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CONTENTS

Point of order

Recording of divisions. Mr. Richter — 323

Mr. Speaker — 323

Routine proceedings

An Act to Amend the Corrections Act (Bill 24). Second reading.

Hon. Mr. Macdonald — 323

Mr. Smith — 325

Mr. Gardom — 325

Mr. Wallace — 326

Ms. Brown — 328

Mr. Williams — 329

Mr. Curtis — 331

Mr. Rolston — 331

Mr. D.A. Anderson — 333

Ms. Sanford — 335

Mr. Dent — 336

Hon. Mr. Nimsick — 338

Mr. Barnes — 338

Mrs. Webster — 340

Hon. Mr. Barrett — 341

The Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Act (Bill 33). Mr. Wallace

Introduction and first reading — 344

An Act to Amend the Assessment Equalization Act (Bill 34). Mr. Wallace

Introduction and first reading — 344

An Act to Amend the Hospital Insurance Act (Bill 35). Mr. Wallace

Introduction and first reading — 345

An Act to Amend the Public Schools Act (Bill 36). Mr. Wallace.

Introduction and first reading — 345

Public Officials' Disclosure Act (Bill 37). Mr. Curtis.

Introduction and first reading — 345

An Act to Amend the Land Registry Act (Bill 38). Mr. Curtis.

Introduction and first reading — 345

APPENDIX

Minority report (Social Welfare and Education Committee) Mr. McClelland — 346

The House met at 10 a.m.

Prayers.

MR. F.X. RICHTER (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, yesterday we were dealing with Motion 1 and, pursuant to the debate that took place, a division was called. After the division it was asked to be recorded, and only one Member stood in his place at that time. We called your attention to it. We notice today that it is recorded. Under section 3 of standing order 16 it requires more than one person standing in their place.

MR. SPEAKER: There is no consideration in the standing orders for how much time is consumed, so far as I can see, before you get on to the next matter of business. Now there are people who like to cut it fine and there are people who like to take advantage of the situation one way or the other in the House.

If you think that it is improper for the Speaker to permit three Members to stand in the House before moving on to the next business, then I would certainly take that as a reprimand. But I do feel, regardless of the sides in this House, that if any Members of this House, three in number, signify before we go on to the next item of business that they want a vote recorded, I think it's in the interest of the House that it be recorded.

Now maybe I'm incorrect, and the House can certainly correct me if I'm wrong. If you feel that it's a matter you wish to put on the order paper, specifying how much time must pass before three people get to their feet, be sure to do so. I would certainly take that as being your correction for the direction of the House.

MR. D.E. SMITH (North Peace River): Mr. Speaker, I have no objection, in speaking to this point of order, to the amount of time that you consume in dealing with the particular matter that was before the House. But I respectfully suggest, Sir, that we didn't see any other than one person on his feet at the time of the request for recording, or at any other time prior to the time that we moved to the next order of business. Now I may be mistaken in that respect but I didn't see more than one person at any time.

MR. SPEAKER: Well, I must have sharper eyes because I clearly saw two Ministers stand, following the fact that it was drawn to the attention of the House that only one had stood. Two others stood then to make the three that are necessary.

I want to point out to the Hon. Members that this sort of thing is a double-edged sword. In other words, some day someone on this side of the House might just as well complain on the same ground. It is my view that I will take the same position, regardless of where you sit in the House, in fairness to the whole House.

Introduction of Bills.

Orders of the day.

HON. D. BARRETT (Premier): Mr. Speaker, I move that we proceed to public bills and orders.

Motion approved.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Second reading of Bill 24, Mr. Speaker.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE CORRECTIONS ACT

HON. A.B. MACDONALD (Attorney General): I'll let the lawyers look at the other one for awhile. They love that kind of thing. (Laughter.) Give them a look at it; give them some time.

Mr. Speaker, in moving second reading of Bill 24 I want to say a few things on the subject of corrections, because it is a very important responsibility of my department and, of course, of the whole government — and, of course, of this Legislature.

The Act provides for a reorganization of the corrections department into a branch of the Attorney General's department. We emphasize the importance which we believe this Legislature should give to the subject of corrections by providing in the bill that there shall be a Deputy Minister of Corrections responsible to the Attorney General.

I might say that this Deputy Minister will be reporting through my senior Deputy Minister. Nevertheless, he will be classified and is so classified in the bill as a Deputy Minister, because this is a very important branch of government, for reasons which I will give in a few minutes, and which I think are already well known to the House.

The task force, which brought in many excellent recommendations which we are in the process of implementing, pointed out a very serious situation in terms of crime in the Province of British Columbia. It pointed out, for example, that between the eight years 1962-1970, while the population of this great province was going up by 34 per cent, our crime statistics were doubling. The problem is particularly of crime becoming more a feature in the ranks of juveniles. It is something which must give us very particular concern.

The predictions for the future as set out by the task force should give us equal concern because that prediction was, as I recall it, that the number of

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criminal code offences, based on these past predictions, would double again by the year 1980 — in roughly the next eight years.

So this is a problem that calls for the most imaginative thinking on our part, leadership from the government and the cooperation of the whole community with a wide range of responses to this problem. The responses will range, of course, from the Minister of Education (Hon. Mrs. Dailly) to the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke) to job employment possibilities to things like nutrition and shelter, which are all part of the problem. They certainly focus in upon reform in the legal system itself, and the subject matter of the present bill — the field of corrections — becomes, of course, one of the focal points as well.

I do not believe that a return to 19th century methods of clapping people into jail would be a solution to this kind of a social problem that we face. When you sever the relationship between an offender and society, you must bear in mind that the crime or offence took place because of a breakdown, in the first place, of that relationship between an individual and the society in which he lived.

If you sever that relationship by having an elaborate legal process, and then clapping the offender in jail beyond what is necessary for the protection of society — and I stress that…the protection of society is the cardinal thing that must be observed. But if we go beyond what is necessary for the protection of society and simply clap people into jail unnecessarily, we're helping to make worse the separation between him and any sense of social responsibility.

How much better it is to have somebody on probation — perhaps working under a probation order whereby he would be making restitution, as he could from his work, to the victim of his offence. How much better that is in terms of not only the rehabilitation of the individual, but some relief to the victim and a great saving of cost to society.

Speaking of the matter of costs at the present time to keep an offender in custody it requires between $8,000 and $12,000 per year in the Province of British Columbia. I remember the time, and it seems only a short while ago, when we used to make speeches in this House saying that it was costing an average of $7.50 per day to keep somebody in the "Iron Bar Hotel" out at Oakalla, but those figures are long past.

We do have in our correction institutions a ratio of one-for-two, one custodial officer for every two inmates. So you can understand that the kind of figures that I am giving, in terms of cost, are staggering and understandably staggering. And yet, when that offender is in the community, our staff relationship is in the order of one for every 200 people on probation — one probation officer for every two hundred, instead of one-for-two in a custodial institution.

We have a very good record in the Province of British Columbia in that, at the present time, we have an offender population, if I can call it that, of about 12,000 people. Of these 12,000, roughly speaking 2,000 are behind bars of one kind or another; 10,000 are on probation in one form or another. Now that's a very good record. But the support services in respect to the 10,000 that are within the community in one form or another under probation orders, are grossly inadequate and must be improved.

I have said before and I say it again that I am very much concerned, too, with the problem of a great many individuals being in our jails because they lack the means to pay a fine. They are imprisoned for their poverty because the judge — and this has been the traditional thing — has given them a sentence of $100 or 10 days, or $200 or 10 days. Perhaps this is more pronounced a problem among the native people of British Columbia, which gives me more concern when I think about it, but that is a problem which I think can be tackled, not only in terms of improving the quality of the decision of the provincial bench, but I think it can be tackled in time and should, before another year has gone by, be tackled in terms of legislation which should be brought before this House.

I can think, for example, that there may be if it can be worked constitutionally — and you must bear in mind the federal government's role — it may be worked that we can have a method whereby the judge can convert these fines into civil judgments which can be collected as and when the individual is able to work in the same way as any other civil judgment. We may then be able to relieve our jails of a lot of people who should not be there, mostly short-time offenders.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MACDONALD: And, as my friend says, part of it can be a restitution order too, which is so much better if that person can go back to work and make that restitution. So much better for him, so much better for society and so much better for the victim.

Our programme, therefore, will be concentrating on community programmes. We want to get away from the single-caseworker approach, focused entirely on one offender, where overworked probation officers try to keep tab on a large number of individuals with widely different problems, and who at the present time sometimes can be lucky if they can just simply find out who is in town and who is not in town.

We intend to develop new facilities, such as attendance centres, hostels and community service work programmes. We are drawing the community

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into the process of correction. We are paying special attention, through a special director in the branch, to the business of mobilizing the volunteer forces of society to help us with this problem — and I may say that the volunteers who have turned out to meetings, and are participating at the present time, is something that we should all be thankful for in this House. I hope the number of those volunteers will continue to grow, organizations and individuals from Big Brothers to church groups to Elizabeth Fry and many other organizations. Every possible encouragement should be given to those groups and every congratulation should be offered to them.

We want to disperse, as far as we can, those custodial institutions which we must have for the protection of society back into the communities. We do not believe in large institutional jails — running up to 1,200 or 1,500 people as we have out at Oakalla — which become schools for crime, which are too large, too cold, too impersonal, too unmanageable, which lead to the kind of ratio I spoke about a moment ago of one prison officer for every two inmates. We want to take the custodial function back to the local community so the offender will still be in this community, in reach of his friends and relatives, in reach of advice, more accessible to work to pre-release programmes, and to rehabilitation.

Within the department there will, as I say, be a Deputy Minister. We have appointed a new Executive Director of Institutional Correction. There is a Director of Community Corrections and a Director of Specialized Programmes. The last will be responsible for injecting top professional, technical or specialized skills into this very important work.

We want to restore to our prison officer and personnel the ordinary rights of employees that apply, under the auspices of the Provincial Secretary, and the legislation which he will no doubt be shortly producing, throughout the rest of our civil service. And so, some of the disciplinary powers that are in the Corrections Act, which to some extent made the correction service sort of a para-military organization of employees and officers doing very important social work for the community, will disappear.

We will also have, because we recognize the worth of every human being in the province, whether or not he is an offender, an inmate, or a citizen, a director of standards who will serve as an ombudsman, through whom any inmate, or any staff person, can have his complaint investigated. I think I have said enough, except that I would be hopeful that other Members in this House will give their view on this important matter in a constructive way, because the problem is immense. The challenge is there, and if we as a government fail in this important thing, it is an area where we cannot forgive ourselves. We must have balance between the protection of society and the rights and rehabilitation of individuals. We can't allow crime predictions to go unchallenged, and if we can meet that challenge, we certainly intend to do it, this government with, hopefully, the support of the Legislature. Mr. Speaker, I move second reading of this bill.

MR. D.E. SMITH (North Peace River): Thank you Mr. Speaker. We accept the principle of this bill. We think it can best be discussed at the committee stage. We feel that it could be moved to that stage where we could discuss it at the next sitting of the House.

It's fairly obvious to us that all the important legislation that we were told we were to meet to discuss is not before this House, that it's a sham, that we have been called on an excuse and we're sitting here spinning out the debate on legislation, which could well be moved along, because of the fact that the other legislation is obviously not ready to go before this House. We should have had it in here today.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I wonder if the Hon. Members would confine themselves to the principle of this bill.

