[ Page 1845 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Department of Housing Amendment Act, 1977. Hon. Mr. Curtis.

Introduction and first reading –– 1845

Oral questions

Kitimat pipeline proposal. Mr. Skelly –– 1845

Appointment of recruitment officer to Resources Board. Mr. Gibson –– 1846

Legal aid funding. Mr. Wallace –– 1846

Moving of businesses from B.C. Mr. Barber –– 1847

Legal aid funding. Hon. Mr. Gardom answers –– 1848

South Peace Dehy alfalfa contracts. Mr. Stupich –– 1848

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Human Resources estimates.

On vote 184.

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm –– 1848

Ms. Brown –– 1850

Mr. Gibson –– 1854

Mr. Wallace –– 1860

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm –– 1863

Mr. Levi –– 1863

Mr. Lauk –– 1868

Mr. Cocke –– 1874

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm –– 1876

Mr. Gibson –– 1876

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm –– 1876

Mr. Lea –– 1877

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm –– 1877

Mrs. Dailly –– 1877

Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm –– 1878

Tabling documents

Labour Relations Board annual report. Hon. Mr. Williams –– 1878

The House met at 2 p.m.

Prayers.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, may I take this opportunity to draw to the attention of all of the members of the House that March 14, today, has been set aside as Commonwealth Day by proclamation in the province of British Columbia. This is in concert with all Commonwealth parliamentary countries throughout the world, who have come to the conclusion that one day each year should be set aside to reaffirm our common principles. March 14 has been chosen as that particular day by Commonwealth countries throughout the world which, in league with ourselves, will be commemorating the genuine benefits that we receive in the association that we have and hold and cherish.

Perhaps I could best explain it to you by reading the final paragraph from a message from Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth. On commenting on today, in the final paragraph of her message, she says:

"Contacts between governments will always be of great importance, but only when they are reinforced by friendship and the exchange of ideas between individuals and organizations with common interests can we make the Commonwealth link both strong enough and sufficiently flexible to meet successfully the problems we today must face together."

A message, I think, we could all take to heart.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Chairman, it gives me great pleasure on the date when we are to be debating the needs of the handicapped, to introduce in the gallery the director and assistant director of the Victoria Society for the Recreation of Handicapped Persons. The director is Judith Armstrong, the assistant director is Alan Currie, and we also have two members of the association in the gallery. I'd ask the House to welcome them.

HON. J. DAVIS (Minister of Energy, Transport and Communications): Mr. Speaker, we have with us in the gallery today Mr. Ed Reimer and the students of the Argyle Secondary School -in North Vancouver. I'd like hon. members to make them welcome.

MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): Mr. Speaker, I would like to welcome to the galleries today Mr. Adrian Wong.

Introduction of bills.

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING

AMENDMENT ACT, 1977

Hon. Mr. Curtis presents a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Department of Housing Amendment Act, 1977.

Bill 9 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, I would like the permission of the House to table three documents requested by the hon. member for Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) They have to do with the leasing of ferries.

Leave granted.

Oral questions.

KITIMAT PIPELINE PROPOSAL

MR. R.E. SKELLY (Alberni): To the Minister of Energy, Transport and Communications: will the government be making representations before the Andrew Thompson commission on the Kitimat oil port and tanker route?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, that's a matter for future decision. The government will be making representation to the National Energy Board, which has final authority in respect to those matters.

MR. SKELLY: Has the government formulated a position which they'll be presenting to the Energy Board?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, that's a matter of policy. However, I personally would think it wrong if the government would finalize its position before the hearings in fact were held.

MR. G.R. LEA (Prince Rupert): Because it is of concern to British Columbians, I would ask whether the minister believes that the provincial government should take the lead in setting policy, not waiting to find out what comes out of a commission but to go there and present a position of government. Is the government prepared to do that?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, one of the purposes of holding hearings is to provide information, and not all the information is in. Certainly the government will have a position.

MR. SKELLY: Will the government be taking steps to assess public opinion on the oil port, pipeline and tanker route before formulating its opinion or its

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position on the oil port and tanker route?

HON. MR. DAVIS: Mr. Speaker, there will be two sets of hearings, as the hon. member knows, both of them conducted by the federal government. During the course of those hearings, there will be plenty of opportunity for everyone concerned about these issues to present their views.

MR. LEA: Are we to understand, then, that until these hearings are over, the government of British Columbia will have no position?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. LEA: For a matter of clarity?

MR. SPEAKER: That's argumentative, hon. I member.

MR. D.D. STUPICH (Nanaimo): The same minister said: "Certainly I believe the government will have a position." What I am wondering is whether the government will present that position at the hearings or whether it will keep quiet about that until the hearings are over? I think it is information that would be valuable to the hearing.

MR. DAVIS: As I said earlier in the proceedings, Mr. Speaker, the government will be making its i position known during the course of the National

Energy Board hearings.

APPOINTMENT OF RECRUITMENT OFFICER TO VANCOUVER RESOURCES BOARD

MR. G.F. GIBSON (North Vancouver-Capilano): Mr. Speaker, a question to the Minister of Human Resources: will the minister inform the House as to why he is delaying the appointment of the positive recruitment officer on the Vancouver Resources Board?

HON. W.N. VANDER ZALM (Minister of Human Resources): We are attempting to obtain further information from the Human Rights Commission with respect to the proposed appointment. I would like to make it very clear that we, too, recognized the desirability of encouraging the hiring of the handicapped and the hiring of native people. But I certainly think we have some concern, as I am sure the hon. members and others have, about setting up a situation where we will have different groups or different individuals looking after the hiring of each of the ethnic groups. Do we have one for the Dutch, one for the English, one for the Irish and one for the

Greeks? These are the types of concerns that we are now inquiring about from the Human Rights

Commission.

MR. GIBSON: A supplementary to the minister: is the minister not aware that the Human Rights Commission has been involved all along in all stages of the development of the affirmative action programme now proposed by the VRB?.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I certainly am informed as to the involvement of the Human Rights Commission, but I wish to get confirmation as to just how they arrived at the decision. Also, I think perhaps - if I need to point out again to the member - it proposes to go much beyond the hiring of, say, one or two groups. The proposal is to make this service available to all minority groups, which would, in effect, cover a very large scope.

'MR. GIBSON: A final supplementary, Mr. Speaker: Is the minister planning to dissolve the VRB? Is this why he doesn't wish to start any new programmes under its aegis?

Interjection.

MR. GIBSON: It's a question.

MR. L.B. KAHL (Esquimalt): It's a question but t's out of order.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Well, it's a matter of policy. It's a decision that will be made by this ministry, as has been announced. If that were the decision, then the member will have the opportunity to debate it in due course.

LEGAL AID FUNDING

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, to the Attorney-General: with regard to reports that B.C.'s Legal Aid Society may fold before the end of the ear due to a 16 per cent budget cut, and since there Have been allegations of under-the-table payments being collected by lawyers in addition to the legal aid payment, can the minister tell the House why the legal aid budget has been cut 16 per cent, in view of he fact that the budget of the Legal Services Commission, which funds legal aid, has actually increased by $300,000?

HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): The legal Services Commission is an independent commission, as the member is aware. I sincerely hope hat it and the Legal Aid Society will be able to come o an effective meeting of minds to provide the necessary legal aid that's required within the confines f the dollar restraints that are facing us.

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MR. WALLACE: A supplementary, Mr. Speaker:

in view of the serious allegations that have been made regarding lawyers asking for additional payments - so-called under-the-table payments - in individual cases that have been brought to my attention, is the minister taking any steps to investigate this matter?

HON. MR. GARDOM: I believe you're referring, Mr. Member, to a press report, which I didn't see myself, on the hearings that have been held by the Legal Services Commission. I would certainly welcome it if the individual who made the statement would make that information available to the Legal Aid Society which, I am sure, would effectively deal with it, as would the Law Society.

MR. WALLACE: Well, Mr. Speaker, since the legal aid fees are among the lowest in the country and tend to make it more likely that these kinds of practices - of under-the-table payments - might develop, has the Attorney-General been taking any steps to review the scale of fees paid to lawyers who do undertake legal aid work?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Once again, hon. member, the legal aid fee schedule is one that is determined and set by the Legal Aid Society and the Legal Services Commission. That fee is not set by this government. It is true that the fees are not, say, commensurate to the fees that one would receive in i private practice. But that was anticipated and that's part of the plan. I can tell you this: British Columbia is fronting, for all of the provinces in Canada, a submission to the federal government for improved assistance.

MR. WALLACE: Well, Mr. Speaker, in regard to s the Attorney-General's answer to the latter part, has the province taken any specific initiative towards the federal government in view of the fact that we have the major drug problem in Canada? It is as a result of these lengthy preliminary trials and drug conspiracy s trials that we are much more involved in providing legal aid in these particular cases than any other province in Canada and that other cases are suffering t as a result. Has the minister made any specific request?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Indeed we have, Mr. Member, and I'm happy to see that you're aware of i it, and I hope that all other members in the House are equally aware and concerned. This is a matter that is r perhaps unique to British Columbia, where figures as high as 60 per cent of all of our crime are related to drug offences.

At the last provincial Attorneys-General conference, which was held in Toronto within the last t couple of weeks, a very strong stand was taken by the province of British Columbia on the point in question. At the request of all of the provinces, we are preparing a submission on behalf of all of the provinces to the federal government to consider both the specifics of dollar assistance and the question of offence.

MOVING OF BUSINESSES FROM B.C.

MR. C. BARBER (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, a question to the Minister of Economic Development: can the minister confirm that he has in his office or department a list of some six or seven companies which have served notice of their intention to relocate in Washington state at some time in the next 12 months?

HON. D.M. PHILLIPS (Minister of Economic Development): Mr. Speaker, in answer to the member's question, it was the Development Corporation that identified companies that indeed were leaving British Columbia. We've been monitoring he ads which the particular county in Washington has been placing in British Columbia newspapers. I'd be pleased to look into it for you and get the names of companies.

MR. BARBER: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for agreeing to look into the question. It's our information that there may be some six or seven companies at the moment.

I have one other question in two parts, and you may well wish to take it as notice. Would the minister undertake to inform the House of the exact number of companies and businesses which have left British Columbia to relocate their operations in Washington state and Alberta since December 22,1975? Part two of the same question is: can the minister inform the House of the number of jobs that have been lost in British Columbia as the result of this relocation of businesses and companies to Alberta and Washington state?

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Mr. Speaker, in answer to he member's question, the study we have done is from August, 1972. (Laughter.) At the last count I had, it was some 75-odd companies. However, I haven't got the list which gives the actual number of employees right at hand. I'd be happy to provide that information. However, I'm quite surprised at the member asking that particular question because the export might not show such a tremendous record for his government.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, may I just observe to the hon. second member for Victoria and the minister that that is more properly a type of question that should be placed on the order paper. It

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does take a fair amount of research to get the answer that you asked for. Those are what questions on the order paper are all about.

LEGAL AID FUNDING

HON. MR. GARDOM: As the hon. second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) suggested, I have a supplementary answer to the question from the member for Oak Bay dealing with the question of the federal legal-aid agreement. It was 50 cents per capita a year ago and it was increased to 75 cents per capita last year, which brought in to the province of B.C. about $1.8 million. As you did mention, the budget this year is $7.3 million. But the legal aid agreement with Ottawa is only restricted to criminal legal aid. We're taking the position in the province of B.C. that we would like to see the agreement extended into other areas apart from criminal - e.g. family law, preventive medicine.

SOUTH PEACE DEHY

ALFALFA CONTRACTS

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, to the Minister of Agriculture. On Wednesday last he took as notice a question of mine as to whether or not the growers of alfalfa in the Dawson Creek area had contracts with South Peace Dehy Products Ltd. He assumed that i they actually had these contracts, but took it as notice. Within hours he was quoted in the press as t expressing concern that the growers did not have contracts. I wonder whether he has any information on the subject to share with the House.

HON. J.J. HEWITT (Minister of Agriculture): Mr. Speaker, I think the question was: did the receiver have the authority to enter into contracts with the growers? At that point in time I wanted to check my facts. The receiver, of course, is in a position to handle the management of the company. The question is whether or not the company will be ongoing in order that the contracts can be entered into by the company and the growers. We're trying to resolve that question as quickly as possible, because I'm as equally concerned with the growers in the Peace River country as I'm sure the member is.

MR. STUPICH: To be perfectly clear, no one at this point in time actually has the authority to enter i into contracts with the growers. Is that what the t minister is saying?

HON. MR. HEWITT: The receiver is in a position a and has the authority. But the question is whether a the company will be ongoing. To enter into a n contract for alfalfa requires a company to be ongoing. p If the company cannot function due to the fact that it is in receivership and is in serious financial difficulty, then we can't enter into the contract. We're trying to resolve that problem, Mr. Member, as quickly as possible.

Orders of the day.

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Schroeder in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HUMAN RESOURCES

On vote 184: minister's office, $146,516.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman, I'll be very brief in my comments. Firstly, I have with me my deputy minister, Mr. John Noble, and the departmental comptroller, Mr. Martin Cook. Hopefully we can answer the questions, should they arise.

Firstly, I wish to thank the staff, particularly, for the tremendous help they've given me during the past year. Mr. Chairman, there's been a great deal of progress within the department. We have certainly seen a good number of changes in the area of welfare and in the area of providing programmes for people generally. For the first time in two years, we saw a considerable increase in the rates given to people on income assistance. We, of course, have seen a considerable change, too, in the programme to assist he handicapped.

For the first time ever, we are providing a shelter overage which gives us the best programme in the whole of Canada. Earlier on, we provided another innovation which was to assure the handicapped that here were the opportunities available for them or to hem, should they wish it, that if they had the opportunity of taking employment, their health benefits, which are precious to the handicapped particularly, would be ongoing and their receipt of income assistance under the programme would be discontinued only for the time they were employed. Should they decide that they could not continue with he employment, then the benefits would be reinstated automatically as opposed to the red-tape system which was in effect up until that change was introduced - again, a very positive step.

We are still reviewing the day-care programme, and while for the first time in two years we provided an increase in this particular programme, we recognize, too, that because of the charge that exists, and that as existed for a considerable time, we should be reviewing the eligibility for people to obtain assistance from that particular programme. Once gain, I'm looking forward to a change in the very ear future to make the programme available to more people.

For the first time in several years we provided

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increases to the denturist, to the optometrist, to the pharmacist, and to others serving the people. Perhaps some will say: "Well, how does that help the person on income assistance?" I think it's very important that we provide a system which will give a person on income assistance the benefits so that they are equal to those benefits given anyone else in society, and so that we don't have a situation where we're issuing welfare glasses or welfare teeth but, in effect, the same benefits are available to them as they would receive if they weren't on income assistance.

For a long time now we've been battling the problem of the rates paid to people requiring our assistance in intermediate care, personal care or nursing homes. Certainly the arguments were made that the nursing homes were closing and the personal-care homes were being limited only to those provided by government because the rates were inefficient, and that, in effect, those people who were paying their own rates were subsidizing the rates which should have been paid by government for those people who could not afford to pay the rates or didn't have the means to pay the rates.

We increased the rates substantially. It's been a real boost to that particular programme, and we're hoping once more that following this particular change, other changes may be introduced in the very near future which will strengthen the whole programme and which will also put a great deal of emphasis on providing help to people in the home or at home before the need arises for them to be moved to some institution, be it private or public. I think there's a great deal we can do to try to keep people in the home with their garden, with their pet, with the surroundings familiar to them, and we should avoid and leave to last the institutionalizing of individuals who, because of age or sickness, require other assistance.

There has been talk for a long time about the cost burden on municipalities, particularly with respect to the administration costs for welfare. Once more, we moved very quickly. As a matter of fact, it wasn't only during the last administration that this was talked about. I can recall many years before then, myself, as mayor of a municipality, raising the issue time and time again, especially since, during the last administration, the costs were lifted from a good many of the municipalities and cities but eight lower mainland areas were left to pay the total of the cost, which created a further inequity and a greater injustice still. So we moved very quickly to pick up that cost which, because it was extended to the administrative levy affecting all municipalities, saved those municipalities throughout British Columbia a good many dollars which will now be available for other services. Once more, that was a very positive move which was taken during the last year.

