[ Page 2939 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Committee of Supply: Ministry of the Attorney-General estimates.

On vote 57.

Ms. Sanford –– 2939

Ms. Brown –– 2940

Mr. Cocke –– 2943

Ms. Brown –– 2944

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 2945

Ms. Brown –– 2947

Mr. Wallace –– 2949

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 2952

On vote 59.

Mr. Wallace –– 2952

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 2954

Mr. Macdonald –– 2955

Mr. Cocke –– 2956

Mr. Levi –– 2958

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 2960

Mr. Levi –– 2961

Mr. Wallace –– 2961

The House met at 8 p.m.

HON. A.V. FRASER (Minister of Highways and Public Works): Mr. Speaker, this evening in the members' gallery is a friend of mine, Mr. Gil McCall, the programme manager of Cariboo Radio, who have radio stations in Quesnel, Williams Lake and 100 Mile House in the good riding of Cariboo. I'd like the House to welcome him.

Orders of the day.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY

OF THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL

(continued)

On vote 57: minister's office, $104,720-

continued.

MS. K.E. SANFORD (Comox): I have a few questions for the Attorney-General, most of which relate to my own riding.

There is one issue that has received publicity throughout the province, and that's the one which relates to the tragic death of Lori Miles, who hanged herself in a Courtenay jail.

The inquest which was held into that tragic suicide death was held May 5 in Courtenay, and the only recommendation that was brought down by the jury at that time was that the cages in the Courtenay jail be removed.

The cages which are there have ceiling bars which enabled Lori Miles to hang herself. Now I have checked with the Courtenay RCMP today, and the recommendations by the jury have as yet not been carried out. Now to me, Mr. Attorney-General, through you, Mr. Chairman, this is a recommendation which should be followed up upon just as quickly as possible. I know that it's now been six weeks at least since the recommendation was made, but at this time there has been no move made to remove those cages in which the inmates are housed.

I would like to mention also at this time that although the jury itself did not bring down any further recommendations, the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) was present at the inquest, and he asked some very specific questions with respect to the knowledge and the ability of the people in charge that evening to deal with lifesaving programmes that might have saved her life. Now they may not have been able to save her life in any case, but the member for Oak Bay, who as everyone knows is a medical doctor, asked the sergeant in charge about the training that the RCMP gave in terms of resuscitation and various other activities related to stimulation of the heart, and we were informed that night by the sergeant in charge that there is a very brief course at the RCMP training college with respect to these skills. There is no attempt at any upgrading or any refresher course at this time. If a constable has been on duty for a number of years and received a brief training while he was going to the RCMP college, it is likely that he is not as familiar with these skills as he should be.

I think that although the jury did not mention this aspect of the questioning that went on that night of the inquest, I would like to pose a question to the Attorney-General with respect to upgrading programmes in terms of lifesaving skills. The RCMP are often called upon to administer first aid at accidents at various times at which they are called to provide lifesaving services. Yet if they have only a very brief training on this important aspect of the police training, then I think some programme should be initiated in order to upgrade their skills to ensure that they can apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and that they can apply heart massage when it's needed.

The other thing that I would like to ask about relates to the Courtenay detachment itself. They have been housed in the courthouse in Courtenay for a number of years and the number of people that are working in the Courtenay detachment has grown tremendously. Yet they are expected to work in the same cramped facilities that they were working in a number of years ago.

I know that they have written on several occasions and many approaches have been made to the government with respect to improving the facilities and increasing the office space and so on for the Courtenay RCMP. I think that the conditions in which they have to work are really unacceptable, Mr. Attorney-General, through you, Mr. Chairman. I'm hoping that the Attorney-General tonight can give us some indication of alternates for the Courtenay RCMP detachment - either additional office space or some new unit which they might move into.

The other question I have relates to the treatment of juveniles. I know that you have just introduced a bill this evening, and we certainly don't want to touch on the bill that is now on the order paper, but I would like to have some details with respect to the plans for housing of juveniles at, I think, the Lakeview Centre up near Campbell River. I would like to know how many juveniles are going to be there, when the planning started for housing juveniles in the Lakeview Centre, and for what kind of time frame the young people might be required to stay at the Lakeview Centre. I'd be happy if the Attorney-General could answer some of these questions.

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MS. R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): Mr. Chairman, I want to raise the issue of pornography. I'm raising it only because I know that it's an area in which the Attorney-General has some very strong feelings. His comments in the media leave the impression that he really doesn't know how to deal with it. I thought I would certainly never have an opportunity like this again to give him some free advice.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Okay, but there are witnesses to know that you are listening to what I'm saying. I am really concerned, Mr. Chairman, with the whole business of pornography and obscenity and the increase in British Columbia today. Although I realize that this is under the federal law, the Attorney-General, as the chief law-enforcement officer for the province, is responsible for dealing with it.

First of all, the Law Reform Commission of Canada, in its report which it brought down recently, made some statements to the effect that it really didn't think that morality is a proper matter of our law and that this should be an area which is private and should not be the public concern of government and certainly should not be the public concern of the law. The law is not in a position to legislate morality and we should not be involved in it, they said. In fact, the position taken by the national Law Reform Commission is that the individual should be entitled "to go to hell in his own fashion as long as it does not do harm to others."

This is the question that I want to raise: whether in fact we can say that pornography as we are experiencing it in British Columbia today does not do harm to others; whether in fact the material which is being peddled by the smut shops and the pornographers and other people - the outpouring of the industry - really in fact does not do harm to others.

I know that the Attorney-General, in his statement on this, made some comment about the Canadian community standard, and said that it's up to us to judge and decide what those standards might be. I want to ask him how any of us, with any degree of certainty, can say that in fact the pornography which is pouring into this country - because I recognize that most of it doesn't originate here - is not having some kind of influence on the minds of people in this country, certainly on the naive and inexperienced mind.

If we want to get into some kind of philosophical question as to. whether the state should or should not intervene into what is moral or what is immoral, surely we have to take into account the question of what influence this has on the crimes, for example, which are committed in this country. I know the Attorney-General will remember the recent incident in Ottawa where a young man bound and gagged and raped a woman, then killed her and then turned a gun on himself and killed himself. When his room was examined it was found that he had all of these pornographic magazines dealing with bondage and all these other kinds of things, as well as a diary which outlined his interest and intrigue with the whole question of torture and bondage and these kinds of things.

So I say to the Attorney-General that we surely cannot continue to say that this kind of material does not harm anyone. There is ample evidence to back up and support those of us who believe that the pornographic material which is pouring across our borders and which is increasing in Canada today is having some kind of impact and in some real way is influencing the kind of crimes which we are experiencing in'this province today.

I want to recommend to the Attorney-General a paper written by Mr. Allan Lawrence, the MP for Northumberland-Durham, which was presented January 18 this year, dealing with this whole area of pornography. He is certainly linking it with the crimes of murder and rape - certainly offences against women - as a result of what we've come to realize as an addiction on the part of some people to pornographic material.

But the thing that really alarms me is the link that is now being made between pornography and violence and as it is being used in the media. First of all, I want to start out by talking about the link between sexual and physical violence and the whole record industry and to point out to the Attorney-General that the record industry in 1975 grossed $682 million.

AN HON. MEMBER: Which one?

MS. BROWN: The record industry - r-e-c-o-r-d -that thing that goes around on the record-playing machine.

AN HON. MEMBER: The gramophone.

MS. BROWN: The gramophone record, right. And that in fact the record industry. . . .

AN HON. MEMBER: The round ones.

MS. BROWN: Yes. The record industry, and certainly the big people in the record industry, admit that part of their success certainly has to do with the kinds of violent and pornographic material that's on the jackets of these records. I'm not advertising and I hate to even mention quite frankly some of the records that are on sale in our record shops today. I

[ Page 2941 ]

refrained from purchasing any of them and bringing them, Mr. Attorney-General, to your attention. But I am referring to records such as "I Am Black and Blue" from the Rolling Stones; "Coming Back For More" by David Blue, which has a picture of a woman caressing a gun; "Choice Cuts, " which has a picture of a woman's buttocks with this "Choice Cut" stamped on it. These kinds of records are selling, quite frankly, because of the jackets much more than the quality of the recording that is on them.

I know that in your statement to the press you said that you were interested in the federal government tightening up the customs laws. But, Mr. Attorney-General, just to say you really believe that the federal government should tighten up the customs laws is not good enough. Surely there are some kinds of things that you can do as Attorney-General to protect us - certainly to protect the women of this province against this kind of exploitation.

I would be very happy to make available to you a list of the records that are exploiting women in this kind of hostile and physically violent way. I think the thing that really alarms us is the whole nexus between pornography and violence. It's passed out of the phase now where it's simply a matter of exploiting women's bodies; it's reached into the arena where they're being exploited in a violent way. We've seen record jackets showing women being hung; nude women's bodies with electrical cords around them showing that they've been electrocuted; they're being killed or mutilated in some way. Somehow, this is being attached to good music, the kind of music which people relax by.