MR. G.B. GARDOM (Vancouver–Point Grey): Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of good stuff in the remarks of the Hon. Attorney General this morning. I don't think that anyone in the House would question for a second that in the long run society is certainly far best served by rehabilitation; I think that is an accepted fact.

I also think that we have got to consider that in many instances, and certainly in the more serious situations, custodial treatment to the full term of a sentence is in the best interests of society, and that concept should not be lightly disregarded. Judicial consultation concerning parole, certainly again in most serious cases, should not be abandoned, as has been apparently the recent practice here.

Custodial treatment, we all agree, never has been a hand-holding kind of programme. It should never become that, which is not its concept. I say rehabilitation is fine, but let rehabilitation be demonstrably evidenced before final release, keeping in mind the economic suffering and perhaps indeed the anguish and the pain of the victims of crime, for it's not the victims of crime who have fully-paid and free medical and dental plans, food, clothing and shelter, educational and recreational programmes. The lot of the victim of crime should not be lightly disregarded.

Restitution is a very good word, and I enjoyed the remarks of the Attorney General (Hon. Mr. Macdonald) this morning on that point. It's also an exceptionally fine concept. I think that it should

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certainly be encouraged when and however possible. The new structure in this bill has a great deal of appeal. I think improvements in this area are all welcome and I'm sure will receive the support of all of the House.

But you know what I would have welcomed, as a more needful priority than that we heard come from the Attorney General this morning, is a statement and a programme from him that he was going to conduct an all-out war against the narcotic trafficking or "industry," as it now perhaps is unfortunately called in the Province of B.C. A couple of years ago, Mr. Speaker, it was estimated that the narcotic trafficking industry had a larger growth than the B.C. Telephone Company, $160 million or so per year. And with normal — and that's a horrible word to have to use in this illustration — but with normal increases we could perhaps say today that the narcotic industry in the Province of British Columbia is a $200 million-a-year gross industry, which is an absolutely shocking figure. As the Attorney General has stated, crime has doubled. There's no indication of its lessening, but every indication of its growing, and there is no indication from the Attorney General that he's baring his fangs to come to grips with that particular problem. I'd like to find out from him, when he closes the debate today, if he favours increased penalties for pushers and traffickers. Does he have more men in the field? Are there more investigative and preventative personnel? Are steps being taken to catch the big boys? Will the government be prepared to boycott the goods into British Columbia of any country which, under its laws, permits the production or processing of what we consider in B.C. to be illicit or illegal narcotics?

I would think that, rather than some kind of horizontal departmental shifting, I would have much preferred to hear something and so would the people of this province, coming from the government side about this disgraceful industry.

Fine, this is a remedial measure. I don't subscribe totally to the remarks of the first speaker for the opposition; I do concur that the government doesn't appear to have its legislation down the pike the way it should be. But this is a useful measure. I am glad that it is coming in today and I'm certainly going to support it.

But we need strong action, we need strong words to stamp out the drug traffic in the Province of B.C. which is dramatically on the way up, and not going down.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Speaker, this has to be one of the major problems in our modern society, our enlightened attitude to the handling of offenders.

While this party will certainly support the bill, one omission from the Attorney General's statement really surprises me. The former speaker has touched on it, and that is the recent lack of any definitive statement, either publicly by the AG or a reference to it in this bill, on the fantastic amount of association between crime and drugs. As I recall, the Attorney General stated publicly some time ago that approximately 50 per cent of all the offenders in jail — and we're talking about 2,000, I gather, from this Minister's statement — presumably about 1,000 are there because of crime associated with drug abuse.

The Minister set up a task force, and he may correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember that task force yet reporting publicly.

Interjection.

MR. WALLACE: Well, I stand corrected.

I went before that drug task force, in association with a group of parents who were desperately seeking measures and forms of assistance to which they can turn when they find that their sons and daughters are wrapped up in the drug scene. It was my impression that the task force members were most impressed and most sympathetic.

It is rather strange perhaps that a Conservative Member of the House who so frequently — not myself perhaps but the party — is so frequently looked upon as being rightwing, should suggest that we are taking the wrong direction in putting drug addicts in jail. So often I meet the comment that if a person chooses to become a drug addict, he should pay the penalty. All I'm saying is, the kind of penalty that society is trying to impose on the drug addict neither appropriately penalizes the addict, nor does it in any way prevent repetition of the original habit and the associated crime.

Interjection.

MR. WALLACE: And, of course, as the second Member for Vancouver–Point Grey (Mr. Gardom) mentions, let it not be said that I in any way, personally or as a speaker for the Conservative Party, in any way suggest a soft approach to the trafficker. The problem is primarily two-fold. There is the person who is not actually taking drugs but who is making a fantastic financial profit behind the scenes. I don't care how long society locks him or her up. But the fact is, Mr. Speaker, that if we have to bring in an enlightened approach to corrections, you have to try and be frank with yourself as to what you are trying to correct. In the case of 50 per cent of the offenders in jail, who are there because they have committed crimes in an effort to finance their drug habit, you are dealing with a person who is mentally and physically sick.

I will be introducing a bill into this House later which will outline in my view what would be a very

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reasonable and sensible approach. It would take the drug offender off the street and into a medical setting, while providing the power to compulsorily retain that drug addict in the medical setting until such time as rehabilitation, which appears to have some real value, can be carried out.

The Attorney General has quoted in his speech the crime statistics which are soaring at a disturbing rate, particularly in the juvenile sector of the community. This is where the point is well taken that many departments will have to be involved in a preventative way through the Minister of Education (Hon. Mrs. Dailly) and the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke) in every attempt to prevent juveniles from becoming involved in the drug scene and hence less likely to become involved in crime. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, this kind of attitude, which the Minister implies in his comments regarding the bill — that we should minimize custodial care and that we should provide preventive measures in schools, and rehabilitation and follow-up measures once the offender has left jail — I think is certainly the right direction for any programme of penal reform.

I noticed the other day in the newspaper, Mr. Speaker, in that vein of rehabilitation and gradually re-introducing the offender into society, the Attorney General was in some hot water because he was permitting the employment of offenders in the last three months of their sentence. The problem again arose because they were being paid less than union wages.

I don't have the newspaper clipping in front of me but I think that, in this instance, the Attorney General took the correct stand. He wasn't prepared to enter into a debate about union wages, but he was stressing the point that these men spend the last three months in a transitional phase where they are not completely in jail and they're not completely free in society; so that when they finally do complete their sentence, it isn't an abrupt episode where suddenly they're back in society and free. This kind of rehabilitation, if this is what is implied also in the comments the Attorney General has made, will certainly have the support of this party.

I was a little distressed — not distressed — but I would just question the Attorney General's comment that people should not be in jail because they can't pay the fine. I agree that poverty should not be the factor. But on the other hand, there is a real feeling in society that citizens are progressively tending to have less respect for the law. Here again, a Conservative who speaks like this and mentions law and order can so quickly be branded a John Bircher.

I'd hate to create the impression in the House today that I am in any way preaching a strong, punitive right-wing approach to penal reform. But I must say, Mr. Speaker, that the AG's comment should be re-emphasized; the protection of society is the first requirement of the penal system. While minor offenders should not, perhaps, be in jail because they cannot pay the fine, I think the kind of offence for which you get fined $100 for what must be a reasonably minor offence must in no way be confused with the violent type of offence which, I think, more and more people in our society are becoming concerned about. I hope to goodness that we never do reach the serious point to which civilization, or the lack of it in the United States seems to have made it impossible to walk safely on the streets after dark.

Nevertheless, when one talks about cutting down or reducing the number of people in jail because they can't pay fines, let us be very clear that we are talking about minor offenders. I presume the Attorney General is talking about minor offenders. This should not result in any diminution of custodial care where it is required to protect society.

The prevention and follow-up aspects perhaps are not as relevant to this bill because we are dealing mainly with the setting up of a new branch of the department, but I don't think this should be overlooked when we talk about crime in general.

The whole involvement of drugs in the crime situation was not really mentioned by the Attorney General. Perhaps when he winds up this debate he would care to comment a little more than he did in his earlier statement to his basic attitude in relation to the task force recommendations. Would he tell the House that he accepts the utter futility of locking up drug addicts in jail? If he does, I would be interested to hear if we are to embark upon some more enlightened system, as I say, where a real effort is made, using the people he mentioned, the John Howard Society, the Elizabeth Fry Society, the Salvation Army, and all the different arms of the community that have shown interest in many a year gone by, not just to penalize a person for mistakes he or she has made, but to rehabilitate him into society, and, if possible, to help him find a job.

The final point I would like to make, Mr. Speaker, is that the personnel in the prisons must also have not only their rights to employment or collective bargaining recognized but they must also be given all the protection they require in carrying out their day-to-day jobs in a more violent society. While we have been fortunate, I think, compared again to the United States, in that we have had minimal riots or disturbances within the jail scene, I think from comments I have been told privately and from certain events reported in the press, we must not, in trying to simplify the custodial system, at any time reduce safety requirements or other reduction of personnel to a point where the danger of the guards being taken hostage is increased.

This seems to be an age where, unfortunately, violence is on the increase and, while all these

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positive, constructive measures which the Minister has mentioned will receive the support of this party, I would only end by repeating that the primary aim of a penal system is to protect society.

MS. R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. Before I speak in support of this bill, I would like the House to join me in welcoming the first female born to a Member of the socialist hordes in this House, young Ms. Skelly.

Thanks very much.

I welcome this bill, Mr. Speaker. I welcome the setting up of this new department as an indication of a new direction that we are going into, as an indication of the new thrust and a new way of dealing with the whole issue of penal reform and of treatment and care and the way we behave towards offenders in our society.

We could go on for hours, listing all the things that were wrong with the old system. Speaking specifically of the old system as it applies to the women's section of Oakalla prison, I would just like to talk about one or two things which, I hope, will come to an end when this new department is set up.

Presently in the women's section of Oakalla prison, the morale is so low, not just on the part of the women who are there as prisoners, but on the part of the staff themselves, that the turnover is very high. Consequently, they are continually understaffed. The Attorney General just told us that we now have a ratio of one staff person to two prisoners. In the women's section of Oakalla prison, it would be very, very difficult indeed to justify or even to prove that such a thing presently exists. In point of fact, none of the staff stay there very long because they are so demoralized themselves. There is a lot of friction between the prison authorities and the inmates themselves as well as between the staff members.

In the women's section of Oakalla prison, as I am sure it is also true in the male section, there is a very high degree of drug trafficking. Nobody seems to care because, quite frankly, the staff feels that there is very little they can do about it at this time.

There is a shortage of doctors, there is a shortage of psychologists, there is a shortage of social workers, there is a shortage of any kind of service people whatsoever, not just because the working conditions are bad but because the whole atmosphere is so demoralizing. The feeling is that the past government and society as a whole had very little concern for these women once they were thrown in prison. The door was locked and the key was thrown away.

It is my very fervent hope that this new department that is being set up under this bill will certainly move as quickly as possible into changing these things. A simple thing like medical supplies, Mr. Speaker, a simple thing like a medical budget — something as small as this is not even adequate in the women's section of Oakalla prison.