We know there has been some criticism from certain quarters about the Possibility of an under run in my ministry; in effect, we won't be spending all the money provided in certain votes. I know, and I am sure all hon. members will agree that we will see it vary from year to year regardless of administration. Sometimes we can be over more than others and sometimes we'll be under. I am very proud of the fact and make no apology that we have considerable moneys left over in this ministry which will make it possible for us to assess the things we have been doing and how we might make more benefits available to other people in the year ahead.

This, Mr. Chairman, is not because of any cutbacks; it's not because people have been cut off. These savings have been brought about through good management which has been lacking for some considerable time in that particular ministry. I am sure those who have researched for today's sitting will have found that not only are the number of people requiring income assistance today down considerably from what they have been in previous years but that the reduction is most noticeable in the area of single people on welfare, especially single employable people on welfare. Those numbers have been reduced tremendously. As a matter of fact, for the hon. member who hasn't done that particular research, they're down by at least 20 per cent - perhaps more. It varies from day to day.

MR. GIBSON: What are the numbers?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: They are down considerably. As a matter of fact, they are the lowest they have been in possibly six, eight or ten years.

MR. GIBSON: How many people?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: These numbers are down because we have created a more credible system-, the numbers are down because there is accountability. The numbers are down because we have established the audit team system which will now give us the opportunity to check on offices throughout the province, particularly our own offices, to assure that the programmes are being carried out in an equitable and equal manner from office to office.

We also have the opportunity now through the audit system to check on the various agencies that are funded through this ministry. We know that in previous years funds were being given to various groups, well intentioned perhaps, which didn't always follow through as they said they might. There weren't the means available to really check or audit and to measure the benefits flowing from the investment in particular groups. Again, it may be argued that whatever benefits from the group, it was possibly more than what might have existed without the

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group. But I would like to caution everyone that when you administer a programme in that manner, you'll soon find that new and perhaps more deserving groups or efforts will be left unfunded or without funds.

We have seen a very successful programme in our PREP, or Jobfinders. I know that various figures have been quoted as to the number of jobs found, but we can assure you once more that for the last three months, each and every month - particularly for the last month - we have seen a good increase in the number of jobs found. In total now we are well beyond 6,000 jobs since September, 1976.

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, oh!

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I heard a sigh from the other side, and I am hoping that this is not a sigh of envy or a sigh of regret. (Laughter.) Perhaps we can now come back and say: "Look, we told you so. Perhaps it's something that might have been done much earlier." I can assure those members, too, that it's particularly gratifying not only for the numbers and not only for the dollars saved, which will now be used in other areas of social services in my ministry or in other ministries requiring those funds, to carry out people programmes but it's particularly gratifying when you know that these people involved in PREP are able to provide a service to a group of people who have otherwise been without this. However well intentioned Canada Manpower is and however they have co-operated with us, their efforts are generally directed to the more employable person. All these people who have been in the area of welfare for a good many months or years, perhaps, have not seen the opportunity.

The letters I receive are very rewarding in that those people have opportunities and have a place in society which otherwise was not available to them. They are grateful, Mr. Chairman. Not only are they grateful but we are receiving more and more very positive comments from all of the social workers involved in all the offices in British Columbia. The people who are working in our system also want to be a part of a more credible and more accountable system. They feel good when there is a direction. They feel good when we are developing programmes which say: this is our goal and here is how we are going to achieve it together. It's working, they're with us, and the comments we are getting are tremendous and very gratifying. I know they will result in providing better services and more services to people everywhere in British Columbia.

During this coming year we hope to place a great deal of emphasis on providing a better child-care programme. We know that there are many areas of need in providing for the care of children within British Columbia. We certainly are now actively working through the ministry and all the staff involved to bring forth new and innovative ideas and programmes. These, hopefully, will be announced in the very near future. However, it will be an ongoing thing and it will be the priority for this fiscal year. I know that at the end of the year there will still be things undone, but we'll be miles ahead of where we are today. We intend to bring in many new, innovative approaches. We intend to move away from the one approach and, instead, make it possible for us to go in a number of very positive directions to assure that we are not making the service available to the child to serve the bureaucracy but that, instead, the bureaucracy has available the programmes to serve the child and to assure that all opportunities are available to that child, whose future lies in this province.

Mr. Chairman, I'll be very pleased to answer any and all questions. I'll elaborate on other parts of the programme during the questioning.

MS. R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): Mr. Chairman, this afternoon in the prayers, one of the things that the minister prayed for was that we would not be a part of the system that lowers and degrades the human person. I think that prayer was very timely, because certainly we are discussing today the estimates of a minister who has used his office to lower and degrade the human person. He has used his office, Mr. Chairman, to lower and degrade the handicapped people in this province and the senior citizens. He has used his office to lower and degrade the children with emotional problems or learning disabilities by withholding assistance to programmes dealing with child abuse. He has lowered and degraded mothers as well as children in this province.

Mr. Chairman, what we have to remember is that, whereas the departments of Forests or Mining or Finance or Consumer Services deal with things that touch people's lives, the Department of Human Resources is people's lives. It concentrates on and deals exclusively with people's lives. It does more than that. It deals with that segment of our society that has need. For the most part, it deals with the very, very young and it deals with the very, very old. In between, it deals with people experiencing other kinds of handicaps. This is why it is so important that that department should be led by a person not committed, as this minister is committed, to lowering and degrading the human person.

He has lowered and degraded the women of this country in terms of withholding funding for transition houses and has allowed one of the largest areas of violence - that is the violence within the family, against women in their homes - to continue.

He has lowered and degraded single parents, talking about his promises to improve child-care facilities.

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He's been in office, Mr. Chairman, for nearly 18 months, and he has used his office to destroy any kind of child-care service that previously existed in this province.

He talks about his vaunted PREP programme. He has used the PREP programme to lower and degrade people looking for work, because. in fact it is the biggest fraud which has ever been perpetrated on the people of this province.

Mr. Chairman, if one were to start listing the 1,001 ways in which that department has pursued relentlessly its task of lowering and degrading the human person in this province, we could go on forever. But I think we have to understand in some way the kind of philosophy behind the actions of that particular minister.

I want to deal a little bit, Mr. Chairman, with the essence of social welfare and what it really means. In fact, we find that the word comes from the phrase:

"Let us break bread together." The essential relationship is between people sharing. The origin of the word "welfare" comes from provisioning from a commonweal. Thus the origins of "social welfare, " as we know it and understand it today, are found in prehistoric times. But the essence has remained constant for thousands and thousands of . years.

Sharing among people: that is what social welfare is all about, Mr. Chairman - sharing among people, not using the power vested in you as a minister of welfare to lower and degrade people.

Sharing has to be distinguished from other words being used in the context of social welfare. The minister tells us how grateful the people are who have tried to use his fraudulent PREP programme. Welfare has to be dissociated from words like gratitude, giving, taking, begging, borrowing, incentive, profit, deserving and undeserving and so forth. There is only one meaning and only one word which must ever be used when one is talking about social welfare, and that is the concept of sharing, Mr. Chairman.

Since the beginning of time there have been perhaps only two developments to the original concept of welfare. The first is the recognition that welfare is a social act. It is something we do as a community and as a society. We break bread together - not for each other or to each other, but with each other, Mr. Chairman.

Not only is social welfare something we do together, but the policies we call social policies cannot be isolated from society as a whole in all its varied social, economic and political aspects.

Therefore, as the minister responsible for the administration of welfare in a community, it is essential that one have a keen sense of mind, but not just for budgeting and expense trimming, Mr. Chairman. An essential background for developing social policy is knowledge of changes in the past, present and in the future, and an understanding of he family as an institution in our times, of the position of women in our society, of social stratification and class, of effects of industry and urbanization and technology. All of these things have o be taken into account as well as budgeting and expense trimming.

We also have to have a minister who understands minority groups. He has to have an understanding of racial prejudice, social control and social deviance. He must have an insight into how people think - what motivates them, what their fears are and what kinds of choices are open to them. That minister stands in front of us, Mr. Speaker, and tries to explain an affirmative action programme that has been worked carefully down through the ages with the Ministry of Labour's human rights branch, with the women's groups in this society -and with the handicapped groups. He tells us that he has to double check on it because if you have an affirmative action programme which says that everyone must get a chance at the job, you're going to have to have one for this group -one for the Finns, one for the Swedes, one for the Dutch, one for the Germans, one for the this, one for he that.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Two for the Irish, sorry.

It shows a total lack of understanding on the part of that minister about human beings and, worst of all, Mr. Chairman, a lack of caring for them.

Welfare has always been different from philanthropy and charity, although the two have always been confused. There is a difference, Mr. Chairman, between sharing and giving. There is a difference between social assistance and the distribution of alms. Over the years, social welfare has gradually been separated from individual acts of charity. One may get charity when one goes into heaven, Mr. Chairman, but social welfare is secular. It is a sharing which has as its intent a better life for all - all of us on this earth.

Sharing is both a necessity for our existence as a civilized society and the promise of a society which is not governed by the goals of sheer survival. Sharing is our defence against lives that are nasty, brutish and short. Philanthropy creates its own opposite, Mr. Chairman - begging. On the other side of begging is hatred. Sharing is an act done in humility. Let us break bread together on our knees. Philanthropy is an act of pride. The philanthropist counts his or her money before donating it, stands up in the House and brags about ripping off the poor of this province for $110 million, and then tells us that it's good management. The sharer counts the people in the act, including himself or herself, before breaking the bread.

The second addition to the original essential

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concept of social sharing is more recent and could perhaps be referred to as being even more scientific. It is the recognition of the interrelationship of both needs and solution. It is the recognition of the complexity of society. In a sense, this refinement of the concept begins with the statement that men and women do not live by bread alone. This refinement reaches its logical conclusion with the democratic socialist understanding that social welfare is but part of the whole and that social policies have to be integrated on a social, national and even international scale. Effective social welfare is related to general social and political progress and to the advancement we make as a society.

Thus we, as individuals concerned with the Human Resources department estimates, have also to look at the need for full employment, for the development of a viable and healthy economy, for democracy and for political advancement. All of these things are interrelated. All of these things go hand in hand. When that minister goes off on his own and sets up a fraudulent little job-finding programme and then stands in this House and tells us that he's found 6,000 jobs when we know that there are nearly 140,000 people out there looking for work and expects us to believe him, he's a mockery and he's an insult. He is insulting the members of this Legislature.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, I may interrupt you just long enough to perhaps encourage you to use more tempered language - language that would be less apt to create disorder in the House.

MS. BROWN: I'm being very careful, Mr. Chairman. I am trying to be as kind, as humane and as thoughtful of that minister as is possible for anyone to be who can see the record of the kind of devastation that he has worked on the people of this province.

Solving social problems like unemployment, class bias and the problems of children and the aged cannot be confined and separated into compartments. The difficulties of retaining the essence of welfare are combined by the kind of society in which we live, by the acquisitiveness of the society in which we live, and by the concept of a minister who measures everything in terms of the dollars and cents saved at the expense of people who can least afford it. In such a society, Mr. Chairman, sharing cannot be, and is not, very highly valued. Instead, the values of getting and grabbing and profiting and keeping and chiseling and ripping off are considered to be more important than sharing.

Decisions are not based on concern for others but on calculations. That is all we ever hear from that minister, Mr. Chairman - his calculations. When he takes the handicapped people of this province and makes them the messenger boys to take increased rent to the landlords and then has the nerve to stand in this House and tell us that we have the best and the highest aid given to handicapped people in this country, he makes a mockery of his role as the Minister of Human Resources.

When he brags about his work and the good deeds that he has done, he fails to mention that even now he is withholding from the senior citizens of this province money assigned to them by Ottawa, even as he withheld from the handicapped people of this province money assigned to them by Ottawa. Again he is making a mockery of his department, Mr. Chairman.

Thirty-five dollars a month, so that he can stand in this House and say: "Good management." Good management, he calls it. Taking from the old and taking from the handicapped is that minister's concept of good management, Mr. Chairman.

MR. D. BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): Billy Scrooge!

MS. BROWN: Beg your pardon?

MR. BARRETT: Billy Scrooge.

MS. BROWN: Billy Screws - sorry.

MR. BARRETT: Scrooge!

MS. BROWN: The other word was better.

The complexities of sharing, Mr. Chairman, are visible in specifics, and I want to deal with a couple of examples. One is stigmatizing. If the people responsible for social welfare policy, programmes and funding in the government have a philosophy and seek a high audience rating on that ground, then the government is evil and inept. Those are very modest words that I am using to describe the government. Bureaucracies and public servants then become leeches and parasites; public institutions constitute a threat to freedom and civility. Those who receive assistance are referred to as chiselers and cheaters and welfare bums and frauds. That's what happens when you start to stigmatize. Both those who deliver and those who participate in the sharing process are stigmatized, and this creates a vicious circle.

Have you ever heard of the fraud squads? Have you ever seen an ad in the newspaper for a member to belong to the fraud squad? It calls for a background in criminology, someone who is expert at snooping and peeping and peering. That's what this great fraud squad does; it hires people to peer and peep into the lives of disadvantaged citizens, implying, first of all, that people who receive social assistance in this province are crooks and, second, that those who are workers in this field, the social workers, are accessories to the crime, that they have been derelict

[ Page 1853 ]

in their duties and have failed to perform. Thus we see that they too are stigmatized. Both the public service and the public are stigmatized, and the concept of sharing and welfare is lost.

This, in turn, creates additional problems. Those who receive assistance quickly perceive that the whole social service system is not one of sharing but is actually a game of cops and robbers. It is not one of need but guile and cleverness. That's what pays off. Those who are part of the government sharing programmes begin to think that they must stigmatize in order to avoid being blamed. So they become fraud squadders too, and peepers and peekers and peerers. They begin to look over their shoulders or, conversely, they take a position in favour of their clients and seek to protect their people from the fraud squad.

When this minister - this ever-roaming, ever-growing, ever-blooming minister - moves out of his department into other people's departments and makes public statements about the laziness of the civil service, then the stigma goes all the way out there. It's not just the people who come under his purview whom he stigmatizes, but everyone else. Everyone else who has chosen to work on behalf of the people of this province are touched by the stigma of that minister.

I have mentioned, Mr. Chairman, that an acquisitive philosophy does great damage to the concept and practice of sharing. But there are other ways in which the complexity of the problem is not understood.

One example is the failure to understand the perception of others, and a failure to understand their experiences. To measure benefits in dollars is, of course, a deadly illogical and self-defeating game, as useless as trying to measure morality or merit in terms of dollars. One has to look at the real context.

If I can give an example, Mr. Chairman, which was carried even this morning in the Province, but certainly something that has been going on for some time, it's that of the senior citizen couple with a combined income of $527 a month, who between them paid $ 10 a month to have a homemaker come in twice a month to help because one had a heart condition and the other had a stroke. They suddenly found they were subjected to a means test. Then they were notified that out of their $527 a month they now had to pay $184 a month - minus $50 because they were handicapped ... or $50 was going to be taken. But they were now going to have to pay a total of $135 a month - 35 per cent of their income - so that they could have someone to come in and help them around the house, so that they can do what the minister told us he wants them to do: everybody stay in their own homes with their nice little gardens and their pets.

Show me two senior citizens, trying to live on $527 a month and paying out $134 a month to homemakers, who can afford a nice little home, a nice little garden and pets. Show me that, Mr. Chairman. The hypocrisy of the man in incredible.

Lack of day care, lack of child abuse programmes lead to hostile, angry children. They grow up to be delinquents, then go into penal institutions, and that's where the money goes, Mr. Chairman. That's where the funding goes - at the end, through the Attorney-General's department, instead of at the beginning.