Now women involved in the women's movement -and some men involved in the movement - have grouped themselves together in a thing called Women Against Violence Against Women. They are utilizing the concept of boycott. What we're saying is that we will not buy any records that exploit women in a hostile way on the jackets. But we need more than that. We need some kind of statement from the Attorney-General first of all to say that you do not endorse this kind of material being sold in the record shops in the province of British Columbia, and doing more than saying that you think that the federal government should tighten up its customs laws.

I know that you and the Deputy. Attorney-General are involved in deep debate at this point as to what you can do about it. At least I hope that's what you're talking about as you are listening to me.

But if you get in touch with the Status of Women Council. . . . I can make this list available to you myself because I do have a list of these record jackets. We've gone out and we've monitored the thing and we're trying to see to it that as many people as possible boycott these record jackets - just not buy them - quite frankly, to see if we can somehow cut into that $682 million which the record industry made last year simply on the basis of exploiting violence against women in a sexual context. This is of major concern to us.

You know, pornography is something which has existed since the beginning of time, but linking it with violence is something new. Quite frankly, it alarms us; we are very frightened by it now. And to see that it is a major seller, that records are selling much more rapidly and in increasing numbers as a result of this kind of exploitation quite frankly frightens us, and I don't mind admitting this to you.

But it's not just the record industry. In the world of fashion, Mr. Attorney-General, one of the latest issues of Vogue had advertised in it a Battered Woman's Jumpsuit. I mean, for goodness' sake, a Battered Woman's Jumpsuit! It was advertised as being beautiful, business-wise and very successful. Suddenly the beating up of women is something that is selling clothes! Surely this is something that the Attorney-General should be alarmed about. Surely this should be a matter of concern to you - the kind of magazine and the kind of journal that comes across our borders.

Again, this is not a journal or a magazine that originates in British Columbia or even Canada. Surely this should be of concern to you, Mr. Attorney-General.

Just to stand up and say, as you did in your interview with the press on March 29, that you think that the federal government should enforce its customs laws more stringently is not good enough. That really is not sufficient protection against this kind of thing.

Demonstration of this was seen in our own city, in Vancouver, when The Bay, one of the oldest and most - in some areas, I would imagine - respectable stores in Vancouver, had in its window display the whole business of these men on motorcycles, and there is a woman on the motorbike with chains, lying on the back of the motorbike, Mr. Attorney-General, with her legs sprawled, and all of these men with chains in their hands. When it was brought to the attention of The Bay that women were going to picket the store, that we were going to throw a picket line around that store to see to it that no customers went in or out if that display remained in the window, The Bay then made some kind of amendment to their display and set the woman upright on the motorcycle and took her chains off.

Now how could that kind of violent, pornographic relationship grow under your jurisdiction? You are the person, Mr. Attorney-General, who stated that you have some kind of commitment to Canadian community standards. Surely that kind of exploitation does not measure up to your concept of Canadian community standards. Most of this smut and the dirt and the garbage and the filth comes out

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of the United States. It comes out of Los Angeles; that's where most of it comes out of. Why is it being permitted to come into this country? Why is it? Surely we have some kind of basic sense of respect for the women in this country. I know you do; I know most of the government members do. How could this s happen?

When the person responsible for advertising in The Bay was approached, he said: "Well, you know, it's a good advertising gimmick. You can't think of everything. I didn't realize that anyone would be offended by it."

We're not monitoring the thing properly. Somehow or another, as the person responsible for administering the Criminal Code in this area, there seems to be some kind of slip-up. In our particular city, in Vancouver, here where we exist, this kind of thing surely should not have been allowed to happen. If it had happened somewhere very remote from here and we heard about it by letter or by radio or by telephone or something, then we'd have some excuse - that it's far away and it's remote and we didn't know that it was happening. But this is happening here on one of our major streets at the corner of Granville and Georgia! It's a major intersection; it's the heart of British Columbia. And that happened there, Mr. Attorney-General, under your jurisdiction, despite all of your statements about Canadian community standards. Why did this happen?

We understand the economics of the thing, Mr. Attorney-General. The record industry says it sells records - $682 million. Vogue magazine says that the battered woman's jumpsuits.... And it breaks my heart, for God's sake, to admit this because only women wear those jumpsuits.

It destroys me to have to stand up here and admit that those jumpsuits sold. Women went in there and bought those battered-woman jumpsuits. I don't know why. I'd never wear a battered-woman jumpsuit. I'd batter the person who put a jumpsuit like that on sale if I thought I could get away with it, quite frankly. In Vancouver, in British Columbia, the Vancouver Status of Women and other women's groups contacted The Bay and informed them they were going to throw up a picket line around that store unless they cleaned up that window, and they did.

When there was advertising for jeans which showed a woman overdosing on pills in her jeans, the sale of those jeans went up 500 per cent. I don't know why. I don't know why anybody would want to buy a pair of jeans which are advertised showing a woman overdosing in them. I just know that somehow, as the chief law enforcement officer in this province, Mr. Attorney-General, you've got to do more than just stand up and say that you think the federal government should tighten up its customs laws. Pornographers got out of hand. You know, once pornography started being linked with violence we lost control. We totally and completely lost control of the thing.

It's legitimized. It's legitimized on TV. The worst and the sickest example of that is a programme called Charlie's Angels, like Charlie is the super-stud of the world. He's got three angels - three beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful women - who are his. He refers to them as "his angels." And they're liberated, Mr. Attorney-General! They don't do his laundry. They don't make his bed. They don't clean his house. They go out and commit murder for him. They beat up on men. They shoot. As the ads say, they fight like a man. This shows that they're liberated. This kind of garbage is coming across the borders into this province. As the chief law enforcement officer in this province, it is not enough for you to make a statement to the press saying that the federal government must tighten up its customs regulations. That is not good enough, Mr. Attorney-General. That is not good enough. The women of this province need better protection than that from you.

There's a new journal on the news-stand now. I don't know if you've heard about it or not, but it's called Violent World. That's a new journal on the news-stand. When the editor of this magazine was interviewed, he said: "The sex magazine field is saturated. Violence is the next big thing in the field and I want to get in on the ground floor." Do you know what Violent World carries? The first issue of Violent World that hit the news-stand, do you know what it had in it? It had pictures of babies being beaten to death, Mr. Attorney-General. It had an interview with a man who says he eats children, like we're barbarians! We sit here and we talk about being civilized and we have on our news-stands a magazine which has an interview with a man who talks about eating children, shows pictures of babies being beaten to death, and carries as its mast-head: "Our Readers Are Interested In Politics." Then it shows a student of Thailand bleeding to death. This is on the news-stand right here in British Columbia, under your jurisdiction as the chief law enforcement officer in this province.

You make a statement in the press that says: "The federal government needs more stringent enforcement of its customs laws." That is not good enough. It is just not good enough, Mr. Attorney-General. It's not good enough for the children of this province. It's not good enough for the women of this province. It's not good enough for the men of this province. It's not good enough for any of us.

Snuff films - do you know what the snuff films show, Mr. Attorney-General? Do you know what "snuff" is? In the good old days of Dillinger, when you snuffed a person's life out, that was it. You finish them off - murder. That's a euphemism for murder - snuff. So now they have snuff films, and the snuff

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films are sneaking across the border. They're coming here, Mr. Attorney-General, during your term of office.

I want to tell you what happened - and this didn't happen here, I admit - in New York City. Viewers paid $200 to see what they believed was a record of real horror and surprise on the face of a woman when she realized that the play acting had turned into nightmare reality and the knife attack upon her by her male sexual partner was genuine. That's what the snuff films are about. The snuff films show women being raped and then being murdered, right there.

The Attorney-General says that the federal government has to be asked for more stringent enforcement of customs laws to control the import of pornographic material. It's coming, Mr. Attorney-General. It's not here yet, but it's coming. The whole exploitation of children is sweeping across our borders.

I hate to stand up on the floor of this House and talk on the same kind of topic that Ed McKitka is supporting. We have nothing in common, Ed McKitka and 1, except that we both realize this threat. This is a genuine threat to the very fabric of our society. It's okay to sit by and relax when pornography is non-violent and say, "well, it's just a little fun and games kind of thing, you know, for the boys to show at their stag parties and for the bachelor to see the night before he gets married, " and one thing and another. But that's changed! Pornography is being linked with violence now. It really is frightening, this threat on the lives of women and children that is now surfacing in terms of the kind of pornography that is showing up on our magazine shelves. It's showing up in the, sex shops and is being allowed to remain in this province.

Mr. Chairman, through you, to the Attorney-General, if pornography was just a private fantasy publicly shared, we could probably say to ourselves: "Let us leave it alone. It's a bunch of dirty-minded old men having fun when nobody's bothering them. If they're that stupid, let them at it.' But it's not that any more. It's in the public arena now. Those of us who are women, and those of us who are the parents of women or the grandparents of women, have to demand more from the Attorney-General than this.

I don't care what the federal government does with its customs laws. The Attorney-General is the chief law enforcement officer in this province and I demand, on behalf of my sisters, and on behalf of my girl children, and their girl children, and their girl children after them, that the Attorney-General do something about this filth linked with violence which is degrading us and destroying us as human beings in this province.