I have been in contact with women who used to work at Oakalla prison and a number of women who used to be in Oakalla themselves. Some of the stories they tell about the ways in which the authorities used to jeopardize any good sort of things that would even spontaneously grow up in somewhere as arid as Oakalla prison I think should be mentioned here.

The first thing is that there is no continuing programme for inmates after they are released from Oakalla. There needs to be some kind of rehabilitation planning. There are no half-way houses that presently operate on behalf of the women — and I am speaking specifically of the women involved in Oakalla because I really don't know that much about the men.

The only volunteers who go into the women's section of this prison are the Elizabeth Fry workers, and they, on their own, cannot hope to right so many of the wrongs that are there. Quite often it is really difficult for them to understand some of the concerns of some of these women in Oakalla because there is a kind of a class difference between the two; the Elizabeth Fry workers coming from the middle-classes and the upper middle-class and the women in Oakalla not belonging to this class.

One of the women who worked at Oakalla for two years had a nervous breakdown, Mr. Speaker, and had to sign a resignation form before being admitted to Riverview Hospital. When she was released from Riverview, she tried to get her job again at Oakalla and it took her two years of real fighting to be reinstated. For some reason or other, to be mentally ill seems to lessen your chances of being able to work in an institution of this nature, even though as a community we deny that there is any stigma attached to mental illness. The penal service practises this kind of discrimination.

One of the things reported to me by one of the women was that the intercom in the women's prison was often misused by the staff. They sometimes used it to monitor the group-therapy sessions. Little things like this, which are so important to the prisoners there and maybe not so important to the staff, really help to breed the air of distrust which is presently existing in Oakalla.

One of the women told me about a programme which was set up by the Burnaby mental health hospital to work as counselors with some of the women in the mental health unit. It meant that they would have to leave and go to the Burnaby mental health unit for counselling.

This was terminated because a directive came down from above, and no one was quite able to trace where above was, but this directive came down which prohibited any treatment outside of the prison. If we're talking about rehabilitation and helping people

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to be re-involved in the community, surely this would be a first step and this should not be discouraged.

Another complaint which I received was about the school which is supposed to be in existence in Oakalla. This is described as a luxury which only comes into being from time to time, when there is full staff; as soon as the staff ratio goes down, the first thing that is cut is the school. It is not on a continuing basis.

There used to be a programme in which women could partake to get a diploma to work in a nursing home when they left the prison. This programme was dropped, again for lack of staff, or lack of money, or lack of interest on the part of the people who run the prison. There's no occupational therapy programme to prepare these women for jobs when they leave the prison. Now they spend most of their time doing the laundry or cleaning.

Even something as personal as discrimination on the basis of religious belief exists in this prison. Women are required to go to Catholic or Protestant services on Sunday, and it is not recognized that they could be either agnostics, Jews, or belonging to any of the eastern religions.

They are locked into their rooms, apparently, and deprived of listening to a radio. This kind of really senseless way in which we are treating adults — it's not even childish; it doesn't make sense to say that that is the way we treat children because quite frankly, we don't even treat children that way any more.

And this is one of the reasons why I really welcome this bill because I have great hopes for this new department. I think it just has to get down to the business of changing some of these things.

The use of medication in treating inmates who are not cooperating: you know, really excessive doses, this is ridiculous; this is not 1984, and this sort of thing cannot continue. I realize, Mr. Speaker, that there are some times when rehabilitation, if misused, really can be more punitive than punishment itself. So this is one of the things that I would certainly like this department to look at.

I believe that inmates, if they're going to work, should work for a decent wage. They should be paid a just wage for their labour. I think that they should be made to pay taxes out of this wage. I don't support the idea of undercutting the labour market, by any means. And I feel that any kind of rehabilitation that is being designed has to take into account the integration of all the services that are brought to bear. No more of this fragmentation — the whole thing has to come together. The inmates themselves, who are adults, have to be involved in the decisions that affect their lives, have to be involved in the kinds of programmes which are planned for them.

So, Mr. Speaker, I support this bill as a first step and as a beginning. I have very high expectations for this new department, and, as you know, if this department does not live up to its expectations, I will be one of the first people to stand on this floor and say so. Thank you very much.

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS (West Vancouver–Howe Sound): I share the hopes of the second Member for Vancouver-Burrard with respect to this legislation. We're starting from a long way back, Mr. Speaker.

I can understand the reluctance of the official opposition to engage in this debate. When I think of the tragic neglect the Corrections Service in this province suffered over the years that they were in power and the attempts to cure the problem by repression, and the failure of those attempts, no wonder they aren't standing in this debate.

I remember when the Premier was sitting in opposition, stood up and proposed for the most minor offences, the possibility of weekend-leave passes — nothing happened. Just a simple little device for someone who happened to be in jail for 10 days because of some minor infraction — someone who wasn't a criminal, who wasn't guilty of violent antisocial behaviour. Now we're trying to pick that up. As I say, I share the hopes expressed by the second Member for Vancouver-Burrard.

I was a little disturbed to hear what the Attorney General said in some of his remarks about how he was going to carry this out. I thought his general outline was very imaginative, but it lacked those specifics that would substantiate what he said was the primary thrust, and that was to protect society against the criminals in our midst…said that had to be the primary responsibility of the Corrections Branch. Yet he spoke about bringing the institutions into the community, using volunteer services — volunteers whom the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi) has already said he's not going to use in the fulfilment of his responsibility. The strange dissimilarity between the approach which we take toward people who have run afoul of the law and been convicted of an offence, deal with them through the use of volunteer people. But before that ever happens, when they're in need of correction in the community and social adjustment, volunteers aren't good enough for that particular programme — so says the Minister of Human Resources.

If I have any concern, Mr. Speaker, it's because I think that the programme, as outlined by the Attorney General, is not broad enough. It deals with the situation after the individual has been convicted and sentenced.

We have this strange problem developing: We have courts of this province, most of which fall within the responsibility of the Attorney General. They may have a person come before them charged with a crime; the evidence is produced; the judge makes a finding of guilt, and then applies punishment. And so,

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apparently, ends the work of the courts. The punishment is designed to fit the crime; that's the general guideline, as the Attorney General well knows. However, once that happens, and we are to get into the matter of corrections, the punishment that has been applied by a judge is suddenly going to be changed in some way so that the punishment doesn't fit the crime, but rather fits the criminal. Now, you see what you're doing, Mr. Attorney General, through you Mr. Speaker? You're creating a division between the Corrections Branch and the courts. Yes you are, because the courts apply one set of rules; they have the criminal passed before them and they say, "You're guilty, you're going to go to jail for X number of days or months or years." Then the Corrections Branch gets hold of them and says, "Oh, we know what the judge has said, but actually we looked into your particular problem and you're not really a bad guy, and we think you should be handled in a different way."

We have a situation possibly developing, if we're to carry this out — and if I'm in error, I trust that the Hon. Attorney General will be at length to correct me, because I would like to be assured this is not going to happen. But we're having a situation develop such as we had under the unfortunate regime of M. Goyer — and we know what went wrong between the courts and the parole organization, and the care and custody of criminal offenders when M. Goyer was Solicitor-General of Canada. In this province we've had some very tragic results from the breakdown of the kind of correction measures that the federal government attempted to employ in some of its institutions.

So I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the Attorney General with this new Corrections Branch should be saying to us that it is going to work hand in hand with the courts right from the beginning. So when the offender comes before the courts, we don't have him treated as a criminal — potential criminal — found guilty and punished, then some different treatment applied. So the Corrections Branch can work with the courts to ensure that from the very first moment that guilt is proven and punishment is applied, the rehabilitative process, if it is possible, commences then. And we won't be hearing from provincial court judges, as we've heard in the past, that they're not consulted with respect to the rehabilitative work carried on by the people whom they have committed to prison.

I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that it also goes back even further than that, because before you get to the courts, you've got a law enforcement problem — a community problem. We all recognize this. It seems to me that the Attorney General has a very serious responsibility to carry out in that respect as well because it affects this new Corrections Branch which we are establishing in this legislation.

Two or three of the Members in making their comments this morning on the principle of this bill have referred to drugs, and I'm not going to refer to it again except that we know that in our communities the drug problem is so serious that the law enforcement officers are scarcely able to contain it, and that is easily visible.

I think it is a tragedy when we find that in the beer parlours in the City of Vancouver the drug traffic is so prominent, so deep-rooted, that the police officers are unable to control it in those public establishments.

Mr. Speaker, who has the responsibility to control and regulate those establishments? The Hon. Attorney General (Hon. Mr. Macdonald). We've got to start back at the community level and the Attorney General has got to start back at the community level, recognizing the problems that his Corrections Branch has and making sure that we aren't producing the offenders that the courts will deal with and the Corrections Branch will eventually have to rehabilitate.

So I suggest that when approving this Corrections Branch we must remind ourselves that the thrust is at least threefold. There are three areas of responsibility, all of which come together with the Department of the Attorney General, which need careful consideration, the implementation of programmes and the expenditure, I am certain, Mr. Speaker, of vast sums of money. We are talking about doing away with some of our institutions….

HON. MR. MACDONALD: I like to hear you say that. There's the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Barrett).

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, I thought, Mr. Minister, that he might be listening very carefully. I noticed that there was very gentle applause. He didn't quite pick up his pen, Mr. Attorney General, but….

Interjection.

MR. WILLIAMS: Oh, pardon me. Yes. Mr. Attorney General, I would remind you that the distinguished Deputy Minister of Finance (Mr. Bryson) is also listening to this debate and I hope that perhaps he may be moved in whatever way is required to ensure that this can be carried out.

But as I was saying, we are talking about doing away with Oakalla and these places. I think it is great, but what do we provide instead? What kind of atmosphere, what kind of community development, what kind of facility are we going to provide to overcome the tragic results of a place like Oakalla?

I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that you and every Member of this House read with shock and dismay in the press of two days ago that in one of the federal

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institutions — not in this province but it certainly applies here, I'm sure — it appears that the director of institutions admitted that you had to beat prisoners — not as a beating, but somehow or other to try and control those people.

I don't understand when a beating is not a beating. A broken nose is a broken nose. It doesn't matter whether you get it when you are being controlled or whether you get it as a result of the unfortunate actions of an individual who is paranoiac, or whatever the case may be, and doesn't know how to handle his job — who knows that violence is the only way in which he can respond to a particular situation.

Anyway, I would like to know what kind of facilities we are going to provide in our community. They are needed, yes. They are going to cost a lot of money. I would hope that the Attorney General might indicate to what extent — now that he is having this new branch created with a new Deputy Minister — they have already moved towards the answers to these problems.

Surely we aren't at this stage just beginning with the Corrections Branch Deputy Minister and then going to start looking at the solutions. I think it would make me feel much better and the community feel much better if we realized the direction in which the Corrections Branch and the new Deputy Minister are going to take us.

In a three-pronged attack let us spend the money, let's solve the problem and let's get on with the job because if the Attorney General indicates that the number of criminals is going to double inside the next decade again, the longer we wait the more expensive it becomes, and the whole system of the administration of criminal justice in this province will break down.

On that basis, Mr. Speaker, I'm happy to support the bill.

MR. H.A. CURTIS (Saanich and the Islands): Mr. Speaker, I would like to participate very briefly in this debate because up to this point, I think, almost without exception it has been a discussion between purely professional persons. As a layman I have at least one comment I would like to leave with the House.