The difficulties, Mr. Chairman, in effective social programmes and policies are also illustrated by something which I overheard the other day and which made me think. A woman and her child were passing me on the street and I overheard the woman-say: "Well, we have a choice; it's either shoes for you or food for the family for a week." This is the choice that that woman was offering to her child. "It's either shoes for you or food for the family for a week." Now I don't know whether this woman and her child were receiving social assistance or just facing the economic realities of having to live under this administration in this province in this year of our Lord, 1977. But I do know that it says something about different perceptions of social policies and differing budgeting realities.

Consider this, Mr. Chairman: your government has passed legislation concerning death duties, legislation which enables the rich to budget not over years but over whole generations. This woman had to deal with shoes now or food for the family for the week, and your government's concern and the concern of the Minister of Human Resources' government is to pass legislation that allows some families to budget not for a week, not for a year, but over whole generations -stuff to pass on. The legislation allows for long-term security, long-term planning, not just for your children but for their children and, indeed, possibly for their children's children too.

Compare that with the budget of Human Resources. Is Human Resources allowed to budget over generations? Human Resources budgets are based on annual consideration. This means that the politicians have some yearly security, true - that they can talk about social policy as something which lasts at least one year. True. And social service workers can expect at least one year's security in their job, as long as they don't ridicule the minister. Uneasiness and insecurity develop only annually around an annual budget time.

But let's look at the budgets of the recipients of service. That is another matter, isn't it, Mr. Chairman - the people in receipt of welfare? They have not even an annual budget. They face a terrible daily and weekly insecurity from the fraud squad, from the means test, from the peepers and the peekers and the continual changes in regulations that flow out of that

[ Page 1854 ]

minister's department. For them the choice is not whether there are shoes for a child in need of shoes, or food for the family for the week.

For some it may be the choice between having the bus fare to go and look for a job or eating. Even when they eat, they may be eating dog food or cat food. It is necessary to take this kind of reality into consideration when we talk about a Human Resources budget. The credibility of this government is important in that regard.

On January 26, the current Minister of Human Resources explained that the philosophy of his department was based "on providing benefits to the most deserving."

Here we go again: the ancient idea that social welfare is for the deserving poor - an idea and a philosophy that has created more torment and more mistakes about welfare than just about any other idea or philosophy. Behind this idea, Mr. Chairman, he all the inhumanities of the Elizabethan workhouse and the grotesque conditions of mid-19th century welfare. I thought that we had advanced beyond the world of Charles Dickens, but apparently under this minister and under this government we're right back into the world of Charles Dickens. I thought we had moved beyond the time when self-alleged superior people felt that they had the knowledge and the right to arrogate for themselves the determination of misery or sustenance for others. I thought we had moved beyond the point where one's private morality was used to test the life and death needs of others.

Behind the words of the minister, however, we find the old assumption that the needy are needy because of drunkenness or because they have long hair or because they're idle. It is easy to isolate victims this way. It is easy to be arrogant; it is easy to pump up one's pride. It is easy to promote the social theory that society distributes wealth according to merit, that the current high unemployment rate is because those who were thrifty two years ago under the NDP government have now become profligate under the Socreds. That's the reason that the unemployment rate has gone up.

The fact is, Mr. Chairman, the complexity of the problems with which social services must deal is beyond, far beyond, simplistic calculations of merit and of distinction between deserving and undeserving.

The philosophy of "the deserving poor" was described by George Bernard Shaw: "It fills the paupers with humiliation, patrons with evil pride, and both with hatred."

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, it upsets me that I only have two more minutes with which to speak about this minister because I wanted to talk about one of his favourite words - "incentive" - the key word to an acquisitive society and one which has been used by that minister to erode and corrode the real meaning of social welfare.

If the definition of deserving and undeserving poor is a throwback to the Elizabethan days, then purely the reliance on incentives appeared in the 19th century from the so-called utilitarians. It's based on he carrot-and-stick theory, the lash and the reward -it's that simplistic. It's the theory of psychology that tresses that people can be made to be good. Do you believe that? I don't. People will behave according to he minister's wishes by a combination of threats and promises: "Ridicule me and you go to Fort St. John. Do what I don't like and you go to Dawson Creek. Behave yourself and you'll be rewarded. Don't behave yourself and I'll sic the fraud squad on you."

A decent pension to handicapped people should not be tied to those kinds of considerations. Senior citizens in this province, Mr. Chairman, children with emotional difficulties, women being beaten by their husbands, people with other handicaps, emotional as well as physical, should not have to live under the threat of "Shape up, behave, or everything that you need will be withheld from you."

MR. BARRETT: Millionaires don't live that way.

MS. BROWN: Billionaires don't live that way, millionaires don't live that way, but the poor have to live that way.

The complexity of our society, Mr. Chairman, makes the incentive angle ridiculous. If you are 75 years old, infirm and without property, the positive incentive to get rich is absurd. It is equally absurd to beat this person over the head with the need to be thrifty when all that that person has to live on is $ 7 1. 5 0 per week.

There may be jobs for the unemployed youth, but with 9 per cent unemployment the prospect is not very good. Nothing demoralizes faster than the hope shattered by failure.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I started my remarks and I want to end them the same way.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time is up, hon. member.

MS. BROWN: The Minister of Human Resources has used his department, as the words of the prayer said, to lower and degrade the human persons in this province. Thank you.

MR. GIBSON: Would the minister care to respond before I make any remarks?

Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to give the minister that opportunity because I think that we just heard a fine, sensitive dissertation on the question of sharing as opposed to charity in our society. I think the minister should stand up and say something about

[ Page 1855 ]

that because I think he's going the charity route.

Interjections.

MR. GIBSON: I can't say that I agree 100 per cent with what the member said about incentives. Maybe we should explore a little bit more about that. I think that you should do what you can in our society to help others, and to produce, and so on, but on the question of sharing as opposed to charity, she was right on.

You know, Mr. Chairman, you don't have to change the dollar amounts in the Human Resources estimates by one penny to be in favour of sharing instead of charity. It's a question of attitude. You can be a tough administrator under either attitude, and make no mistake about it, the people of British Columbia want a tough administrator in the Human Resources side of things now, but they also want fairness and they want people who should be helped to be helped. You know, the difference in that tough administrator - you talk about fair sharing - is you say, "you're taking more than your fair share out of this, " rather than hold the unfortunate of British Columbia up to abuse and ridicule as rip-off artists.

You know, there's $35 million going to be under spent in the aid to seniors and handicapped this year the way trends were going in the first nine months. Are these people rip-off artists? Are the seniors and handicapped of British Columbia ripping off the system by $35 million that you're holding back from them, Mr. Minister? To take from the old and the handicapped and give to the Minister of Finance is just a Robin Hood in reverse. That's what this particular minister is.

I was trying to find an image for what this man is like. I was thinking - as I think from time to time -of the wonderful Kingdom of Oz, because the backbenchers remind me of the Munchkins so much as they pound the desks, and I thought: this is the Tin Man.

HON. J.R. CHABOT (Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources): You're the straw man.

MR. GIBSON: Oh no, we'll talk about the straw man later. I'll get to you, Mr. Minister of Mines.

The Tin Man had no heart, and this minister has an electronic calculator where his heart should be.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please, hon. members.

MR. GIBSON: The Munchkins are restless tonight, Mr. Chairman. They're upset.

How much is it going to be under? By how much is that department going to be underspent? The minister has been vaguely bragging about it in a few little speeches. Let's have some exact numbers. Let's look at services for families and children, which were budgeted at $65,791, 000 and had only spent $36,718, 000 as of the first nine months. It looks like that's going to be about $17 million under spent -services for families and children. Was there $17 million of rip off there?

Services for senior citizens and handicapped persons: $187,389, 000 voted by this Legislature last year - and asked for by the government, I might say - but $113,738, 000 spent as of the first nine months. If that trend continues, it will be $37 million under spent. Services for senior citizens and handicapped persons - I guess they're rip-off artists to the tune of $37 million because the minister has been able to cut that back.

Income assistance programme: $218,800, 000 asked for by the government and voted for by this Legislature; $126,324, 000 spent in the first nine months. It looks like that's going to be $48 million under in a year of record unemployment, Mr. Chairman - social assistance under spent by that amount in a year of record unemployment.

Now the minister likes to suggest - and he suggested again this afternoon - "Oh, gosh, we've cut down on the employable single persons on welfare." He didn't give us any numbers, though he said it was down 20 per cent. How many people have been cut off as a result of the fact that they are single employable persons on welfare, and exactly how much of this $48 million has that saved, and how do you account for the balance of it?

MR. D.G. COCKE (New Westminster): How many kids are sleeping under bridges?

MR. GIBSON: What are those numbers?

Tighten up, by all means; have good administration, but remember what the money was voted for and remember what your mandate is as Minister of Human Resources. Your mandate is people, and the alternative to proper programmes for people in that minister's department, Mr. Chairman, is other programmes for people when it gets to the point of the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) having to look after them in the corrections system or when it gets to the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland) having to look after them in the hospital system. This minister, I think, doesn't know that. He just wants to preserve the money in his own department.

I started out thinking he was a pretty smart minister, Mr. Chairman. He did some popular things, and I'm on record - I'm ashamed to say it - as saying about a year ago that I thought he was the most politically popular minister in that government.

I take that back. He's sure not any more. He said

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today in his opening remarks that people ought to be grateful for the work that he and his department are doing. He said: "People are grateful." That's what he said, Mr. Premier.

Interjection.

MR. GIBSON: Well, it's stronger to say that people are grateful. That's what he said; that's what I wrote down.

I don't think he's been reading his mail because I've been getting a lot of copies of letters that people are sending to him and they don't sound very grateful to me.

The handicapped people who didn't get that $22.50 passed on to them - and we'll get on to that later on - and the seniors between 60 and 64 who haven't got the $35 passed on yet aren't very grateful. I'll tell you that, Mr. Chairman.

He's been shooting from the hp. He's been running every department but his own around this province. He's been telling the Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Hewitt) what kind of inquiries to hold and the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) how to run the civil service. He's been telling the Premier how to run intergovernmental affairs and save Quebec in this country.

Do you remember what he said about Quebec separatism? He said he wouldn't lose any sleep if the province of Quebec left British Columbia.

MR. C. BARBER (Victoria): Shame!

MR. GIBSON: Didn't you say that, Mr. Minister? It was in the newspaper. If you want to say you were misquoted, I'll gladly listen to that and I'd be glad to hear it. But that's what is in the newspapers - that you wouldn't lose any sleep.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Please address the Chair.

MR. GIBSON: Mr. Chairman, that's what he said.

You know what else he said? Right after that election - I don't have the exact words - he said words to the effect: "Well, maybe now so many of those Quebec welfare people won't be coming to British Columbia any more." He is also quoted in The Province of September 3,1976. Listen to this.

"A Quebec government spokesman Thursday denied a claim by B.C.'s Human Resources minister that Quebec welfare workers have encouraged welfare recipients to move to B.C. where social assistance rates are higher. The claim was made in Kamloops Wednesday by Bill Vander Zalm, who said he believed that until recently it was the common practice to post charts in Quebec's welfare offices showing the difference between assistance rates between the two provinces. But Rene Simard, spokesman for the Quebec minister of state for social affairs, denied such charts were ever posted."

Mr. Chairman, what an inflammatory thing to say when it's untrue! At this time, when Canadian Confederation and Canadian unity are in a delicate state at best, this minister is running around making irresponsible statements of this kind.

Always watch for those little Freudian slips. Last week in this House, we were talking about the extra $35 a month that Ottawa has allocated in respect of those seniors on Mincome between 60 and 64 years. And you know what the minister said as part of his reply? He said: "This money is due to Victoria." That's the way he thinks. "This money is due to Victoria, to our government." This money is due to the seniors for whom it was intended, Mr. Chairman; that's to whom it's due.

You can just tell by the way the minister talks, how he thinks. Now this nasty little business on the Vancouver Homemakers Association, which the first member for Burrard (Ms. Brown) referred to in her talk. It's a sad attitude. I have seldom seen it put better than in a letter from an associate professor at the School of Social Work, University of British Columbia. It's published in the Sun of October 6. I'll only read out a portion of it, but it's writing in comment on Frances Russell's article entitled: "The Welfare Police." Listen to this part where he's speaking of the minister:

"His public statements also convey, loud and clear, the message that those seeking public aid in times of family need or crisis are morally deficient and criminally suspect. In cynically singling out thousands of socially handicapped persons for public scorn and scapegoat, the Minister of Human Resources obviously believes he endears himself to the political majority. But he should realize that short-term political expediency can result in personal tragedy and increased social costs when persons in need are cowed by fear of social stigma from seeking necessary public assistance and aid. Thus, in the longer run, a likely effect of his punitive and opportunistic scorn for welfare recipients will be to transfer the ultimate costs of failing to solve those in need from his own department to the criminal justice and mental health systems."

Even if it was just the bottom line and the dollar bill which we were looking at, that's exactly why this minister is penny-wise and pound-foolish. I want to ask you, Mr. Chairman, who the people are that the Minister of Human Resources has the duty to help. How many of them should be cut off the moneys voted by this Legislature? I think the totals I read out were something in excess of $100 million. It looks like they are going to be under spent that much this

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year.

The minister puts his attention on the single, unemployed employable person on welfare. What's the percentage of money spent on that kind of person? The minister knows that the money is spent on seniors - on elderly people in our society. He knows that the money is spent on the handicapped. He knows that the money is spent on single parents.

According to one of the last studies I saw, not much over 10 per cent of the social assistance money is spent on people who are single, unemployed employables. Yet here we see a budget shortfall of much, much more than that - a much higher percentage than 10 per cent. What was voted was $589 million; and the shortfall, it appears to me, is going to be something in the neighbourhood of over $100 million - something like 20 per cent shortfall in that department.

[Mr. Rogers in the chair.]

MR. LEA: Isn't that an odd figure?

MR. GIBSON: One hundred million, as you point out, Mr. Member, is a figure that has some historical recollections attached to it.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. The member for North Vancouver-Capilano has the floor.

MR. GIBSON: So let's go to some of the particulars as to how this government is helping, Mr. Chairman - this business of GAIN equals L-E-S-S.

MR. W.S. KING (Revelstoke-Slocan): Free parks!

MR. GIBSON: Free parks for the senior citizens. That's right, Mr. Member for Revelstoke-Slocan, and we should never forget that act of generosity on the part of the government. I saw a delightful cartoon in the papers the other day of a nice old lady with a pack on her back, standing out in the road hitchhiking to the free parks. No doubt as the weather gets nicer, there may be a bit of that happen. But it's about the totality of what the government's done.

Listen to what's actually happened on this question of handicapped persons' income assistance and the extra $22.50 that was forwarded from Ottawa in respect of each person from October 1,1976, on. Now the minister talks about research. We've done a little research on that and we find that if the federal government had continued to pay the same percentage as they did in September, they would have contributed about $1,153, 000 less in respect alone of the five months since then. So there's

$1,153, 000 that's been squirreled away in the coffers of the provincial government and not passed on and that was directly intended for the handicapped.

Then he comes up with a big programme for the handicapped: $57 for single persons in shelter allowance. Let's just look at the case of single persons for the moment. Let's look at how much this is actually costing the government of British Columbia. Take that $57 and subtract the $22.50 extra that's been coming since last October 1; you have $34.50 left. Then take into account the fact that Ottawa pays half of that $57; take off another $28.50. So what do you have as the net cost to the treasury of the province of British Columbia? - $6 a month! That's the net cost of that big increase that the government and the minister came out and made such a big press release about. Six-dollar Bill - that's what he is. And, of course, Mr. Chairman, this big deal doesn't even start until July 1, 1 think it is, by which time the government will have squirreled away another million or so in this regard. It's going to take a number of years to work that off at $6 a person a month.

The sad thing is that the minister hasn't paid attention to the proper way of approaching the question of assistance to the handicapped in our province. The approach should not be one of charity. It should be one of equalization. It should be a recognition that some people in our society have not been afforded the physical or mental capabilities that the ordinary person has. There should be a concept of sharing, as the hon. member put it, and equalization in that regard - not a question of charity, but a question of "some of us are lucky and others aren't." We should share that. It should be a matter of right, not a question of grace and favour.

