease that they know something about, and this is where the doctor shines over the athlete or the politician, or anyone else who might have respect for his body and want to keep it in as good condition as possible.

But where a doctor really can do more, and where the medical commission can in a sense save itself money by promoting health, is in the realm of bringing in new treatments or investigating causes of disease so that we can learn how to treat them better. Well, that's really more research. It is a stretching of the argument, and I think the Minister maybe ought to redirect his thinking just a little bit because there is a possibility of marshalling the public funds — it can be done through this vehicle or through the BCHIS — to get on with new things for the public.

I want to mention one specific thing as an example. If we move very quickly now, we can bring acupuncture into use in the hospitals of British Columbia as a major form of treatment. And for old people who may have to undergo an operation for cancer or for some serious illness, who themselves are just marginal from the point of view of mental alertness, going under a general anaesthetic may leave them irreversibly damaged. In other words, they could age years in just that short period when they are under the toxic effects of a general anaesthetic. But the advantage of acupuncture is that…

May we have some order, Mr. Speaker, please?

Many physicians from Canada have now been to China and have seen this can be done without the use of the general anaesthetics. We have an entree to China because it is said that the most famous Canadian of all time is Norman Bethune, the pioneer physician who went to China. We don't know anything about him; we didn't even know enough to buy his home until recently.

HON. MR. BARRETT: May I remind you that he was a communist?

MR. McGEER: Yes, but he's a very famous communist, one of the few commies who did some good. There he was in China, in Mao's time, pioneering field hospital methods for them. He's one of the No. 1 non-Chinese in the eyes of the Chinese people. For that reason, anybody who wears a Canada badge is very welcome in that country. It would be the easiest thing in the world, Mr. Speaker, for the Minister to take some money from this particular grant and send the top anaesthetist from the Vancouver General, St. Paul's, the Royal Jubilee, over to China. They will welcome them and he will learn how to apply the techniques of acupuncture.

Everyone who comes back says that the general principles are simple and straightforward, and Canadian physicians could learn it quickly and be able to apply successfully this method in British Columbia hospitals. We could be the jurisdiction in the Western world that first introduced this beneficial new technique to our citizens. The financial means for doing that would be right in this Act if the intent of it were just redirected very, very slightly.

So certainly we would support the principle of this Act and the just and immediate use that it could be put to.

Now, as far as the third principle in the Act is concerned, I really can't see the necessity of putting it into legislation. We just hope that the Minister keeps a sharp eye on those who give him advice.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Member for his remarks. I never thought I'd hear the day when Dr. Norman Bethune's name would be raised in praise in this particular legislative House, considering its past antipathy towards people like Dr. Bethune.

Dr. Bethune was an outstanding Canadian. At one time he was the founding member of the CCF in Montreal, strayed to the Communist Party, and went to China. Dr. Bethune also worked very, very diligently in Spain. There is still a living British Columbian by name of Henning Sorensen, who lives in North Vancouver, who worked with Dr. Bethune in Spain and represents one of the many pioneer voices in this province who have had unusual experiences.

I am out of order, Mr. Speaker, but I just wanted to say that I happen to be a very great admirer of Dr. Norman Bethune and everything that he stood for in the medical field. I am pleased to hear his name mentioned in our House.

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. Minister closes the debate.

HON. MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I understand that the Social Credit Party indicated that their main criticisms are going to come by way of amendments

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in the committee stage of this bill. I am not quite sure whether they are going to come as a result of paranoia or what when I hear this being the shelter for community clinics. Mr. Speaker, the federal government and everybody in the whole country, everybody in the world who wants to produce alternative methods of delivery of health care are looking at all facets. Let me assure the Member over there that we have the vehicle now for community clinics.

As far as salaried doctors are concerned, under Medicare you can have every doctor in the province or in the country on salary because there is that alternative already built into the plan. Your plan, which was devised some little time ago, wasn't quite as well thought out as the NDP suggested, but at least you did fall into line to some degree. Thank heaven that our party did press for so many years for health care on an unlimited basis to people.

Mr. Speaker, there are some other areas. We don't think that the kind of people who advise the Minister of Health are going to be advising by slandering and gossiping. Those advisers are hired or selected on the basis of their expertise, and mostly they are very highly scientifically-trained people. They are at least doctors. I think the suggestion of the Member opposite that the people advising my Ministry would be slandering and gossiping is quite uncalled for.

As far as the financing aspect of it, Mr. Speaker, we are integrating three separate carriers, period. For a number of years that party across the way knew perfectly well our party policy on this question. We felt that it was an administrative catastrophe having three separate carriers going their own separate ways, and so for that purpose we are having them together and we will show great savings administratively.

As far as the consumer protection aspect of the thing is concerned, Mr. Speaker — and now I'm speaking to the Member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) — the consumer's position is above all being protected by my department and by this government. I think that you probably recognize that by the number of people who are being involved directly in the delivery of health care specifically.