The Attorney General, Mr. Speaker, I think has outlined his intentions pretty clearly this morning and we will learn more as we get into the committee stage of debate on this bill. I wish him well in what he is attempting to do. There are others, perhaps, far more qualified than I who could speak on one particular aspect of the whole question of dealing with the offender. I look particularly, Mr. Speaker, to the Hon. Premier on the basis of his many years experience in the social work field.

But it seems to me that there are, in virtually every community of British Columbia, individuals whom the community police department can identify as those likely to commit a major crime at some time in the future, short- or long-term. They know of the individuals. They are powerless to act, other than to observe. They know the general type of crime that is going to be committed by the individual on the basis of past contact with the individual.

I don't for a moment suggest that that person should be locked up with the key tossed away. Of course not. But our police forces are, as I understand it, pretty well powerless to deal with the individual in a constructive and preventive manner. Surely the Attorney General, Mr. Speaker, would look to other Ministers, Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi) and Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke), in an attempt to really tackle this problem to prevent a lot of our crime before it happens.

There was an event in the greater Victoria area not too many weeks ago where any police official could have told you that the crime would happen; sooner or later the crime would take place, yet nothing could be done.

A means of rendering assistance — medical, psychiatric, whatever it may be — to those individuals before it is necessary to lock them up surely must be one of the main aspects of this new department and this new approach.

MR. P.C. ROLSTON (Dewdney): Mr. Speaker, just following on from the Member for Saanich and the Islands (Mr. Curtis), I think the House should know of examples where community groups are attempting, with the police, to try to do exactly what the Member hopes for.

Let's be specific. The RCMP detachment at Colwood under Sgt. Ted Foster, with his 24-man staff, is trying to work with psychologists, psychiatrists, school counselors, probation officers and a citizens' group. I think we should recognize this and give encouragement to Sgt. Foster and others.

In Vancouver, more specifically, the Attorney General has been working with Superintendent Oliver in trying to build up some kind of a community support group so that when two or three uniformed Vancouver or Colwood officers walk the street on a Friday or a Saturday or Sunday night, they know that they have the support of the community group of people who, over many, many discussions and meetings, are beginning to develop some kind of a community responsibility.

Even though we have 3,300 RCMP personnel in British Columbia, there is no possible way that these people on their own can really do the policing and the detecting that the Member for Saanich hopes for.

So it is certainly my hope, as we deal with corrections, that we try to do some more preventive policing, more preventive detection. I would hope the House could give support to people like Sgt. Foster

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and Supt. Oliver. Surely it is possible to still look to the potential in people, especially at an early age, trying to hope for the best out of people, trying to go into a situation where you don't expect trouble and, you know, in a positive way trying to prevent crime.

I think we all know that on a Friday night…last Friday night at midnight I went down to the main street of Mission where there have been anxieties. The mayor phoned us last Wednesday very concerned about crime and people standing on cars and breaking off meters and so forth. We had a meeting last Saturday with the Public Safety Committee in Mission.

What I am appealing to this House for is that you don't look for trouble. I think that there has to be an attitude, a public stance, that is positive and rehabilitative.

We are told that we have the largest number of people in institutions, in jails, per capita than any western nation, and I think this is kind of an alarming indictment of our country.

Mr. Speaker, I should just remind the House that of any riding in this House I probably have more jails, certainly provincial jails, than any other Member on this floor, and it is kind of a strange situation. I look here at the physical inventory of provincial institutions under the Attorney General and there are at least 800 people, often very young people, who are in institutions in Maple Ridge; and specifically at Haney Correctional Institute. But I hope the House recognizes the more positive and smaller forestry camps at Boulder Bay, Stave Lake, Pine Ridge and Blue Mountain.

Incidentally these were started, I believe, under Warden Epp who is now going to be the new Deputy Minister in charge of corrections, a person who, of all people in my experience — and I am fairly new into this — certainly gives feelings of confidence among the staff people in Maple Ridge. I am personally very happy about his choice. You know, it's like asking for a fellow to be a university president. I don't think it's the most exciting prospect and yet it's an instance of a person whom we are able to get back from eastern Canada to do a very big job and yet a job I know he is up to.

HON. MR. BARRETT: He won't last long.

[Mr. Gardom in the chair.]

MR. ROLSTON: Well, no.

Mr. Speaker, I think it should be reminded, there are four volumes of this B.C. corrections study. I just look at the volume on facilities and it is pretty depressing to read the comments on the facilities. I don't want to take too much time here during the debate, but just to describe the impersonal kind of feeling that these people must have in the various institutions. Even though Haney Correctional was a $5 million institution built in the late '50s, the description of this institution is very discouraging: the permanency of the institution, the fact that you really feel you are just going into a concrete jungle, a maze, a very stifling experience. I just can't believe that there could be anything personal and humanizing come out of that kind of atmosphere. Even with the best of staff, I just don't know how it could be possible.

I think the House knows that a federal institution is going to be built in Mission. I am appealing, and I have written lots of letters hoping, that this would not be just another concrete jungle at great expense to the taxpayers. What we need is a more liberating, a more humanizing, surely a more natural kind of environment for people to go through this kind of process, in many cases of just simply growing up, in many cases learning how to relate back to people. It's pretty hard to relate to long cement corridors. It's very hard to relate to the noise. The sheer noise, the echoing in these mazes I find very, very disappointing.

One thing I guess I do hope is that with this new administrative procedure, with the fact now that the staff people, at least 1,200 people in direct provincial staff relations, have immediate access to a Deputy Minister now, a person whom they can trust. I think that is significant.

I do not know why, but there seems to be a real lack of confidence among the staff people I have met. I have struggled with that, I've gone to the union meetings; I've tried to listen. I was just barraged last September and October. These people felt it was a semi-military kind of operation which just can't bring out positive results in people. I certainly hope that the support services for the staff will be more human, less para-military, and that personalizing things could happen.

I guess everybody wants to have neat solutions, but one of the things that I think has been happening, and should be some kind of a handle, are the community projects that these people are involved in. I think the House knows that for 16 years — I could be corrected, but I believe 16 years — there has been in operation a kind of outward camp of Haney Correctional on Stave Lake, with a puny budget of $40,000, apart from the regular budget of Haney Correctional, to do logging and clearing of debris on Stave Lake. There was a large descriptive article in the Vancouver Province last March on this project which I think is worthy of the consideration of this House. We fortunately now have a budget of $100,000 above the regular Haney Correctional operating budget for this Stave Lake project itself.

We are all impressed with what Bond Brothers and other people are doing in the lakes up in the northern part of B.C. I am hoping, and I have made a lot of phone calls hoping that more of this kind of outward,

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physical involvement with these young people can be seen. Personally I would like to see these people simply work a normal 8-hr. day like anybody else does, from 8 until 4:30 and then go back to the prison at night. And, as the Members seem to be saying, with the normal pay. Pay room and board out of this, pay income tax out of this, and be part of some kind of a work experience. We all know how impossible it is once these people leave, once they have finished their sentence or are paroled out. Often they have very little money with them, they have very, very few contacts and probably no likely contacts for work. Unless they are fortunate to have Big Brothers or somebody to help them, it's just going to go back down the tube again.

So my hope is that, first of all, there is greater morale; I think this is possible with the new leadership we are getting. I hope that there are more staff services, more support services, especially in the community — not just on Stave Lake projects — helping people with their gardening, their driving. I don't know if it's actually happened but there is some hope in Maple Ridge that we can have one of their people driving for Meals on Wheels, that there could be a lot of just simple carpentry and other projects.

Incidentally, to my knowledge nobody has ever escaped from the Stave Lake logging project, which has been going on for 16 years. So community projects and community involvement I think are very, very important. Let's face it, none of us should be surprised if this is a high-risk business. We are all very upset with what happened when Anderson escaped — the Member from Chilliwack (Mr. Schroeder) isn't here — but we were disappointed with the fact that Anderson escaped from the Matsqui Institution.

HON. MR. MACDONALD: He escaped from Parliament in Ottawa. (Laughter.)

MR. ROLSTON: He escaped from Parliament in Ottawa.

We were upset with that instance; it was embarrassing and maybe there should have been greater control but, as Walter Petkau from the Abbotsford Community Services said, "It is a high-risk business." You are not taking risks keeping the guy incarcerated. It is a high-risk business involving these people in the community, but I would like to think that there is some of kind of hope for something to happen for these people.

I don't know if you realize it, but there is an active United Church minister, ordained three years ago, who probably spent longer on death row than anybody in the recent history of corrections in this province. He is now actively serving our Lord and the people of this province. He was a person who, with very little help from the Corrections Service, was given rehabilitation and we are very pleased. There are not many, but I think there are a few instances where people certainly have been able to swim upstream against the stifling kind of 19th century punitive programmes of corrections. I know that this is a new atmosphere; this is a new day. Again, I hope for preventative community involvement and strongly support this legislation.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, may I congratulate you on taking the Chair.

As the closer for this party in this debate, I would like to make a few comments on this bill, which we will certainly be supporting.

First, I think the Attorney General might well have given us a little more information upon the crime statistics, for British Columbia in particular. It is true, of course, that crime is increasing substantially, but B.C. is first on the national scale for murder, first for wounding and assault, first for rape, and first for suicide; only when you get to violent robbery do we come second, and I believe we come second to the Province of Quebec.

The statistics are really quite startling. In terms of murder, we had in B.C. in '62, 3.9 per 100,000; 1974, 4.1 per 100,000. Quebec for the same years had 1.4, 1.9 by example. In other words, more than double in British Columbia.

Part of this probably, and I will give them full credit, is the effectiveness of the RCMP in this province. But certainly there is no question that violent crime is a great deal greater in British Columbia than elsewhere, and I wonder whether, in closing the debate, the Attorney General will comment upon this, whether he will give us some indication as to whether that task force that he has set up almost a year ago has reported to him on this, and whether perhaps he can make this information available.

I may certainly be at fault myself, Mr. Speaker, in not knowing of a report of the three-man commission that he appointed back in December of last year. I may be at fault for not knowing whether they sent a report to my office, but I have not found one yet. I've been searching my shelves in a somewhat desultory fashion earlier this morning, unable to find one, and my Hon. friend from Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) also was unable to discover whether he had received one. I wonder whether the Attorney General would assist us by making this type of information available. It may well be the report has been presented; I am no way suggesting it hasn't been presented. I'm just saying a year ago you set up a three-man commission when you said that the existing facilities were "bombed out" by drug offenders and that they were going to discuss such things as correction matters being moved to the Department of Rehabilitation or a separate

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department, such as in Ontario.

This report was expected before or during the next session of the Legislature on January 25, 1973. It may well have been put forward then, I don't know, but perhaps comment on this by the Minister — if it's late, why — would be helpful to us in this debate.

No question, though, that there is a serious problem in British Columbia. Perhaps the Minister might like to comment, if he has information from that commission, on why the problem is so much worse here.

There are questions, or course, specifically with respect to Oakalla raised by the Hon. lady from Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown). I have referred to an article in the newspaper by Simma Holt where it states flatly that if fire occurred in Oakalla, particularly at night, most of the inmates would probably die.

She is quoting a matron from the prison, and I will repeat the quote here because I think it is important for the Attorney General to be reminded of this article: "If anything happened to the matron in the front office and there was no way to get at the lock keys for the outside door we would all die."