MR. LEA: Big Brother government.

MR. GIBSON: Mr. Chairman, I was very much taken by this report of SPARC that was put together by their legislative committee. I'm enough impressed with it that I just want to take a moment of the committee's time to read out this concept. I'm quoting from the SPARC document.

"The concept being developed is being developed in order to: (1) minimize the financial gap between the able-bodied and the disabled; (2) assist handicapped persons to live more independently in the community; and (3) improve the quality of life of the disabled."

They go on to envision a two-part payment.

" (a) Periodic payments" - the equalization pension - "not tied to employment or means, but guaranteed and connected to the extra expenses created by a disability and subject to income tax regulations."

Mr. Chairman, what could be fairer than an

[ Page 1858 ]

equalization payment to the handicapped unfortunate tied to the concept of extra expenses created by a disability?

"(b) Income-replacement payment for persons not working temporarily or permanently as with able-bodied welfare recipients."

Then they speak a little bit of the scope of what's called this equalization pension. The minister should adopt this, and his department should adopt it.

"The equalization pension would be granted and the amount of payment established by a medical and rehabilitation team after rehabilitation and when the level of permanent disability has been determined. Coverage would include such items as attendant care, homemaker services, special transportation when the charge is greater than public transportation, all prescribed prosthetic devices, prescribed equipment, service and repair to devices and equipment, special diets and home renovations where and when necessary.

"The equalization payment would not be withheld for any of the following reasons: marital status, employment or unemployment, inheritance, size of income or assets, or necessity to receive income replacement or subsidized housing."

Mr. Chairman, I endorse that and the minister should endorse it. It is a recognition that in this lottery of life, not everybody has come up with the same number. It is proper that there should be a sharing and that the sharing should be a matter of right. When you go down that checklist of what would be provided, there's no rip off there. It's a question of fairness and equity in our society.

Look at what the minister has not been doing for those on Mincome aged 60 to 64. Again the minister talks about research, and again I'll tell him the calculation that I have done there. An extra $35 a month has been payable since October I in respect of certain persons aged 60 to 64 from Ottawa to the provincial government and it has not been passed on. If over those five months to the end of February you count the extra moneys that have been received and calculate them out, you find that the federal government contribution has been raised an extra $1.547 million over those five months. And none of it has been passed on; the 60 to 64 GAIN rates remain the same.

The minister is making vague promises about how all of this kind of thing is under review. Well and good, Mr. Chairman. Review the GAIN rates, but pass the federal entitlement on immediately. Don't wait one week; don't wait one day. Pass it on as of October 1, which is when it commenced to be paid to the Province of British Columbia. The minister can flutter about and make all kinds of complicated speeches: "Oh, this is something that we deserved along and it has to go into general revenue and be dispensed according to the proper priorities, " and this and this and that. The people who are not in receipt of that $35 and the people in respect of whom that $35 was given do not believe that. You can cover 100 pages of Hansard with that kind of argumentation and those people will not believe that, and they should not believe it. Any attempt to convince them to the contrary is bafflegab.

Now the minister spoke a little about the PREP programme. He bragged about the 6,000 jobs he said had been created. He didn't refer to the estimates of PREP; they were going to create 12,000 jobs by Christmas, so they have apparently fallen 50 per cent short of their target. What I want to know is how many of these are new jobs, or is this particular agency simply acting as an addition to the job-finding market without adding one little bit to the job-creation market? I'm prepared to be convinced; I'm prepared to have the minister stand up in this House and say: "Here is a list of exactly how many jobs would not have existed except for the PREP programme." I'd like to hear chapter and verse and examples on that, and I'd like to have the name of the employer so I can phone him up and check, because frankly I don't believe it.

Something the minister didn't mention was the B.C. Conference on the Family. One of the things that disturbed me most as a contrast in veracities - if I may put it that way - is the concentration of the throne speech on the family. We see this mystical word running throughout the throne speech. Then the hon. member for Esquimalt (Mr. Kahl) , in responding to the throne speech, stood up and gave us a lovely talk about the family. And what was happening? The B.C. Conference on the Family did not have its funding continued. It had done good work. It was asking for a small sum of money in governmental terms of, I think, around some $50,000 to carry on in 1977 doing work that, if anyone believes in volunteer organizations - as I thought that party did - they would have to say was at least 10 times the effectiveness of anything that might be done inside government.

I am interested to see the hon. member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) applauding that concept of voluntary organizations. I hope he will get up and tell the House what he thinks of the government taking over the Victorian Order of Nurses last fall.

MR. LEA: He won't.

MR. GIBSON: So isn't that shocking, Mr. Chairman? They say what a wonderful thing the family is, and then they take the organization of churches throughout this province and interested community-spirited people throughout this province

[ Page 1859 ]

and they deny them their funding. I'd like the minister to tell us where that stands because he made a little hint a while ago that something might be available. I think that hint was about a month or so ago, wasn't it? But where is it?

Now, Mr. Chairman, I would like to move to community resource boards. One of the most stupid decisions ever of this government was to abolish that system of community resource boards which was starting to show some promise in the experimental areas of this province where it was being tried. It was one of the best pieces of legislation of the former government. It provided in the social field for some modicum of local control and input ...

MR. LEA: And decentralization. They hate it.

MR. GIBSON: ... and decentralization, which is the current buzz-word these days. It was the same kind of thing in the social field that we have long had in the schooling field and in the field of general municipal administration, and it was the right direction to be going. It was stopped and cut off and hauled back by this bunch of centralizes across there. They're great people, you know, for saying that Ottawa ought to decentralize powers to British Columbia, but when it comes to British Columbia decentralizing some powers to the local authorities, "Oh, no. Well, we don't quite go that far."

And so it is that those municipalities that administered their own social programmes have been taken over by the provincial government, and so it is that the rumors are now flying that the Vancouver Resources Board is going to be cancelled. I was fascinated by the minister's reply to that question in question period today. He did not take the normal, I would have thought, opportunity to say: "No, there's no truth to that." Instead he temporized and said: "Well, this is a question of government policy." Tell me, suppose the statement had been: "There's a rumour going around that Mincome is going to be stopped."

AN HON. MEMBER: They have stopped it.

MR. GIBSON: That's right. They stopped that word Mincome, but they're still carrying on some of those payments. What would be a better example? Suppose somebody said: "There's a rumour that spending on highways is going to be stopped." "Oh, no, " the minister would stand up and say, "We're going to continue."

But he didn't say that about the Vancouver Resources Board, and I thought that was very, very illuminating.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, the three-minute warning light is on.

MR. GIBSON: Oh! Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

But if you don't have these kinds of community things, people get frustrated and they say: "I'm going to live my own life and I'm going to rely on the professional." If there's a community problem with juveniles, for example, well, the answer is to hire more policemen, unless you have a community spirit. I was at a meeting on the weekend in Lynn Valley, and so was the Minister of Energy, Transport and Communications (Hon. Mr. Davis) . It was called a "community forum." Here was an example of the people of the community getting together and talking about their problems. The thread that ran through all of it was: "How do we communicate with each other and how do we, ourselves, deal with these problems without having to look to some other area of government?" They weren't looking for aid from Victoria or Ottawa. They were saying: "How can we grapple with these problems?" If they had a community resource board in that area, they would have the vehicle and the instrument. It was a stupid decision to cut them out.

A final word as to Pharmacare, Mr. Chairman. The minister, back on January 18, answered me a question saying that the information on Pharmacare and the new deductibles, and so on, will be provided to the House after the presentation of the budget. It's about two months later. Why don't we have that information yet? Why do we have the obvious, stupid, tragic situation coming down the road where there's going to be a $25 deductible, or something like that, and there's going to be a lot more paperwork and the seniors who are now collecting that Pharmacare will have to save all those little receipts? And they may be able to look after the accounting problem and the saving problem, or they may not. A lot of it will never be collected at all, I would fear. We can just tell that this new promise of universal Pharmacare doesn't mean very much in dollar terms because we see by how much the estimates have gone up - $1.5 million, up from $24 million or so. When are we going to get some details on this? I want to tell you, Mr. Chairman, it's bothering people.

MR. LEA: After his estimates.

MR. GIBSON: I'll tell you something else - when questions like this are in the hands of this minister it should bother people, because it comes back to that question of attitude and if the question of attitude is save a buck rather than share. I'm all in favour of saving a buck, but let's do what the legislation says that minister should do, which is to share some of the resources of those who are more fortunate in the community with those who are less fortunate and provide ways for the community to be involved in it. I say he is not doing an adequate job on that.

[ Page 1860 ]

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I read not too long ago that the real measure of a civilization is reflected in the respect and the care and love which is shown toward the elderly and the disadvantaged of a civilization. In fact, civilizations have generally begun to crumble when, for whatever reason -self-indulgence or distorted affluence or whatever -the people with the power and the material wealth ignore the legitimate rights of the disadvantaged group. The gap widens and society begins to crumble. I think - in fact I don't think, I feet convinced - that that's the point at which Canadian society is approaching or has probably reached.

I couldn't help but listen carefully to the prayer today - one of the other speakers in the debate has already mentioned the prayer - when the minister said: "Let us try and take a wider vision of the world around us." It doesn't stop at the four walls of my home, which happens to be a very comfortable and well-appointed home. Don't look at the boundaries of our municipality and stop looking at the boundaries of British Columbia - and maybe even the boundaries of Canada. The spirit in which I would like to take part in this debate is that those of us, such as the Liberal leader who just spoke, myself and all of us in this House in fact, just happened to have been lucky enough to be born with sound health -health of body, anyway. I suppose we all sometimes question each other's sanity and that's understandable. Certainly many people who come to the gallery write in and ask me if I'm quite sure that we're not all crazy in this chamber.

At any rate, we were all given certain blessings when we came into this world - blessings of good health and relative sanity. We've also been given a very wealthy province, in terms of natural resources and in terms of many able and brilliant people who can pilot this province in many sound directions. It seems to me that we're not meeting the responsibility I mentioned at the outset - to look after people who weren't born quite so lucky.

I won't waste the time of the House to go over the comments that have been made by the two previous speakers about the particular plight of the handicapped, save to say that I don't believe that the handicapped in British Columbia are getting a fair share of the assets that are available. This does not relate to the back-and-forth argument that's going on regarding 5 0-5 0 sharing with Ottawa or 40-60 sharing or who passed on what to whom. That has all been argued. My position is much clearer than that. I don't really give a hoot how many arguments I hear about the book transactions between Ottawa and Victoria. My question is really much simpler: are the handicapped and the elderly and the disadvantaged getting a fair deal? They are not, in my opinion.

If we only take one simple, quick, passing example. Mr. Chairman, the legislation provides that allowances , whatever they might be, can be indexed to the cost of living. We have the federal old-age pension indexed to the cost of living every three months. Of course, that in turn leads to the question whether that money is passed on every three months or does the provincial government simply give a little sigh of relief because it realizes that the net provincial dollars amount going into the payments is less? At any rate, I don't wish to get into that argument. I just wish to stress that there are few groups in our society who are discriminated against more than the handicapped and the elderly.

The handicapped need only look at the definition used by the government for eligibility to know what kind of sympathy or lack of sympathy they're getting. I'd like to read the definition of "handicapped, " section 12b of the regulations, into the record.

"For purposes of these regulations the foregoing definition excludes an individual who, regardless of any physical or mental disability, has not tried nor completed all possible training or retraining for employment and has not tried nor completed all possible remedial treatment to overcome the disability." The earlier part of the definition, I think, is also incredibly rigid and I think it should be read into the record:

"A handicapped person means an individual, age 18 years or older, who, at the discretion of the director, has been designated as handicapped due to the individual being mentally ill or mentally retarded, as defined in section 2 of the Mental Health Act, 1964; or due to the individual having a physical injury, amputation or physical malfunction of the body.

"Such designation shall be made only after a qualified medical practitioner has confirmed that the disability is apparently permanent and that there is no remedial therapy available for the individual to significantly lessen the disability, and provided the disability is sufficiently severe that the individual requires extensive assistance or supervision to manage normal daily functioning; or, as a direct result of a disability, the individual requires unusual or continuous monthly expenditures for transportation or for special diets or other unusual but essential and continuous needs."

That very rigid, firm definition, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me, reflects a highly critical, suspicious - I hesitate to use the word "inhuman" - certainly less-than-sympathetic approach to people who need help because they're handicapped. Anybody who qualifies under this definition unquestionably is handicapped, and there must be many, many others who have a measure of handicap which makes life in this dog-eat-dog world very difficult for them who are

[ Page 1861 ]

shut out from the provisions under this definition.

Now I don't want to go on repeating that, because I've raised it in earlier debates in the House; and the minister, or someone, always comes back with the answer: "Well, we've got to make sure that the alcoholics can't draw under these regulations." I don't propose at this point to get into a debate on alcoholics, but I just wonder where this government has been if it doesn't realize that, finally, society has got around to recognizing that alcoholics are sick people. Here again, we have this categorization or classification of people with handicaps, and some with some handicaps apparently can get in under the regulations. Others with very severe handicaps, but not meeting these rigid criteria, cannot qualify. That's where I strongly sympathize with the comments made by the first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) regarding the concept under which a modern government should be trying to provide a range of services to people who are in need. Certainly we've covered the discussion of the handicapped in , that light from this side of the House - that it isn't a i question of trying to prove that you're not ripping off the system, or that you're not up to some scheme to extract money from the government falsely, but simply because you're desperately in need of funding for the most essential requirements from day to day and week to week.

The other group that I cannot speak too strongly for, or too often about, is the elderly. I'm particularly disappointed that there is still no recognition of the fact that the elderly who can no longer stay in their own homes are those who are perhaps more severely penalized even than the handicapped. They're certainly in exactly the same category and not getting a fair share of the money that is available, or the money that could be made available. I won't bore the House with a repetition of the many comments I have made before - how we had a committee of this Legislature in 1973 which brought in an excellent report pointing out that governments pay lip service to keeping the elderly in their home, but when it comes to coughing up the bucks to pay for that.... Oh, that's another situation altogether, Mr. Chairman, and if I took the time of this House, I could re-read many speeches that have been made in this House strongly supporting the concept that the elderly citizens should be given every kind of assistance to t maintain their living in their own home and avoid institutionalizing them any earlier than is absolutely necessary. I'm sure the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland) , who's in the House at the present time, t well remembers the unanimity of opinion that we heard when that committee held hearings in various t cities throughout this province in the summer of

1973. But what we do have as recently as today? We find that the regulations regarding homemakers have been reinterpreted. I can't think of a more valuable person to provide the kind of assistance to senior citizens which will keep them in their home than a homemaker.

I had a long discussion with one of the directors of the Greater Vancouver Homemakers Association on the telephone today, Mr. Chairman. Not only do they find that the regulations keep being changed around or reinterpreted at regular intervals, but what actually is going to happen is that some of these elderly couples, who have been receiving homemaker service, are just not going to take it at $6.75 an hour.

Let me just in passing say, Mr. Chairman, that this is how the regulation is interpreted: the elderly couple define what their gross income is; then there are various allowances made for the basic essentials -food, shelter, heat and light. Then, if there's $50 left over - if I can use that very inappropriate phrase -they can then spend $6.75 an hour for homemaker care until the $6.75 is used up. So what would you do, Mr. Chairman, if you were in that position? You know $50 is no princely sum, and $6.75, let us say, into $50 is perhaps eight hours of service a month; two hours a day, or whatever, one day a week.

Even that, Mr. Chairman, from a preventive point of view would be worth considering. Many of these elderly people are able to cope three or four days a week, but a visit even one day a week to provide some of the basic help in the home might well prevent some old lady falling and breaking her hip and finishing up in the hospital at $150 a day and all of the expenses of the acute-care hospital.

Year after year and government after government, I've listened in this House to the value of homemaker care, home-nursing care and all the services that very well may keep an elderly citizen out of some of our expensive acute-care hospitals. But we seem to be going backwards. It's getting more difficult, not more easy, for many of these elderly citizens to receive the kind of care and assistance which I think by example has proven its own value.