A number of people have talked about it and have written about it. There are all kinds of psychological analyses and political analyses and sociological analyses done to explain why it is that pornography is a business run by men for men. I don't care what the reasons are.

MR. CHAIRMAN: One minute.

MS. BROWN: One minute? I haven't even started yet!

MR. CHAIRMAN: One minute, hon. member.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, pornography cannot be viewed as harmless. We cannot get ourselves involved in a debate that says that the law cannot legislate morality in this province because pornography expresses a widely held view that woman is property to be used and desired and exploited as food, or whatever. It is just not good enough. There is absolutely nobody, Mr. Chairman, in this province to whom we can turn, except the Attorney-General, and say: "Listen. We are frightened! We are terrified!"

I'm not interested in what the Attorney-General wants the federal government to do. What I want the Attorney-General to do is to see to it that the definition of pornography and obscenity is tightened. To talk about obscenity as being ... I forget what the Law Reform Commission says it is - it is the undue use of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah against someone, or whatever. Tighten it up! It's not good enough!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Time, hon. member.

MS. BROWN: Any smart lawyer, Mr. Chairman, can beat that kind of definition.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Your time has expired, hon. member.

MS. BROWN: Okay, Mr. Chairman. I have some other recommendations to make to the Attorney-General when he's ready to listen to me.

MR. D.G. COCKE (New Westminster): The member's time is up and I realize that an intervening speaker makes quite a difference under these circumstances.

I want to talk about another subject in a few minutes. I'm going to wait my turn to do that. But I would like to say that I've listened with a tremendous amount of interest to what the member for Vancouver-Burrard has talked about. I also want to say that for a number of years of my life, I have been one who felt censorship of any sort is wrong. But I must confess that the last few years have told me that some form of censorship - some form of discipline in this particular area - regardless of what the press

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says, is absolutely essential in our society.

I have seen things in the last two or three years that have not only sickened me, but have made me feel that the influence of the kinds of sickening things that I think we've all been faced with should make us reconsider our position on the question of censorship.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Who'd be, the censor?

MR. COCKE: I mean particularly the magazines and the films that are presented, particularly those that are available to the young people of our land.

I certainly don't want to sound like a prude or a fool in this matter, but I believe that we can create a climate that makes people something less than they were when they became involved in that climate. So one thing that has occurred to me is that the brutality, particularly, and the use of children -infamously in my view - should be stopped. What level is necessary to stop it is no concern of mine, providing it is stopped. Misusing children and women for the purpose of creating an excitement in some person's mind, no matter how warped that mind, is something I don't believe we should accept as a society. I certainly agree with the member for Vancouver-Burrard. I hope that that member will continue her remarks as mine are somewhat different and I would like to make them later.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the member for New Westminster for giving me this opportunity to continue.

What I really want to do at this point is link pornography with crime. I don't really think you can separate the two. It follows, when you display the kind of contempt that you do for women and link it with violence, that the ultimate response or the ultimate outcome of this is crime.

Do you realize, Mr. Chairman, that in British Columbia the killers of at least 23 women and girls are still unidentified and among us? Did you know that? The police call them sex killers. What the police say to us is that we, the women of British Columbia, should not go anywhere unaccompanied. In fact, we are in clear and imminent danger of being raped or murdered if we go somewhere unaccompanied.

What kind of justice and what kind of law do we have in a province that says that it is the victim who has to have their behaviour circumscribed and curtailed in some way, and that it is the criminal who is free to move unfettered among us? What kind of justice and what kind of law is that?

Surely the Attorney-General recognizes that the link between pornography and violence and crime against women is unquestioned. Nobody debates or questions it; everyone accepts it; it is a fact. All you have to do is read the newspaper accounts each day of the lives and deaths - especially the deaths - of women. The police reports always report the link between sexual crimes against women and pornography. Whether it is the death of that nine-year-old child who was found just outside Chilliwack who was bound, sexually assaulted and then murdered; or whether it was the crime in New York City against that woman who was raped after she had been stabbed and lay bleeding to death -when the criminal was brought to justice he said: "I had to kill her because I do not like raping women who put up a fight. I like my victims to be quiet." - between the two, whether it is one or the other, the end result is the same. The end result says that it is the victim who should be behind bars, because it is the criminal who is roaming free.

It really is just not good enough. I don't want to repeat myself, but it is not good enough for the Attorney-General to stand up and say to us that it is the custom laws of this land that have to be tightened up and their enforcement that has to be more stringent. The Attorney-General has to recognize that he has some kind of responsibility to us. I don't care what sex we are; he has some kind of responsibility to us in his jurisdiction, in his responsibility as the chief law enforcement officer in this land, to see to it that the kind of increase in pornography and violence and the kind of legitimization of pornography ceases.

This is what terrifies me: those records that are being sold and advertised in the store windows openly, for everyone to see - the nude women; the advertising in the store windows; the advertising in the magazines; the advertising for that shoe which shows the foot on top of the woman's neck and says: "I will kill for these shoes." These kinds of things are accepted. You rush out and buy a pair of shoes that show a man's foot on top of a woman's neck and say "I will kill for these shoes, " in the same way that we rush out and buy a battered-woman jumpsuit. I don't know what you are going to do about it, Mr. Attorney-General, but I'm saying to you that something has to be done about it.

I think you should start out with the legal definition of obscenity and pornography. It is too loose. You don't even have to be a literate lawyer, quite frankly, to be able to beat down that kind of definition and to get it through the courts.

The other thing is this whole business of paying a fine. When you fine somebody who is selling a journal like Violent World or is selling some other pornographic material that is exploiting the bodies of children, you fine them. Do you know what the fine is? The fine is a licence fee. That's all they're doing; that's all the fine is. The fine is a licence fee. So you carry the magazines, you make a fortune on it and you pay a little fine. Big deal! Like, that is really great protection! I'm not saying you fine them. The courts fine them, but as the Attorney-General surely you can do something about that.

[ Page 2945 ]

It's the same thing with these snuff films. Now it's true, you've got to get in your car on a Sunday and drive across the border to go and see a snuff film. It'll be just a matter of time before it will be here.

And what is this business, Mr. Attorney-General, of charging a person after the damage has been done? What good is that to us? It's a strange way indeed that the law operates. It really is strange that after the magazines are on the shelf and everyone has bought them and it has spread its filth and its garbage and its dirt and its crap, all over everyone, then you lay a charge and they, they're fined. The damage has been done. I don't know what you do about that. I'm not interested in what happens after the damage has been done. I am concerned about how you stop the damage being done.

[Mr. Rogers in the chair.]

There are all kinds of research. The psychologists, Kinsey - everyone has done it. The commission on violence just completed its hearings in Ontario. The link between violence and pornography and the impact it has on people's lives is very clear. Why do we have to wait to lay a charge until after the damage has been done? That is my third question.

The fourth thing is about the enforcement of customs laws. The feminists in Los Angeles raised a very interesting point. It has to do with society's attitude towards women. They took, for example, the Jews. They said that when someone opened a store in Los Angeles that carried literature that was pro-Nazi and. anti-Semitic, the whole world exploded. A group of people got together and attacked that store. They overturned the shelves. They destroyed everything there and when the police and the fire trucks tried to come in and protect the proprietor the mobs wouldn't allow them through. That's what happened when one store opened with material that was anti-Semitic.

When a store opens with material that is anti-woman, what happens? You put on your dark glasses, you pull your hat over your eyes, and you rush in and you buy up the stuff. That's what the difference is, Mr. Attorney-General. The society will not tolerate and accept the exploitation of religious groups or racial groups. But society, for some reason best known to itself, condones and accepts the exploitation of women even in the most degrading and dehumanizing ways.

Okay. We can't do anything about society. You are supposed to, Mr. Chairman, through you to the Attorney-General, be the chief law-enforcement officer in this province. We have no one else to turn to but you. You are it! You defend us or we stand defenceless, vulnerable, and at the mercy of everyone. What are you going to do about it? Question No. 1: what are you going to do about it?

HON. MR. GARDOM: In response to the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) , if she's listening on her machine.... She was referring to the lock-up situation in Courtenay, and that of course is a municipal lock-up. I agree with the recommendations of the coroner's jury and I think that her direction should well be to the municipality concerned. The RCMP there are putting in their new subdivision headquarters and they will have a lock-up facility. Certainly it is my understanding that it will be properly adequate for the needs in the area.

Dealing with the lifesaving skills and the education given to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in their training programmes, I cannot answer that specifically but it is my general understanding that they do receive matters along that line. Insofar as our own municipal police are concerned in the province, it was only within the last three weeks or so that rules were completed and approved by myself to the effect that all of the police who are hired by municipalities in the province will certainly first of all receive training and continuing courses of training at the police college. It is my general understanding, to the hon. member, that they certainly do include matters along the line which she was discussing.

She directed another question re the Lakeview programme. It is contemplated that there will be accommodation for up to 30 juveniles in that, and this is a matter that we can consider in more depth during the debate on the bill that was introduced earlier today.

