1976 Legislative Session: 1st Session, 31st Parliament
HANSARD
The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.
(Hansard)
FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1976
Morning Sitting
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CONTENTS
Routine proceedings
Labour Code of British Columbia Amendment Act, 1976 (Bill 77) .
Second reading.
Hon. Mr. Williams — 3131
Mr. King — 3133
Sheriffs Act (Bill 56) Second reading.
Hon. Mr. Gardom — 3133
Mr. Macdonald — 3134
Hon. Mr. Gardom — 3134
Public Construction Fair Wages Act (Bill 83) Second reading.
Hon. Mr. Williams — 3134
Mr. Wallace — 3140
Mr. Nicolson — 3142
Mr. Macdonald — 3143
Division on second reading — 3147
Municipalities Enabling and Validating Amendment Act, 1976 (Bill 63) .
Committee, report and third reading — 3148
Home Purchase Assistance Act (Bill 49) Committee stage.
Mr. Gibson —
3148
On section 5.
Mr. Nicolson — 3148
On section 6.
On section 10.
Hon. Mr. Curtis — 3150
Mr. Nicolson — 3150
Hon. Mr. Curtis — 3150
On section 16.
Mr. Nicolson — 3150
Hon. Mr. Curtis — 3151
On section 18.
Mr. Nicolson — 3152
On section 20.
Mr. Nicolson — 3152
Hon. Mr. Curtis — 3152
On the title.
Mr. Gibson — 3152
Hon. Mr. Curtis — 3152
Report stage -- 3152
Division on third reading — 3152
FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1976
The House met at 10 a.m.
Prayers.
Orders of the day.
HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): With leave, Mr. Speaker, we, move to public bills and orders.
Leave granted.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Second reading of Bill 77, Mr. Speaker.
LABOUR CODE OF BRITISH
COLUMBIA AMENDMENT ACT, 1976
HON. L.A. WILLIAMS (Minister of Labour): It is with pleasure that I introduce second reading of Bill 77, and as I do so, may I point out to you and to the members that the Labour Code of British Columbia has in all jurisdictions of Canada provided a significant advance with regard to the regulation of labour activities within our jurisdiction. It is a code which is being very carefully examined in many jurisdictions. Some of the features of the code as it presently stands are attracting the attention and the enthusiasm of other areas of the province.
Interjection.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, it is a code. While it was hotly debated in this Legislature during the period of its passage, it has, I believe, provided an advance and been an assistance in the conduct of industrial relations in British Columbia.
The code, however, Mr. Speaker, was not chiselled in stone. Experience shows that there are some minor adjustments which are required at this particular time. I am sure that as experiences gained over the years there will be other adjustments in the code. Industrial relations is a dynamic activity, certainly in British Columbia. The laws which we provide for regulation of relationships between employers and their unions and between unions and their employees will constantly need to be watched carefully to make certain that the legislation which we have is kept up to date and matches some of the initiatives — in fact, some of the ingenuity — which is displayed by the parties who are involved directly in labour-management relations.
Bill 77 is one of those minor revisions. It covers in only three minor respects some changes in the existing code. I think it is important for the members to realize that with these changes there is no essential departure from the original purpose of the code. Aside from some very, very technical amendments which can be dealt with in committee, there are three matters to which I would, address the attention of the House this morning.
The first one deals with the area of essential services as provided under one subsection of section 73 of the bill. In its wisdom the Legislature saw fit to identify those areas of our social activity involving policemen, firemen, and hospital employees as ones which should be singled out for special consideration when the disputes in which they might be involved with their employers could produce work stoppages. It is, however, important to recognize that the underlying factor which was taken into consideration in section 73 was not to single out those three unions, but really to ensure that certain services which are available to the citizens of this province be maintained. It was specifically provided that where disputes might present a serious threat to health and life, some special consideration should be given to the resolution of those disputes. But still, there were only three unions recognized.
Subsequent experience has indicated that in our concern for the essentially of services to health and life, there are other unions which may be involved. This is the outgrowth of continuing unionization activities by the unions of British Columbia as it permitted in the code. There is the possibility now with increased union activity that other unions besides policemen, firemen and hospital employees' unions can be involved in disputes, the consequences of which can present a threat to health and life. Therefore one of the three areas which are covered in this amendment is intended to ensure that the essentially of services to health and life can be continued regardless of the union which might be involved or the employer which might be involved.
I think we have to recognize that when we single out three particular unions, we are also singling out the employers of the members of those unions for special consideration under section 73.
Section 73, as the amendment proposes, will also, while continuing the authority to designate essential services using the facilities of the "Labour Relations Board, continue to provide for the cooling-off period. It is extended from 21 days, as in the present legislation, to 40 days. This change results from the specific experience which we have had recently in this province with regard to the dispute in our hospitals. It was found during the course of that dispute that the appointment of a special mediator could perhaps have produced a resolution of the difficulties between the employer and the union involved.
However, it's clear that the 21-day period is inadequate to allow the assistance of third-party intervention to bring about the resolution of the dispute. The consequence of that, Mr. Speaker, is that
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with the coming to the end of the 21-day period, those people who are entitled to rely upon essential services are confronted with either the resumption of a strike or, indeed, the resumption of essential service designation. Neither of those prospects is one which the government can treat lightly. Therefore, to provide some additional opportunity to assist the parties in the resolution of the difficulties, the amendment will extend that cooling-off period from 21 to 40 days.
It must, I think, be recognized that this amendment to section 73 is in keeping with the principle which has been clearly enunciated in other legislation which it has been my pleasure to place before the House this year. The purpose is that while ensuring that essential services are maintained, the Department of Labour — the government, through the Department of Labour — is facilitating the parties themselves in reaching a conclusion to their dispute, settling their collective agreements through the processes of bargaining.
The second area in which this bill seeks to change the existing law is with respect to the conduct of strike votes in British Columbia. The law presently provides that before any strike or lockout shall occur, the members of the organizations involved, whether they be a union or an employers' organization, must take a vote by secret ballot, but it has never been spelled out in any way what that means.
There have never been any regulations to provide, for example, what notice must be given to the persons who are entitled to cast a vote by secret ballot. It has never been prescribed what procedure should be followed in the event that the vote is conducted by a mail ballot as opposed to one which is held at a meeting convened for that particular purpose. It has never been clearly spelled out as to the question which must be posed to the persons who are asked to make a choice as to whether to strike or lock out or not. This shortcoming of the law is one which has cast doubts about the effectiveness of the secret ballot as is presently provided for in the code. Therefore the amendment simply provides that the government may, by regulation, establish specific administrative procedures to be followed in the conduct of secret votes.
I would recall to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the members those other areas in which the secrecy of vote is deemed to be important. One, for example, is the vote which takes place with regard to the election of the members of this assembly, to all levels of government. Very great care is taken to spell out the way in which that vote is cast, the way in which those votes are counted, and the secrecy which surrounds that most important activity. We believe that it is appropriate to approach some of those same requirements in the conduct of votes which can have a very significant effect upon the individuals who themselves are casting the vote and also a very major significance on others who have no interest therein at all but, nonetheless, may suffer seriously from the results.
The regulations are presently being considered by the Department of Labour, and it is my hope that when the regulations have been drafted there will be an opportunity to review those regulations with the representatives of employers' organizations and unions in British Columbia who will be affected in the conduct of their affairs by those very regulations. This was the basis upon which the code itself was formulated and it seems appropriate that when dealing with regulations which affect, or arise from, provisions in the code a similar process should be adopted.
The consequences of non-compliance with those regulations is something to which I'd also direct you, Mr. Speaker. Provision is now being made, where there is a complaint with respect to the manner in which those regulations are carried out, that the Labour Relations Board be used as the forum to determine whether or not there has been any non-compliance with those regulations. In assisting the Labour Relations Board in that regard, the regulations may also make provision for the invigilation of strike and lockout votes, but this does not mean that the government is going to interfere by way of a government-supervised vote into every strike or lock-out situation which arises within the province.
If the Labour Relations Board, having adjudicated on the matter, finds that there has been some impropriety, then specific provisions are made in the amendments whereby the consequences of the improper vote can be nullified and decisions made as to how the question which is posed to the persons who are involved shall be resolved.
The third area to which we have addressed ourselves in Bill 77 is the present provisions of section 90 of the code. section 90 has not been often used. One of the reasons for the failure to use section 90 has been some misunderstanding arising from the words of the code itself as to the import of section 90, and also a concern as to the enforceability by the Labour Relations Board of such opinions as it may give and such orders as may arise therefrom.
When considering the amendments to section 90, consideration was also given to the range of activities which may affect trade and commerce by reason of labour disputes. The members will recognize that the code already makes very specific provisions with regard to picketing. The Labour Relations Board has, since the introduction of the code, been able, to resolve many of the difficulties which heretofore were experienced, and in fact, as the result of successive decisions, has created a body of administrative law which has gone a long way to resolving differences of opinion and problems arising
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there from in the range of picketing activity.
Therefore it has been determined at this time to look at other activities which may affect trade and commerce in this province, and that is the use of the so-called "hot declaration." Hot declarations have never really been recognized under our laws; yet it is clear that the consequences of the use of hot declarations can, in fact, be much more devastating and much more widespread than even is the case with picketing. It is therefore considered appropriate to bring that particular activity under the aegis of section 90 and therefore under review by the Labour Relations Board if a case can be made whereby such a declaration is affecting the trade and commerce in this province.
Again I must point out to you, Mr. Speaker, that the adjudication on this matter will be made by the Labour Relations Board. I look forward to decisions by the Labour Relations Board on the question of hot declarations of the same calibre and with the same result as has been the case with regard to the decisions on picketing. The board, as I indicated, is of course also being given authority under section 90 to ensure that its decisions flowing from that action can be enforced in the manner provided with the code.
Mr. Speaker, as I indicated at the outset, these are essentially technical changes in the legislation — a fine tuning of the Labour Code based upon experience to date. I am sure that the members will agree in principle with this legislation and direct their attention to constructive remarks designed to perhaps improve the amendments which are being made during the committee stage on this bill.
Mr. Speaker, with those remarks, I move second reading of Bill 77.
MR. W.S. KING (Revelstoke-Slocan): This bill, Mr. Speaker, was introduced on Tuesday last and we were notified just prior to the House sitting this morning that the bill would be called. I wonder if the government would agree to an adjournment of the debate.
HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): We agree to adjournment, though we do note that it has been on the order paper for some days. The days are getting shorter, Mr. Member — there are only six months' shopping days to Christmas from now, so we do hope....
MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member for Revelstoke-Slocan wish to move the adjournment then?
MR. KING: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Since the government agrees that since last last Tuesday is not really too much, I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House.
Motion approved.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Second reading of Bill 56, Mr. Speaker.
SHERIFFS ACT
HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Speaker, this is the first major overhaul of the Sheriffs Act since it was first enacted by the B.C. Legislature. It will modernize the legislation involving sheriffs so that their role will be more accurately reflected.
By way of background, to the hon. members, the first Act was passed by the Legislature in 1873, then consisting of some 24 sections and with very little change until today.
In that first Act provision was made only for two sheriffs, Mr. Speaker — one for Vancouver Island, including the Queen Charlotte Islands, and a second for the city of New Westminster who had jurisdiction over the New Westminster district, Yale district and the Kootenay district. It wasn't really until 1888 that counties were established.
The first major amendments to the statute were enacted in 1897 when portions of the English Sheriffs Act of 1887 were embodied in our legislation with very interesting vignettes such as dealing with the duty of citizens to aid sheriffs, the creation of posses, provisions re false imprisonment, liabilities of sheriffs for escaped prisoners and so on.
The second and final major amendments were introduced in 1918, at which time those amendments had the effect of placing sheriffs' offices in the counties of Victoria, Vancouver and New Westminster in the position of civil servants.
Today we find that the sheriffs' former responsibilities continue to extend to such things as order in court trials, the empanelment of juries, service of court documents, processing warrants of committal, seizure and sale of goods, ships and lands under court orders, plus jurisdiction to arrest in the criminal sphere.
In December or 1973 plans were formulated to expand the role of the sheriff, and at that time in B.C. there existed some nine sheriffs, 22 deputies and 49 sheriff's officers. The sheriffs were not only to continue their involvement with civil causes but also take on the further tasks performed by the police in the criminal courts, and to do this effectively required a major reorganization of the system. The first step in that direction was in 1974 when the Sheriffs Act was amended expanding their jurisdiction beyond their bailiwick to the whole of
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the province, and by proclamation all sheriffs were brought within certain provisions of the Act, which, in effect, made them, for all practical purposes, civil servants.
Today in B.C., Mr. Speaker, we have about 350 uniformed sheriffs and deputies, and a budget of around $7 million. Their duties have been expanded to cover increased court attendance responsibilities such as the location and notification. of witnesses, maintenance of court security for judges, witnesses and the accused — as well as escort duties from lockup to court, court to remand centres and court to correctional institutes.
The present bill therefore, Mr. Speaker, has been introduced to better reflect the true position of sheriffs. No longer are they free agents, but instead are public servants of the Crown and subject to all of provisions of the Public Service Act.
The sheriff will now have provincewide jurisdiction. He's now an officer of all of the courts in the province, a position that I might say was true in practice in recent years but not in the legislation.
Fees for services are still prescribed by order-in-council and they are included in the new supreme court rules, but they are now all payable to general revenue. This bill itself, Mr. Speaker, again is a companion statute to the amendments to the supreme court rules which will be coming into force in the province on January 3, 1977. I would so move second reading.
MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): I'm pleased to be able to say that this bill was passed through our caucus. As a matter of fact, it passed through our caucus last spring and so you don't expect me to get up and oppose it now, I'm sure, Mr. Speaker, or prolong the debate or filibuster the debate....
HON. MR. GARDOM: I have to get the cobwebs off it. (Laughter.)
MR. MACDONALD: It's a very good bill and I'm glad it's going to be paid.
Interjections.
MR. MACDONALD: The formation of the new sheriffs' service is now running at a budgetary item, as the, Attorney-General says, of about $7 million a year. I want to pay tribute first to Jeff Mortimer, I think, who did the initial difficult job of the organization of the new sheriffs' service, the training facilities and the training courses and did a splendid job, and who is now no longer head of the sheriffs. And there were many other people also involved in the school.
The other thing I want to say is that $7 million is a very good investment for the people of British Columbia because it is relieving police officers and other personnel in the justice system from those clerical and service-of-summons and escort-of prisoners duties where they would be tied up, and they would have to be replaced.
So the sheriffs' service has made a very significant contribution to a better standard and quality of justice in the province of B.C. I am sorry to be able to report that they are not a secret police. I know that disappoints some people. They are basically a civilian body. I have nothing more to say about the bill. I think it's a good one.
MR. SPEAKER: The hon. minister closes the debate.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, I would move second reading and just make one observation. When I was a student in law in the sheriffs' office in Vancouver, there were four sheriffs and their names were Turtle, Tuttle, Diggle and Bottle, which I think is something truly out of Dickens. (Laughter.) I move second reading.
Motion approved.
Bill 56, Sheriffs Act, read a second time and referred to Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting after today.
HON. MR. GARDOM: I am glad the House is in such jovial frame of mind on this lovely morning of June 25, Mr. Speaker.
Second reading of Bill 83, Mr. Speaker.
PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION FAIR WAGES ACT
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, in moving second reading of the Public Construction Fair Wages Act, I think it is important that I draw your attention to some of the consequences that have obtained since the Public Works Fair Employment Act, which this Act will repeal, has become the law in this province. I spoke a few moments ago about the Labour Code of British Columbia and the advances made under it and the extent to which it has contributed to the preservation of industrial harmony in this province.
I also recalled to you, Mr. Speaker, and the members, that under the Labour Code the right to unionize is enshrined. Similarly in this province the right not to unionize is the choice of the employees. In neither activity is the employer involved. As a matter of fact, the provisions of the Labour Code make it quite specific that the employer is expressly prohibited from engaging in activities which might influence his employees one way or the other. This government does not criticize the code in that
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respect.
However, under the Public Works Fair Employment Act, which is presently our law, the opportunity to engage in one's activities when the government is involved, to tender for Crown jobs, to avail themselves of the opportunity of doing work for the Crown and its varied agencies, is limited, subject to some loopholes to which I will refer, to those employers', whose employees have utilized the opportunity which the law provides for them, namely to unionize.
Now when you consider that you are excluding a person from carrying on his livelihood, if he is a contractor of subcontractor — not by any reason of any action or inaction on his part — you are excluding him from an area of activity to which he has in the past and will in the future be entitled to engage as a result of decisions made by his work force. This, to the government, seems inappropriate.
The purpose of Bill 83 is to remove that impediment from proper activities of persons engaged in the field of construction by giving to them the right again to carry on their business, to undertake contracts with the Crown or Crown agencies or contracts which are funded by the Crown, notwithstanding that his employees have not organized themselves into a union. Therefore it removes a discrimination against an employer for reasons which are not of his making.
Now I mentioned that under the law that presently stands there are some areas in which the obligation to be unionized does not exist. It is startling to note as you look at the Public Works Fair Employment Act on our books today that there are areas where you can escape the obligation to unionize. That's where the government does not call for tenders on a particular job or advertise the job publicly. — That seems to the government to be a strange loophole whereby the government itself, by not calling publicly for work to be done, can avoid the obligation to use unionized contractors.
Interjection.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, there are examples, but I would.... I don't want to single out any Crown agency, but there was....
Interjection.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, I will, if you want an example. There was a situation last fall where work was being done by a Crown corporation in the development of an industrial subdivision in one of the northern areas of the province, and this required the use of certain heavy equipment. The Crown corporation didn't call tenders for the supply of that equipment or the conduct of the work that the equipment would do, and in fact they made some private arrangements for the supply of equipment. In fact they specified that they wanted non-union trucks on this particular job.
Well, this situation is disturbing to the government, and I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, and the hon. member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) who raised the question that it is equally disturbing to the unions in this province — that possibility that the law can somehow or other be circumvented. Well, it's not the government's intention to allow that to continue.
But it is also not the intention, Mr. Speaker, for the government to permit non-unionized employers to contract with the Crown or Crown agencies, or to engage in work with respect to which the Crown provides grants, loans or guarantees, to carry on their business by failing to pay their employees wages and benefits which are equivalent to those which other contractors must pay because they are unionized. Therefore the bill, as the name indicates, is a fair-wage bill. For a contractor to engage in such activities while it's no longer his obligation to be unionized — because, as I say, that's not his choice — it is his obligation and will continue to be his obligation to pay fair wages as is specifically defined in the legislation.
To ensure that activities are not carried on which circumvent that obligation, provision has been made for the director of labour standards of the Department of Labour to carry out an adjudicative role in such cases. If questions are raised as to whether or not any particular contractor is paying fair wages as defined in the Act, it is the director of the labour standards branch of the Department of Labour who is charged with the responsibility of determining whether the law is being followed.
There is another aspect of the bill to which I would draw the members' attention now. I'll have more to say about it during the committee meeting. That is that under the legislation which is before you there is a specific requirement that the fair-wage concept be taken into contracts entered into between the Crown, Crown agencies and contractors. In the event that any Crown agency should fail to make specific provision in such contract, it is deemed to be in that contract. I trust that the members will not be offended because the government is deeming such a provision to be in a contract between a Crown agency and a contractor.
It goes further, however. As we all recognize, in many construction projects there may be the principal contractor and a number of subcontractors. Therefore the provision goes further to oblige the principal contractor to ensure that all of the subcontractors, who may be non-unionized, also have in their contracts the obligation to pay fair wages. Again, if that obligation is not carried out, the legislation deems that subcontract to include that
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same provision.
Now the reason for this, Mr. Speaker, is that the major enforcement authority that the Crown has is to suspend payment in any case where it is found that this Act is being breached. The government wishes to be certain that if the breach is not the result of direct action by the contractor but by reason of some failure on the part of a subcontractor, the government can be certain that it can enforce the power it has by withholding funds until the breach has been rectified.
If I may give to the members an example: a contract for the construction of a health building of some kind might be entered into and the financing of it arranged by contract between the Crown and a hospital society. That's the principal contract, but there'll be a series of other contracts flowing from that and the Crown wishes to be in a position, if it finds that someplace in that range of contracts there has been failure to fulfil the obligations of this legislation, that it can enforce the obligation by suspending payment until the breach has been cured, or to make other provisions. Members will note that the power to suspend payments is discretionary, and I would assure you that the reason for the discretion is that in some projects it would be inappropriate to suspend all funds while a particular problem is being rectified. The Crown is therefore taking to itself a discretion so that funds can be made available to allow the work to go ahead, but perhaps reserve by way of holdback, or other such means, while the particular breach is being remedied.