To go one step further in arguing about the discrimination against the elderly - even putting aside the argument that the homemaker and the home-nursing service and all the help in the home is now being made more expensive to the recipient -what happens when that citizen finally does have to go into a nursing home? I do a little bit of research too, Mr. Minister, in case you hadn't noticed. That person, in a four-bed ward in Glenwarren Private Hospital in Victoria, pays $821.50 a month.

So we have all the other levels of care and we have he person who maybe does fall and breaks a hip in her home. For the two or three months that she's in he hospital, she manages to pay $4 a day for all her care. Then that poor lady never gets well enough to go back to her own home-, she has to go to a nursing home. Oh my goodness, then there's a dramatic change in the economic circumstances. That elderly

[ Page 1862 ]

person, who has been paying $120 a month to live, has to start paying $821.50. If that isn't the most blatant discrimination against one particular group, I don't know what is.

Now if that person has assets less than $1,500 in the bank then of course social assistance comes up with the funding. Even then, they don't pay the going rate, and the private patient has to subsidize the social assistance patient. While it's a blessing, I suppose, that many of these private hospitals exist -otherwise I don't know where the patient would go -we do find that because these hospitals operate with wages that are less than elsewhere, the standard of care generally is poorer than applies in hospitals which are subsidized, to whatever degree, by the provincial government.

So we've got this segment of elderly citizens - I don't know how many, probably 10,000 - in this province who, compared to every other level of persons receiving some government assistance, are just incredibly harshly dealt with in complete absence of any government assistance until their assets get down to $1,500 or whatever the figure is. Then, of course, in their last years they have the dubious honour of going on to social assistance.

There's such disparity between this and other levels of assistance. If I have an accident and go into the hospital, I get looked after, even if it involves one or two or three months' rehabilitation to put me back on my feet at $4 a day. I've probably even got private insurance. That really means I'm not all that penalized anyway, being in the hospital. But the person who certainly does get penalized is the elderly person who can no longer live at home and has to be in a facility of that kind and has to come up with $821.50 a month. How any government that believes there should be some kind of equitable assistance available to all people in need - and these elderly people are very much in need of help - can go on month after month and year after year suggesting that it's reasonable to pay $4 a day in an acute-hospital, but if you happen to have your life savings in the bank and you need to go into a nursing home, you finish up paying $821.50 a month.... This subject has been touched on innumerable times in the eight years that I've been in the House. I just keep desperately hoping that we will get some action from this minister.

It's interesting, Mr. Chairman, that the last excuse is really gone. If there were any kind of justice at all in this world' - and I don't think there is, but if there were - the last, feeble, political excuse is gone, because of the story I've heard for eight years: "Oh, of course the federal government won't share in the cost."

Well, Mr. Chairman, the ground rules have been changed again, and the federal government has transferred tax points to the provincial government in lieu of a cost-sharing arrangement. There is now not a single reason why this government should not be putting money into assistance for the senior citizen who has to leave his home or his apartment and live in an intermediate-care facility. There is no reason whatever. I suppose the last shred of reason may well be that the government will claim that since they're private institutions being run for profit, the government can't subsidize profits.

If that's the case, I would suggest that the government meet the commitment that they made on the election platform in 1975 when they said they would embark on immediate construction of facilities similar to those in Alberta. I won't bore the House again by dragging out all these election brochures. I'm sorry the first member for Victoria (Hon. Mr. Bawlf) isn't here, because his ads during the election were very profuse on how he was going to fight, as a member of the new government, to get these programmes started. The word he used in his advertising was "immediate" start to construction of these facilities.

So I just hope that this is the last time I have to make this particular comment that even considering the fact that I don't believe the handicapped receive adequate allowances and consideration and are looked upon as being a group that have to prove their need when the need is obvious, even allowing for that, I think that equal or worse is the situation regarding the senior citizen who has to be in a nursing home or similar facility.

I also want to talk briefly about the Conference on the Family, because while it's quite understandable that in this debate we would first of all zero in on the people in greatest need - and that is the elderly and the handicapped - there's an ever-increasing amount of concern throughout the whole of our society about the way human relationships seem to be falling apart. Divorce is on the increase; young children leave the home to live on their own or to shack up with some other spouse or partner or whatever the popular phrase is. This has to be very much a challenge not only to government but to the particular ministry involved in human resources.

The Conference on the Family, I felt, represented a very exciting breakthrough whereby two big groups - namely, church and government - who had always felt that they must keep at arm's length from each other, opened the door to some kind of dialogue at least; and from the kind of discussions that followed at the conference, it's quite obvious that delegates from all across British Columbia were more than eager to get involved in some new and exciting programmes to try at the local level to work much more in the preventive field than just to try to deal with all the serious problems that face the young people of British Columbia today.

I know from discussions with the minister that he

[ Page 1863 ]

still has this matter under consideration and that he e will be meeting with church leaders this week, I understand. But it was particularly disappointing to me, Mr. Chairman, that when the minister came and spoke at the banquet at the conference, he made what to me sounded like a very valid point when he r challenged volunteer organizations to join in pilot projects aimed at heading off marital and family t breakdown before the breakdown occurred. I can't think of a more reasonable or a more accurate way in which to try to look at problems in the family unit. The minister is even quoted in The Vancouver Sun, November 4, as going further. He said: "You can provide the bodies and we'll provide the bucks."

Well, I thought that at the end of the conference we were being very reasonable in trying to keep all these delegates and local groups involved in this concept by at least establishing the most simple, permanent kind of administrative skeleton, if you can call it that, of one or two people, a co-ordinator and a secretary, at least to maintain communication with all i these delegates until such time as we could develop something more permanent.

Frankly, Mr. Chairman, that is all we were asking for in terms of money. in the first instance. We were asking for a basic amount of funding to have a small office with a staff of two people, and overhead costs of telephone and correspondence and so on, covered. As the Liberal leader (Mr. Gibson) mentioned, I think the figure was $55,000.

What has happened is that the co-ordinator who put the conference together over a period of two years is no longer available. Her wealth of experience and knowledge of this whole project is invaluable to any future success that the organization might have. In fact, I think, Mr. Chairman, it would only be fair to name that person, who was Miss Connie Holly, who did an absolutely first-rate and dedicated job over the period of two. years in planning and putting on the Conference on the Family. In my view it would be tragic if we try to restart the project without having her as the person who can put it all together and act as the co-ordinator.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, you have three minutes.

MR. WALLACE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are many other points which will have to be covered later in the debate, but I wonder if I could just end my comments by asking the minister about this particular, single issue of the elderly citizen who cannot stay in his or her home and is suddenly pitch forked into an institution - which is regrettable in the first place - but they have to start wondering how they can pay $821 a month.

I know the minister can't, on any basis, say that that's fair, and we're not going to get into an emotional argument on that. But can he not tell us what immediate plans his department has, perhaps in conjunction with Health, at least to bring some measure of fair play to the elderly citizen who goes from living at home or in an apartment with some reasonable kind of assistance and backup support -whether it be homemaker or home nurse and then he very next day he or she is stuck with the costs of $821.50 a month? I think if the minister collide give us some hope that that will be dealt with, even if he didn't answer any other of my questions, I would be very happy.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman, I'm not sure what other questions were asked. I only heard the one question. The others, I think, were more observations. Correct me if I'm wrong. I would certainly respond to questions if there are others.

With respect to long-term care, I certainly agree with the member that we have to look to new and innovative means of providing this type of thing. The approach outlined by the member certainly is one which is being considered by this ministry and the Ministry of Health, but since the whole matter of providing long-term care is one for the Ministry of Health, I think perhaps the question should again be raised then, as I'm sure the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland) would like to respond directly from the information he may have available within his ministry.

MR. WALLACE: Well, could you tell us some of your own plans?

MR. VANDER ZALM: We ' 11, Mr. Chairman, I guess perhaps I took the member by surprise when I said I agreed with his observations and approach. I agree that we should attempt to develop other means to keep the elderly in the home where they are with familiar surroundings. Certainly the homemaker programme is one approach, the home-care programme is another, and there may be others still. Certainly each of these must be reviewed and updated to assure that they are affordable to the people being served.

MR. WALLACE: When they have to go into a nursing home what are you going to do?

MR. N. LEVI (Vancouver-Burrard): It's kind of frustrating, Mr. Chairman, particularly for the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) . I distinctly heard him ask three questions, particularly in relation to the Conference on the Family, but evidently the minister didn't hear that one.

What I'd like to talk about, just to begin with, is the back-of-the-truck syndrome that the Premier made in one of his speeches about the previous

[ Page 1864 ]

government. He said they were going around shovelling money out the back of a truck. That's what he said. Now what they've got is a truck going around with a big vacuum cleaner sucking up $100 million from the poor and from the old people.

I'll say this: I lived with a $100-million overrun, but I see that as a badge of honour in terms of the way that previous government behaved with the senior citizens and the old people. If that's the kind of government we've got - that goes around from the back of a truck sucking up money - then they've gone back on all of the promises that they made.

You know, we hear a lot of talk today in this province about dog food. It's back again. Some of you who were in politics before this previous election will remember the kind of atmosphere that existed in this province prior to 1972 when people were on dog food. You didn't hear any discussion about dog food when the previous government was in, except idiotic statements by some members that the previous government somehow gave an allowance to welfare people for dog food for their pets. Nobody was able to show that policy in the House, but that's the only thing you got when that government was in.

[ Mr. Schroeder in the chair.]

Now we're back to dog food again! We had it on TV with Mr. Neumann eating dog food. Somehow the regulations didn't allow that man to keep the $300. The regulations were such that $25 had to be held back - $25! They had a saving of $100 million and t they had to hold back $25! The minister's explanation for that, Mr. Chairman, is that we have to i be equitable. Weft, I'll remind the minister that there is an understanding with ministers - they have discretion. From time to time you move in and you overrule your bureaucrats and you say: "That's a windfall - leave it." Instead, we've got the asinine statement that it's got to be equitable. It's "equitable" to take $25 from a handicapped person. f

You know, I've been hoping that during these estimates members from the other side are going to get up and they're going to defend this minister - because he needs defending. They're going to have to defend him on the policies that he has created which, in a matter of 15 months, have rolled this province back to exactly where it was in 1972, in terms of dealing with people.

He talks about the handicapped allowance; it's the b best in Canada. He doesn't talk about the fact that p from January, 1976, until July 1,1977 - that's when the programme comes in - the handicapped don't get i anything! He doesn't talk about the fact that in 1972, s the handicapped pension was $139, and on January $ 1,1976, it was $265.

He talks about the $57. Well, we'll deal with the -$57 when we come back into this House and see exactly who gets the $57, in the same way we were told last year that the GAIN legislation will be good. Yet it's been demonstrated, both in this House and by various voluntary groups outside who've taken the trouble to research it, that there has been a general loss of some 28 per cent in terms of people's income under the GAIN legislation. Yet we're constantly told that they are the best rates in Canada. But for how many people? He talks about homemakers; we heard the story today. It was talked about that people are back to being means-tested and where people have a pre-added budget. If it goes beyond the $275, they're going to have to pay if they want some help. But what I don't understand is that they do not have any understanding at all of the future cost and the damage that they do.

I said in this House four years ago, when we first brought in the Mincome programme, that the budget of the department would swell 300 per cent, simply to catch up with all the damage that that previous government did. Here we are right back to the same kind of philosophy. They're going to means-test people for the homemakers programme. If they can't afford it, they'll go into homes which cost anywhere from $15 to $30 every day, instead of providing or allowing for the $52 to be paid for by the state. You multiply that up. In 1972, there were 2,800 people being taken care of under the welfare system who were in various private homes, in the so-called chronic-care system. In December, 1975, there were 7,200 people, an indication of the kind of situation hat old people get into in terms of not being able to fend for themselves. But we don't have any information. We don't have an annual report. We don't have the minister answering questions on the order paper. All we have is a lot of percentages: GAIN - 20 per cent of what?

You know, he is exactly like the minister who used to be in this House, Gaglardi, when he had his AIB - and that was sure slaughtered, once we got a few facts on the order paper. Once we get the facts n the order paper about the PREP programme, I'm sure we're going to go the same route.

There's an old adage about government: "If you've got anything good to say, find the right time to announce it." We haven't had any announcement bout the GAIN legislation - no announcement whatsoever. It's always been these percentages -percentages in the face of what's probably going to e announced this week: 120,000 unemployed people.

There's been no indication of the jobs and no indication of the pay, although the minister himself aid: "We'll be able to get jobs - not well-paid jobs; 3, $3.15 an hour." Okay, then he has to tell us how many jobs, how much pay, and how long are the jobs two days, three days, three weeks, permanent jobs? What permanent jobs? Where are the permanent jobs,

[ Page 1865 ]

Mr. Chairman? We have no facts. So we have to fly a little blind and we have to deduce from some of the statements that he has made, in order to find out what's going on in his department.

Let's deal for a minute with the issue of children. I want the minister to tell us what is going to happen in terms of the juvenile delinquents, because he is one of these people who feels that what we've got to do with juveniles is to lock them up. The Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) has indicated that they're going to spend $4 million on lockups and $2.5 million-on administration to look after some 40 juveniles. Well, one wonders where he's going to get the money, but we know where he's going to get the money. After all, the minister will save so much money on children's programmes that the government can now feel free to start building the lockup situation.

What is happening about the foster parents? Are they going to get a raise? Is the central organization going to get a raise - the operations where they are trying to train people, where they are trying to interest them? That's a tough job. It's becoming more and more difficult to find people who want to be foster parents. It's very difficult, party because as a result of some of the programmes under the previous government, the number of people coming in of the lower ages is lessened - or had lessened until this government came in. We don't know yet because we don't have the facts, but we know that we have more juveniles, more teenagers that have to be looked after. That's a tougher job; that requires a great deal of commitment from foster parents in order to work in that particular area. What are they doing?

Incentives - that's the word he often talks about.

What is he doing to offer these people incentives to do these kinds of jobs? Is he going to do anything at all? Again, we don't know. Just great generalizations.

I want to talk for a minute about the Pharmacare programme. I want to talk about the Pharmacare programme because here we have a complete reversal of policy. I would hope that members on the other side are going to get up and tell us how good it is, Mr.

Chairman, that the Pharmacare programme is going to be universal. It's going to be difficult to get a universal programme out of $1.5 million, and we know - at least we have to suspect, because the minister hasn't kept his word; we haven't got the legislation down yet - part of that is because he was at the tail end of the estimates. Public pressure brought his estimates up, so his legislation is not ready. But the important thing is what is going to happen to people who previously received

Pharmacare - free prescription drugs - if they're going to have to pay. That's the important thing.

What is going to happen to those people who are going to have to lay out the money? Let's take an example of somebody who has a $ 10- or $15-a-month bill. They're going to have to lay it out. In fact, I suspect that if they go the Manitoba programme, they’ll have to lay out the first $25, then all of the money after that for their drugs, and then they'll end in the receipts and get the money back. But the important thing is that the money has to go out first before they can get it back. Now we're going to have people who are going to make some choices, choices hat for the past three years they have not had to make in terms of whether they need prescription drugs or not.

We said that if it's to be sure that the 50 per cent or 60 per cent of people who previously could not afford their drugs were going to get them, we had to introduce such a programme. We had to introduce it o make sure that there was not a continuing wastage of the money spent on the medical plan where people have extensive medical treatment and at the end of hat treatment there is a drug-therapy programme hat they have to have. If they can't buy those drugs, hey can't complete the treatment, and much, . of the money that's been spent under, medical treatment in he general way has been wasted. But that's what we seem to be going back to, unless the miracle workforce is going to get a universal programme out of $1.5 million. He's not. He's going to get it out of the pockets of the poor and the senior citizens. They're going to pay for it. It's part of the same philosophy hat the Premier is fond of talking about. You know: 'The user has to pay. " The user has to pay for the transportation.