In response to the first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) and to the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) on the question of obscenity, first of all, I think in fairness, both to the position which I and my colleagues across the country hold, it's unfortunate to say but it's correct: it's not a new problem; it's one that has existed for literally hundreds if not thousands of years. It's not a new phenomenon here.

I was most impressed and thank both members for the sincerity of their talks and the approaches that they took. We well could have heard from them over the other years that they've been in the House because they've made very valid points.

But I'd like to say this first of all: what we have insofar as existing law is concerned.... I don't think somebody is suggesting that we're going to have provincial laws that will be literally a provincial Criminal Code in the country. We don't have the jurisdiction to do that in the first place, and in the second place it wouldn't create uniformity or do an effective job across the country. I would commend the lady member to take a look at the Criminal Code of Canada, and she will see that offences that tend to corrupt morals are defined under the Code. They include undue exploitation of sex and of sex with cruelty or violence.

[ Page 2946 ]

According to case law, the test to be determined is not the test that she subscribes to me as something that came down a beam of light and was an idea that I promulgated. The test has been determined, Madam Member, by the Supreme Court of Canada. And that is the existing law that we have. We have the Criminal Code of Canada; we have the interpretation of the Criminal Code of Canada by the Supreme Court of Canada. Apart from those sections dealing with the exploitation of sex or sex with cruelty or violence, I suppose there might be companion matters under the Criminal Code of conspiracy to commit an offence or aiding and abetting.

But it's not possible for us to provincially legislate matters that are within the competence of the Criminal Code, notwithstanding the fact that I may thoroughly agree with many of the statements that the hon. members have made tonight. And these are matters that have to be within federal competence.

Certainly, insofar as the input of material into the province - it's not only into this province but into all of the provinces in the country - the statement that I made, Madam Member, is one that was made by all of the Attorneys-General in Canada because they felt that there were not adequate safeguards and checks at the border.

But I'm going to say this: not for one minute do I feel that if there were total and complete safeguards and checks at the border, that would cure the problem, because unfortunately, I suppose, if there's an illegal dollar to be made in items such as these they may well start within the confines of our own borders. Then, of course, we can have a much better opportunity to regulate and control, but I'm not suggesting that as a solution. But the input of the material into the country certainly is not a matter that is within provincial competence.

Then you talked about people going down to Blaine. They should be stopped from going down to Blaine. We can't stop people going to Blaine or Afghanistan or London, England, for that matter. If they choose to go to Blaine or Denmark or wherever it may be to become involved or interested in these kinds of dreadful matters, I suppose they're entitled to do that. It is a very difficult area and I'm not going to say that it isn't.

The member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) said that he was opposed to any form of censorship but he said: "By golly, I think now I'm prepared to take a look at it." It's a very difficult decision to make, and who's the censor?

But in our concerns we have to consider probably three categories. First of all, there is the obscene, depraved pornography sadism and violence, the vicious, depraved kind of material, and material depicting children involved in sexual acts, or portrayal of acts of bestiality, and such matters as that. They are well outside contemporary community standards as defined by the Supreme Court of Canada in the interpretation of the Criminal Code and prosecutions could follows.

Probably a second category - and this is difficult to categorize - you might say might be adult material. No sales are displayed to minors. There is no outside display of the wares of these stores and no access to minors in them.

Thirdly, there is the borderline or the so-called soft-core material, the type of thing you might find in corner drugstores, something along that line, which could be thoroughly offensive to some people, and certainly thoroughly offensive, I'd say, to most youngsters. The federal Law Reform Commission, as you indicated, after its lengthy study in 1975, essentially recommended that what I would call borderline material should not be accessible to children or displayed or advertised in a public manner.

I'd certainly advocate support to community action with respect to controlling that kind of material, to ensure that it is screened or out of the reach of the kids. I'd say co-operation and the assistance of the retailers and the wholesalers in that respect is indeed sought. It is always open to consumer groups and interested citizens - of which you have become one, and I would hope everybody in this House would share your own views and attitudes in that respect - to demonstrate their concern and indicate that kind of a concern to the stores. Don't necessarily boycott the corner store from buying a volume of XYZ, but tell the corner store, fine and dandy, you are no longer going to subscribe to it and you're going to take all of your business somewhere else. You're going to be buying your medical supplies somewhere else or your soup and your bread somewhere else. Let them get the message through strongly and clearly.

Now I'm talking about the material that is on the lower level there, the vicious, obscene, depraved pornography and the sadism and the violence - that type of material is prosecuted, both under the provisions of the Criminal Code....

The hon. member says: "Well, what happens when it gets to court? It's too late then." Well, unless we're going to live in a country that will establish censorship and decide we're going to start burning some books - and I suppose many, many years ago there were a lot of books today that are considered ... not best sellers.... I want a word here; give me a word.

AN HON. MEMBER: Bible! (Laughter.)

HON. MR. GARDOM: No. Well, books that are considered acceptable today and considered perhaps to consist of a great deal of literary genius - in another era of mankind those were considered to be

[ Page 2947 ]

depraved. Well, we can think of such things, I suppose, in our contemporaries. Lady Chatterley's Lover wasn't considered to be the best kind of a text. Well, compare that today to some of the stuff that is around; there's just not any comparison to it. But don't for one minute think that I'm advocating or supporting the kind of material which you're talking about.

You're wishing, and I respect your wishes, to attempt to clothe this office - and this office is the same as any other one in the country - with a degree of responsibility that it does not have at the present time. If you wish amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada to change these kinds of things - to bring in a degree of censorship - fine and dandy; maybe that's the approach to take there. I can assure you that the point in question is one that is of a great deal of concern to everyone in the country who holds this office.

I think even my colleague experienced this when he held this position. I'm very, very happy to say that the degree of enthusiasm to do something about it is mounting at pretty well every meeting which we go to. But, Madam Member, there is no way that I can amend the Criminal Code of Canada for you and you know that as well as I do.

I would certainly like to reiterate once again that there's not a province in the country that would not like better enforcement by our customs officers. This thought has got through to the federal government and they have tightened up. That's happening over the last few months. I'm not saying that the stuff is not coming in. They explained to us their great difficulties. They come in in a variety of fashions, but they say they're doing their level best to get control of it before we get into a situation in Canada like they have, as you mentioned, in Los Angeles or San Francisco - call it where you will.

Sure it's been indicated in the studies into crime in the United States of America and I think it's pretty clearly felt in our areas as well. There is a strong link between pretty developed and sophisticated crime and the production of the material for this market. But you talked about public awareness and public attitude and that to me really is a tremendous part of the key to it. If we could have public attitude supporting the positions which you have raised in the House tonight - and I'm not too sure if these have effectively flowed through the commission of which Miss LaMarsh was the commissioner - and if these public attitudes could make themselves widely enough known, I think we'd then be able to maybe have better action at the level whose responsibility it is. If it's a criminal matter, it has got to be done via the Criminal Code. That's where we are sitting on it.

MS. BROWN: First of all, Mr. Chairman, I agree with the Attorney-General that this is not new. This goes back to the beginning of time.

Do you have to go off in a hurry again, Mr. Attorney-General? You just went before supper; do you need to go again? (Laughter.)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, we are on the minister's vote.

MS. BROWN: I know, but the minister is leaving. What am I supposed to do?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm sure, hon. member, you'll be able to proceed for a few minutes on vote 57. Yes, I'm sure you can.

MS. BROWN: You think I'll be able to persist. Okay, Mr. Chairman, I'll talk to you then.

You know, the Attorney-General mentioned that this was not new. We can go back to the Greeks. We can go back to the beginning of time when one of the rules that the Greeks had was that their slaves should go unclothed because this was one way of demonstrating who was the boss and who was the slave. You knew immediately that you were dealing with a slave if it was someone who had no clothes on. Really that is the political root of the thing. That is the political root of the whole pornographic thing because you very rarely have pornography which displays women fully clothed or children fully clothed. We're really dealing with the whole business of exploitation and the whole business of oppression in terms of who is the boss and who isn't, which is fine. I'm opposed to that; that's no secret.

What I'm really alarmed about is that now coupled with pornography is violence. It's not enough that one exploits the nude body anymore; one has to have acts of violence against that body. That is what is alarming women around the province. Now when the Attorney-General says that there is nothing that he can do about it, who can do anything about it? When all of the Attorneys-General of all of the provinces of this country come together and make a decision about something, they can change it. That's why I am talking to this Attorney-General here.

There is absolutely no opportunity for me as an individual to stand up and speak to all of Canada and explain the political, emotional, psychological and sociological damage that pornography has done and is doing to women and children. I'll never have that opportunity. The only opportunity I have is to speak to my Attorney-General, who is the chief law enforcement officer for this province, and hope that the Attorney-General will speak to other Attorneys-General. Together they will speak to the Minister of Justice and somehow, by the process of osmosis or whatever - I don't know how Attorneys-General relate to each other - the Criminal Code will be changed.