I might say, Mr. Speaker, that one of the areas where the repeal of the Public Works Fair Employment Act and the substitution of the Public Construction Fair Wages Act will be of significant value to the government and to the citizens of this province is with respect to those activities which are carried out under funding arrangements made by the Department of Housing. Experience under the present legislation has shown that the Public Works Fair Employment Act has so reduced the number of contractors who are available to do the work that it has interfered substantially in the functioning of the tendering process and the free market in that particular area of endeavour. The passage of this Act, while ensuring that the employee will continue to receive fair wages, will nonetheless increase the number of contractors who are available to bid and to participate in the area of endeavour in which the Department of Housing is involved and for which funds that are made available by it will be expended.
Mr. Speaker, with those few brief opening remarks, I have pleasure in moving second reading of Bill 83.
MR. KING: I certainly am not surprised that this bill is before the House. I must say that I thoroughly anticipated that the new government would in fact eliminate the Public Works Fair Employment Act and replace it with another statute, because when the Public Works Fair Employment Act was introduced, I believe it was in 1972, we had a very serious and a very clear-cut division of opinion between the then New Democratic Party government and the Social Credit Party as to the philosophy underlying the approach which our government had taken. So fair notice was served and I thoroughly anticipated that the statute would be eliminated.
I just want to review, Mr. Speaker, some of the thoughts behind the Public Works Fair Employment Act which the statute before us is replacing, and explain precisely what the rationale was for introducing the former statute. I found, upon assuming the office of Minister of Labour in 1972, that essentially the same approach was provided for at that point as is contained in the new Bill 83 which is before us, namely that the Minister of Labour basically had the responsibility for setting fair levels of recompense and conditions of employment with respect to public contracts. As one who believes in the collective bargaining system, I found it personally repugnant that I, as a politician, or indeed any other politician, should play God, should completely deny the collective bargaining process as the best means of developing and establishing the relationship between an employee and an employer, that we should take unto ourselves the authority to designate a fair wage and fair conditions of employment. By whose standard? What is a fair wage? what are fair conditions of employment?
I suggest that any arbitrary authority by government or government agencies to impose their will and their assessment of what is fair upon the working people of this province is a repudiation of the collective bargaining system and an arbitrary and unilateral philosophy which I certainly do not agree with.
The minister has made a variety of points regarding the competitive position of firms bidding for government contracts through public tender. He has suggested that there has been discrimination or preference given to organized firms. That is true, to a degree; that is partially true. He failed to mention, though, that where no union firm bids, as is very often the case in the house-building industry, because there is very, very little organization in home construction in this province, the government was quite free to award the contract to whomsoever bid, whether or not they were organized.
So when he talks about loopholes, there were deliberate provisions left in the current Act to recognize the realities out there: the reality that very few organized firms were involved in home-building; the reality that when a small government contract came up for bid in an isolated area of the province,
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obviously there had to be some latitude in the Act with respect to small family firms and partnerships bidding for that contract, because it would be foolish to require the importation of a major unionized firm from Vancouver or the lower mainland to do a small renovation job on a public building in Pouce Coupe or in Golden. So these exemptions were made as exemptions were provided for the construction of public schools and hospitals and in the municipal area, where nevertheless provincial funds are expended, They were left free to chart their own policy,
But the underlying thing is that while the minister and his colleagues over there express some cynicism by their comments and their facial expressions about equality of competitive opportunity, they fail to recognize that you are caught in that dilemma no matter how you slice it. By the introduction of Bill 83, you are guaranteeing that the unorganized firm — the non-union firm — is at a competitive advantage in bidding for government contracts. He is at a competitive advantage over those unionized contractors and firms which would like to bid on and win government contracts, say, for highway construction and so on.
I'll explain that. Mr. Speaker, it should be recalled that when the Public Works Fair Employment Act was introduced in this province, the B.C. Road Builders Association openly and publicly endorsed that statute and its approach and CLRA — the Construction Labour Relations Association — tacitly and privately endorsed that approach, because they recognized that through being unionized organizations they were at a competitive disadvantage. I am going to tell you why: because fair wages is not the only criterion for cost of labour. Up to 25 per cent of the labour costs involved accrue from fringe benefits, from dental plans, from pension plans, from medicare plans and a whole variety of fringes that are normally and usually provided in a collective agreement, which in no way appear in the provisions of this statute.
So we are looking at a situation where an unorganized contractor bidding for a government contract of work, be it in the Highways department, be it on a public building or any other realm — Hydro, the railway — is in the happy position of being able to undercut the CLRA contractors or the B.C. Road Builders Association contractors because they have the built-in advantage of not having to pay any of the normal fringes that go into the average collective agreement in the province of British Columbia.
The minister wants to play God. He is a distinguished-looking gentleman, the minister — very impressive looking, But I argue with the right of any politician, no matter how distinguished looking he is and no matter how judicious he is, to say: "I am going to seize for myself the authority and the power to tell you, Mr. Worker, what a fair level of wages is for your particular niche in society" through your agency, through the director of....
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: The director of labour standards.
MR. KING: Yes, the labour standards director. Right. I've forgotten already.
Interjection.
MR. KING: For a lawyer, that's a very empty exercise. The minister is taking the authority, delegating one of his departmental mandarins...a mandarin, incidentally, whom I have the highest respect for and who is a very capable man, an excellent individual. But I argue with the philosophy and the right of any individual to arbitrarily designate to workers in this province what is fair for them. How patronizing and paternalistic! I wonder how the legal profession would view such an arbitrary designation of what was fair and just for their recompense by some outside intervener. I wonder. I wonder, Mr. Speaker. I don't think it would be welcomed either by the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. Williams) or the Attorney General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) with respect to their profession.
AN HON. MEMBER: It's in the Supreme Court Act.
MR. KING: There's no arbitrary designation.
HON. MR. GARDOM: You already passed that.
MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, there are other aspects to this bill that I think are serious, and I want to outline precisely what the government is doing so everyone understands it. I don't question their right to move away from the situation we had, and I agree that there were imperfections in the Public Works Fair Employment Act — it was a difficult Act to administer. But the Minister of Labour failed to say, also, that inherent in the new Act — and I see he's preserved it in Bill 83 in section 5 — was the authority of the Minister of Labour to do something which I feel he does have a right to do, something which he never had the right to do under the previous Social Credit government, and that is to ensure fair practices of hiring. I am glad to see the minister retaining that. I'm sure that virtually every MLA in this House has had constituents complain of their inability to gain employment on local projects because they were not a member of the union. I respect a union's right to their hiring procedure, but I also think that right must be balanced and weighted against the right of local citizens to enjoy some
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employment opportunity on projects that reside at least within their particular district.
That was introduced for the first time in this province's history under the Public Works Fair Employment Act. It's a good principle — one that I hope the Minister of Labour will administer wisely and judiciously, and one- that I hope he improves, because it had weaknesses and failings in terms of the administration of it under my stewardship. That was one area we were not able to bring into a sound administrative practice. Nevertheless, the approach and the philosophy is good.
I hope that the minister strengthens that, and in consultation — not arbitrarily but in consultation — with the trade unions involved, with the contractors involved and with representatives of the local area, and is able to come up with some realistic and logical division of employment opportunity between the trade union membership throughout the province and the working people of the area where the project is to be developed.
The Mica Dam was a classic case, and the new Revelstoke Dam that is proposed is going to be another classic. We're looking at something like 4,000 people who will be ultimately employed on that project, if indeed it goes ahead. I think the city of Revelstoke, the Sicamous area and perhaps even some of the Okanagan area, the immediate area, have a right to expect access to some employment on a project of that magnitude where public funds are involved.
Under the bill, which the minister has maintained, the provincial Department of Labour for the first time in history was given the authority to require that as a condition of obtaining the contract, both the contractor and the union agreed, either through full union membership or through work permits, to allow into that area of jurisdiction a certain reasonable percentage of the local work force. That was a progressive, forward-looking step, and one that I think is supported by both the business community and the trade unions involved. They see the reasonableness of it, That was inherent in the Public Works Act and I'm pleased to see that it's retained. I hope the minister does not diminish the importance and the aggressiveness with which he administers that particular provision.
The main thing is the difference in philosophy here. Fair wages: what are fair wages? I say that fair wages make up only a portion of the cost involved to a collective agreement. I think the minister has to acknowledge by his own departmental records that up to 25 per cent of labour costs in the average collective agreement are made up of what is commonly called fringe benefits, other than direct wages — travel allowance, the whole thing.
Now you can say that it's unfair for employers whose employees are not organized and lack a collective agreement not to be able to bid.... That's not quite true — they could bid, and if there were no bids by an organized employer then, of course, they would be entitled to take the contract. However, preference was given to the contractor with the collective agreement between he and his employees. I think that's pretty fair, really, when you view the fact that he would otherwise be competing against a contractor with a 25 per cent cost advantage over him in terms of labour costs.
The other thing about it is that inherent in the old Act was a principle which in my view saved this province untold labour disruption. I want to warn the Minister of Labour — and I hope the House pays attention to this — that by the passage of Bill 83 the Minister of Labour is going to buy himself a great deal of additional labour problems in this province that will constantly be before the Labour Relations Board in terms of picketing activities. What used to happen, and what was eliminated by the Public Works Fair Employment Act, was the whole question of a prime contractor obtaining a contract on a highway as an organized firm and then employing non-union subs, with the result that organizational activities went on on the project, to organize those sub-contractors.
Usually there was resistance by the employer, and as a consequence picket lines went up. Because some sub-contractor had a minimal contract on the whole project and got embroiled in the labour dispute, a picket line shut down the whole operation. This constantly happened, because in many of these contracts there are up to a dozen sub-contractors, all embroiled in the organizational struggles with the unions, all embroiled in picket lines, legal or otherwise, which has the effect of pulling the prime contractor and everyone else into the dispute. We are going to see that kind of jungle warfare on the property of construction sites in this province again. I think that's retrogressive and I think it's foolish, but I predict that that's going to be one of the consequences of the introduction of this bill.