I listened last night to the first member for Vancouver South describe in an eloquent fashion -he was very eloquent - about why the ferry rates are up. You have to imagine that across from Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen there is a four-lane highway. That has to be paid for. It's a user fee. That's what he said last night. Now we're going to get the user fee for Pharmacare for people who previously, it was demonstrated, could not afford to buy drugs. That's why we had the Pharmacare programme in the beginning. Well, we're going to have a user fee.

AN HON. MEMBER: Toll drugs.

MR. LEVI: Yes, as my friend said, "toll drugs." We're going to have a poll tax on drugs for old people. We're going to have a poll tax for the children and we're going to have a poll tax on drugs for those on welfare, a poll tax for those people on handicapped pension.

But, of course, the handicapped pension is a tough one to deal with. After all, last year the minister said that anybody could get on the handicapped pension; you just had to have a stomach-ache or you had to un to the bathroom and you got onto a pension. I don't know whether he's met with that committee that adjudicates the applications. I met with them and I found them to be the toughest, hard-nosed,

[ Page 1866 ]

unresisting people I'd ever met. In fact, at one stage I was almost going to fire them because I thought they were so hard-nosed. But we left them and they continued to do the job. But this minister suggests that they were soft. Soft!

Sure, we went from some 2,300 people who were on the handicapped pension up to 10,000. We don't know, but I presume and I would hope that those 10,000 are still on. I would hope that there are more, but we don't know. We don't have the facts. One would get some indication that probably there are less on, because they're saving money on the apportionment of the budget. But we don't know; we don't have the facts.

In terms of the Pharmacare programme, we're going to go back to a period of time in this province that existed previously where people could not afford to buy the drugs, and consequently the state wasted a great deal of money in terms of the in completed medical programmes they were on.

I want to talk now about a report that was done and completed in the summer of 1975 - "Drug Delivery Systems in the Health Care Facilities in the Province of British Columbia." Mr. Frank Lowe did the work; he was a consultant to the government on this. This was a report that was authorized to go and look at what was going on in the various chronic-care system locations as to how they dealt with drugs for senior citizens. There were a number of recommendations that came out of that. I don't think the minister has tabled the report in the House.

One of the problems that existed was that while the average number of prescriptions for senior citizens in the community was 22 a year, in institutions it was 54. There were 54 prescriptions a year written at private hospitals, boarding homes and rest homes.

The intent of the inquiry into this was to see what could be done in order to reduce the number of prescriptions which, it had been clearly demonstrated, were in conflict with one another. Many of the drugs being used in these places were out of date in terms of effectiveness.

Now when the minister gets up, he could inform us as to what has happened in terms of this programme. They continued to. look at this particular situation. What are the arrangements now for people in chronic-care facilities in terms of the drugs that exist? We should know that. We're going to have to be very specific in asking this minister questions because he either doesn't remember or he doesn't write them down. It is important for us that he answer some of these' questions.

I want to talk for a minute now about the question of welfare payments, particularly in the area of the figures that the minister has indicated. We don't have any figures; we only have some percentages. As I recall, in December, 1975, there were 128,000 people on welfare. There were approximately 70,000 children on welfare and 26,000 family heads, of which about 2 1,000 were single women with children. Then there were 30,000 people who were classified as single, and these people were between the ages of 18 and 59. Now this is where the difference of opinion comes in in terms of how many of these people were employable.

The figure used initially by the minister was that 23,000 people were considered to be employable from the group of 30,000. Then he revised that downwards because, as a result of speaking to some of the job finders - and I am not talking about the Job finders programme that he hired, the job finders programme that was in place when he took over -many of the people who were classified as employable are not employable. The previous government always operated on the basis that you are looking at approximately 10,000 unemployed employable single people. He shakes his head; he would rather have it 20,000. Well, he's going to have to produce the facts. He's going to have to speak to the Vancouver Resources Board, and go and take a look at the project that they operated, and see that for every 10 people who were sent in as employable persons, only six were found to be employable. So you're not looking at the large numbers.

But what I want to get down to is: how much money is the government spending on welfare for the unemployed employables? The Liberal leader (Mr. Gibson) suggested it was 10 per cent of the social allowance budget. The estimation that we, the previous government, had was something of the order of $16 million. I'm going to talk about figures now and not percentages. We estimated that probably $16 million was being spent on about 10,000 unemployed employables who rolled over at the rate of about 50 per cent per month from the caseload. They would come on five or six months later, depending on what season of the year it was and what the unemployment situation was. But the important thing is that there was a rollover.

Now the question of the $16 million is an important one. The last budget I was responsible for in the ministry was $516 million, of which we projected that there would be something like a maximum of $16 million spent on the unemployed employables. If that's the case, and we believe that it was the case, we now move to the issue of fraud, because I want to include in there some of the points that have been made over the past year by the minister.

[ Page 1867 ]

He has been quoted as saying that fraud in the welfare system is as high as from $40 million to $80 million. He's said that, and that's based on some figures that were given to him by somebody, and then he made a projection and he indicated that the fraud was $40 million to $80 million. Well, he may be right, because he's going to save $ 100 million. Presumably he's discovered all this fraud and he's stopped it. In order to do that, he's spent about $1 million hiring people who do audit, people who do what the first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) said -peer, peek and peep. He's done all of that, spent about $1 million.

What we've been trying to get from that minister is some indication from his point of view based on some reasonable facts as to how much fraud is there. How much fraud? You know, he told us about the Surrey problem earlier last year. Well, you know, the Surrey problem was his problem when he was mayor of Surrey. You know, he talked about fraud in Surrey, he talked about the job-finder programme in Surrey, he talked about how difficult it was in Surrey. He was the mayor; he was responsible. The one thing he didn't talk about was the overrun that they had in Surrey when he was mayor. Ah, yes, that minister, when he was the mayor of Surrey, was responsible for a $3 million overrun in their budget of $11 million. Yes. They had an overrun and his city manager came to see us. Yes, check with your comptroller.

He came to see us and said: "We're in trouble in Surrey. We haven't estimated enough money for our welfare budget." Then the deputy minister came to see me and he said: "They're in trouble in Surrey. They've overspent. They haven't allowed enough money." I said: "How much do they need?" He said: "Well, they need $3 million." They budgeted $11 million, but they actually needed $14 million. Yes, and there was I. One who dealt with an overrun in the department was dealing with an overrun in Surrey by the mayor of Surrey, who was responsible at the time, who became my successor. His great forte was: "I'm much more efficient; I'm much more capable." But he didn't tell anybody about the overrun. He didn't tell anybody. A 30 per cent overrun - 31 per cent - on an $11 million budget! He couldn't make an accurate prediction of what they were going to need in Surrey.

MS. BROWN: Shocking!

MR. LEVI: Shocking? Sure, it's shocking. Shocking! He never came to terms with the problem in Surrey when he was the mayor. But we're not dealing with his role as mayor. We're dealing with his role as the minister.

So I just want to conclude what I was talking about on the fraud. So we talked about 10,000 unemployed employables - and the minister may come up with 16,000 but he's got to bring me some facts so we can look at it - and a cost of about $16 million.

Now what about the poor? What are we dealing with? He's been quoted as saying $40 million to $80 million, and then another time he's been saying that it's probably between 3 and 5 per cent. Well, if it's between 3 and 5 per cent and you're spending $16 million on that particular category, you're looking at some kind of a problem in the area of around $800,000. But his solution to remedying that problem of $800,000 is to set up a police force and hunt-and-chase branch for over $ 1, million.

You know, he's fond of saying that they have accountability there. Yes, they have accountability, and what's it based on? Is he telling us that once he became the minister he set up an accountability system whereby he got a reporting of the facts, or is he saying that there was an accountability system that was in place, which it was, and they were able to iron out some of the kinks and keep up the accountability?

I accept that accountability is important. That's why we set up the system that he so often talks about. That system was in place when he came in. There was a recognition that you have to have that kind of accountability, particularly when you're happening to spend so much money as we were having to spend to take care of most of the damage that had been caused by the previous Social Credit government. Certainly we taxed the system. You know, we taxed the system of accountability in such a way that we had to be able to be reasonably sure that we got away from the kind of accounting system, Mr. Chairman, that existed previously.

It took a great deal of time for us to be able to overcome a system that was inherited from the previous government, which in 1968 and 1969 had a 24 per cent overrun under the previous Social Credit government. In 1969 and 1970, it had an 18 per cent overrun. In 1970 and 1971, it had a 36 per cent overrun. Then, as the accountability system came in, you had, for instance, in 1972-73 - that was the last budget, Mr. Chairman, that the previous government was responsible for - a 23 per cent overrun. The following year, the overrun dropped to 14 per cent.

Because we're dealing with open-ended programmes and having to take care of the needs of the people, when you're prepared to move from strict, stringent regulations and definitions of who is a handicapped person into something that is humane and reasonable, the system is going to come under stress. People are going to come forward and they're going to make application for assistance. That's what we found with the handicapped. We found it with senior citizens. What we had to do was to meet the needs of these people.

Yet prior to the last election, all of this kind of

[ Page 1868 ]

work that was done in terms of meeting the needs of people was turned around into some kind of negative, wasteful kind of system in dealing with people. It was as though, when that government came in, they set out to show that the previous government spent over $100 million more than it should have done on people. They were going to turn around and show that they could save $ 100 million on people.

MR. BARRETT: Give it to millionaires.

MR , LEVI: We'll deal with that one soon - the millionaires.

It seems that's what they set out to do. But do you know what? In the last three or four months the credibility of that minister and that department has suffered greatly in this province. It's not just because of the way they treat the handicapped or because they destroyed Mincome. The Premier went around the province saying they would make it better; they would index it. They didn't index it. He got upset, that Premier, during the budget debate. He said we trotted out our old speeches. The reason we trotted out our old speeches, Mr. Premier, is simply that those speeches are appropriate to what's going on now because they went on in 1972, and we're right back to 1972. We have made no progress with this government - except we have something unique. The uniqueness really relates to the fact that they are saving money by looting it from the pockets of the poor people. That's how they're saving money.

Somebody has got to stand up over there and tell us what they mean when they say they want to be equitable and they want to give to only those people who are in dire need. We know what dire need is now.

MR. BARRETT: The millionaires!

MR. LEVI: Any person over the age of 65 in this province is in dire need....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Time.

MR. LEVI: It's time already? Let me just finish, Mr. Chairman.

, . . simply because they need homemaker service. The Premier treats it lightly. We know where he stands. He stands with the rest of those millionaires. Give us ours, but the other people can't have theirs.

MR. G.V. LAUK (Vancouver Centre): I've just been going through some of the correspondence that the minister has asked for. I've editorialized a bit because most of the correspondence is a bit too harsh and unparliamentary. I don't want to unduly upset the minister.

MR. BARRETT: Does it use the same kind of language he did?

MR. LAUK: He has a somewhat protected life. He's had a little bit of a rose-colored look to society generally. He's the kind of person who feels that you've got to have the initiative in this life and to get out there and inherit a business or a department store. He's the kind of person who believes the disabled and the people who are incapable of providing for their own livelihood in society really have to be assessed some blame in some way. He doesn't think in terms of "I am my brother's keeper." He thinks in terms of "Everybody has to pull his own weight, " either from a wheelchair or a millionaire's office chair. It doesn't make too much difference to him. Everybody's got an equal opportunity in this society. Because they are disabled or have financial and cultural barriers to making a livelihood, well, that's their problem, not his. It's a businessmen's government, Mr. Chairman, and this minister represents that businessman's government more so than, I think, any other portfolio.

Let me tell you about the last businessmen's government in the province of British Columbia. It was called the Tolmie administration. It was elected in 1929 and it consisted of a cabinet of the most distinguished industrialists in British Columbia. Do you remember the Tolmie administration? The hon. member for Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem) remembers it very well, 1929-1933; he was a young man of 40 in those days. He has a very clear recollection of the Tolmie administration. It was known in those days, as you will recall, Mr. Member for Dewdney, as the businessmen's government. The businessmen's government was translated easily into the big businessmen's government.

We here call this administration the bottom-line government. Well, you know, running through their record of government, Mr. Chairman, they weren't a fraction as bad, in terms of bottom-line economics, as this present administration is. The Liberal opposition in those days put the Tolmie government, the Tory government, under a lot of heat. I'm quoting from The Rush for Spoils by Martin Robin. He says:

"The heaviest Liberal fire was directed by W.C. Shelly, the Finance minister, whose chief qualification for office was his considerable private fortune accumulated through the manipulation of bakeries, tire companies, resorts, oil companies and grain exports. According to Professor Soward of the University of British Columbia, Mr. Shelly had sharply increased his availability for the Finance portfolio through heavy campaign contributions. Shelly's sole previous government position was as an alderman for Vancouver in 1920, and there were many occasions on which he wished he was back in

[ Page 1869 ]

the safe obscurity of the city council."

I wonder if the present minister doesn't have romantic, nostalgic views of his position as the reeve of Surrey. Dealing with this minister's vote:

"Shelly's first budget was utterly inconsequential. Enamored of the status quo, the Tories" - and for that you read the modern Socreds - "neither increased or decreased taxes. The sole major change in fiscal policy during the first session was a reduction in succession duties, a concession to the wealthy. The high expenditure rate on public works, necessary to feed the party machine, was maintained, and the new government called for loans. . . ."

"As for welfare legislation, the Finance minister contented himself with a warning against the rising tide of paternalistic legislation. After expressing his alarm over the rising welfare expenditures on hospitals . .

Can you imagine - hospitals evil?

". . . mothers' pensions, and old-age pensions, Shelly warned the people of the province to view with caution and concern any further proposals of a paternal nature which eat away at the capitalist system."

That was the businessmen's government, Mr. Chairman. Let me describe to you its death throes, maybe as a warning to the Minister of Human Resources and to the Premier:

"The Tory ship was effectively sunk by the spring of 1933. For the Conservative Party, the legislative session which began on February 23 was a dreary exercise in futility. The House members met early and agreed on a minimal co-operation necessary to prevent a House defeat. Otherwise the members spent most of their time plotting, hiding and mulling over graceful ways of abandoning the ship.

"The Tolmie-ites offered up dull legislative fare. The people wanted work and wages. They were fed instead a stern economy diet."

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please, hon. member. Could the hon. member please show how this relates to the minister's vote?

MR. LAUK: I think it was Sir Barnett Cocks who said, Mr. Chairman, that a good Speaker allows the speaker at least some time towards the gravemen of his point.

MR. KAHL: You only have 30 minutes.

MR. LAUK: I'll repeat the phrase:

"The people wanted work and wages. They were fed instead a stern economy diet.

"Quoting the Minister of Finance of the day: 'Paternalism in government has been of a volume such as to impair the development and maintenance of our national assets.' The Jones budget called for drastic cuts. Aid to hospitals and charitable institutions was sharply reduced; the municipalities were squeezed by reductions in revenues; school grants were lowered, as were teachers' salaries and civil servants' pay. To the workers, the unemployed, the salaried middle class, it was a final reminder that provincial Tourism was dead."

Now my point is simply this, Mr. Chairman: bottom-line economy in government is always a disaster. Business and government are two separate things. You cannot run a government on a business basis in the way that private business runs its own business. That is ridiculous. It is a disaster. The parameters or the criteria for running a private business are totally different from those for running a government. You can run a government efficiently but you cannot run it on a bottom-line, business basis, because when you do you forget the one essential ingredient of government that must never be forgotten, and that's humanity.

Now let's see how it has been expressed through this minister. In my riding, Mr. Chairman, there was a very serious problem - and there is a serious problem - which was brought to the attention of the minister as long ago as February, 1976, within less than a month of that minister being sworn in to office. He has virtually avoided and/or ignored and neglected this problem in my riding. The problem is that under existing New Democratic legislation, the minister has the power to investigate and report instances where the rent-control legislation of this province should be imposed.

In the downtown east side of the Vancouver Centre constituency, Mr. Chairman, there are many people who live in hotel accommodation which in all characteristics is permanent residential accommodation. This situation has been extreme for the past two years. The New Democratic Party introduced legislation to try and alleviate it. We provided for a provision where the minister would investigate the situations, report them to the rentals man, and the rentals man was compelled to investigate and bring about the provisions of the Rent-control Act.