This was said by one matron who had done night duty for several years. I know it is being phased out; I know changes are being made. I just wonder, however, whether we might have a word or two on that from the Minister when he closes the debate.

Mr. Speaker, the emphasis in this debate has been on parole, and I think that is excellent. It has been said, and I believe it, that there is no way, really, to reform a prisoner and there is no incentive to reform unless parole exists. In systems which are tightened up, where sentences are passed down and there is no parole, there is no incentive for a prisoner to reform and that's it. You are going to have a man returned to the streets at the end of his sentence without any improvement in his character or mental make-up which will make him less likely to repeat the crime. So parole, obviously, is critical.

However, if it is critical we are going to have to do a great deal better in the future than has been done in the past in selling this concept to the public. The rash of articles and criticisms of the federal parole system which came out a year ago, two years ago, led to a tremendous amount of distrust in the overall concept of parole. This must be combated properly and parole must be explained properly if the system is to work at all.

For example, Judge Bewley wrote an article for the Weekend Magazine about a year ago. He talked about 62 parole failures in B.C. and they were pretty horrifying. Yet, at the same time, he failed to talk of the 1,500 paroles granted in that same period of time. Not all of those 1,500 were successful, but he was talking about 62 out of a relatively large number.

This brings up perhaps the most critical point. We are often told, as politicians, "Well, we don't mind parole — just make sure you don't make any mistakes." There is no way to prevent mistakes in parole. There is a way to cut it down, but there is no way to prevent it. For us to mislead the public into suggesting that we are going to create a parole system which is perfect and in which only those who are sure-fire, clean-cut citizens are going to be released is a very, very important thing. We are going to have to tell them there are risks involved in the whole system of parole.

Now in British Columbia there are 10,000 on parole. In the federal system, I believe, there are 42,000 on parole across the country, of whom a substantial portion will be in British Columbia. We, after all, have the largest number of violent criminals.

So, we have a large number of people paroled in this province, either federally or provincially, who are walking the streets — 70 per cent of them, I believe, have jobs — and who are trying to reform in most cases. But there are a number of those who in absolute numbers, and it may come up to quite a substantial number, will not succeed or will be returned for parole violation or will repeat crimes. That is the price society is going to have to learn to pay. It sounds somewhat tough, perhaps, to put it in that way, but unless you give a man the opportunity to work, you are not going to get him reformed. Unless you give the prisoner the opportunity to get paroled, you are not going to reform him. In essence, what I am saying is that the parole system is critical to cutting down on the number of crimes by criminals repeating their previous offences.

It does result in a certain number of mistakes. Efforts, we hope, will be made to reduce these to the minimum but some will occur and the public is going to have to learn that the number that do occur are, in total number, far less than would occur otherwise without a parole system. I don't think that the public understands it now. When the Hon. Member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) was speaking, it occurred to me that perhaps the former judge, the Progressive Conservative candidate in New Westminster, Judge Maurice Mulligan, would have found his remarks rather difficult to take. I was very pleased with the remarks from the Member for Oak Bay.

MR. WALLACE: I believe it.

AN HON. MEMBER: Yea-a-a!

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: I am sure he will repeat those remarks when I say it was somewhat different from the tune sung in the Okanagan in the last by-election. Now, of course, the Member for Oak Bay is, as he says, the leader. I am very pleased because I think he is adopting a very liberal approach.

Mr. Speaker, that's one point I leave with the

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Attorney General right now.

Now, we turn to the bill itself. We talked at some length about parole. We talked at some length about crime and drugs in this debate. But the bill itself, according to the explanatory note, is a fairly pedestrian and innocuous document. The purpose of this bill is to replace the Corrections Service with the Corrections Branch — in other words, it's a name change — which will be directly under the control of the Attorney General and the Deputy Minister of Corrections.

In other words, this bill, in terms of principle, in terms of what it does, doesn't really deal with many of the subjects we talked on. It doesn't deal with drugs, it doesn't deal with parole per se, and in this respect I think the bill can be — I won't say criticized — I think it could be questioned.

First, the Minister has told us that we're going to establish a new Deputy Minister who is going to report to another Deputy Minister. Administratively, I think that is a bad way to handle it, in my personal view. If you are going to have one Deputy Minister for your department, Mr. Attorney General, fine. If, however, you want to establish another Ministry and you want another Deputy Minister, fine, but I don't like this idea of you establishing a new Deputy Minister, reporting to a second Deputy Minister — or I should say a first Deputy Minister — when you have already just established an Associate Deputy Minister whose purpose has apparently yet to be defined. You are going to have at least three Deputy Ministers or former Deputy Ministers running around knocking heads together trying to get your ear, and I think that with your own personal problems in your own department this is a curious way of going about it.

Essentially, all this does is upgrade a Corrections Branch and you are going to call it a Ministry, or at least you set it up under a Deputy Minister. I wonder: what is the administrative need for this? You haven't defined it yourself. It doesn't, in itself, give any more weight or importance to what this Branch should be doing or could be doing, just by changing the names of certain people, changing the establishment. I haven't yet heard a decent explanation.

Interjection.

MR. D.A. ANDERSON: It brings the control to you and strikes out in previous Acts where control was either separated or where it was joined. It is now in your own hands, Mr. Minister. True. Again, could that not have been achieved without establishing what essentially might turn out to be a new Ministry? I don't know. I just wonder at the administrative propriety of having this type of situation. I can't see that that, in itself, will solve any of the problems that we have talked about. That's the point that I am trying to make. I think it is a valid one. I think it is fairly important.

In the past, the job was done by a director and you haven't really explained why an upgrading in name is going to make the job done all that much better. So I would trust, Mr. Speaker, through you to the Minister, that in closing the debate, as well as more general comments I have asked for, the Minister will refer more specifically to this Act which is basically, apparently, a name-changing exercise, as well as a slight administrative alteration, and will indicate how this type of relatively modest step in the administrative field is really going to help us in solving some of the other problems that have been talked about by many Members from all parties.

Mr. Speaker, as I indicated, we will be supporting this legislation.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before calling upon the Hon. Member for Comox (Ms. Sanford), I would like to draw to the attention of the Hon. Members that it is the responsibility of the office of Speaker to maintain both decorum and propriety within the House. (Laughter.) It has always been considered appropriate that Members leaving the House or Members entering the House acknowledge the Chair — not necessarily the person in the chair but the office of the Chair — and I would hope that all of the older Members of the House would follow the good example of the new Members and do just that in the future. (Laughter.)

MS. K. SANFORD (Comox): Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak just very briefly about one aspect of this whole problem. That is the area of the stigma which is attached to people who have served a term in prison, particularly as it relates to job opportunities.

The Second Member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) this morning outlined for us the depressing conditions under which the prisoners, at least in the women's section, live at Oakalla and how demoralized they felt. I think that people who have served their term, have completely been rehabilitated, have gone through all the processes that are involved and have received retraining must also feel very demoralized and depressed because of the stigma attached to the fact that they have served a term in prison. No matter what their behaviour is once they get out, they find it difficult to obtain employment because of the attitude of society towards them.

Now, I would like this new Corrections Branch, if possible, to take a look at this whole aspect of the problem of corrections. Perhaps they could embark upon some kind of an educational programme to enlighten society about the fact that these people have paid their penalties; they are now rehabilitated; let us accept them as people in our society.

I would like to point out this business of stigma, this whole aspect of it, by relating one particular case,

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which has been brought to my attention. This involved a man who served eight years in prison for armed robbery, which he committed with a toy gun. There was no violence involved.

He served his time in prison and was rehabilitated. This man is now 60 years old, it is 30 years since he was released from prison and he has quite a story to relate, about trying to fit back into society, trying to obtain a job like everyone else in society.

Even though this man was the first person with a prison record to be accepted into the Masonic order in 1964, even though he was one who could now be accepted by the Shriners as well, and was accepted by that group in 1967, and even though he served as a warden at a church for some time in Toronto, he was unable to find the usual kinds of jobs most others in society can. He was unable to work for the government and he found that he was unable to find employment with any large business.

In 1952, for instance, he took an extension course at the University of Toronto. This was a national safety course and he became a certified safety director. But because of his record he was unable to use the training that he had received and could not get that job.

He's been able to do such things as work as a driving instructor for the YMCA and for St. John's Ambulance. Those people would accept him, but he was not accepted by government because of his record and he was not accepted by the general business community because of his record.

Now this man, although he married, decided not to have any children because of the stigma which society had attached to him because of his serving eight years in prison for armed robbery with a toy gun. Now I would like this new branch to have a look at this problem to see if we can't correct it. Thank you.

MR. H.D. DENT (Skeena): This bill will, I hope, and I'm sure all of us hope, establish a whole new direction in corrections in British Columbia. Like the Hon. Member for Dewdney (Mr. Rolston), I served in the ministry. Of course in that capacity we had many occasions to deal with offenders and to be called into situations where there were very serious problems that either had led already or could lead to infractions of the law and we would often go to court with young people. So we developed a very good understanding of the personal problems involved in the whole process, and they are considerable.

All I can say at the beginning of my comments is that the first thing we should establish, if we are going to do something, let us do it properly, otherwise it's not worth doing.

For example, there was a drug offender who was arrested for armed robbery because he needed some money to get some drugs for his habit. He was sent finally to Matsqui federal institution, and I thought this was very good; maybe after a certain period of time, two or three years or so, he may be successfully rehabilitated and will then be able to take his place in society. The facts were otherwise. He certainly did spend some time there, a couple of years, but he was only out a short time when he was convicted of a further crime and was again incarcerated.

I discovered that they had not properly funded the thing; there were not adequate staff. They'd not actually instituted the programme that was originally recommended for this multi-million-dollar institution. So you know, it was really a waste of the taxpayer's money. They might as well have created something a little cheaper and simply locked him up and thrown the key away. It would have been a greater service to him, probably, and also to society.

So my first plea is, whatever we do, let's fund it adequately, let's do it right. Let's not have half-baked programmes. All we've had in the whole system so far are half-baked programmes. Every programme I've run into is a half-baked programme. Every kind of situation seems to be half baked.

The probation services are not adequately staffed. The so-called extra additional institutions are not adequately staffed. The only exception seems to be the one that he referred to in the Maple Ridge area, and there are some others under the provincial services that seem to be adequately done. But the first plea is let's do the thing right. Let's put the money out that needs to be put out and try to do a proper job. And let's make sure we get the very best of personnel to run them.

The second point I want to make is that we have to be concerned both with the protection of the public and with rehabilitation. It seems to be the weakness of almost every previous system that they always go either one way or the other. We seem to be incapable of doing anything rationally in terms of doing both of these things at once. There is not adequate protection to the public and the government is accused of being easy on criminals. The courts are accused of being easy on criminals, which is often the case. Or else we do the opposite; we have a very good system of protection in a sense, but we don't do anything for the person who is incarcerated, or make any serious attempt to rehabilitate him.

I think that the rational thing is that we must be concerned about and address ourselves to both of these things at once. There are many innocent people around the province, and I've seen many instances of this, as I'm sure we all have, of people who have been preyed upon by people who are ruthless and who are engaging in criminal activities, and yet seem to be able to get away with it time and time again; many of them don't even get caught.