[ Page 2948 ]

Now I explained to the Attorney-General that the hangup is the definition of obscenity and pornography, and the key word is "undue" - undue exploitation. It has been used over and over and over again to have cases thrown out of court. I'm not a lawyer, you know. If I had the facilities. I probably could bring all the "this versus the state, " "that versus the state, " "the other versus the state" to itemize all of these times. But what I can do is draw attention to one case involving a dealer in Timmins. It was a very clear case, open and shut, that exploitation of women - undue exploitation - was involved. He got off because the courts decided in their infinite, infinite wisdom that the exploitation was not undue.

How are we going to deal with the word "undue"? Every dictionary I read gives me a different definition for "undue, " and I can think of some definitions that I haven't even seen in any of the dictionaries.

All I'm asking the Attorney-General to do is to ensure that at the federal level the definition for obscenity and the definition for pornography is tightened up. "Undue" is a word that you can run a truck through. Who defines "undue"? What's undue for you is not undue for me, and that is the whole crux of the matter.

When the Attorney-General says that there is nothing he can do about it, then we're doomed. If the Attorney-General can't help us, we're in serious trouble; nobody can. That is the only reason why I have raised this under the Attorney-General's estimates. I know it's under the Criminal Code; I started out by saying I knew it was under the Criminal Code. But as the administrator of justice in this province and as the chief law enforcement officer, that is my final court of appeal, There is no one else. When the Attorney-General fails the women of this province, we've been failed once and for all.

The Attorney-General talks about the difference between obscene, sadism, violence and separating that out from adult material, and what is not to be brought into the reach of children. Well, that is a joke - what is brought into the reach of children. Unless you burn your TV set, children see everything. I can't handle the stuff my kids are watching on TV.

HON. MR. GARDOM: What are you going to do with the United States stuff that comes through the TV?

MS. BROWN: Precisely.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, I ask you: what?

MS. BROWN: Precisely, Mr. Attorney-General. This is what I'm saying. Even something that is supposed to demonstrate the liberation of women like "Charlie's Angels" oppresses and destroys us.

We're in serious trouble.

But there are some things that the Attorney-General can do, and one is that he can get together with the other Attorneys-General of the provinces of this country, say "look, the definition for obscenity is too loose; tighten it up, " and he can come up with a recommendation. Do something about the word "undue." You lawyers have all kinds of things you can do with words. Do something about the word "undue." Find another word to use. Tighten the thing up so that every lawyer worth his salt can't get into the courts and destroy a case brought against somebody in terms of it being undue.

When you talk about not being able to stop stuff coming across the borders, you can stop wines coming across this border. You can decide what wine is sold in our liquor stores, and you can't decide what magazines are sold on a rack? I don't understand that. I don't hear any arguments that we can't have laws against murder because what about murder in other provinces and murder in other countries?

I know, Mr. Attorney-General, that you are committed to this. All I'm asking you to do is to start putting some action behind those words. You have a lot more power than you think you have. Even if you don't, stick your neck out! Just this once, see what happens. You might get your head chopped off. So what? At least you would have lost it in a good cause. Better to have stuck your neck out and lost than never to have stuck your neck out at all. That's the way I feel about obscenity anyway.

The whole business of public awareness starts when you stand up as the Attorney-General in this province and you say, "I do not condone the kind of things going on in the advertising windows at The Bay. I do not condone those records coming across the border with those record jackets with nude women being hung and gagged and shoved and all of those kinds of things." You stand up and you say something, Mr. Attorney-General. Lead in this field; don't sit around and say you're waiting for public awareness. You can be the spearhead of public awareness in this province.

I know you don't condone this. All I'm asking you to do is two things: stand up and say something publicly aside from the fact that you're waiting for the federal government to tighten up its customs law. Blow your gasket once in a while!

Secondly, you get together with the other Attorneys-General - I know the Attorneys-General get together - and you say to the Minister of Justice (Hon. Mr. Basford) that the legislation is just not good enough and has to be changed. I have written to the Minister of Justice and who am I? I'm nobody! But if you write a letter to the Minister of Justice, that's coming from an Attorney-General, from the chief law enforcement officer in this province, and that is something.

[ Page 2949 ]

Under some of your other votes I'm going to talk about some of the rape in this province and some of the violence against women which can be directly linked to the kind of violence in pornography. Don't separate the two, because that is what we're concerned about: the violence now being linked with the pornography that's spreading through this province.

MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): Denmark has the lowest rate in the world of sex crimes.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You had better get in a debate with her then.

MS. BROWN: Do something about it, Mr. Attorney-General, please.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Chairman, I believe there was some mention earlier of the management of juveniles who are mentally disturbed, and particular reference was made to the tragic case in Courtenay of Lori Miles. I think that the House and the people of the province should understand how absolutely primitive we still are in British Columbia in treating mentally sick people as though they were criminals.

Now I know that the minister has set in motion a combined effort by four of the ministers of cabinet to ...

HON. MR. GARDOM: First time ever in the history of the province.

MR. WALLACE: ... investigate this situation. The minister interjects that it is the first time ever. I'm very happy to hear this and would certainly support the efforts of the minister.

I do believe though, Mr. Chairman, that to ensure this long overdue effort is both informed and sustained, it is important to read into the record in this House the unbelievable, primitive, ignorant, callous indifference that exists right at this time in this province towards juveniles who, through no fault of their own, are mentally sick. I know that many people in British Columbia consider that we are somewhat informed about things like epilepsy and mental disease and that it is a form of discrimination to look down our haughty noses at unfortunate people who are mentally sick or epileptic.

But I tell you, Mr. Chairman, I cringed when I sat through the three-hour inquest on Lori Miles. I'm sure there must be many people in this province who, if they were to read that transcript tonight, would just not believe the way in which all of us, within our respective spheres of responsibility, do our jobs, do what is expected of us within the framework that exists today, and end up with a dead teenager. That is exactly the sad, sorry saga that unfolded when I listened to the case of this tragic teenager.

Mr. Chairman, what was her offence? What, had she done to be considered, in the words of the various people who handled the problem, a danger to the community?

She admitted to having slashed somebody's automobile tires - no assault on a person; no assault on another individual; no human danger to people. But she had done two things: she had run away from the foster home where she was being looked after and she had slashed some tires. Apparently all that society could do was lock her up in frankly, Mr. Chairman, what was little more than a cage, 5 feet by 8 feet by 7 feet, with bars and criss-crossed metal slats across the roof of that cage. That has got to be the most obvious invitation to suicide for anyone who was mentally disturbed and who previously had shown a tendency to take her own life through overdosage with medications.

But everybody did their job; everybody met their responsibility. The social worker phoned the judge and the judge was told that she was a danger to the community. How could the judge know all her history of four or five years of the most bizarre, disturbed mental state of a tragic young teenager? But he did his job. He said: "Yes, I think she'd better be kept overnight in the lock-up."

The social worker gave the authority and the matrons were called in to give their 10-minute periodic inspection of this pathetic child - no more than a child - locked up in a cage in this grave Brave New World of 1977, where we're all supposed to be very enlightened and educated and understanding of the fact that people's behaviour is often abnormal because they're physically or mentally sick.

But all the people in the system - the social worker, the matron, the judge, the police officer -everybody does their job, so that in point of fact when you get down to the bitter, tragic end, there's really nobody to blame. The only verdict from the jury was that there should be some more strenuous effort to prevent suicide. That's all that came out of that tragic, typical example of case after case that you read in the newspapers of this province month after month after month. Disturbed teenagers, many of them mentally sick, are treated little better than the epileptics who convulsed in basement caves and prisons in countries 300 and 400 years ago.

I could go on and on, but it was a revelation to me, Mr. Chairman, in this day and age when we all pride ourselves on our technology and our medical scientific research and all the diseases we can treat and all the wonderful things we can do to help people to live longer and live better. We talk about quality of life, but I tell you, there's not much of a quality of life in this province for the sick teenager. They're just

[ Page 2950 ]

a nuisance - a nuisance, and I'm very worried.

I say to the Attorney-General tonight: I am very apprehensive about the euphemisms that are being bandied around in the province about containment. To me that word means that the law enforcement authorities and the government and the people who are trying to solve some of these very difficult problems are seeking to solve the problems by the kind of facilities I've seen at the Willingdon School for Girls: small, very restricted little jail cells with nice, cold, bare stone floors and bars. But they are at least considerate enough, I suppose, to have a single toilet in each cell. Such consideration!

Mr. Chairman, I just say to the Attorney-General and to anybody that is government in this province in the years ahead: out of sight, out of mind is not an adequate solution to some of the serious problems we have with young teenagers. While there may be that very small minority of teenagers who are not sick and who are simply resentful of authority and who might have to be - for lack of a better word - contained, I say this: I see a very real danger that the Lori Miles of this world, for lack of proper evaluation and insight by the people who handle their problems, run the real risk of being contained simply to get them out of society and to get them out of everybody's hair because they happen to be a nuisance by going around slashing tires.

Now the Attorney-General shakes his head. I'm delighted to see him shake his head. I hope he personally, at least, is very well aware of the convenience of containment, the convenience of shutting up people out of sight and out of mind simply when they're a problem to society. There's no easy solution to that problem. That, Mr. Chairman, was the clearest, shattering impression I got from the inquest in Courtenay.