The Member opposite, Mr. Speaker, suggested what we should do with the private hospital body. Mr. Speaker, we are going to. We are going to turn that over to Juan de Fuca Hospital Society, a hospital society which was set up and has not been running any hospital for some years. I don't know how long they have been around, but two or three years. The Juan de Fuca Hospital Society will be running Richmond Heights on behalf of the regional district and the Hospital Insurance department. We feel that's just the way to go; it is self-evident.

But as far as running an insurance carrier is concerned, we don't think that the consumer aspect of that should be direct. We think it should be indirect on an advisory basis, and that will be maintained. Right now the consumer has very little to say about what is going on under Medicare.

MR. WALLACE: Will there be a carrier on the board?

HON. MR. COCKE: There will be an advisory commission, Mr. Speaker. Structured as it is now, we have three separate cumbersome societies taking care of insurance. And that's what it is — it is straight-forward: a doctor sends in a bill and we pay it. That's about the size of it. The bureaucratic aspect of the thing is the fact that you have to decide whether or not the doctor is overbilling or underbilling or whatever. But I don't think that we need worry about that, Mr. Speaker. I think that is well taken care of.

As far as acupuncture is concerned, Mr. Speaker. Yes, sure, that could be done. It could be used for such purposes. I would say under health services we have Dr. Saita working for us in Vancouver; Dr. Saita is working under the auspices of my committee in this field. If Dr. Saita's work indicates that we can get the doctors sufficiently interested to go to China and learn analgesic acupuncture, we will be most interested. But, Mr. Speaker, we have to get that kind of concern from the doctors.

Now, the one thing that I don't want to come out of this debate today is some great expectation out there. I want the people to know that what the Member for Vancouver–Point Grey (Mr. McGeer) was talking about was acupuncture for operations, for anaesthetic. That's not putting it the right way. It is really analgesic acupuncture; it is not for therapy. So many people in this province are writing and crying and complaining and wanting therapeutic acupuncture. That's not what that Member was talking about. Therefore, I don't want that to get mixed up.

He's talking about acupuncture in the operating room, and that's all. And I agree. It is something we are certainly heading towards. It has been proven, in my view, in China, and it will be coming here as soon as we can get people who are prepared to learn the procedures.

But I feel, Mr. Speaker, that this bill is very straightforward. It does the job, and I therefore move second reading.

Motion approved on the following division:

YEAS — 34

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NAYS — 11

PAIRED

AN HON. MEMBER: I request that the division be recorded.

Bill 10 read a second time and referred to Committee of the Whole House at the next sitting after today.

Hon. Mr. Barrett moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:25 p.m.

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APPENDIX

1 The following motion is referred to on page 294

That this House acknowledges the value of a Public Information Bureau which (a) would provide information and assistance to British Columbia residents who encounter problems dealing with Government departments and agencies and (b) would utilize a toll-free telephone number so that the service is available to all residents.

2 The following motion is referred to on page 299

That this House authorize the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Printing to inquire into the effect of the imposition of Provincial social services tax on books, children's sports equipment, and publications of the Queen's Printer, such as Hansard and The British Columbia Gazette, and to report its findings and make recommendations, if any.

3 The following motion is referred to on page 301

Be it Resolved, That this Government consider the advisability of implementing legislation to provide equalization grants to students living in the remote areas of the Province for the purpose of attaining a higher education not now available to them.

4 The following motion is referred to on page 307

That this House rules the Federal Government to make, without delay, sweeping changes to the Small Loans Act (Canada) to provide consumer protection by increasing the variety and size of loans covered by the Act, by prescribing fair and tolerable interest and borrowing ceilings, and by allowing for the repayment of loans by debtors without excessive penalty.

5 The following motion is referred to on page 300

That the correspondence and document delivered by Robert McClelland, M.L.A., Langley, to the Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance, on September 19, 1973, relative to the report on health services in British Columbia, which was the subject of Committee hearings by the Select Standing Committee on Social Welfare and Education, be tabled in this House, and the contents of the document be entered upon the Journals of this House.

6 The following motion is referred to on page 311

That this House endorse the principle of providing up to $2,250,000 for the purpose of implementing the unanimously supported resolution of the House on February 14, 1973, regarding the building, staffing, and maintenance of medical facilities for the rehabilitation, care, and development of Vietnamese children and that the required sum, and other moneys that may be forthcoming from individuals and groups, be utilized for this purpose and for the provision of personnel and (or) material as indicated by the policy developed by a Special Committee of British Columbia Legislators and representatives of interested groups such as the Red Cross, Save the Children Fund, and such other groups as designated by the Minister of Health Services and Hospital Insurance.

7 The following motion is referred to on page 313

That the Hon. Minister of Transport and Communications table with the Legislature the full details and guidelines of a proposal made by British Columbia Ferry Authority to the Seattle firm of Nikum Spalding in seeking the design for a new ferry.