The government is saying: "Look, it is unfair to exclude the contractor that didn't have a collective agreement." Well, I say that's partially true in a way, but we tried to provide some openings for that guy in terms of schools, hospitals and municipal work. We provided the opening that if it was a small firm composed of a family, a unit not appropriate for organization, then he had every right to bid. If there was no union contract the non-union firm had the right to pick it up.
Contrasted against that concern, and it's a valid one, is the concern I have now for the completely competitive advantages these non-organized firms have over their organized competitors. I say that's discriminatory. You're eliminating what you conceive to be one form of discrimination only to introduce
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another, and you're doing that while at the same time failing to recognize that the organizational activity that takes place on these major project sites once again is going to disrupt virtually every firm involved.
When you're looking at highway construction, when you're looking at dam construction, when you're looking at construction on the British Columbia Railway or a power line for Hydro, you're looking at 10 or maybe 12 different contractors that are involved. If the prime contractor is organized there is no way that his workers are going to stay on the site with an unorganized worker. It's as simple as that; it's traditional in the building trade, in the construction industry. We saw this happen for years, and that was one of the benefits of the Public Works Fair Employment Act — it eliminated that kind of jungle warfare on project sites.
We pay lip service to collective bargaining in this House. Regardless of the party we belong to, we all say: "Yes, collective bargaining is the best way of maintaining the relationship." Why then should we not set a deliberate policy of giving preference to those firms and those employees that have that basis as the system and the mechanism of regulating their own relationship?
I know the Minister of Labour is well-intentioned and I know we've got a basic philosophical disagreement here, but I want to make it very clear to this House and to the government what lies ahead through the course that they're charting, and I think it's a serious one.
I wish the minister would do a number of things with respect to the changes he is making and offering to this House in terms of labour legislation. One of the things that seems to be completely absent, as far as I have been able to discern in reading in the press the comments made by trade union people and, indeed, management people, is the dialogue, the consultation. Where is it?
This legislation has been spun very quickly and I believe that the minister has not had the opportunity to meet with the principal unions involved, meet with the principal management groups involved. And it is a partnership; it's a partnership in terms of their relationship. I think it's tremendously important that the minister should not drop legislation on this House, however well intentioned, without first meeting and discussing for weeks, and even in some cases months, because in terms of getting those people to understand what he's attempting to do and cooperate with it, that's important. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that those parties have been involved in this game longer than the minister has, or any other politician.
They live with the real world of labour law out there every day and they have a lot to tell you that is worthwhile. If you take the time to be warned by them, and have adequate dialogue with both parties, I think there's a much better chance of coming up with a system that is going to be workable — and that's really what we all want, no matter which side of the House we're on, Mr. Speaker.
I completely disagree with the minister's approach in this regard. No, that's a bit too strong — not completely; some of the things he's done are fine. But the principle of the main approach in the bill is one with which I disagree very strongly. And I'm not doing that just because we happen to be sitting across the House. I don't think there are many political points to be made out of industrial relations for anyone. I think the only points that could be made out of industrial relations accrue to all the people of the province in terms of, hopefully, some better harmony and some better workability in this very difficult area of human relations. It should never be forgotten that that's precisely what is — human relations.
It's difficult to set down by statute something that regulates their interrelationships, their actions and conduct, and ask them to accept it — particularly if there's not been a great deal of prior dialogue to the motives of the minister are understood, so his objectives are understood, and the parties to be so regulated have an opportunity to tell him where they perceive the weaknesses and the injustices to be.
I think this is something that the minister appears to be violating and ignoring, Mr. Speaker. I think it's regrettable that this statute has been introduced in the House as quickly as it has, where that kind of dialogue was impossible in the time that it has been before the minister.
The basic underlying philosophy of this bill I have to oppose, but there are provisions in it which I am pleased to see the minister has kept.
MR. G.F. GIBSON (North Vancouver–Capilano): Mr. Speaker, I happen, generally, to agree with this bill. It was part of the platform of the Liberal Party at the last election to proceed along these general lines and I support the principle, certainly.
I listened intently to the thoughts put forward by the former Minister of Labour because I very much respect his approach to labour relations in this province, and I tried in my own mind to understand the points he made. The essence of the points he made and the concerns he expressed was, if I could restate it — and I hope I'm doing this correctly — first of all he expressed a concern with the government playing God in terms of assessing what is a fair. wage,
I looked carefully at the definition in the Act, and while we're not in detailed study, nevertheless I think this is an important definition: "...fair wages means wages and benefits reasonably equivalent to wages and benefits usually provided to workers for doing work of a particular character or class or performing a particular function in geographical areas where they
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are employed."
In other words, it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that the definition makes it clear that whoever is setting whatever a fair wage might be is really not playing God; they're relating it to what is happening in other areas, in other job sites outside the government purview, in which seemingly there is a kind of an objective standard — an objective test — which must be met.
The hon. member for Revelstoke-Slocan went on to suggest that the passage of this Act might in fact reverse the situation and give an advance to non-union firms on government job sites. Again, I looked at that question and considered the argument he made that non-union firms may not pay the same kind of fringes as union firms have to do, because these things have been negotiated more adequately in the collective agreement.
But again, looking at the definition of what fair wages is deemed to mean, it includes wages and benefits. It seems quite precise in the definition, and therefore I would expect, and I think that the House in passing this legislation should expect, that there should be no such advantage allowed to non-union firms, and that the director, in determining the wage which is a fair wage, will be required — and I would suggest that it is the intent of the House, if it passes this legislation, that he should be required — to include fringes in the calculation of what is fair.
The third essential objection that the former Minister of Labour raised I find a very serious one, and that is the objection that the admission of non-union firms to mixed construction sites could lead to jungle warfare because of the traditional solidarity of the building trades unions in these kinds of questions. Obviously this is a historic fact of life in British Columbia that the government, in the administration of this Act, is going to have to take into account. We may legislate here in this chamber but we also have to take into account the realities outside of this chamber, and the reality, as the member for Revelstoke-Slocan (Mr. King) mentioned, is one that the government will simply have to deal with.
I do not think, however, that this fact of life which must be dealt with is of itself sufficient to prevent the Legislature from articulating a principle which seems to me to be proper, and that is the principle that the government should not put its thumb on the scales on one side or another in terms of the organization or not of employees in this province. I happen to be in favour of going the route of a high percentage of organized labour in our economy. There are people who point at the countries north and south of the border in North American and say that the U.S. economy is much less unionized than the Canadian economy and it's much more productive, and that that proves something or other. I happen to disagree with that. I think that a higher rate of unionization, as some of the European democracies have proven very well, can lead to a kind of cooperation for productivity that, in the end, turns things out better than they would have been without the union involvement in the first place.
So I am in favour of a high degree of unionization and continuing organization in the British Columbia economy. Nevertheless, I believe that the government should remain as neutral and as distant as it can in relationships between private parties.
It seems to me that this Act is an improvement on the relationship which the government has with the private parties. It brings about a situation where it neither encourages nor discourages organization in projects that are paid for by the government. It withdraws what was, in my view, an unnecessary invasion of the freedoms and rights of employers and employees to organize or not to organize as they might choose. The government should not exert a bias one way or another in those areas.
The minister, in his opening remarks, made clear to the House that in some ways this bill is a marked improvement over the previous legislation in terms of extending protection to subtrades, and maintaining and extending the concept of fair wages, which to me is the right concept — fair wages and benefits — and a better operation of the market system in the construction area because more firms are able to bid. I would suggest to the House that this system has worked well in other jurisdictions and there is every reason to believe that it can work well here.
I would ask the Minister of Labour in his closing remarks, to address himself to the very serious questions raised by the former Minister of Labour in terms of the jungle warfare,, as he put it, that could arise by the presence on traditionally union building sites of a non-union firm pursuant to action that might be taken under this bill. As I say, this is a question the government is going to have to deal with in a very pragmatic way, but I do not think it impairs the principle of the bill, which I intend to support.
MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Speaker, I also support the principle of this bill. In fact we made an attempt this session, in a private member's bill, to bring the matter before the House prior to the government introducing the bill.
I think it is the principle from which our support flows, and that principle is freedom of choice. People in this province and in Canada have a choice as to whether they want to be unionized or as to whether they don't want to be unionized, and I think the opening statement by the minister that in the present situation an employer either has the right to bid on government contracts or not, depending on the choice of the employees, which in fact leaves the employer in a disadvantaged position.... I think the
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general comment of the former Minister of Labour (Mr. King) that we are not here on a debate on this area to win political points or to claim that either side of the House has all the answers....
Lord knows, the labour-management problems are enormous and complex and there is no political party or government that has all the answers. So I strongly support the former Labour minister's (Mr. King's) comment that we are here to try and make a very complex area of human relations both workable and as fair as possible to both sides.
While I am very much impressed by the former minister's pointing out one of the problems that may arise from this bill, which namely is the employment of subcontractors who are not unionized on a construction site which will readily lead to picketing and closing down of the whole operation, on the other hand I see no reason why an employer should not have the right to bid on government construction, which is being paid for by the taxpayers' money — that's where the government gets the money to pay for the construction. The employer who happens not to be unionized has every right, in my view, to bid on that kind of contract, which at the present time he does not.
Another point I would like to raise, Mr. Speaker, is one that after the present bill became law, it was not very long before I was contacted by one of my constituents who was in a completely different business — in the moving business. He has nothing to do with construction. He came to me with a very disturbing complaint that he had previously obtained contracts to move furniture from government offices and other forms of contracts involved in the moving business, and he had been told that under the Public Works Fair Employment Act moving of government property could only be carried out by unionized firms. In fairness to the government of the day, the matter was brought to their attention and this unjustified application of the legislation was corrected.
Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, it's very dangerous, I think, if the community at large gets the impression that only unionized companies can work with the government by contract. We are only talking about construction in this bill, and that was all, I believe, that' was ever intended in the former bill. But the kind of society in which we live, and the degree to which labour-management matters have a constantly high profile in newspapers and media, can lead to many misunderstandings. It would seem to me that this government, and any government, should make it very clear that it believes in choice and freedom of choice and that in something as important as awarding millions of dollars worth of contracts provided for by taxpayers' money, contractors, whether unionized or not unionized, should have freedom to bid on the contracts. It is from that very basic and fundamental principle that I view this bill. At the same time, I am well aware of the fact that there is the potential for problems. The two that see are the competitive disadvantage, as pointed out by the former Minister of Labour, if, in fact, the very substantial cost of fringe benefits in a unionized business are overlooked in determining the definition of "fair wages." As the Liberal leader (Mr. Gibson) pointed out, the bill includes a definition. In the definition of "fair wages, " the bill includes the words, "... wages and benefits reasonably equivalent to wages and benefits usually provided to workers for doing work of a particular character or class...." I gather — and I would like the minister's comments when he winds up second reading — and I take it from that that he is aware of the point raised by the former Minister of Labour and that in the definition he is endeavouring to stress the fact that the non-union employer, in paying his workers, will be expected to have included in that wage some allowance for the kind of fringe benefits which are included in the cost of employing union employees.
The other point which I hope the minister will deal with in winding up debate is the other obstacle which the former Minister of Labour is very much concerned about and which he described as "jungle warfare" on a construction site where there may well be subcontractors employing non-union labour. That would seem to me to be the most distressing possibility. I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about the details of this problem to know whether that is as strong an objection as the former minister pointed out. But I think in helping to inform all of the members of the House just how valid that is, the minister should perhaps deal with that at some length in winding up the debate.
The other part of the bill that I would like some clarification on is the minister's statement that where some assurance about paying fair wages has not been written into a contract, it will be deemed to be included in that contract. The minister pointed out that the manner in which the government would deal with this would be by suspending payment to such a contractor or subcontractor who had in fact breached the provisions of this bill. I'm just not quite clear, when the minister introduced this bill, why that particular phrase, "deemed to be included in that contract," is necessary when in point of fact the government would suspend payment anyway, until such time as fair wages were paid. Just to deem that an agreement is in the contract, or that a clause is in the contract, seems to me very insignificant compared to the government's commitment to suspend payment until in fact the workers do receive fair wages. I'm not clear whether the minister meant that the wage as defined in the contract might not be fair or there just wouldn't be a clause at all dealing with a commitment to pay fair wages in that section 3,
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which the minister touched upon. I'd appreciate some enlargement on that point.
The question of hiring local help as far as possible is also a very positive part of the bill, but I would certainly just have to re-emphasize that the most important thing in a democratic society is one's freedom of choice as to which party you support, or which church you go to, or freedom of speech — it relates to freedom, period: the freedom that you should not have governments, other than perhaps through the law and order which they provide in the courts, dictate anything to the individual, whether he be an employer or an employee. If employees have a legitimate right, as indeed they should, to choose by vote whether they want to be unionized or not unionized, I think the legislation is an incredible invasion of the freedom of an individual employer, as a consequence, to find that his rights to practise his legitimate job or profession — in this case, his job as a contractor — regardless of who the party is that is providing the contract. While that has to be the fundamental point from which we start this debate on this bill, I do agree with the former Minister of Labour that there may be consequences flowing from the specifics of the bill which warrant further study, perhaps, and further revision or amendments. On the two particular points that I have raised and which the former minister has raised, I would hope that the present minister can give us some assurance of what action he feels he would be in a position to take if, in the course of applying this new bill, these consequences do develop, or whether in fact there are even amendments to the bill at this present time that would be appropriate to correct these two potential consequences.
MR. L. NICOLSON (Nelson-Creston): I think I would be remiss in my duty, Mr. Speaker, if I didn't get up and say a few words about this bill. As former Minister of Housing I had a great deal of experience with both the positive and maybe some of the more difficult aspects of the present bill.
If I were to come into this House, having made the comments that were made by the Social Credit Party or by the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) during the election, I still think that I would have to take a more moderate approach, because this bill is really a repeal bill. It is really going back to where things were. I must say that things as far as they were were certainly not good and they were not fair.
There's been a lot of talk in this debate about freedom of choice. I'd like to relate some of the personal experience of the right-to-work group that was organized all over the province by small independent contractors that felt threatened by this bill. In spite of the modifications which made its application as fair as we felt it could be, these groups sprang up. What did they do to try and whip into line some of the small independent contractors and subcontractors?
Mr. Speaker, I can tell this House that in the Creston area that organization blackballed the one skilled mason in that area, a German immigrant who brought skills which were badly needed in that area. They blackballed that member because he refused to join this so-called right-to-work group. The deprived him of his right to work. Two other persons, very good friends of mine, took the expedient of joining, although they didn't believe in what the organization stood for, particularly after they recognized that one independent contractor in the Creston area had been blackballed.
So what I'm saying to those members and the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace), who's getting a little exercised, is that this situation should be looked at from both sides, Because I've certainly heard enough of the arguments about what some of the unions have done, and I don't think there's any paucity of that type of information or expression of that. But certainly it is a two-sided thing. If the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. Williams) is concerned, and if he's going to take this kind of a measure, he should certainly recognize that a complete swing of the pendulum is not going to be a positive move, and I think it's going to create problems for them. I'd also like to dispel some of the myths about the so-called high cost of union labour in the housing industry.
One of the experiences which I had when I first became Minister Without Portfolio — some plans had gone ahead where plans had been made for construction of some duplex units. The land had been acquired. The building permits were there and they had actually, I believe, been put out to tender before I was Minister Without Portfolio. In came the bids, and this was the summer of 1973. At that time, these were almost unheard-of bids for residential home construction in greater Vancouver. Union bids came in in excess of $40 per square foot — $40 and $44, if memory serves me right. Non-union bids came in at about $32 and $34 per square foot. Both sets of bids were unacceptable by that day's standards.
My decision then was not to build and to look for something else, and even possibly to dispose of the property. But the plans were there and the approval was there and so we held onto it. During the intervening time and by the next spring we had acquired Dunhill Development Corp., and I asked Dunhill to find out how much it would cost to do it — and I'm just talking about construction costs, not about land costs — how much it would cost then, a year later, to do it with union contracting, do it through Fisher Development, which was a member of CLRA.
Again, going by memory, I think I'm quite safe in saying that the costs were in the neighbourhood of $27 per square foot, which shows what the actual
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costs were. Now, of course, there would have to be some sort of margin for profit, but these are some of the things that are possible.
In trying to keep to the letter of the law, the Public Works Fair Employment Act, other situations were encountered, and I might say, Mr. Speaker, that in some areas construction went ahead with non-union labour — certainly in Cranbrook, and I would hesitate to say whether it happened in Penticton. But in a good many areas it was found that the difficulty was not in the fact that the union labour for house construction was so much more expensive, but that, in fact, very few union construction companies were really skilled in framing construction. So the difference in bids which we encountered in the first instance that I cited today were not so much a problem of any inherent difference between union and non-union work but the fact that very few of the union construction companies are skilled in framing construction.
However, development companies such as Daon Development, such as Fisher Construction, a subsidiary of Dunhill Development — companies like this can do it. They're not necessarily interested in bidding on government jobs, especially small ones, or they weren't at that time.
So I would say also concerning the definition of fair wages that I had the experience of interpreting and looking at what the Central Mortgage and Housing Corp. used as a definition of fair wages — what has been their guideline definition of fair wages — and I would just have to say that they are totally out of line with what can be construed as fair wages.
I think that there is a danger here and that it shouldn't be decided by someone outside this House that the legislation is lacking in that the definition of fair wages is not spelled out very definitely by some index which is recognizable and seen to be fair. I would like to say that if at every turn people were trying to look more to the.... And that is the public servants who were helping to implement our programmes. If there was a failing there — and I think there's a failing in bringing in this legislation — it's that people are not looking at ways in which we can make this work; they are looking at ways in which they can find the shortcomings and therefore say that it should be repealed.
I think the principle of implementing a public works fair employment Act and implementing the Public Works Fair Employment Act as it presently exists — this might seem an expedient. But I think this is a retrograde step and that when one really goes onto the job sites and sees the so-called conditions of fair employment, one will see workers being exploited, one will see characteristically ethnic groups being exploited, Mr. Speaker and see that they do not lack....
It isn't just a matter of pension benefits or dental plans; it's a matter of wrongful dismissal and being subjected at a time when you are perhaps newly emigrated to this country. We do have a dearth of skilled people in many of the trade areas so we depend upon immigrant skilled workers, but these people do often lack the skill of having a knowledge of their rights in this country. There's no provision in here for the protection of rights of workers, and the matter of fair wages is not the only issue.
The only way that has been contrived to really protect the rights of workers, whether they be immigrants new to this country or persons who have grown up in this country, is through the rights of collective bargaining and a collective agreement that embraces more than just wages, embraces total conditions, and not just the so-called fringe benefits but also working conditions. I can say that working conditions and the attitudes of a great number of job foremen....
There are certain job foremen who've been around long enough...you'll find certain job sites in which just about all of the framers are perhaps German; you'll find another one in which perhaps they're all Italian — and you'll find that these people are being exploited, that some of these foremen are not held in high regard.
In just talking shop with some of the contractors, there'll be discussions about certain foremen and their questionable ethics. These people are exploiting people because they do not have the protection of full collective bargaining. That's why, no matter what side of the House I was sitting on, I wouldn't be able to accept what I think is a complete shift of the pendulum — something which I think is far too sweeping. Even if I embraced a conservative or right-of-centre type of a principle, I still could not intellectually accept this in terms of fair play.
MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, just a few words on this bill, and I'll try to be to the point.
[Mr. Veitch in the chair.]
The old bill gave a break to the union-organized contractor on government work. This bill, I think, gives a break to the unorganized contractor on government work, because, while you have a provision for fair wages, there are additional costs of grievance procedure and administration of a collective agreement that are with the organized contractor and not with the unorganized contractor.
Secondly, I think you've created trouble on the building sites, and I think the former Minister of Labour (Mr. King) made this point. I think you're asking for trouble because you're going to have a scramble to organize where a government contract is let on this building site and on that building site — with one craft picketing and the others out of work,
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and one trying to get a contract, the others not. I think you're buying trouble with this, Mr. Speaker, to the minister.
Thirdly, I don't think you can manage that thing about fair wages. Are you really going to establish throughout the province of B.C., in regions, really what amounts to a second minimum wage? Different categories; different jobs. Before you've really done that, I think the pencil will tremble in the hands of the director of labour standards. I think you've inherited a problem in that respect, too.