Everybody in that situation - the police officer, the social worker, the judge, the matron - all knew that they were solving nothing. They were simply taking Lori Miles off the street for one night. But even then they couldn't do it with the kind of commitment or guarantee that's involved in the rules of our present system. I've got pages and pages of transcript of that inquest. But the fact is that even with all this money, even with all the personnel, even with all the links in the system, she still managed to kill herself. Even when the system's all wrong to start with, we can't even do it efficiently.

[Mr. Schroeder in the chair.]

And why do I say that? Because this cage that she was locked up in, Mr. Chairman, was in one corner of a fairly large room. Within 30 minutes of that girl committing suicide, she was walking around in the space in the room outside the cage. From the evidence - and again I won't go through all the quotes - she had settled down to quite an extent between the time she was admitted to the prison and approximately midnight.

But the rules, Mr. Chairman, the system, dictated that the RCMP officer had to tell her on the stroke of midnight that she could no longer walk around in the room. She had to leave the surrounding space and be locked up in a cage 5 by 8 by 7 feet. Within 28 minutes, she had hanged herself. That's the kind of system we've got in British Columbia today.

I recognize the move the minister has made to change all this, and I acknowledge it. The trouble is that nobody - or too few of us - have taken the trouble to find out exactly what the situation is and to come here and spell it out into the record and make the point clear to the people of this province. There are many people making a loud protest about the fact that we must handle teenagers more effectively, and that's a reasonable concern. It's also reasonable that they should make their protest.

Mr. Chairman, as we handle these problems today, there is a glaring failure to recognize that many of these problems are not just the ornery awkward behaviour of the teenager. The challenge is to recognize that many of these young people are seriously ill in regard to their mental state. If there is any way you can more assuredly make that mental state worse and lead to this kind of thing, it's to lock them up in a cage. I inspected that cage, I talked to the officers, and I can assure you, Mr. Chairman, that there are many of us right here in this chamber who would have a great deal of difficult mental turmoil if we had to spend one night in one of those cages. I notice that we have a member of the Corrections Service with us tonight sitting in the chamber. I applaud and commend him and others who took the trouble to go and spend one night in jail themselves.

There are many people in this province who are screaming about law and order and they don't know the first thing about how it's being implemented at the present time. I think many of the people who are so full of quick, simple, right-wing solutions should go and spend a night in the B.C. Pen, or maybe a night in Oakalla, or a night in Wilkinson Road jail, or maybe even just a night in the cage at Courtenay. Maybe - just maybe - we might get a more enlightened approach to some of the needs that really are unmet at the present time, because this question of mental disease doesn't stop with the teenager that I'm quoting.

As the members of the Corrections Service know, and as the minister knows, and as his deputy knows, many of the problems that cause people to finish up in jail are mental in the first place. All that the jail system does is multiply that mental disorder 300 or 400 or 500 per cent. Then we wonder why we have riots and we have all the problems that have escalated over the years.

[ Page 2951 ]

I would interject and say, Mr. Chairman, that I hope, at long last, the federal government will do more than pay lip service to the most recent report they've received. From my limited understanding and experience of the jail system, that all-party committee of the federal parliament, I think, has made an outstanding contribution in a non-partisan way. It has come out and had the guts to say publicly what is wrong with the system. Never mind whether the prisoners are misbehaving, or taking drugs, or whatever they're doing; they've pointed out that the basic structure of the system has fallen apart. When you don't know who's running the jails and you don't know who's responding to whom - inside or outside - it stands to reason that you finish up with chaos and, sooner or later, you're destined to have riots and destruction.

One of the particular aspects of the Courtenay case, Mr. Chairman, which I just found absolutely unbelievable was that this poor child has been treated in various centres. She had been seen by various medical authorities. Part of the medical evidence that was read into the record at the inquest related to an opinion by a specialist - a psychiatrist in Nanaimo -who made it very plain that this child suffered from epilepsy, she suffered from uncontrollable outbursts of temper, and that one of the certain ways this could be exacerbated was to confine her in a restricted space. The last thing that should be done would be to put her in jail. That's all in writing. The fact of her medical history, it turned out in the inquest evidence, was known to the various people at the jail at the time she was admitted. It was either known or it was revealed by telephone conversations in seeking more information about her.

I won't belabour the point further, Mr. Chairman, because I have some confidence that this minister, who used to speak on this same kind of theme when he was on this side of the House, acknowledges that the first problem is the thinking which goes into the handling of the teenagers who have these problems. I trust and hope that this minister at least thinks properly and he seems to be well aware that the out-of-sight, out-of-mind syndrome has little place in any long-term hope of dealing with these kinds of problems.

I would just say that regardless of the particular case I have quoted, I would leave two specific recommendations for the minister to follow. First of all, it amazed me that we have all these non-medical people - the police officer and the matron and the arresting officer and the judge and the probation officer and the social worker - all the personnel in the "system." We take the step of having this teenager locked up overnight, knowing that she has a medical problem, and at no stage of the process is any initiative taken to have the child examined by a physician.

I asked the question, Mr. Chairman: are there no routine standing orders in the management of such prisoners to ensure that some medical opinion is brought to bear on the decision to lock this child up overnight? And the answer was "no." I'm paraphrasing the answer, but it was: "Well, if it appears that the prisoner needs medical help, then, of course, we would summon a doctor." But there is no routine requirement that anything of this preventative nature be done.

The prisoner, apparently, has to be very obviously in serious need of medical help before it occurs to anybody in the system that maybe they better have a doctor see the prisoner first. I would suggest that the Attorney-General's department take some steps to -I don't know the technical term - issue standing orders, as we would call them medically, that under certain circumstances certain steps be taken.

The other point, I gather, has been covered to some degree before I entered the debate. That's the question of resuscitation. This applies whether it happens to be a 16-year-old depressed teenager with epilepsy or whether it happens to be an adult male or whatever. I say this without disrespect to the individual concerned, but part of the most pathetic evidence that was presented at the inquest was the mental picture I had of this police officer in a completely futile and ignorant way pounding on the chest of the dead teenager, while at the same time making no effort to establish an airway or administer any kind of oxygen. The whole question of resuscitation involves not only pumping the heart to get the blood flowing, but providing oxygen to the flowing flood. It's just absolutely stupid to even go to the trouble of pounding on the chest and probably fracturing a few ribs when no effort is made to provide an airway and oxygen down that airway.

I'm not criticizing the RCMP officer, but I questioned him, and he's out of college about 11 years and he says: "Yes, I recall getting some training when I was at college, but I've had no training since then." And again: "There are no standing orders as to how we deal with problems or what our responsibilities are when a death of this nature occurs in the cell and we make some attempt to save that person's life."

It's nothing less, Mr. Chairman, than a shattering experience to listen to this kind of real-life expose of how our criminal justice system works, in the handling of this dead teenager. While it is not fair or correct of me to suggest that one swallow makes a summer or that this one case represents all cases, there are other examples we could quote that indicate this happens often enough that our present system, clearly, is at least falling short of the basic, minimum standards of care which the system - medical, criminal justice, human resources and otherwise -should be providing in a situation like this.

[ Page 2952 ]

Perhaps the saddest part of the whole situation was - again I say this without disrespect to well-meaning jurors, but it really left me feeling very disturbed - that the jury became so preoccupied with how or why or in what manner the suicide might have been prevented in a purely technical way, namely that the child should not have had access to a blanket off which she tore a strip, or she shouldn't have been able to throw the strip over the metal slats in the roof or the cell, when she shouldn't have been in the cell in the first place!

I was thoroughly disappointed, frankly, and I hope I offend no one, particularly the jurors, when I say that they completely missed the point. All they were trying to analyse was whether the matron did her job by going in every 10 minutes, whether the lighting in the cell was adequate to observe the cell from outside the room door, and all the technical minutiae which really don't matter a damn because the girl shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Unfortunately, the jury zeroed in on all the little procedural and mechanical requirements and responsibilities demanded of all these different people in the system. As I say, they all met their responsibility. No blame was attached. It was just so distressing to realize that so many people left that inquest and I suppose many people read the newspaper clippings and thought that perhaps that inquest served the purpose of pointing out that we've got to be more careful in handling potential suicides in our jails. Society completely misses the point that these so-called "potential suicides" shouldn't be locked up in the first place because that's the surest way of encouraging them to go and commit suicide.

So I'm encouraged to learn that the Deputy Ministers of Health, Education, Human Resources and the Deputy Attorney-General have been asked to prepare a plan to help such children by July 1. I'm quoting from a clipping of the Vancouver Province of May 14.

I commend the minister for taking that initiative and I just say two things: would he please expedite some action on that study just as fast as he possibly can; and secondly, if the legislation which he has told us is pending regarding the containment of juveniles hasn't been finally written, would he please ensure that whatever the final form takes... ? Could we plead with him, through you, Mr. Chairman, that every step is taken to ensure that we separate the mentally sick teenager from the category that I assume will be the completely intelligent, knowing, understanding teenager who simply chooses to flout the law and adopt aggressive behaviour? I realize there is more than one category.