On August 19,1976, a letter went forward to the hon. the minister from the First United Church of the downtown east side of my riding, Mr. Chairman. It pointed out the tremendous problem that this caused. We got situations where it was in the form of false economy, Mr. Chairman. People who moved into this hotel residential accommodation would be charged any amount in rent, and they were on welfare or disabled pensions.

[ Page 1870 ]

The landlord, on the other hand, would take rent say for two weeks or a month, and at the first sign of trouble from their new tenant they would boot them out without the protection of the Landlord and Tenant Act. These people had already paid two weeks' to a month's rent, and they'd have to go back to the welfare department and say: "I'm without accommodation." Social assistance would have to provide a new rent chit to them. They would go back to another hotel, and the original landlord, Mr. Chairman, creamed off the top that money, taxpayers' money, and the taxpayer would have to refinance that recipient. He'd go to another accommodation and this would be the treadmill of the downtown east side. There's no control over the ripoff artists down there, any excuse would throw them out, and you've got that room empty for the week and a half that's already been paid for. It's an outrageous situation which this minister had on his desk over a year ago, and has done nothing about since.

People have pleaded with him, Mr. Chairman. W.C. Hennessy, on behalf of the First United Church staff team in the area - hardly a political group - wrote a letter to the minister on August 19,1976. He stated:

"Earlier this year we wrote on behalf of the staff team of the First United Church asking that the Landlord and Tenant Act be enforced in residential hotels and rooming houses in downtown Vancouver. In particular, we asked that the ceiling for rent increases be brought under the umbrella of the Landlord and Tenant Act. In your reply you simply suggested that this was not your responsibility.

"Mr. Minister, I would like to emphasize that the prime responsibility is vested with you to afford protection to residents of rooming houses and hotels under the law. I refer your attention to Bill 142, section 7, which received third reading by the Legislature in June, 1975. The bill provides you authority to designate these rooms as a residential premise.

"In our work in the downtown area of Vancouver, we regularly witness rental increases which are devastating to tenants with fixed and low incomes. We realize that some of the rental increases are justified because of increasing operating costs, but are convinced that owners of hotels and rooming houses are using the lack of enforcement to make enormous profits at the expense of their tenants. These are hotels and rooming houses in downtown Vancouver where rent increases over the past couple of years have ranged from 50 to 100 per cent.

"As an example, we enclose copies of correspondence . .

and so on.

What was the minister's reply? Almost a photocopy of his original reply in January. On August 27, he said: "Dear Mr. Hennessy:

"This would acknowledge receipt of your letter of August 19, requesting my support and assistance in pursuit of Landlord and Tenant provision for residential hotels. Again, while I can express sympathy for your concern in this regard, I can only point out that this matter does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Human Resources and any action on my part will not be effective.

"As I indicated in my earlier letter, my suggestion to you is to pursue the matter through the office of the Attorney-General, and present your case there. Certainly, when this matter comes before cabinet, I will have had the benefit of your comments and more clearly assess the situation at that time, but this matter is clearly one that will have to be dealt with through the department of the Attorney General.

"I regret I cannot be of more assistance to you in this regard."

On September 1, Mr. Hennessy writes back:

"We have your reply in response to our further representation on August 19. Your repeated negative responses have left us in a continual state of extreme disturbance and frustration in relation to your denial of prime responsibility under this law - particularly so because our letter of August 19 gave details of the bill under which your authority is vested, and hoped that this statute would be in your possession for confirmation. However, we are not about to give up our firm conviction that you are the minister primarily responsible."

Reply:

"Dear Mr. Hennessy:

"This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of September 1.

"While I again can appreciate your concern for the enforcement of such regulations I would again point out that in the sections of the Act that you relate, the enforcement of these regulations does not fall within the jurisdiction of the Department of Human Resources.

"In the material you supplied me under the miscellaneous statutes you will please note that the authority vested in the Minister of Human Resources is only to report such information as is obtained to the office of the rentals man for his appropriate investigation.

"I must repeat: the enforcement of the Landlord and Tenant Act under the office of the rentals man does not primarily fall under the Minister of Human Resources."

"Dear Mr. Minister." And they send this time a

[ Page 1871 ]

copy of a legal report from the Vancouver Community Legal Assistance Society. Says the lawyer:

"First of all, I should point out that Vander Zalm is correct in saying that his authority is only to report information to the office of the rentalsman. However, if he does not initiate any action by reporting the circumstances to the office of the rentalsman, no one can do anything under that section of the Act. In other words, if any relief is to be obtained under that section of the Act for anyone, action must be initiated by Mr. Vander Zalm."

He also draws to the attention of the United Church that under the Interpretation Act, his deputy minister has the same power, Mr. Chairman.

. "I do not think that there is anything you can do legally to force the minister to report the circumstances to the rentals man. Section 3 (a) says that the minister 'may' report the circumstances to the rentalsman. The use of the word 'may' generally indicates that the minister has a free choice of whether to do so or not.

"You will note, however, that the Act says the rentals man 'shall' investigate upon the minister's report. This means that you could conceivably force the rentalsman to investigate."

No such report from the Minister of Human Resources on a situation that's been going on for two or three years has been made.

, So Mr. Hennessy, on behalf of the First United Church staff team, writes again on December 8,1976. He says:

"Your reply, Mr. Minister, to say the least, is a disappointment in connection with your non-enforcement of the Landlord and Tenant Act. In view of our frustration on behalf of those low-income people who have been faced with enormous difficulties in meeting exorbitant rental increases, it was decided to seek legal advice."

Then he indicates what that legal advice was. Again, no reply.

Finally, the First United Church writes a letter to the Premier dated January 13, the day that this session of the House started. I shall read that letter too. He sends the letter to Mr. Bennett, Mr. Gardom, Mr. Vander Zalm.

"Dear Sits:

"It has been the practice of the First United Church staff to keep in close contact with the cabinet in Victoria concerning issues that affect the people we serve. We thus wish to place before you some top-priority matters we feel need special attention during your initial weeks in office. Universal application of the Landlord and Tenant Act - following from this injustice we would urge that the rent increases for 1976 be limited to 8 per cent, rather than 10.6 per cent." Pardon me, this was in January 13,1976, which was three weeks after they were in office. It was the initial letter. Sorry about that - I intended to read that last. These were brought to the attention of the Premier and the minister in charge. "The basic social welfare rate is now $160 per month for single people, " and they go on.

The final letter to the Premier was on February 3 of this year. It says:

"Dear Mr. Premier:

"Since January, 1976, the First United Church have been trying to convince the Hon. William Vander Zalm, Minister, Department of Human Resources, of his statutory responsibility under section 3 (a) of the Landlord and Tenant Act for those low-income tenants occupying rooms in hotels and rooming houses in downtown Vancouver. We attach copies of the correspondence.

"Since the hon. minister has been unreceptive and has taken no action we have found it necessary to inform you of our utter frustration in the hope that this might lead to a positive response." No positive response has yet been received.

The reason I dealt with this matter at length, Mr. Chairman, is that here is a minister who avoids any responsibility that he feels he doesn't technically have by letter to the people complaining.

This is the same minister who will talk about marketing boards, talk about separatism, talk about every conceivable question that is not under the Human Resources Department that you could imagine, but when it comes to people, he can't face up to it.

We got some very inadequate action, but only when he saw first-hand that the disabled persons were flesh and blood, and they were in his office and they spoke to him and confronted him. This is the kind of minister that lives with rose-coloured glasses and with blinkers on, taking no action unless he's confronted with the reality of the problem, and even then too little, too late.

What did the famous poet say about too little, too late? I'll just read it for you. This is Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. He said: "Too much or too little are treason against property." Treason against property. This is the point I want to make. This is the minister of false economies. We have a minister of non-economic development; now we have a minister of false economies.

There was false economy, for example, in cutting off the Rental Aid Society. Clearly the reply from the minister to the Rental Aid Society was that other services like this can be provided by other services. In

[ Page 1872 ]

other words, it was a Catch-22 situation.

MR. BARRETT: Sleep under the bridge!

MR. LAUK: This was a non-profit, voluntary organization that provided a service for finding accommodation in the downtown or in the city-centre area. It had a pittance in the way of a grant, but think of the social cost factor and think of the other economies - the drain on the provincial and municipal treasuries - by cutting off this kind of service. Did the minister think about that? He thought purely about the political sales job that he was doing on the people of British Columbia. He could save a few pennies in his department at tremendous social and economic costs in other areas of society.

The West End Service to Seniors was cut off -another false economy. Here's a letter that was sent to me on March 10,1976 - a long time ago. It hasn't been renewed; the service has gone defunct. "I would like to share with you our concern regarding the termination of funding for West End Service to Seniors by the Minister of Human Resources." I'm going to read this letter next year and, if there's not a general election, I'll read it the year after.

"West End Service to Seniors is a home-aid project that has been assisting senior citizens and handicapped persons in the West End for over three years. The staff of eight provides a variety of services: grocery shopping, house cleaning, escorting to medical appointments, medically recommended outdoor exercise, recreation and other services to over 650 old-age pensioners and disabled persons in the West End of Vancouver. This enables individuals to enable functioning in their own homes at a more satisfactory level than would be otherwise possible. It is a service used by local doctors, hospitals, Human Resources personnel, Victorian Order of Nurses and community-care teams, among others."

Their letters of testimony were attached, Mr. Chairman, indicating in dollars and cents the tremendous saving to those agencies funded by the provincial government because of this other service.

"The reason for withdrawal of funding is, to quote the deputy minister: '. . . the fact that home-help services of the nature provided by your organization are available from staff from other sources, ' a fact that even local Human Resources staff would be quick to dispute. See letters attached. These services are not presently available."

The letters attached from the minister's own personnel indicate that they were not.

"Our concern is how this decision will affect the elderly population of the West End, an area of the city with the highest concentration of senior citizens. We would most appreciate anything you could do on our behalf to enable us to continue this service."

Mr. Chairman, in the year that has gone by, I've investigated what has happened to the great many of the 650 people who received that service. A great many of them have had to enter chronic-care situations at a great cost to the public purse and to their families. They would not otherwise have had to go and have had to expend had a service like this and others like it been available. This is the test of the hard, bottom-line economy type of government that we have here - penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Can you see a greater example than this? A very low-cost service to elderly and disabled people, providing them with a little bit of human dignity and allowing them to live on their own, independent of major public service, was cut off to save a few pennies. It cost society at large hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital and chronic care and medical services. This is not even to talk about the social cost to these people who have little or nothing to look forward to in a day and who are for one reason or other unable to do the normal, functional routine of the average working family in this province. They can't go out and buy their groceries on their own. They can't go out and have a ride or a walk in the park without some assistance. Providing them with a little dignity and a little enjoyment out of life in their twilight years has never occurred to this minister. It never occurred and doesn't occur today.

I'll read this letter next year. Here's what's happened to a few of them in Nicholson Towers. There was an old-age couple who were arthritically crippled, virtually crippled, who were on old-age assistance and Mincome, who used this service once a week with other old-age pensioners in the area to go for a ride in the park. One of them played checkers and the other just sat and watched. It was clear from the physician to these two people that after this service was cut off, these two people deteriorated rapidly, both having the same physical medical problem. He's a medical man and he attributes that to the lack of alternatives in the week in recreation and other things. They were stuck in their home; they had no family to take care of them and take them out. This very modest service was cut off by a very callous administration.

This is how it is demonstrated at the "people" level. We can talk here about economic cost, and I've told you how I feel this minister is economically foolish. You don't run a government department the same way you run a tulip business. You don't weed out the weakling human beings in society; you protect them and give them some dignity in life. You don't go through them like you go through a bed of

[ Page 1873 ]

tulips and pick out the weeds and the weakling flowers.

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: Dim bulb indeed.

I think the minister sometimes believes what he says. But he's mistaken, Mr. Chairman, because it does affect people down the line and he isn't looking at that problem. The disabled persons came to him the other day and confronted him with a problem and he did something about it which was totally inadequate and silly. If he really believed in and if he really understands the effect of that new programme of rental aid to disabled persons, he'll know perfectly well that it's just a political snow job. If he believes that, he is not being honest with the people of British Columbia. The disabled people say that, yes, the minister says the employability is the criterion; if you're employable, you’re off disabled pension. Well, yes, Mr. Chairman, through you to the minister, employability is a criterion. I can provide you with 2,000 disabled persons tomorrow or the next day, if you like, with their skills written right beside their names and addresses, and you provide them with the jobs - if employability is the criterion. I agree with you. You provide them with the jobs before you cut them off the pension.

You can't even find jobs for people who are able-bodied and who can work in any job, and you're saying employability is the criterion. What an absolute mockery of human justice that is - when you take advantage of suffering. The list of jobs should be available for 2,000 disabled persons, many of whom have been cut off from disabled pensions they received under our administration. They have tried jobs. They have gone off the disabled pension. They've tried these jobs. When they've come back after they got laid off, for some reason or another, they were told: "No, you no longer fit the criterion." Employability is the criterion. These people have tried to get off the public dole and their payment for it was a technical rejection of them as disabled pensioners. This is the kind of callous minister and administration we have. It doesn't get many votes to talk about disabled persons and old-age pensioners because they are very few in number.

I know you're upset about the red light, Mr. Chairman, and so am 1. But let me tell you something. Whether it gets votes or not, you have to take care of people who are cut off from the mainstream of society and cannot take care of themselves. It's not enough to walk around in a millionaire's coat and talk to these people....

MR. W. DAVIDSON (Delta): Time.

MR. LAUK: Oh, here we have the member for

Delta. He sits on a hospital board in his riding, and he is telling me, "Time." Time is running out for the people I'm talking about, too, Mr. Chairman, through you to the member. Time is running out for them and as time runs out for them, time runs out for that government.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before we proceed to the next member, the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) , just a caution to the members of the House. "An attempt to influence the course of a debate by the reading of arguments or letters from persons of authority is repugnant to the spirit of the debate, " says Mr. May. Just in case the members of the House would fall into the habit, I would give you that caution today. The member for New Westminster has the floor.

MR. COCKE: The context, please.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The citation is 18th edition of May.

MR. COCKE: No, no, no, no. You read us one line out of May. I mean, in what context?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Page 405. 1 was just cautioning the member who just finished his speech.

MR. BARRETT: You mean that if you read the letter from a citizen to the minister...

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. On a point of order, the member for Prince Rupert.

MR. LEA: Mr. Chairman, I don't quite understand what you are trying to get at. What sort of thing is it that we are not supposed to do - in specifies?

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, the Chair observed the last member making his speech very closely and, although the Chair didn't wish to interrupt the member's speech, it nonetheless observed that, in the course of his speech, he read several rather lengthy letters. Just so the House doesn't fall into the regular pattern of doing this, the caution was read for all members to observe.

MR. LEA: But, Mr. Chairman, I still don't quite follow your meaning. Maybe I am just dense. But I just don't follow what you feel is being done that borders on what shouldn't be done.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Maybe I should read the

[ Page 1874 ]

citation again.

MR. LEA: Yes, but I would like you to explain it in your own words.

MR. CHAIRMAN: "An attempt to influence the course of a debate by the reading of arguments or letters from persons of authority outside is repugnant to the spirit of the debate." It's on page 405 and you, perhaps, would like to use some time other than the time of the committee to review it. The member for New Westminster.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, you and I have been here for the same length of time and we have heard letters and newspaper items ad infinitum, quoting authority ad infinitum. I would like to read the whole paragraph sometime and I will at my leisure, as I will read, Mr Chairman, a letter this afternoon - or parts of it - in order to place before this committee some of the arguments that I think are necessary in order to validate a point.

[Mr. Barrett in the chair.]

MR. COCKE: Holy mackerel!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Member, you have a point of order?

MR. LAUK: The Chair warned me, Mr. Chairman, about the reading of letters and cited May. I should point out that that particular citation relates only to the reading of legal opinions and other authoritative written materials in committee or in the House. I am sure the Chairman did not mean letters from constituents or letters raising examples of hardship and suffering brought about by this crushing and insensitive government.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Member, please do not editorialize on a point of order. The Chair was obviously referring to authoritative letters rather than letters from one's constituents, who have an appeal directly through a member.