I don't think there's been talk about freedom here. It seems to me that we on this side are the supporters of freedom in this particular exchange. After all, you are going to the employers who may be doing government work, and you are telling them that we're going to impose on you your wage classifications and your wage rates. Well, that's taking something of freedom away from the private bargaining process.
Then, if you're going to be fair and you really intend to be fair, in terms of those employees who are doing the work, you've got to impose security of employment too — unjust dismissal protection.
Then you've got to consider seniority. Are you going to impose that too? If you're not, you should. Then, if you go on from that, you've got to say maybe this job should have a safety committee set up under some kind of an agreement between the employees and the employer. Impose that too, if you will, and when you've done all this imposing, imposing, imposing, you've got a union contract. You'd be much better to have left it to the parties to bargain that contract between themselves. I think you're just inheriting a peck of trouble, Mr. Speaker, to the minister.
I'd like to finally say that there have been speeches made in this House — particularly by the leader of the Conservative Party — about freedom. Now what is freedom in today's society? Is it the freedom to be unorganized? If it is, I wonder how many people are embracing that kind of freedom — only those who have to.
Interjection.
MR. MACDONALD: The lawyers? You don't have any trouble finding a lawyer to act for the Attorney-General to represent the Queen in the courts of this province who belongs to the Law Society of B.C. You can say what you like — that is basically a trade union organization.
The doctors make the distinction that they don't have to belong to the medical association, but they really have their own union.
The pilots have their own union.
The hairdressers have tried to organize, but the trouble is not that all of the members have to be part of their organization; the trouble is they're poorly organized. They don't have the clout because they don't have any disciplinary powers with respect to their members and all of them do not have to belong.
So what I'm saying, Mr. Speaker, is that in the modern society in which we live the right to association of crafts and professions and businesses is their protection. That is their freedom. The unorganized people are exposed to undercutting of their rates, they're exposed to unfair competition, and they try to organize as quickly as they possibly can. So if the Minister of Labour listens to the bottom line down on the back benches and he comes in with a bill like this because philosophically everybody should have the right to be an unorganized worker and work for a gippo, it sounds great, but we should be moving the other way.
We should be moving in the direction of countries like Sweden where it goes without saying that 90 to 95 per cent of the working professional and business people have some organization. That is freedom. That enables them to participate. That enables them to have had some power, and along with the participation and the power there is some responsibility within their own profession or trade and within their own country. You find in a place like Sweden, which has actively had the courage to go out and encourage people to belong to trade unions and not been ashamed of it one little bit a strike record that would make ours look sick like a running disease in comparison.
I don't think the government understands what freedom is about today. Freedom is the right to belong to an association in your calling and to participate democratically in that. All of the members of that calling should be part of that association and they should have disciplinary powers and they should bargain together about their common problems and they should have some power in their calling and accept responsibility at the same time. That is the road to freedom — not this fragmentation of the working force into those who are organized and those unorganized people who are exploited by the gippos.
DEPUTY SPEAKER: The minister closes the debate.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I wish to commend the members for their contribution in the second reading debate on Bill 77.
There is a difference of viewpoints between the members on the government side and the official opposition on this bill. I thought that the hon. member for Revelstoke-Slocan, the former Minister of Labour and a person whose knowledge and experience in labour matters commands our attention, dealt fairly with the matter. I particularly appreciate him pointing out to all the members that this debate is likely to be most productive if it is
[ Page 3145 ]
non-political, because there aren't political marks to be made out of labour-management relations in this province.
I only wish that the first member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) has listened to what he said, because in his closing remarks he certainly tried to make every political mark that he could. He made it quite clear that the present legislation, the Public Works Fair Employment Act, so far as he was concerned is intended to force the workers of this province into unions. That's a political move.
He speaks so highly of the Swedish system. Yes, Sweden has made significant moves in the field of social democracy, but there are other countries in the world whereby the productivity of the workers is greater than it is in Sweden and, in fact, greater than it is in North America, and they don't have compulsory unionism at all — West Germany, for example. West Germany has an entirely different system.
MS. R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): And South Africa.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: As a matter of fact, in West Germany you don't have to belong to a union. There is no closed shop, There is no union shop in West Germany. They are to be looked upon as successful workers in a highly productive national economy, one which is the envy of all the world.
Interjections.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: You talk about freedoms. Yes, I agree with the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) that fundamental to this legislation is the matter of freedom. The first member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) would suggest that only the NDP are the supporters of freedom. He suggests that we're going to impose wage decisions upon employers and therefore the determination of fair wages upon employees. But, Mr. Speaker, if you listened very carefully to what the first member for Vancouver East said, the NDP's idea of freedom is to impose unionization on both the employers and the employees of this province. That becomes a different kind of freedom.
MR. MACDONALD: I said encourage.
Interjection.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, you would impose it — because you want us to make sure that we give preference to all those companies which have collective agreements. You only have collective agreements if you're unionized, and therefore you want us to give preference to unionized organizations.
You would withdraw from anyone who was not unionized the right to engage in activities which involve the Crown and Crown agencies.
Well, there's the fundamental difference, and yet you know, Mr. Speaker, it is strange: the member for Revelstoke-Slocan (Mr. King) pointed out that there were circumstances under the present legislation where you didn't have to be a unionized contractor in order to work, you know, because of the family relationship in the kind of organization that wasn't appropriate, but he didn't point out, as I did in my opening remarks, that one of the exemptions is where the Crown or any of its agencies does not invite tenders or give public notice or the work or public work. What a loophole!
Imagine a government which says: "We support the preference to unionized organizations" and then provides themselves a loophole whereby if you don't call tenders you can use non-union workers. Talk about exploitation! Not only is it an exploitation of the workers if that indeed is the case — because there's no provision for fair wages in such a case under the present law — but really it's an exploitation of the responsibility of government to deal publicly and openly with government business, either by way of tenders or public advertisements of the job.
Mr. Speaker, the member for Revelstoke-Slocan raised some questions that I want to respond to. They were good points and I think that the bill provides the answers for them. He suggested that the Minister of Labour was going to play God, or someone was going to play God — the director of labour standards. I would say that the member hasn't read the bill. I'm surprised that he would say such a thing, because he knows who the director of labour standards is and he knows the facilities that are available to the director of labour standards with the Department of Labour to determine — what fair wages and benefits are in this province. There is no place where there is more research being done into this whole subject than in the Department of Labour. All of those facilities are available to the director of labour standards.
If he makes an error in establishing his schedule of fair wages, then the read legislation provides that that error is capable of resolution by the Board of Industrial Relations. But who is the Board of Industrial Relations? It's composed of representatives of management and of unions, and it also has people who have no relationship with management and unions. They are the kind of people who will look and address themselves to this particular problem. It is suggested that this is somehow or other not as good a way as collective bargaining. Talk about playing God! Has he ever been involved in the process of collective bargaining?
Mr. Speaker, I'm satisfied that there are provisions in this legislation which will ensure that fair wages and benefits which are associated with wages can be
[ Page 3146 ]
assured to those employees who under our laws today make the free choice not to join unions.
If we want to go the way the member for Vancouver East says we should go, then why didn't they in the Labour Code take away the right of the workers to decide on majority vote whether they should go into a union or not and just say that all the workers shall be in a union? Then they would have solved their problem. It looks to me as if their attempts were by the Labour Code to offer the opportunity of freedom of choice to the workers in this province but by other legislative action to slowly diminish that choice until finally they had succeeded.
I find it significant that the member for Vancouver East is nodding his head affirmatively.
MR. MACDONALD: I was getting bored.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Now if it is a matter of playing God, I should also point out that one of the exemptions to the present Act is spelled out in the Municipal Act. There the concept of fair wages has been enshrined for years and was accepted by the previous government. Who is it who has the final choice as to whether a fair wage is being paid under a municipal government contract? It is the Minister of Labour. Now if it's so offensive that the Minister of Labour is involved, I would have thought that the previous administration would have seen fit to expunge that from our statutes. But his was enshrined in their own legislation, the Public Works Fair Employment Act.
On the question of fair wages and the consideration to be given to benefits, I would like to make it perfectly clear that it is not the intention of this government to allow employers whose workers are not unionized to exploit those workers. That is the whole concept of fair wages. The member for Revelstoke-Slocan spoke about the percentage of the total compensation package in current collective agreements which are related to benefits, and he said it was about 25 per cent. Recent experience shows that increases being negotiated in collective agreements for fringe benefits would put the fringe-benefit package at about 50 per cent of the increases which are presently being experienced. All of those changes will reflect themselves in the basis upon which the director of labour standards must determine the schedule of fair wages.
It is suggested that somehow or other, by the exploitation of workers, non-unionized contractors will have a competitive advantage, but I think the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson) pointed out quite clearly in his remarks that the competitive advantage does not flow from wages. The competitive advantage flows from other considerations such as the skill and the ability to do particular jobs. It's a productivity factor which gives to some contractors a competitive advantage.
I see no reason why the hon. Minister of Housing (Hon. Mr. Curtis), in projects which are carried out under his responsibility, should not enjoy the consequences of non-unionized work forces giving that productivity factor and hence the competitive advantage which that may provide. The very fact that an employer has a relationship with his employees such that those employees determine not to unionize may itself indicate the existence of a relationship and an ability to function together and to produce far more than otherwise would be the case. That very relationship may, in fact, heighten the productivity of that work force group.
Now much was said of the trouble that is going to be created by the passage of this Act. The member for Revelstoke-Slocan talked about picketing activities arising out of organizational activities on building sites and the return to jungle warfare. Yes, that is a problem and we will have to be certain that the laws, as contained in the Labour Code of British Columbia, are effective enough to control that particular activity. But what is the alternative? If the threat of this kind of action by union leaders is sufficient to take away the right of workers under the laws of this province not be be in a union, then the jungle warfare wins,
Talk about who plays God in this province! Every time time union leaders say, "you can't do that, " does the rest of the province have to say, "okay, we give in"? Is that the way we are going in this province? I don't believe that to be true. Indeed, the discussions which I have had with union groups on the subject of the Public Works Fair Employment Act indicates to me that there is in organized labour a more responsible element than that.
Now there will be problems. I don't doubt that a bit. But what is the situation that you face when confronted with the challenge of organized labour? Do you always retreat? Is that all that is left to us — to retreat?