I'm pleading with the Attorney-General to involve medical people to the greatest possible degree in those cases where there is any doubt at all that the offending person who is breaking the law does have some medical or neurological or psychological or whatever kind of problem you care to mention which is related to some established disorder; that these people be given the easiest possible access to medical advice and direction. Only then, Mr. Chairman, can we really claim that we are living in an enlightened society where people receive not only the medical treatment they need, but the understanding of society as a whole.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I would very much like to compliment the member both in his very poignant and heartfelt remarks tonight and, more than that, upon his very clear understanding of the problem. As the hon. member knows, and as he articulated himself, it is the job of this ministry to deal with children with criminal problems. Unfortunately, it seems that throughout the history of this province this ministry has been facing problems with those who are not necessarily of criminal magnitude but those who are emotional and have health situations. That's why, Mr. Member, we moved as promptly as we were able to take affirmative steps to inventory that which is available for youngsters with mental and emotional problems, for youngsters in need.

I agree with you that we should be moving along that line with every bit of dispatch. But I would also like to say, Mr. Member, that this is the first time in the history of this province that these kinds of initiatives have been taken, and it's high time they were taken.

Vote 57 approved.

Vote 58: administration and support, $3,423, 788 - approved.

On vote 59: courts, $24,727, 125.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to mention within the court system a matter which I raised with the Attorney-General in question period earlier in this session. I must confess that I don't have the file with me.

This is dealing with the question of payment of compensation to witnesses over and beyond the normal witness fee. I regret that this particular vote has come up as abruptly as it has, since, as I say, I don't have the files with me. But I'll talk from memory and try to be fairly specific.

I'm dealing with an issue which I think strikes very much at the heart of one of our fundamental principles, namely the value and respect of evidence presented in courts and the very serious view we take of anyone who tries to subvert evidence, who tries to bribe a witness or who, through such means, attempts to distort the administration of justice.

Regarding the two particular cases that I have been made aware of, perhaps for simplicity's sake I will refer to the names of people involved. One was the Palmer brothers, who were charged with and

[ Page 2953 ]

convicted of drug conspiracy. One of the witnesses was paid $25,000 by the RCMP and subsequently....

HON. MR. GARDOM: That's federal.

MR. WALLACE: Regardless of whether it's federal or provincial, Mr. Chairman, I feel that the cases occur within the confines of British Columbia. I understand that in this particular case CLEU was involved in a great deal of the investigative work or part of it.

The nub of the problem, regardless of who paid it or whether it's federal or whatever it is, is that this witness gave some very damaging evidence which helped to bring about a conviction, and he was paid $25,000.

Mr. Chairman, it may be a little bit like the case I mentioned this afternoon where wiretapping is federal legislation under which the provincial authorities function, but let's not have this Attorney-General or anyone in this House overlook the fact that these are the rules and the system within which the people of B.C. are living. Whether it's federal or provincial legislation I would expect the Attorney-General of this province to be very concerned that a system could function whereby someone paid $25,000 to give the appropriate kind of evidence and subsequently admits that he perjured himself from here to I don't know where. An appeal went to the appeal court simply because he subsequently signed an affidavit admitting that he had perjured himself simply to do what the police had wanted him to do in terms of the evidence they wanted him to present, simply to obtain a conviction.

We have the other case of the Ross murder which I quoted earlier in question period. In this case the witness was not actually paid the large sum of money that was quoted, but over a period of 22 hours or somewhere in that neighbourhood he was repeatedly questioned, taken out to the murder site, and pressured by the RCMP with the suggestion that certain circumstances could be arranged if he would give evidence and that he might even be given free passage to Australia.

As I say, I don't have the file with me to go into specific details, and I may not be correct in some of these details, but certainly the principle involved is serious enough that within our society apparently the criminal justice system is capable of knowingly and willingly and, in fact, eagerly doing what I would end up behind bars for doing. If I went out to somebody who was a witness in a pending trial and offered them $25,000 to give the right kind of evidence - or the kind of evidence that I wanted them to give - I would wind up behind bars, and rightly so. But apparently it's okay for the police to do it. I've got a photostat copy of the cheque for $25,000 that was paid to Mr. Ford.

So, Mr. Chairman, I think we have to have some explanation from the Attorney-General today as to the policy and the philosophy of his department on this principle which I think strikes very seriously at the very heart of our system, namely that evidence under oath should have the very sacred respect that we all have it and that it is ill-becoming of the system itself to undermine that respect and trust that the average citizen places in evidence given under oath.

I can't go into too much more detail because the Palmer brothers had appealed - and I would have appealed too if I had been in their shoes when we had some liar giving evidence for $25,000 to put me behind bars. As I understand it, the decision of the appeal court has not yet been handed down.

This, Mr. Chairman, is very similar to other practices in our society today, of which the most recent is this evidence of the RCMP officers who illegally entered property in Montreal and took possession of files and so on. Not only did they break the law, but we've got the highest levels of government taking part in a coverup. Five years pass until we get some wind of what's been going on and the hanky-panky in the highest levels of the administration of justice at the federal level. Here we have, in little, old, sleepy British Columbia - which is supposed to be kind of a distant part of the republic beyond the mountains, as so many people joke about it - complicity, and I use that word with consideration, by the very authorities that are supposed to uphold the law. It's complicity in what, in my view, amounts to little more than bribery.

Mr. Chairman, we've had the explanation that sometimes a witness, by providing such devastating information, puts his life in jeopardy. He has to be relocated and he's got to be hidden in a motel for weeks prior to the trial and so on and so forth.

AN HON. MEMBER: That's true, isn't it?

MR. WALLACE: I'm all in favour of giving reasonable and the maximum safe protection to a witness whose life is in danger - but $25,000 with a promise of another $25,000? The only reason that he blew the whistle after he got the first $25,000 was that he didn't get the second $25,000. The judge in his decision, as I recall - and again, I'm quoting from memory - said that the witness was a rather despicable creature who had been in all kinds of problems.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, I hate to interrupt you. Perhaps a casual reference might be in order. However, to go into a major debate on the case would not be in order at this time. This is a case, as I understand it, that is going to be heard perhaps this next week. We wouldn't want to prejudice the

[ Page 2954 ]

decision.

MR. WALLACE: Yes, Mr. Chairman, you're absolutely correct and I acknowledge your guidance.

It's the principle I want to emphasize and I want to ask the Attorney-General one or two very distinct questions. As a matter of fact, I have a question on the order paper which unfortunately the Attorney-General hasn't as yet been able to answer. But I think the people of British Columbia - and the people of Canada, in fact - are entitled to know just how often this principle is applied. What sums of money are involved? How many people in the course of the last 12 months got sums of money for giving evidence? Who makes the judgment that the witness' life is in danger and to what extent it is in danger?

Immediately, Mr. Chairman, you can begin to see that this is such a very difficult thing to judge. There must be many people who give evidence in court and who expose themselves to some element of danger. At what point do you give them $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 or $50,000 or send them to Australia or Sooke or wherever you think they should be in safety? It's a very dangerous precedent.

I don't know how long it's been going on but the reaction from the press in this province, I think, was commendable. They immediately wrote editorials and asked the question: what on earth is happening to our administration of justice system when this kind of procedure and the payment of large sums of money to witnesses is apparently in regular use? I don't know how frequently it happens, but I've made some inquiries, and I understand from my federal counterparts that it's all but impossible to find out at the federal level what part of the RCMP budget has been paid out in fiscal years for this particular item of expenditure.

Again, it comes back to the principle I tried to discuss this afternoon about wiretapping. Because we all loathe some of the ramifications of organized crime and we all want to try to wipe it out, there's a real tendency that we'll go to any length and pay some pretty serious price to nail a few of the highest-level individuals in organized crime. I wish we could nail every single one of them. But if we do it at the price of some of these basic principles, such as wider invasion of the privacy of all of us through expanded wiretapping laws, or more bribing of witnesses with $25,000 cheques to get them to give the evidence that will obtain a conviction, we've got to say, hey, wait a minute. The price we're paying to nail these offenders is probably a great deal more than we as a society should be prepared to pay.

Again, Mr. Chairman, I won't belabour the point. I hope I've made it very clear that I think it's a dangerous precedent, however well motivated authorities may be in order to try and get a conviction, because sooner or later that tendency expands and the next thing we know is that someone whose guilt is very much in doubt finishes up being unfairly convicted because of evidence presented by someone who was paid to give the evidence.

I wonder if the minister has any of the details that I've asked on the order paper, or whether he would care to give us the information in his possession as to how often this happens, what kinds of sums of money are involved, and whether, in fact, his department is prepared to issue some kind of guidelines to police forces in British Columbia. At the very least, Mr. Chairman, I think that if they're going to continue to use this policy, then the very least that should happen is that the Attorney-General himself should be involved in approving, or disapproving, or preventing these kinds of payments.