I remember a professor of sociology of mine at UBC, Dr. Topping, who had specialized in

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criminology. He said that only one person in 10 who commits a crime actually gets caught and put in jail. So that certainly we need a study system of detection and ferreting out and finding people who are preying upon others in any form, whether it be the very sophisticated kind of kiting cheques, or whether it be the rackets and that sort of thing. Every kind of crime must be rooted out and ferreted out.

On the other hand, we also must make sure that there's the very best of rehabilitation provided so that, if there's any possibility that the person can return to a normal life, that he will in fact return and make a contribution to the good and well-being of society.

A third point. I think that the new approach in corrections should — and I would assume and I'm sure that it will, but I just want to mention these points — take into account the different kinds of people who are involved in crime and make the necessary provisions for each kind. For example, one thing that I noted and this is, I think, a fact, and that is that probably nine out of 10 criminals incarcerated or involved in the courts in B.C. are males, and maybe about one-tenth are women.

Now women could stand up and say: We're more righteous and virtuous and so on. I think the sexual difference in the makeup of people biologically has to be taken into account; there has to be a provision made to ensure that there is adequate service to compensate for the different makeup of males to females involved in crime. After all, if there are so many more men in jail than there are women, there must be a difference between them in their make-up, the reasons that they get involved in crime. And if there's a difference….

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

MR. SPEAKER: Point of order?

MR. D.E. SMITH (North Peace River): The point of order is simply this, that the principle of this bill is the simple restructuring of the department to provide for two separate divisions where there was previously one. We've gone on for two hours on a wide-ranging debate on everything under the sun except the principle of this bill. I suggest you keep the speakers a little closer to the principle of the bill.

MR. SPEAKER: Well I must say that this debate certainly has been getting down to specifics, but it is true also that this does refer to both men and women as persons. I suppose that would allow a certain delineation of the subject between the two sexes, as long as you treat them equally. Would the Hon. Member proceed.

MR. DENT: Yes, I speak to the principle of the bill, which is the new direction in corrections in British Columbia. I think that this is the whole principle of the bill and that's what I am addressing myself to.

Now, as I said, I would hope — and this has been simply an observation of fact — that the attitude of many people in society is well, if the young motorcyclist or somebody who's a rough, tough character commits a crime, you just chuck him in a cement cell and forget him because he's a rough, tough character and that's the way you treat rough, tough characters.

But actually underneath that is a very sensitive personality, who is often very insecure and who often requires far more help than a woman who's often very quiet and peaceful and just kites cheques or embezzles. We need to adjust our thinking to fit the kinds of personalities and the kinds of special problems that each one has.

Also, the second kind of criminal is organized crime. I think organized crime, obviously, is going to require a very sophisticated kind of system, and I certainly hope we do not go easy or think that we can always rehabilitate people who are involved in organized crime. They have to be treated very differently than people who are obviously able to be rehabilitated in a different sense.

The same with transient criminals; the people who simply wander into the province and wander out again and commit crimes. They're very difficult to control as compared with ones who are brought up and raised in the province and who have roots here. So again, there needs to be special consideration given for the transient criminal. There seems to be quite a number of that type right now. There seems to be a lot that have moved into the province recently or come in; they're involved in crime, and suddenly they're in B.C. for a couple of years in the penitentiary or in the jail. Maybe their problem is, again, a specialized one.

Similarly with young offenders, I think the only solution is really probation — but very good probation services. Many young offenders would never commit a crime again if they had proper probationary services. But when they're locked up even for short periods, they meet other offenders and they emulate their heroic qualities. They're influenced by the fact that they're courageous and they've got guts, and so on, and they wind up committing more crimes. Whereas if they had very good and extensive probation services, this wouldn't happen. I've seen this on many occasions.

The fourth major point is that if we're going to take our new system of corrections into the communities of the province and involve people there, I think this is very good, I think this is very realistic. I think the community must accept the responsibility for its own offenders to a greater

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degree. But if they're going to do this, they're going to need a lot of assistance from the department; they're going to need some resources and guidance.

Again, I think the move that we've made in interdepartmental cooperation between Health and Human Resources and the other departments that may be involved is a good step in the right direction. But it has to be carried through aggressively because otherwise we're going to wind up with a shambles. If the communities are assisted in this process and participate, I think it can be the greatest thing that's ever happened in terms of correction, and I welcome that move very much. But again, it must be done well; otherwise it will simply disintegrate into shambles.

The final point: one of the things I think we fail to recognize in the whole system of justice is the fact that penalties and sanctions have been a traditional method of measuring the moral values of the community or of a group.

For example, if you get a parking ticket in the City of Vancouver, it looks something like a Safeway shopping list it's got a list of all the offences that you can commit — traffic infractions and so on — and what the penalty is for each one. At least, that's what it was when I got my traffic ticket; I haven't had one for a few years. As I said, it just looked like a shopping list.

But one thing you saw when you looked through it instantly was the fact that they attached a different importance or value to each offence. So if you merely over parked, it was $4 at that time. I guess it has increased since then. If you went through a red light, that was $25. So obviously, even a fool could see that going through a red light was a much more serious offence than over parking. Our common sense would tell us without looking at that ticket that that's the case.

But that's not so much the case with other things. There are some things where the value is only really brought home to somebody by the penalty or the sanction that's attached to that particular offence. Then they understand the value of it to the community.

For example, where rape to somebody might seem like an unimportant thing, or infanticide might seem to somebody only one step away from abortion and therefore not really important, the fact is that the penalties prescribed for these offences indicate the degree of importance that is attached to it by the community.

Therefore, I would hope that in any system where we change our direction in corrections, we ensure that young people especially understand the importance of things to the community. If we can achieve it in some other way other than locking them up for eight years for robbing a bank with a toy gun, then it should be done. But there should be every effort made to get across to young people the importance the community ascribes to particular acts.

In one community you can do something and nothing will happen to you; the community doesn't care a fig for it. In another community, they care a great deal and they would bring down the full weight of the law on you. But that's where so many young people get into trouble. If there is some very clear way that young people, perhaps through probation services and other services, can be brought to understand the fact that communities ascribe different values to different actions in each community in each situation, they may conduct themselves accordingly and show a respect for the community values.

Thank you very much.

HON. L.T. NIMSICK (Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources): I support this bill. I've listened to quite a debate on the penalties and corrections that go on, but I'm one who believes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I don't think we do enough in the early stages of our young people. Schooling, I think, could do a lot more in their curriculum in teaching a child their rights and their wrongs and respect for the police.

Some of this, of course, stems from the family and a lot can be done in the home; but more counselling could be done in the schools. I've noticed that the attitudes of young people to the police is such that they build up an animosity. If a policeman stops them and corrects them on something, they get pretty snotty with them and away they go. The first thing you know, a simple little thing ends up in something big, and probably a fight with the police. I feel that not enough counselling is done in the schools to educate these young people in the real respect for the law and that the police have got a job to do. We won't have to go to the correction and to the courts with a lot of these cases if we did this.

MR. SPEAKER: The Second Member for Vancouver Centre.

MR. E.O. BARNES (Vancouver Centre): First Member, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: I'm sorry. In this House, if you are sitting in the front, you are usually the second Member; if you're sitting in the back, you're the first. I can't figure it out.

MR. BARNES: It only logically follows that if you're in the cabinet, you should be the first Member, I suppose. (Laughter.) Now, that's an aside.

I would like to enter the debate in support of the motion, Mr. Speaker, in this particular instance, primarily because I am a long, long time professional

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in this field. As soon as I graduated from the school of social work I worked at the young offenders unit at Oakalla, and then, following our now Premier, out at Haney Correctional institution, and then working with the Narcotic Addiction Foundation for four years. So I'll probably have the shortest speech.

I would just like to suggest to the Members that the idea of a sentence should not carry with it an idea of public retribution. We have these institutions, and quite often we don't look at them for the intended purpose. That is, the fundamental principle behind an institution should be to provide a service. But I think that when it becomes a place of retribution, to get even, so to speak, where you have people locked up because we don't know what to do with them or we're going to punish them, then the institution no longer serves the purpose for which it was intended.

The idea of corrections, to me, is simply that: we think there is a problem we can correct. If we don't then something's wrong in the overall objective. When we talk about a sentence, it should be related to a goal — six months, or a year or two years — and should be related to a plan, an objective. I don't think a person should be thrown a sentence with no objective, no plan, no goal.

Keeping this in mind, I'm wondering if the public is being kept up-to-date on the ideas of what a correctional institution is set up for. I think that the Corrections Branch, or corrections department, should have as part of its objectives a parallel programme that assists the public in understanding what it is attempting to do.

I would hazard a guess that most people who think of criminals think of someone who is all wrong and deserves to pay for something. But criminals, or whatever we want to call them, are people like you and I, Members of this Assembly, who have not been able to perform according to some standards that have been laid down.

We should keep these standards in mind. We should keep in mind the rules of our social structure, of the society that we are living in today. These need to be changed from time to time. We need to consider the difficulty within which a person has to function. These rules sometimes become very unsatisfactory for the types of problems that we are all faced with from day to day. You know, some of the things on the books, some of the rules that we live under, are really old hat, and it is like enforcing laws that are no longer enforceable. Young kids smoking cigarettes is just one example: if you are under 16 you are not supposed to be able to smoke, but all the kids do.

But when you have a society that is not prepared to change and itself keep up the regulations that it expects the members to follow, and you put people in jail or punish them for it, then I think that that makes it impossible for those who are doing rehabilitation to be honest and really be an example for the people they are working with.

I worked out at Haney, about 10 or 15 years ago now, and I recall when I was in the social training department….

HON. MR. BARRETT: Nine years.

MR. BARNES: It was only nine? It seems longer. Well, maybe…. It was in 1969, I think. Yes, 1959 — 13 years, 14 years.

But we had double fences around the institution — those cyclone fences or whatever — they are about 10 or 15 feet high, and we had towers. This was at the time that that institution was supposed to be a medium security institution that was going to be a forward look; only the first offender-type people would be involved. All the modern techniques would be used — opportunities for people to get a pre-release experience at a place called Gold Creek Camp, and so forth.

But at the same time, while I was really doing a con job, a selling job, a propaganda job, I was really being quite dishonest and insincere because I feel now, when I look back on it, that I was a front man for an insincere system because what was happening was….

Now, to show you the structure of this thing — I don't think it has changed that much — you may put one warden in there, but he's got two attitudes, one for custody and one for social rehabilitation, and it is impossible to do both at the same time. I think this is what one of the other Members was suggesting.

So, the Deputy Warden of custody was responsible for seeing that the towers were manned; the Deputy Warden of social training was telling me to go out and convince him that those towers didn't mean anything. So here I am, I'm going to take a group of kids out to the field and we're going to play some ball and talk about working together as a team and trusting each other, getting passes to go out into the community, and so forth. And they couldn't get anywhere near that fence without the guard getting uptight, coming out and getting his binoculars on them to make sure no one tried to get over it. This was a very tense situation. Now this was happening in the last 12 years. I don't know if it is still going on now — I haven't been back to the place since I left, but I don't think it has changed too much.

But how is it that we can allow ourselves in this day and age of technological advances to lag so far behind technically in the field of sociology, I mean, to not understand human behaviour? We talk about understanding the indicators of how people behave as they develop — the age, the stage — the things that tell us something about their experiences as related to their behaviour…and for us to expect people to behave better on the outside than they were on the inside under those conditions. I believe we should not

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feel that people should be proven guilty until they are innocent. That is, if they are in jail, why can't we trust them? And if they fail then we say, "Fine, okay, we'll have to have a more secure situation."