MR. MACDONALD: Not if they're lawyers.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Do we always retreat? Well, the hon. first member for Vancouver East always throws up the lawyer bit. I'm talking about the workers in this province, not about the legal profession — the workers! That only includes a very few lawyers in the workers. Let me point out — and the member for Revelstoke-Slocan should give some lessons to the first member for Vancouver East — what the situation is in this province.
Interjection.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, there is only 44 per cent of our work force organized.
[ Page 3147 ]
MR. KING: That's a terrible thing!
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: The member for Revelstoke-Slocan says that is a terrible thing, but the other side of the coin is that 56 per cent of the workers in this province have decided not be be organized, and that has to be taken into account too.
MR. KING: Rubbish!
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: That's their choice.
MR. MACDONALD: They haven't had the chance.
HON. R.H. McCLELLAND (Minister of Health): Oh, come on!
MR. MACDONALD: They haven't had the chance!
HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Everybody has the chance.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!
MR. MACDONALD: Bank employees? They'd be fired if they organized.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Oh well, you see, there we go, We're permitted to stand up for the unions and let them harass society, but then as soon as you suggest that somebody hasn't joined the union, the answer is always given: "Oh, that's because they're being harassed by somebody else." There is no proof of that at all — no proof at all.
AN HON. MEMBER: Are you Minister of Labour or minister of industry?
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I am the Minister of Labour. I recognize the contribution that has been made to this debate by members from all parties, including Revelstoke-Slocan, but I must say that the contribution from the first member for Vancouver East has done nothing to credit him or to assist in the understanding of this legislation or, indeed, to promote industrial harmony in this province. There they stand, the great friends of the B.C. Federation of Labour, although Len Guy had some difficulty in getting that message. They don't want him on their council — he got beaten by the $80,000 man.
AN HON. MEMBER: Money counts.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Suddenly the $80,000 man decided he wanted to run for a position in the NDP. Who did he run against? He ran against Len Guy. I think, as a matter of fact, that organized labour — the B.C. Federation of Labour — has more friends on this side of the House than they do in the official opposition.
Certainly it should be said quite clearly that free unions function in a free society. That is what this government provides. But free unions do not function in a society which is not free. I commend all the members to take very careful cognizance of what was said by the first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) during the course of the NDP convention, that they shouldn't pay too much attention to the matter of free collective bargaining because under the kind of control that NDP would bring to our system, that free collective bargaining would disappear. I think all union members and union leaders should pay very careful attention to the clear indication of the direction in which that party is going as far as unions are concerned.
I wish to say to the member for Revelstoke-Slocan that the question of hiring practices, as pointed out by him in section 5 of the bill, certainly will continue to be a major concern of the Minister of Labour and of the department. I recognize the steps that member for Revelstoke-Slocan took when he was minister in this field. I understand quite clearly the difficulties that he faced; I face the same difficulties. But I wish to assure the House, if they are aware of what that member did when he was minister, that we will continue in the same direction.
I have had the occasion of meeting with union groups dealing with specific problems. The members should be aware that the member for Revelstoke-Slocan during his ministry took particular care to make every arrangement he could to ensure that there was local hiring for jobs throughout this province. That will be the continued direction of the Department of Labour.
I would also like to say to the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson) with regard to conditions of employment — he referred to that — that that is also covered in section 5. There is no intention of this government through this bill to allow any employer to exploit the worker by reason of his ethnic background, his unfamiliarity with the English language or the French language in the province of Quebec and the province of British Columbia, The laws which provide for proper conditions of employment will continue to be enforced by this government.
Mr. Speaker, I move second reading of this bill.
Motion approved on the following division:
YEAS — 30
| Gardom | Bennett | Wolfe |
| McGeer | Phillips | Curtis |
| Calder | Chabot | Jordan |
[ Page 3148 ]
| Schroeder | Bawlf | Bawtree |
| Fraser | Davis | McClelland |
| Williams | Waterland | Mair |
| Nielsen | Davidson | Haddad |
| Hewitt | Kahl | Kempf |
| Mussallem | Rogers | Strongman |
| Veitch | Wallace, G.S. | Gibson |
NAYS — 15
| Macdonald | Barrett | King |
| Dailly | Cocke | Lea |
| Nicolson | Levi | Skelly |
| D'Arcy | Lockstead | Barnes |
| Brown | Barber | Wallace, B.B. |
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
Bill 83, Public Construction Fair Wages Act, read a second time and referred to Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Committee on Bill 63, Mr. Speaker.
MUNICIPALITIES ENABLING AND
VALIDATING AMENDMENT ACT, 1976
The House in committee on Bill 63; Mr. Veitch in the chair.
Sections 1 and 2 approved.
Title approved.
HON. H.A. CURTIS (Minister of Municipal Affairs): Mr. Chairman, I move the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.
Motion approved.
The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.
Bill 63, Municipalities Enabling and Validating Amendment Act, 1976, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.
HON. MR. GARDOM: Committee on Bill 49, Mr. Speaker.
HOME PURCHASE ASSISTANCE ACT
The House in committee on Bill 49; Mr. Schroeder in the chair.
On section 1.
MR. GIBSON: I have a question for the minister here. Which is the proper clause in this bill in which I should ask the total estimated cost in the coming fiscal year?
Interjections.
MR. CHAIRMAN: The member for North Vancouver–Capilano has the floor.
MR. GIBSON: I'll assume that it's section 1 and ask the minister if he could tell us.
HON. MR. CURTIS: It could be dealt with at committee stage, or as the hon. member knows, Mr. Chairman, my estimates are not yet up, of course. It's covered in a block vote in the Housing department estimates — so, as you wish.
MR. GIBSON: Well, if you could just give us a number.
MR. CHAIRMAN: May the Chair suggest that it's perhaps best discussed under the vote for the title?
Sections 1 to 4 inclusive approved.
On section 5.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to have some clarification. This appears to preclude assistance.... A person is not entitled to a grant or a loan unless.... I should say:
"A person who is in receipt of financial assistance under the Assisted Home Ownership Programme Rural and Remote Programme, or any other programme under the National Housing Act (Canada) designated by the regulations, in respect of a residence is not entitled to a grant or loan in respect of that residence."
I'd like to know why that does not conflict with the intentions.... I'm sure it doesn't conflict, but I'd like to know why it does not conflict with the intentions of the policy in later sections and also in publicity which has been released by the department.
HON. MR. CURTIS: I wonder if the hon. member, Mr. Chairman, would go through that again, because I was distracted here. I'm sorry.
MR. NICOLSON: It says:
"A person who is in receipt of financial assistance under the Assisted Home Ownership Programme, the Rural and Remote Programme, or any other programme under the National Housing Act (Canada) designated by the regulations in respect of a residence is not
[ Page 3149 ]
entitled to a grant or loan in respect of that residence."
Now under "The Affordable Home and How We're Helping It to Happen" brochure, the department illustrates how the assisted home ownership programme operates in British Columbia, how part (1), CMHC gives an interest reduction loan, part (2), a $750 subsidy from CMHC and, part (3) $750 from the province. I'd like to know from whence the subsidy from the province comes then.
HON. MR. CURTIS: Well, since we're discussing the section, Mr. Chairman, referring to the material that the hon. member for Nelson-Creston has just identified, under 1, that money is from the housing fund, the provincial housing fund — and we've taken the arbitrary position on this side of the House that you will qualify for one or the other, but not both.
Section 5 approved.
On section 6.
MR. NICOLSON: Well, Mr. Speaker, I would urge that....
I haven't proposed an amendment or prepared one on this section, but I'd like to bring to the minister's attention some of the difficulties that led to giving persons a second chance, and this would preclude a person from having a second opportunity.
Under the old home-acquisition programme, we found that persons purchased homes specifically in Prince George.... The area I think was a floodplain, which led to a resettlement programme, but at any rate, homes were expropriated in that area by government action. I'd like to ask the minister how he's going to rectify the injustice which could occur if a person avails himself of the programme and then finds that the Department of Highways, or some government agency, or B.C. Hydro, expropriates property and not even through a job relocation action these people are caused to move — by a completely external force — and then are denied a second opportunity to take advantage of this legislation. I'd like to point out that that's why amendments were made to the Provincial Home Acquisition Act: in order to give persons the opportunity for a second grant, although we didn't limit it. That was certainly the injustice that we saw.
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, the former Minister of Housing has made a valid point. We looked at this very carefully. I believe, in second reading, it was the first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) who spoke about no second-chance dealing — not with what you have raised today, Hon. Member, but rather spouses...speece? (Laughter.)
MR. NICOLSON: Yes, that's another point.
HON. MR. CURTIS: But where, to respond to your example, the Department of Highways, or some other department of government, moves in on a particular piece of property, then there will be expropriation, and it's our contention that the loss of future benefits should be taken into consideration in the expropriation.
I hope that we can work this section, or this measure, with no great difficulty, but I do pay attention to the comments you've made about it.
MR. NICOLSON: The first member for Vancouver-Burrard isn't here, but she also brought up a very good point in second reading. It was also our experience that in the event of a marriage breakdown and a divorce, in some cases.... It's not always the case, Mr. Chairman, of some women who has been totally dependent upon her husband's source of income. It might be, in point of fact, that the woman is perhaps the more qualified person to actually earn an income. But we found specific cases where the woman, once having made the decision to be independent and the divorce having been finalized, was maybe starting out on a career very successfully, with fairly adequate income, but was being denied this because of a previous marriage from which she maybe received no financial benefit.
I don't think it's right to depend upon a divorce settlement to bring into account the possible loss of benefits under the new Home Purchase Assistance Act, that things such as this should be taken into account. Persons should be able to benefit when they strike out on their own, even under a legal separation. I don't think that the abuse is going to be that great compared to the very real moral principle which is involved here.
I could cite a case — I wouldn't get too specific — but I certainly could cite a case of a woman who was a legal secretary making fairly good income who was denied, until amendments were made, a chance at the old Home Acquisition Act because her husband had received it. She had no benefit from the house in terms of her settlement. She was starting out quite nicely, thank you, and coping with everything, including looking after her family and making a reasonable wage, but was denied a benefit that would not have been denied to any other family.
I think, for reasons such as this, there should be a provision for the setting of regulations which would look into some of these very special cases, which I'm sure Mr. Rounds and Marion Price in the department would be fairly familiar with, and also the people on the mortgage eligibility committee.