MR. LAUK: Thank you very much.

MR. COCKE: It's a delight to have such a fair-minded Chairman.

Well, Mr. Chairman, after three years and some months of New Democratic Party administration in this province, we saw an actual reduction in crime. We saw an actual reduction in the use of drugs. If anybody would like to look at the record, it's very clearly available. A little more than three years ago, in every city in this province, we were noticing that there was quite a drug cult growing. Each of those areas was terribly concerned. I suggest that now there has been a tremendous reduction in many areas and a lot of it because of the fact that we - the ones who were accused by the former opposition of being opposed to volunteer activity - had created sufficient volunteer activity in order to offset some of the problems that were growing in our communities.

I think it's important for us to understand that many of these programmes now have been dismantled by a government that has no eyes for anything except to vindicate all their prophetic statements made when they were in opposition. Mr. Chairman, I think it's not a fluke that we are now again faced with a situation where community-development-minded people all over this province are crying out at a government that many of them supported to get to where it was, and now are terribly unhappy with what they did on election day - with good reason. I say that there is less volunteer activity in every community in this province as a result of the granting policy of this new government. I will cite you an example or two that I'm sure will convince you, Mr. Chairman - a fair-minded Chairman, to say the least. Withdrawing financial support from preventive programmes in this province is tantamount to encouraging increased use of drugs and criminal activity. There's no question in my mind and I'm sure there's no question in any fair-minded person's mind.

Mr. Chairman, if you wish, you might call me a bleeding heart. I prefer to say that I'm a concerned person for the welfare and protection of society. I'm not a bleeding heart for a government that's protecting them by their callous withdrawal of preventive programmes.

Let me put you in touch with one specific programme so that you get an idea of what I'm talking about. I'd like to quote from a letter dated January 31 1977, written to a Mrs. G. Matheson, chairperson of the YM-YWCA in New Westminster. It's signed by a K. Levitt, regional director of region 13 in the Department of Human Resources. I'll only read you the first paragraph of the letter; it's short and sweet.

"I regret to inform you that due to a reduction of funds available in our community grants programme, we are unable to approve a grant to the detached youth programme for 1977-78."

Let me tell you about that programme, Mr. Chairman. A few years ago in New Westminster, we had groups of youths running the streets. The police couldn't handle them. The community was in trouble; they were in trouble. There was excessive use of drugs. The school was in trouble because the influence was expanding. Everyone in our town recognized that something must be done.

That very conservative organization - in many people's minds - the YM-YWCA, picked up the

[ Page 1875 ]

challenge. They had a centre right in the middle of town; they were approachable. People in our community were saying: "What can we do about this need? How can we fill the vacuum that's been created due to lack of programmes for this specific group?" Oh, Mr. Chairman, we've got programmes coming out our ears. For athletically inclined children, every park in our town is full of kids playing soccer and baseball; the rinks are all full of kids playing hockey; lacrosse boxes are still filled in New Westminster, if they're not elsewhere; but, Mr. Chairman, there were no programmes for these people - none whatsoever.

So the YM-YW did come up with a programme, and that programme was called the Detached Youth Programme in New Westminster. They put workers on the street - up to recently, four in number, and a number of volunteers - seeing to it that there were activities for these kids to give them a direction other than the one they had been following. I tell you, Mr. Chairman, it was one of the most successful programmes that we've ever seen in our area. We have never seen a programme that was, right from the outset, so obviously working, as this one did.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to read you parts of a letter. As a matter of fact, I believe this letter is important enough to read you the whole thing.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, the government Whip (Mr. Mussallem) over there has some objection. If he wishes to raise an objection he can stand in his place and raise that objection.

Mr. Chairman, this letter is dated March 1,1977. It's written to Mrs. Lee Irwin, co-ordinator of the Detached Youth Programme. It is signed by the police chief in New Westminster, R.C. Carey, chief constable. He's a very responsible person and well regarded in our community by all sections of that community. What does that chief of police say about this programme? He said:

"Dear Mrs. Irwin:

"I was sorry to hear that the provincial funding for your programme has been curtailed. For your information, when you are speaking to the authorities for possible continuance of funding, you may advise them that I personally support your programme, as does our juvenile office."

He went on to say, Mr. Chairman:

"Whenever we have had occasion to contact the Detached Youth Programme, we have been helped in our immediate problem. During the winter of 1975-76, we did have a problem with four youth groups in different areas of the city. Street workers were supplied by you and the problem was resolved in a short time due to the support of your group."

Mr. Chairman, this is important material, and it's material that has gone across the desk of the minister:

"The Simcoe Park area and the Queensborough area received a lot of attention from the DYP. We consider the DYP of New Westminster YM-YW a valued resource, and at times we would have been hard-pressed without them to count upon. I take this opportunity to thank you for your help in the past and, hopefully, the Human Resources branch will have a change of heart and once again fund your project."

AN HON. MEMBER: What heart?

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, what is the obvious alternative? The obvious alternative is catering to the needs of mobsters, catering to the needs of the pushers. That's what I see as the alternative here, Mr. Chairman - nothing more, nothing less.

Mr. Chairman, I'll read you an excerpt from another letter. This is from C.R. Day, youth and family consultant:

"The programme has provided a focus on preventive work with young people. In our present society, the need for such a service is clearly evident. I view with concern the decision of the Ministry of Human Resources to withdraw funding from this programme. It is my sincere hope that this decision might be reconsidered and that alternate ways might be found to keep this programme in the community."

I remember how they fought for that programme in the first place. They identified the need, Mr. Chairman, and until the New Democratic Party was government, nothing happened from government, but when that occurred, when that fine day happened in August, 1972, they were able to approach an approachable government and receive the help.

The government that we have now will put us in the glue, will put us in debt in the long run, because they are not doing the preventive work, the work that will have to be done down the road as a result of their callous attitude, and their inactivity in areas such as this will be work with crime that's so expensive and work with those who have been drug-abused which is terribly expensive. You have to get to them first; you have to get to the kids before the pushers get to the kids.

The corporation of the City of New Westminster instructed their city clerk to write to the Hon. William N. Vander Zalm, Minister of Human Resources. - Let me quote a paragraph or two from the letter. Naturally it begins by saying: "At a council committee meeting" . . . blah, blah, blah . . . "of the whole. . . ." But let me get into the real heart of this letter that's important.

[ Page 1876 ]

" This programme, which provides a recreation and counselling service to approximately 400 young people in our city, cannot operate without this funding and will have to cease operations at the beginning of April, the committee was advised. The provincial government funding provides full salaries of all workers except that of Mrs. Irwin, whose salary is provided between the Department of Human Resources and the YM-YWCA.

"City council urges in the strongest possible way that reconsideration be given by your department to the funding of this very worthy and much-needed programme which has no parallel in this area and which has council's full support."

Full support, yes, and financial support. If the minister knew anything about it and did his homework, he would know that. It's interesting to hear that.

Mr. Chairman, I won't bore you with all the letters that I could, but let me tell you that there are letters from the city recreation departments, letters from the alternate school where they have been providing service for many of the same group of people. Will the minister and will that government ever understand that preventive work is so much less expensive than remedial? The Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland) , if, God forbid, he lasts that long, will be taking care of many of these people who have been overlooked now. I'm not wishing you poor health - just an unsatisfactory situation at the polls, Mr. Minister.

The Attorney-General will be the recipient of many of these problems in the long run if they're not cared for now. But you see, Mr. Chairman, what I'm trying to point out is the total callous attitude of a government that's absolutely preoccupied with the bottom line today, and seeing to it that some government in the future is going to have a bottom line that they can't cope with because of the stupidity of ignoring prevention. It's absolutely bound to occur. I would be less than charitable if I didn't say that maybe they don't understand what they're doing.

But how long does it take to get the message across or to get the message through? In some people's minds, this callous withdrawal of preventive programmes is tantamount to pushing. Some people feel that's exactly what this kind of activity is. It's tantamount to pushing criminal activities, tantamount to pushing drugs.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Member, you're not implying that of the minister, yourself?

MR. COCKE: No. I just say that in some people's minds, Mr. Chairman, this kind of activity - whether it's intentional or otherwise - is tantamount to encouraging that kind of activity. Mr. Chairman, as that programme dies, the problem grows, and we've got programmes all over this province dying as a result of a government which turned its back on their basic reason for being. Remember, all the time we were government, they were yowling and screaming their heads off about how they preferred to do things that encouraged volunteer activity.

This is a programme that encourages volunteer activity! And so many of the programmes that encourage volunteer activity have found themselves washed out. It's cynical - getting to government, then turning your back on the very thing which you said you stood for.

Well, Mr. Chairman, forgiveness is going to be very hard for some of us to attain. The Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland) can talk all he likes about vicious attacks and all the rest of it. I just hope that as a result of some of us over here standing up and indicating strongly enough that there are problems out there, at least these people will take a look around them and try their level best to understand what's needed in our province and to understand that there's something more to it than going around making populist statements that appeal to many who don't really understand the significant need that we enjoy at the present time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your rapt attention.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, we're waiting for the minister to answer some of the questions that have been raised.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Madame Member. Does the minister wish to respond? He can stand in his place.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I can't recall any questions being asked by the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) . He raised a point about the organization in New Westminster with whom I'm meeting next week. Other than that, I don't recall any questions being raised.

MR. GIBSON: The minister wants some questions. I asked him a question he hasn't answered. I asked him how many single unemployed employables on welfare there are in total and how many he has cut off. He was very proud of that and he implied that there's where the money was being saved. I don't think that's where the money is being saved. I think he's under spending in other programmes. Would he give us those numbers? That's a very clear question he didn't answer.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman,

[ Page 1877 ]

certainly I agree there's money being saved in other areas. It's not at the cost of cutting back on a programme, but we are seeing reduced numbers in many areas, and the savings are considerable.

MR. GIBSON: What are the numbers?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: And not only savings in dollars. With the reference to PREP, where the question was raised, I think there's a great saving in the dignity for the people that are being helped, and this is difficult to put a price on.

MR. GIBSON: I'll be so brief. I wasn't asking the minister to put a price on anything. He's bragging about the number of unemployed employables that are single that have been cut off welfare. I want to know how many. If he's going to brag about it, I want to know how many. I want to know how many in that category are totally on welfare, because the minister knows that it's very few. The real problems of the social assistance system in this province relate to people of unquestioned need. I would like the minister to give this House those numbers that he's trying to use as his excuse for the way he's running his department.

MR. LEA: I think it's probably indicative of the manner in which groups and individuals are handled in the statement just made by the minister. After the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) took his place in this debate and laid out a number of problems with a specific group in his riding - and I think did it very well - the minister gets up and says: "What do I have to say? He didn't ask a question." When the handicapped and elderly go to that minister and lay out before him the problems they face and go away, and don't get any help, what does he say? "They didn't ask a question. All they did was tell me the problem." Is that the kind of attitude we're going to get?

You don't have to ask a specific question on a problem. When you lay it out in understandable terms, surely the minister has enough intelligence to sort out that it is a problem, and can answer questions on that alone.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman, in answer to the member for Prince Rupert, I not only welcome questions and suggestions from all groups everywhere, but I go out to various constituencies, including that member's constituency, and I will voluntarily address groups and I would welcome the opportunity again. I do not wait for the questions, as he suggested, but I will certainly volunteer information and I'll seek feedback from all groups. It's worked extremely well.

MRS. E.E. DAILLY (Burnaby North): I'm glad to hear the minister say that he goes out and seeks information, and he's glad to meet people. I have a question to ask the minister, in view of that statement. Why have you not discussed with the Burnaby council this whole area of decentralization of the Human Resources services in Burnaby? Now it's my understanding that this move has been made and is ready to go ahead without any real discussion with the Burnaby council. I would like to hear the minister's response to that. I'm not a professional in this area of social services at all, so on behalf of the people who do work for the Human Resources department, though, I do wish to pose a few more questions to the minister before you respond on the other. Primarily, have you done any real, specific research - or was it done before - to the advantages of Burnaby, which is one of the largest municipalities in the province, of being changed from their present system into this new decentralization format? From my understanding, the Burnaby Human Resources department has operated very efficiently and very well. As the MLA for Burnaby North anyway for more than 10 years now, I have had very few complaints on the administration of the department. This does not mean that the people who have to go down and obtain social service are happy, of course, with the procedure which, of course, many times does not reflect on the administration there, but on the edicts, et cetera, which come from the ministry.

I'm sure the minister, when he was mayor, must have been aware of the ordeal that people face when they have to walk in and apply for welfare. So I often find it very ironic when we hear thumping on the other side about there are too many people on welfare. I would suggest that some of those people go down and actually go in the lineup and go through the ordeal of what it does to your human dignity to have to apply for welfare for the very first time. I would think you would find that it's the very last step which most of our citizens want to take.

I don't want to get off the basic question, Mr. Minister. What kind of research has been done on this decentralization move for Human Resources in Burnaby? What are the advantages? Basically, according to the reports I have, Victoria does have a decentralized system now and it employs 280 staff members whereas Burnaby's present system requires a mere 70.

1 know this minister has gone on record over and over again talking about waste in government, and he and his fellow colleagues have said they were going to bring about efficiency and less expenditure. Yet here we have members of the department who work there themselves who are basically concerned, not with their own particular needs but with best serving the citizens of Burnaby. They're very concerned that perhaps this move is being done a little too quickly.

[ Page 1878 ]

They feel that it will not be efficient and it will not be to the advantage of the citizens of Burnaby. As I say, I'm not professional, so I'm quite willing to hear the reasons from the minister on why you're moving into this. I can assure you there's a lot of concern in Burnaby about it. Could we hear some comment?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Well, Mr. Chairman, of course there was pressure on for some considerable time from Burnaby as well as from other municipalities for us to move in and take over the administration of social services in their municipality. When we acceded to that request, it was not a municipal operation any more; it became part of a region. Therefore we did not have to have a central municipal office. Rather, we could concentrate on providing the offices to a spot where we could service the greatest number of people easiest.

While I've not formally met with the Burnaby municipal council, I've talked to different members of council and I know that within the council there's a difference of opinion as to what would be the best model. But certainly most of our findings are based on their very own municipal study, which shows bus routes, population centres, jobs, commerce and industry, and which would indicate that the direction we're moving now - which is to decentralize and provide the offices nearest to the people - is, in effect, what was projected and wanted throughout the planning process.

However, I have not had pressure from individuals or groups within Burnaby to move away from the concept which has been proposed by our administration. I have had a request from Burnaby council very recently to come to council and give an explanation as to why it is and what it is, but no expression from council one way or the other. The only formal opposition to the proposal - and it may be that this particular opposition is valid in many respects - comes from the staff.

I appreciate that for them, aside from all of the other concerns expressed, the central location is convenient, there is plenty of parking, there are other services in the municipal complex which will serve a very beautiful building which is presently used by Human Resources. But I will continue to maintain that our first consideration must be providing the service to the people of Burnaby. I think we can do it well through the proposal that has now been put forth. However, I'm still prepared to meet with council and look at their suggestions as well.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, before we proceed to possible adjournment, I would like to take this opportunity to clarifying the question raised about reading letters in the House. The exact quote, to the member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) was from Sir Erskine May:

"An attempt to influence the course of a debate by the reading of arguments or letters from persons of authority outside is repugnant to the spirit of debate, although it has been permitted."

The instance that bears great relevance to your particular question occurred just recently, Mr. Member. I'd like to draw it to your attention and the House's attention.

"In 1885, the Speaker, when consulted privately about the propriety of using in debate a letter from Mr. Gladstone about a bill under discussion, expressed his disapproval of an attempt to carry on debate by proxy."

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Order!

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that clarifies the earlier question raised by the member in result to this.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

The committee, having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. Mr. Williams tabled the annual report of the Labour Relations Board of British Columbia for the year ending December 31,1976.

Hon. Mr. Williams files answers to questions.

Hon. Mr. Williams moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:59 p.m.