What I am thinking of is the idea of a work programme which another Member suggest — I think it was the Member for Dewdney (Mr. Rolston). Why not give them a full experience if they have to be in an institution? Why be concerned about people escaping? I would suggest that about 1 per cent or less would ever even try to escape; and if they try to escape then we'll put that 1 per cent in an institution where they can't get out — some kind of more secure setting. But I will bet you that 99 per cent of the people, especially the young ones, who are put in jail for one problem or another, given a full experience, would not try to escape. I believe that. I don't believe that they would.

I think that these people are alienated and they have personal problems, and they need somebody to talk to. I know I still get calls from people who I worked with those many years ago: they tell me to come to their marriages; some of them have gone into business; they are all over the place. I see them and they still want a talking contact. They've had all kinds of problems growing up themselves.

I'm suggesting that to really make the system work we will have to get the public involved, as was pointed out by the Member for Skeena (Mr. Dent). We have to take people back, not just because they are from a particular community that they go back to that community, but that the community is responsible for all of the problems and all of its institutions. It endorses these institutions; it supports these institutions, so it should be responsible for the planning of what happens on both ends of the institution.

I really don't feel we can continue to think that by locking people up and putting guards with uniforms in there, giving them a big stick and telling them that they have the authority, that we are going to be able to rehabilitate anyone. I think that this is an incongruous approach, an incongruous approach to what we are saying has to happen in a society. Really, when you are democratic and you are talking about responsible citizenship and all these things, we've got to demonstrate that we believe in this system. This is one of the problems. We say it on the one hand, but we don't have faith in it ourselves.

I believe that if we had shown this faith, if we got the Public involved…and I don't mean that we are going to turn people loose who have personality disorders that are obviously queer, or people who are escaping or who are becoming violent. But most of the people in jail are not violent; I think they become violent; they become angry, and they are angry quite often because of the unfair laws in the first place. And we are not prepared to give one inch in assisting these people.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would just like to suggest that we employ people in institutions who understand something about personalities, something about human growth and development, something about the social dynamics of the complex society in which we live. Let's not put people in and say, "Okay, you're now protected. You're in the civil service and you don't have to worry. Here's a uniform; here are the regulations. Show no diversity, show no flexibility; don't do any thinking yourself because this is the way it is." We can't operate like that in the long run.

I think that we are going to have to have more faith in the nature of the human organism as such. It is diverse and it always will be, I hope. We don't need to unify our thinking so that everybody does everything the same way. Let's give the prisoner a chance, too. Let's not have him going from one prison to one jail-keeper, to the next guard, the next authority person and get the same story all the time: "I'm sorry, I can't do anything. My hands are tied." He's a human being who we are dealing with, unless we are prepared to keep him in jail forever. Thank you.

MRS. D. WEBSTER (Vancouver South): Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief. I would like to say that I am delighted that the Attorney General has brought in a piece of legislation which I hope will be so enlightened that we will reduce the number of people in our penal institutions, the way it has been done in other countries. Every time I read in the paper of the large percentage per capita of offenders that are being kept for a long time in penal institutions in relation to what is happening in other countries, it distresses me.

It distresses me because a great number of these are people who, as was mentioned earlier, cannot afford to pay a fine and so instead they are given the alternative of so many days, or so many months in jail. One of the great inadequacies of our penal institutions, even the ones that are a little bit more of the open type, is that while they give the detainees courses, very often these courses that are given in prison are so long that they are longer than the actual sentence that the trainee is in for.

This means that they don't complete the course and they go back into society still inadequately trained. It's more confusing to them than ever if they have to return to society and not be prepared for anything. It means that they are back on the street and still probably unemployable. Now that is one point.

The other point I would like to make, Sir, is that we have to find some way, as the Minister of Mines (Hon. Mr. Nimsick) mentioned, prevention beforehand. We live in a very violent age and violence

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is perpetrated very often because of two things. One, because of the increased density of our urban society, and secondly, because of the permissiveness. I believe that one of these permissive elements in our society is the ease with which young people or anyone can buy a gun, or a knife.

In spite of the fact that when the Solicitor-General of Canada was here in Vancouver, he said that knives were not in evidence, he hadn't seen any, yet every week we hear about people being knifed or being stabbed to death. It's terribly frightening to society in general.

Secondly, they are able to get a gun very easily on a permit without having to have any tests taken. They can make a collection of guns. These guns don't have to have the pins removed and the collector can perpetrate all sorts of violence in this society.

During the Canada Games a young man was walking down the streets in the east-end of Vancouver and he was shot by a sniper. A young nurse walked with her friend to a bus station at midnight, and on the way home she was shot to death. They found that she had four bullets in her body. These are the sort of things that are happening continually and it's because we haven't got gun laws, laws that are strict enough to prevent the average citizen from obtaining guns. I think it's about time that we started to put more restrictions in these laws. I think it's about time we took toy guns off the market as toys for children, too.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I had mixed feelings about whether or not I was going to participate in the debate, but then those feelings disappeared very quickly. (Laughter.)

Interjections.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Yes, you're right. I couldn't after that. I have waited so long in this House to see this type of legislation appear, and I have also stayed out of the corrections field in other than general discussions in cabinet around changes in the Attorney General's department. I suppose that if there is any other job I would give my eye-teeth for — other than being Premier — it would be Mr. Epp's job for a couple of years. Not longer than that, but certainly a couple of years.

AN HON. MEMBER: He can have mine. I can trade with him.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Okay! Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment first of all on a number of things that were said in what I consider to be a very excellent debate and certainly long overdue in this House.

It is interesting that it's up to the Socreds to say nothing, or say something. In any event it's interesting that they are not really getting involved in a very….

AN HON. MEMBER: I've got something to say.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Okay, well I am looking forward to hearing your contribution, because I think everybody should give us some idea of a reflection of their own feelings, because in this field it is really a feeling area and when people talk it sort of gives their own philosophy, and the philosophy of the people they represent, to a certain degree.

I thank the First Member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) who shared a work experience at the Haney Correctional institution with me, although he came after I had already been paroled (Laughter) and it is a parole, Mr. Speaker.

I don't say that lightly. Staff in prison, you must understand, are not paroled. They are in prison for all their working life, if they choose that as a career. The inmates get to go out on occasion. So they must have some sympathy and understanding for the staff.

If any staff deserves a kind of sabbatical that university professors get, it's staff that work in mental institutions or in prison.

After seven years at university, I understand that you get a year off. Well I think, Mr. Provincial Secretary, through you, Mr. Speaker, it might be worth considering the same kind of thing for those people who work in prisons and in mental hospitals, because they, more so than the inmates, are prisoners of the building.

My good friend the Member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) talked about that double fence. I think the House should know a little bit more about that double fence. When we first arrived there in 1957, money was not allocated for the double fence, and we opened the prison without the fence and we put up some posts and some lumber and said, "that's the fence, don't go past that fence."

Then Treasury Board of that day finally allocated the money, not only for the fence, but for the guardhouse. We argued against it, and I don't think the government wanted to spend the money, Mr. Speaker, but it got so bungled up in the machinery that once it was unleashed as an expenditure it had to be expended.

We went for 19 months without a fence, and as soon as the fence was up, and as soon as the guardhouse was up, we had our first escape. The reason being that when you test human beings on the basis of that kind of challenge, they have got to check it out. When we asked people for the first year-and-a-half not to go past the imaginary line, there was no real challenge to it. They had to assume some responsibility in the setting for their own behaviour. But as soon as the fence was up and the

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game, really, of playing guards versus prisoners started with the binoculars, with the rifles, that's when the system had to be tested; and we had our first escapes.

The escapes were successful, because it's a test of ingenuity, and many people who we're dealing with in prisons, are usually very ingenious in terms of coping with the rules of society. They found out when you have a guard who comes on shift, when the shifts are, what the changes are, what the routine is, and in a prison once you have set a routine it never changes, never.

They just sit around. They've got all the time, 24 hours-a-day to figure out what the routine is, and they find the loopholes in it.

The question about drugs, and the experience with drugs. In my experience, many of the people I worked with had their first experience in using drugs in jail. Now I must qualify that by saying my experience was limited in the drug scene before the soft drug explosion took place. When I first worked in Oakalla in 1953 at the Young Offenders' Unit, the drugs were essentially related to a hard-core criminal group, and it was heroin. They started by sniffing and then by spooning and a needle. Very young kids were mainlining heroin, but it was a very small group.

The soft drug explosion is something that I don't understand. At 43 I find that I am a generation removed from understanding of that particular problem and that's why, when I saw young social workers with very long hair, coming to work without ties, and their shirtsleeves rolled up, I was first staggered because this was not professional decorum. But it sure as heck was effective, and a whole scene changed in a generation about behaviour and what was acceptable, and what wasn't acceptable.

But the jails never changed. The scene changed but the jails didn't change. The only good thing, if I may say that in a very bad sense, that came out of that soft drug explosion was that for the first time middle-class youngsters were showing up in jail, and we had a public outcry and a public alarm about the jail system that was just as rotten before, that the community didn't care about. But we had a public outcry and a public alarm because middle-class kids were showing up in jail. Before that time it was exclusively the poor.

At UBC a research group did a very interesting study on Oakalla showing that many of the young people that came in there came from families whose incomes were below the median of the poverty level. But as soon as the middleclass kids start showing up in jail, then whole new concerns start showing up — in the United States, too, not just here. Okay, we've got a new awareness about jails. But the Member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Williams) is absolutely correct to emphasize the jail; you are always starting when it is almost too late.

But then you come to the problem raised by that Member and the Member for Saanich and the Islands (Mr. Curtis). There is no doubt in the community that teachers, the police, community workers and parents can look down the street and say: "Look, if somebody doesn't do something with Johnny, that kid is going to be in trouble." And they do. They accurately predict the kind of criminal behaviour, the kind of criminal act that is eventually placed by that individual.

And yet, we have a society that demands the protection of an individual's civil rights.

Here is the complex situation. You might find a youngster whom you know because of his behaviour is going to commit a crime; but what legal jurisdiction do you have to go in and intercede before the crime is committed? It is a violation of that individual's civil liberty. You are making a judgment of behaviour before the act is committed, and yet you know odds are that that criminal act is going to be perpetrated. It's a dilemma. Maybe the lawyers can help us out of that dilemma. But how do you stop infringing on civil liberty and still get the same thing? I don't know.

Surely, we've got to look at protection of the community. The whole purpose of any kind of protection, in terms of parole or jailing or punishment, must be the protection of the community. And on that basis, when you look at what happens in our federal penitentiaries, some of our sickest people are the people who act out in the area of sexual crimes.

We don't discuss human sexuality in the school system. We are starting now, but when I went to school the question of actual sexual relationships between boys and girls was just never even thought of as part of the curriculum. Like most others, I suppose, the kind of education we had in sexual relationships was either some gentle attempt by parents to give us some understanding or whatever you picked up on the streets.

And that hasn't changed very much. Some of the most severely disturbed people we have are the ones who act out in sexually-motivated crimes. What do we do with those? If there is a child molester and there is a series of molestations to the point that he is picked up and actually convicted, we put him in jail for three years or five years. And, as the Member for Victoria points out, then the parole system comes into play.