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I thank the hon. member for his comments on this problem, and
[ Page 3150 ]
it is that. I understand, from the early briefings I had in the Department of Housing, that the eligibility committee had great difficulty with the variations and the wide spectrum of separation and settling problems where assistance had been granted.
We've chosen to take this route. If with experience we find that we can narrow it down to two or three cases where clearly the assistance can be rendered and rendered without any difficulty, without any gray area, we will do so. But we have chosen, after great consideration, to take this particular route, and I can offer no further comment than that.
Sections 6 to 9 inclusive approved.
On section 10.
MR. NICOLSON: The interest rate under the old home acquisition programme was listed at 8.5 per cent, I believe, with forgiveness features of $25 per month for payments made on time. I believe the effective interest rate, at any rate the one I retain, is 7.5 per cent. This will allow an increase on any mortgages given up to current rate. I am remiss in knowing what the current rate of the National Housing Act is, so what would the specified interest rate be at this particular time — is it 11 or 12 per cent at this time?
HON. MR. CURTIS: It's 11 3/4 per cent at the moment. The member may not be through with his comments, but if I may respond, the rate can be varied by regulation, depending on circumstances, on experience.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to know if it's the minister's intention to peg it to the rate under the National Housing Act, which varies. It is your intention, okay. Thank you.
Now also part (3) of this: "The difference between the payment required at the specified interest rate and the eligible payments shall be called a deferred loan, which shall be credited to the mortgage account and accumulate in a special account that does not bear interest."
There are a few questions that might be raised under this section. I think this is where we'll find the closest equivalent to the old home acquisition grant, and I would like to know how this applies on older residences, because in a later section it allows classifications, regions and all kinds of other things. Will persons with older residences, who've been renting, be able to apply? Is there some similar provision there?
Also, I see that this is a deferred loan, so any amounts.... I'd like to find out how there are going to be deferred loans given. A person might buy a new home with AHOP, for instance. I'm assuming that he can get a $5,000 second mortgage. In computing that, how will he qualify to get a deferred loan? Then at what time will the deferred loan start to bear interest and be capitalized into the mortgage?
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, no interest until the home is sold. I should point out that this whole section is modelled on the former government's leasehold mortgage programme, and I would think the member would be reasonably familiar, therefore, with what is intended in this section.
I answered the other question with respect to the $5,000 mortgage. The answer is yes.
MR. NICOLSON: One other question: will this apply to older homes as well as new homes under any circumstances?
Interjection.
MR. NICOLSON: Yes it will.
Through you, Mr. Chairman — being very reasonable here today — to the minister, I would ask the minister: will the requirements for rental be prerequisite, or will it just be a first-residence requirement?
HON. MR. CURTIS: We are dropping the requirement for rental.
Sections 10 and 11 approved.
On section 12.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, this is the one section of the bill that I think is most objectionable. It's my impression that under this section it will be possible to create price limits, classes of dwellings, regions within the province — at least this is the first mention of such things, which are also gone into in section 16. It starts here in terms of specifying these things. I would just like to have confirmed whether or not these limits are going to be the same limits as defined under the Assisted Home Ownership Programme of the federal government.
AN HON. MEMBER: Only the Lord knows.
HON. MR. CURTIS: With respect, Mr. Chairman, this topic really should be dealt with under section 16.
Sections 12 to 15 inclusive approved.
On section 16.
MR. NICOLSON: As I had read the Act, this
[ Page 3151 ]
elaborates a new approach, really, in this bill. It provides the mechanism for settling regional price eligibility limits. The present federal AHOP price limits are: Victoria $45,000; Vancouver, $47,000; Cranbrook, $33,000; and Prince George region, $39,000, I believe. The Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reports the average price of 520 multiple listings in May was $62,694, a steady rise from $60,052 in January.
It appears that the restriction to AHOP will prevent many buyers from benefiting. Further in section 16 it says: "... fix maximum and minimum costs and sizes of residences for eligibility...." Now in the release of the department we see some of the sizes which are specified in the municipal incentive grant programme. I can only assume that the incentive grant to municipalities is related to the encouragement of the building of affordable housing.
Some of the eligible unit sizes are: a bachelor studio unit,400 square feet; a one-bedroom apartment, 600 square feet, or 650 square feet for other housing forms if there are one-bedroom townhouses being built or one bedroom bungalows; two-bedroom, 800 square feet and 900 square feet in the case of a detached dwelling or a townhouse-type other than what is called an apartment, which I would assume to be a one- or two-storey central corridor-type of a unit. I think that here we are imposing fantastic limits.
One would also wonder, under this'section, what the limits are that you are envisaging for mobile homes. Are mobile homes to be covered under this section? Are they to be eligible? Are you setting mobile home limitations in the greater Vancouver area? Is that up to $47,000 for a mobile home? Are there going to be greater limits set in the regulations that are intended here?
HON. MR. CURTIS: I was tempted to say that this should have been dealt with under section 12, but I won't do that.
MR. WALLACE: You're learning fast, Mr. Minister.
HON. MR. CURTIS: I have to around here.
Mr. Chairman, the whole purpose of this programme, the thrust of AHOP, is to provide first ownership situations for individuals. We could debate for the afternoon situations for individuals. We could debate for the afternoon in a responsible manner whether the limits are too severe in terms of price or in terms of size. We want to get people into an ownership situation if that is their wish.
So with respect to the size that the member has spoken of, Mr. Chairman, they are probably pretty small. But we have been conditioned, I think, in North America, and certainly in this part of Canada, to think, as first homeowners — a young couple just starting out — that we have to have virtually everything that is eventually going to be put in place in our final home or the home in which we raise our family — the three bedroom, four-bedroom, shag carpet, one and a half- or two-bathroom home with a lot of amenities which probably you, Mr. Member, and most members of this House, did not start with. That's really why the limits have been set and why they've been set with respect to dollars and size.
The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Barrett) — and I think this is relevant comment on this section — in second reading debate, Mr. Chairman, said: "Who in this House, in this Legislature, would sell their home for $47,000, or who owns a home costing less than $47,000?" In response to that I would have to ask the committee, Mr. Chairman, who in this Legislature needs the kind of assistance that this bill is intended to offer. We're talking about two entirely different. clients, if you wish to use the term.
MS. BROWN: In Vancouver.
HON. MR. CURTIS: In Vancouver, Madam Member, and in greater Victoria it is working, and it's going to work extremely well.
The member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson) quoted some figures. In the period January 1, 1976, to April 30, 1976, residential sales in greater Vancouver, according to MLS, were 1,701, of which, Mr. Chairman, 443 were under $47,000. Now someone on the other side would say that most of those are condominiums. Well, that's not correct. Of the 443,136 were condominiums. The type of housing is there and we intend to assist individuals to get into it, particularly the first owner who is otherwise, in our view, destined to a lifetime of undesired rentals. That's not what we want.
MR. NICOLSON: That's rather interesting. You said in greater Vancouver?
HON. MR. CURTIS: Yes.
MR. NICOLSON: How far out? Abbotsford?
Mr. Chairman, I would say to the minister that I could see him finding some of the projects which have already been initiated and which he's converting from rentals into sales...I can see there being some available units for them, but if they talk about 443 units, 100 and some odd of which were condominiums, I think that that indicates that there aren't very many of these units available. There are thousands of the large condominium units available, as the minister is aware — thousands of these units that he describes with one-and-a-half baths, and shag rugs and covered indoor carports. I might point out that I believe that the market value of my home in Nelson is probably still under $47,000. It's under 800
[ Page 3152 ]
square feet and it has two bedrooms, so I understand what he's talking about with "starter homes."
I feel that this section of the Act is the key to this Act and I think that it's the area where it's really going to fail. If this government continues to be involved in construction, and particularly in the servicing of areas such as the Winch Park area, where hundreds of acres of Crown land were opened up in Burnaby, this is going to be irrelevant.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye!
MR. NICOLSON: There's a lot to be said about this section, really.
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye!
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I get the feeling the committee would like the member and, me to leave the room. (Laughter.)
Sections 16 and 17 approved.
On section 18.
MR. NICOLSON: This allows payments to municipalities for new homes which fall under the price limits set by the regions. It's something that I initiated discussions with the UBCM some time ago, and it's something which I would support.
Sections 18 and 19 approved.
On section 20.
MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, this rescinds the home acquisition grant. Maybe this should have been raised under section 12 too, but I would like the minister just briefly to assure me that persons who build their own homes, when they put in a lot of their own sweat equity, will not have their homes appraised as $40,000 and $50,000 homes when in fact they only put in capital of $20,000-odd.
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I can assume the hon. member and the committee that the policy will remain exactly as it has been under the Act which has been referred to.
Section 20 approved.
On the title.
MR. GIBSON: Mr. Chairman, it was indicated that this was the place to talk about expenditures, but in the interest of passing the bill through, we can do so in the estimates if the minister wishes.
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Chairman, I have the information — approximately $14.8 million is set aside for this programme this year.
MR. GIBSON: About how many homes would that assist? Or Shall I ask that in estimates?
HON. MR. CURTIS: It's very difficult to judge, Mr. Chairman.
Title approved.
HON. MR. CURTIS: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.
Motion approved.
The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.
Bill 49, Home Purchase Assistance Act, reported complete without amendment.
MR. SPEAKER: The question is that Bill 49, Home Purchase Assistance Act, be read a third time now.
AN HON. MEMBER: Division!
MR. NICOLSON: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker: the opposition, earlier in the House during the sitting, once called for a division when clearly no dissenting voice was heard, and there are so few members in the House that it's pretty obvious that there was no dissenting voice on this bill. Why is a facetious division being called now...
MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.
MR. NICOLSON: ...when there was a division called earlier and it was denied?
MR. SPEAKER: It's within the right and scope of any member to call for a division.
HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order: it was certainly not offered facetiously, not at all.
Bill 49, Home Purchase Assistance Act, read a third time and passed unanimously on a division.
Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.
HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of tabling the annual report for the Workers' Compensation Board for the year ending December 31, 1975, with a letter of transmittal thereof from
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the vice-chairman. Connected therewith, I ask leave to table a letter from the deputy comptroller-general dated June 25, 1976.
Leave granted.
Hon. Mr. Gardom moves adjournment of the House.
Motion approved.
The House adjourned at 1:08 p.m.