Well, here's a parole board that has to look at this sexual offender. He's got five years in jail. He has done three of it and they know at the end of five years he is going to be released. No longer is the parole board responsible if he commits an offence. He commits the offence after he has served his sentence, so it is safe not to give him a parole. But if you don't give him a parole, what control have you got over him in the community after his sentence is finished?

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That's the dilemma.

So you have to take risks on parolees. If you are interested in protecting the community you have to say to yourself that, two years before he goes out, we'll have a two-year hold on him so we will give him intensive parole service and hope like heck he doesn't commit a crime. But, if you want to play it safe with the parole board, you say: Don't give any of these people paroles. The statistics on parole will look great but there is no protection for the community.

Now the lawyers in Ottawa and the parliamentarians in Ottawa have to start taking a serious look at the Criminal Code. They have to start taking a look X period of time after your sentence is over that you must be under mandatory X period of time after your sentence is over, you must be under mandatory supervision in the community. Then the community must be faced with providing the services that these people need.

Sexual problems within prisons are severe. Terribly severe. In the penitentiary system in North America, when a boy comes into a major penal institution, if he is coming in at the age of 17 or 18 or 19, into a major penitentiary, whether it's in a state or province, there is actually a system of drawing lots as to who gets the young boy. Now these are real human problems and they go on every single day. We are legislators and we have got to come up with some system to protect people in this kind of a situation.

In the west wing of Oakalla, we are still holding young offenders awaiting trial. I know, Mr. Attorney General, that one of the recommendations of the inquiry of Mr. Epp is to build a holding unit in downtown Vancouver. And I'll tell you, when you come with the plans, the money will be there on behalf of the people of British Columbia. They must be separate.

The women's jail. The Member for Victoria is absolutely correct in that we have made some moves but not rapidly enough in that women's jail.

We closed the Willingdon School for Girls. Now that is an interesting study in itself. In all the months that it has been closed, we have only had one or two complaints about the loss of that institution. Doesn't that say something about it? Doesn't that tell us something, that perhaps for all these years, when we ran that institution, that it wasn't really necessary.

The Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Levi) had a meeting of social workers after the institution was closed and my own professional group attacked the Minister for closing it.

They said to him, "What are we going to do as an alternative?"

And he said to them: "You are the professionals. Go find out!"

They went out into the community and found places for these girls. They spent money to purchase foster home care and group home care — and it has been a success.

Now maybe there are a lot of people in jail who shouldn't be there, and maybe there are a lot of people outside who should be there. I believe there are a lot of people outside who should be removed from the community because they are a menace to the community. We can't violate their civil rights, but yet we must find some method of pulling them out — maybe just for a weekend or a month or something — just to pull them out, so that we know that we are at least preventing a crime for a short while.

We've witnessed another phenomenon in our society that is absolutely frightening. Just two days ago we read in the newspaper and heard on the radio about a woman who attempted to commit suicide in Florida and the crowd stood around the tower urging her on. Now what causes this kind of breakdown in feelings and attitudes? And when the police went to rescue the woman, as the report reads, the crowd started stoning the police.

What is this that is breaking society down on this basis? Why is it that our children still have a fear of the police? Why is it that no one wants to squeal on somebody? The police are something apart in our society and perhaps we had better look at how we should integrate the police back into this system rather than being adversaries of what is going on in the community.

The Attorney General is suggesting that they go out to volunteers. I have mixed feelings about that. I wish them well, but the difficulty is in finding a volunteer who has, first of all, the time to spend with a parolee or probationer. Unless that time is truly available, then there is no use in going to a volunteer. The second thing is quality of that time. It has to be with some understanding and some appreciation.

The Act itself offers the opportunity to correct many things that are within our jurisdiction as a provincial government in terms of dealing with people. I have great faith and admiration in Mr. Epp and also in the staff we have in our whole correction system. I hope that we are able to improve the lives of these unfortunate people who come into our institutions. But for anybody who says that this government may be taking a sob-sister approach or too soft approach, I say to them — that unless we are human and humane with people who offend against society, then we will create a condition that will allow for more offences in society.

We must protect innocent people. And that protection for innocent people, especially children, is to ensure that we have done the best that is humanly possible to prevent an act taking place by violence or by the criminal activity of an adult.

So I have great hope. You are not going to correct all human behaviour, but this debate and this bill is long overdue. And, Mr. Attorney General, we are very

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lucky. There is money in the till. You will need money and the money will be made available.

MR. SPEAKER: The Hon. Attorney General closes the debate.

HON. MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, we always enjoy hearing the Premier of British Columbia speak in this House, but particularly in this area of human concern. I am sure that he will do so again. And I hope that this kind of debate does repeat itself from time to time because, when you're in this kind of a field, you cannot succeed without enlightened public understanding and cooperation, and that process has to start here.

I'm just going to say a few words at this stage. The Hon. Second Member for Vancouver–Point Grey (Mr. Gardom) and the Hon. Member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) brought up the question of drugs. It's true, we have not said anything particularly about it in this bill. Really, in the case of the addict, this government believes that that is basically a health problem. I think perhaps at some other time the Hon. Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. Cocke) will be outlining some of his ideas in this field.

I agree with the Hon. Member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) on the utter futility of simply locking up an addict. I think there are a variety of resources that are available and which will see shape in the form of legislation oriented in a health direction, I would think, by the spring session of this Legislature.

The feasibility studies are now actively underway which will see that these young people — they're mostly young people — are either able safely to remain in the community or, in some cases, perhaps, be in their own remote treatment centres where they can build their own community. That's a matter which is receiving very close attention of the government.

Just one thing in regard to what was said by the Hon. Member for West Vancouver–Howe Sound (Mr. Williams) about the dichotomy between the judges and the correction thing — between criminal justice and sort of a welfare-of-the-individual approach at the other stage. We're lessening that kind of an inconsistency. I think it has existed in the past. I think Gilbert & Sullivan were right that the rule in the courts was "let the punishment fit the crime," not let the case be disposed of according to the real needs that we see before us in this court.

I think that we're lessening that because the judges discuss these things. In our provincial court system there are regular seminars going on in which the police participate, in which the social welfare people participate, and the corrections people.

In order that there should be a smooth flow with what is essentially one human problem, we have established in my department a working committee led by…the secretary is Dr. Matheson, who brought out the corrections report; my Deputy of Corrections sits on that. Assistant Commissioner of the RCMP, Gordon Cunningham, a very enlightened officer that we are fortunate to have in British Columbia in that field, is also on it. I think we want the municipal police to have their input there; I'm not sure who represents them.

Then on that committee that will meet regularly will be Chief Judge Brahan, the chairman of the parole board and a representative from the Bar Association. Maybe it will be expanded. It's to pull together the thing so that we can think not only in terms of corrections, but think in terms of crime control and prevention that we draw these various disciplines together. Now as for the task force, I'm sorry that there were printing difficulties. Before the committee stage of this bill you'll have your copy. It was released some time ago.

In closing and moving second reading, I would just like to say to the Second Member for Vancouver South (Mrs. Webster) that I fully appreciate, support and understand her views about the easy accessibility of weapons in this gun-happy society. I hope that between us and Ottawa, we can remove that threat before it proliferates too far to be controlled.

Motion approved.

Bill 24 read a second time and referred to Committee of the Whole House at the next sitting after today.

HON. MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave of the House to move to introduction of bills.

Leave granted.

THE DRUG ADDICTION
REHABILITATION ACT

Mr. Wallace moves introduction and first reading of Bill 33 intituled The Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Act.

Motion approved.

Bill 33 read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE ASSESSMENT EQUALIZATION ACT

Mr. Wallace moves introduction and first reading of Bill 34 intituled An Act to Amend the Assessment Equalization Act.

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Motion approved.

Bill 34 read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE HOSPITAL INSURANCE ACT

Mr. Wallace moves introduction and first reading of Bill 35 intituled An Act to Amend the Hospital Insurance Act.

Motion approved.

Bill 35 read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS ACT

Mr. Wallace moves introduction and first reading of Bill 36 intituled An Act to Amend the Public Schools Act.

Motion approved.

Bill 36 read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

PUBLIC OFFICIALS'
DISCLOSURE ACT

Mr. Curtis moves introduction and first reading of Bill 37 intituled Public Officials' Disclosure Act.

Motion approved.

Bill 37 read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

AN ACT TO AMEND
THE LAND REGISTRY ACT

Mr. Curtis moves introduction and first reading of Bill 38 intituled An Act to Amend the Land Registry Act.

Motion approved.

Bill 38 read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

HON. MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, in response to the motion by the Member for Langley (Mr. McClelland) I wish to file the correspondence that was referred to in that motion. (See appendix.)

Leave granted.

MR. F.X. RICHTER (Leader of the Opposition): Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the House Leader could tell us what direction we'll be taking on Monday in the business of the House.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. Members, this is the 15th day of the session and under the provisions of the Legislative Procedure and Practice Inquiry Act, I am required under that Act, chapter 6, to file with the House the second report of the Speaker on legislative procedures and practices.

I hereby file that report which includes a number of recommendations, seven in number, relating to a variety of subjects: television broadcasting, time limit on debates, matters of urgent public importance, standing orders 19, 20 and 21, introduction of private Member's bills, minority reports from committee, amenities and facilities for Members. I take pleasure in filing that report.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Under the statute, I don't have to ask leave; I'm supposed to do it.

Hon. Mr. Barrett moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 12:42 p.m.

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APPENDIX

The following report is referred to on page 345:

MINORITY REPORT

I am in full and complete support of the recommendations contained in this report which call for provisions to "plug the gaps" in the levels of health care available to British Columbians.

Regretfully, however, I must dissent in connection with two of the basic recommendations contained in the report.

The report says: "Hospital care facilities should not be operated for private financial gain."

I consider that statement to be basically philosophical in content and too general and all encompassing to be able to give approval to it. In addition, its consequences are overwhelming.

There are approximately 5,000 to 6,000 private nursing-home units in the Province at the present time. Based on current estimations, it costs between $14,000 and $15,000 per bed to construct a modern nursing home. The cost of converting the present inventory to Government-owned facilities would represent a minimum initial outlay by the people of British Columbia of $100 million.

The previous Government had a basic position of the orderly withdrawal of the private sector from the hospital field, but with full Government compensation.

Further, there is some question in my mind about the scope of the statement. Does it mean, for instance, that no care facilities shall be operated for private financial gain by private societies which have traditionally maintained a very real presence in the field? These societies are not necessarily "nonprofit," they use profits to expand facilities, but under the terms of the statement in question, these facilities, many of them operated by ethnic or religious organizations, may be in jeopardy. It is my personal opinion that we can, under a very high degree of supervision and inspection, and with upgraded, community-based licensing procedures utilize private intermediate care facilities and nursing homes to extremely good advantage.

The second issue with which I wish to disagree, is the recommendation that "the per diem coverage of all patients in acute care, extended care, or intermediate care (regardless of whether they are in an institution or at home) should be equitable."

I believe that the word "equitable" should be replaced with the word "equal."

People must be allowed to move from one level of health care to another without suffering any financial penalty. We must have a single level of charges, applicable to all levels of care.

Respectfully submitted.

R. H. McCLELLAND