HON. MR. GARDOM: First of all, or perhaps secondly, Mr. Member, you were talking about the trail of Regina v. Ross, which was heard in Nanaimo. I dealt with the procedures with you, I believe, in the House during question period, or shortly thereafter. The procedures could be followed by any individual in the province who had a complaint or a grievance regarding how they were dealt with by a police force or by a member of a police force. I also requested, Mr. Member, that the commanding officer of E Division of the RCMP, Deputy Commissioner Peter Barzowski, conduct a further internal investigation and report to me. In the course of this investigation, the witness in question was interviewed. I'm now advised that' this internal investigation has revealed that there were improper and certainly unacceptable methods used by the investigators during the internal questioning of this witness.

Interjection.

HON. MR. GARDOM: No, this is a different case. I'm speaking now, if I may, Mr. Member, to the Chairman who was drawing to my attention that it was a case of sub judice. I'm not referring to.... Oh, I think this is under appeal too. Appeal is started in this one.

Well, in any event, I think I'd better leave that. Appeal has commenced in this one. I thought the Palmer case was under appeal, but....

MR. WALLACE: The appeal is being heard.

HON. MR. GARDOM: In Palmer, yes. Okay. But the Ross case is under appeal, so since that's under appeal I'm going to have to follow the sub judice rule there.

Now dealing with your broader question, Mr. Member, concerning the investigation of criminal offences and the question you had on the order paper, I'd like to say that it does become necessary,

[ Page 2955 ]

under varying circumstances, for the police throughout the country - or in any country, for that matter - to associate with individuals who are of the criminal element. This is in order to gain knowledge, to prevent planned offences, to identify undetected crimes, and to obtain information pertaining to offences that have already been committed. In certain situations, therefore, criminals do receive some compensation for such aid as they may provide, but the RCMP have a rigidly controlled system for the payment of any such type of information.

There's also 'provision, Mr. Member, also under strict control, for the purchase of material evidence -for example, where an undercover policeman infiltrates an area of crime and purchases illegal commodities such as drugs or counterfeit money. Criminal investigation and the requirement for accuracy and sufficiency of evidence does require the use of a police officer in such a role so he can appear as a witness and produce and identify the evidence that he's purchased and identify the individual from whom the evidence was purchased.

Next I'd like to refer to the situation of witnesses who sometimes become targets. You cited the name of the Palmer case, which is a federal case - a drug conspiracy case. So there is the situation of witnesses who sometimes become targets for those people against whom they have testified. As you well appreciate, these witnesses, as anyone else, have to appear in open court. If their lives are in jeopardy -and in many, many cases they are - protection has to be made available for them. In addition to physical safeguards, this protection can also include such things as living allowances, transportation, schooling arrangements and relocation. Each case is judged upon its own merits and is closely scrutinized by senior police officials before any such expenditures are approved.

Now the police guidelines stipulate and stress that an informant who supplies evidence or information cannot do so on the basis of deliberately promoting or instigating a crime. Informants are not left to their own devices, but operate under the control of a police investigator. So before any remuneration can be considered, the police investigator must submit to his superior officer a detailed account of any information he has received and his assessment of that information's value to the investigation. This material, in turn, is then scrutinized by a senior officer who first has to be specifically designated in writing for that specific job by his commanding officer. The material is then again assessed and weighed in the public interest and approval or disapproval of any payment next follows.

Under the provisions of the Financial Administration Act, the Solicitor-General of Canada has delegated financial authority to specific members of the RCMP holding various positions throughout the force. These members are controlled by financial limitations which are specified in writing by the commissioner. There is an accounting system that provides for precise adherence to all controls. These are also subject to scrutiny by an ongoing audit and by an annual audit. Payment is not made to witnesses for court testimony, save and except the entitled witness fee. So that which I have stipulated, Mr. Member, covers the procedures and the range of undercover operation disbursements, contact and information expenses, surveillance costs and the purchase of material evidence.

MR. MACDONALD: I recognize the problem, you know. You have the Ross case which, allegedly, was a contract killing. I won't discuss the case itself any more than that is the allegation in that case. Now the person who gives evidence might or might not be in danger. Therefore you provide for his protection. You provide a sum of money. I think the member for Oak Bay has got a valid point as to where the safeguards are. You may provide for a witness some safe custody pending trial and then after trial so that he, as a free citizen, will come forward and give his evidence. But are you buying the evidence or are you protecting the witness? Of course you say you are protecting the witness. But it's a fine line, isn't it?

HON. MR. GARDOM: You know that; you've been in the job.

MR. MACDONALD: I just wonder whether it should be decided solely, as the member for Oak Bay suggests, within the RCMP and the police force that is conducting the investigation and laying the charge. I think there are times when that kind of question should come to the attention of the Attorney-General and be approved.

Sometimes these payments go up to $50,000 -something of that kind. That is a lot of money, and to the public it may very well seem that you have bought that man's evidence. I'm not suggesting that was the case. But that is the problem. If you did have sort of a police state and not a free society, and you had that kind of payment to people who were about to give evidence or you promised that kind of payment, then nobody would feel that there was a fair trial involved.

Our problems go deeper than that. We, of course, have to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. The accused has a right to silence in too many cases, in my opinion. I think there are far more cases where a person owes it to society to give an account of their conduct when grave allegations are made, not in a police station, but before a justice of the peace or before a judge. But if we err at all, we err on the protection of the individual accused of crime, because he can say nothing and he can say to society: "Prove

[ Page 2956 ]

the case against me beyond a reasonable doubt."

If you begin to enter that kind of society where there is intimidation and organized crime, then you begin very speedily to come to the point where witnesses are intimidated. That's happened in many parts of the world not very far from British Columbia. In the state of New Jersey for a while, although I think it's been broken - the wave has been set back - that was the case. It was very hard to get a witness to come forward who had seen a man shot down in the street with no apparent motive and it was probably a contract killing. It was very hard to get a witness to have the courage to come forward and tell his story in court.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You've seen people in protective custody here. So have I.

MR. MACDONALD: You may need to afford protection to that witness, but it must be done in such a way that no one can suggest that you're buying that witness's evidence. That's a very serious problem. I come back on this question to the necessity really of some kind of a crime commission where people who we know are engaged in a big way in trafficking. The kingpins can be required to account for their activities and their wealth to society. I don't suggest that in every case, but I think there's a whole range of serious cases where the right to silence is something that is great for defence lawyers, but not necessarily in the interests of society or civil liberties generally when you bear in mind the civil liberties of victims and when you bear in mind the good of the whole community.

So I think we have to continually look at the justice system and the rules of evidence and the balance between the right of society to survive free from corruption and free from intimidation by organized crime and the right of the accused individual to a fair trial and to be acquitted if he is innocent. We have to continually examine that. Many of the old concepts that we've inherited from the common law of England may not apply in 1977 and in the decades to come.

So I suggest that what the hon. member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) said has validity: the Attorney-General should work out rules whereby where protection of a witness is involved and money is going to change hands or money has been promised, it should be first with the consent of a civil authority, namely the Attorney-General or his deputy, so that it's not wholly decided within the police force, which naturally has an interest in the investigation and the laying of a charge.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I didn't mean to interrupt the member who was debating. However, the material being covered perhaps ought better to be covered under vote 61, police services.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, earlier this evening there was a discussion about the New Westminster courthouse. I thought it might be an idea under vote 59 to discuss that proposed edifice. Some years ago it was suggested that there be a New Westminster courthouse. Many representatives, and many proposed representatives, candidates and all ...

HON. MR. GARDOM: That was Ray Loewen when he was in high school.

MR. COCKE: ... have had an opportunity to broach the subject on the government. This goes back to the time of Mayor Hume. Now Mayor Hume was the mayor of Vancouver, but long before he was mayor of Vancouver he was mayor of New Westminster. He proposed that a new courthouse be built in that town in the 1940s.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You know what he did? He bought a hockey team instead.

MR. COCKE: He bought a hockey team instead. But you see, at that time we didn't have the hon. Attorney-General that we now have.

However, I would like the government to take note of the fact that in principle not only a courthouse, which we agree was needed badly for the New Westminster area, particularly in view of the fact that the administration of justice in that area has been squeezed, has been hurt.... The lawyers in the area and those who have been in any way involved with the justice system have been shocked not just for the last two or three or four or five years, but for many, many years.

I was pleased to see when we were government that while it's difficult sometimes to move Public Works, the Deputy Minister of Public Works and the minister at that time came around to the point of view that a courthouse was necessary and were prepared to put forward the idea that a courthouse along with a provincial government building was in order. Of course at the same time the then progressive provincial government, who recognized the needs of an area, who didn't want to see a city die - because when a core dies a city dies - also felt that it was time something be added that would really provide for the lifeblood of that area, which was the ICBC building. Of course, this new government came along and hammered that to death in very short order. However, having done so, they then felt sufficiently repentant to at least come forward with an idea that a courthouse be built.

I would like to congratulate the Attorney-General for the pressure that he must have put on the Minister of Highways and Public Works (Hon. Mr. Fraser) ,

[ Page 2957 ]

who is a great thrower, because I'm sure that it took a good deal of pressure to get him to come around to this situation.

MR. G.R. LEA (Prince Rupert): He's not a senior cabinet minister; he's a Liberal.

MR. COCKE: I agree that it is a major interest to those interested in the justice aspect of our life, and that the administration of justice will be more complete as a result of that.

However, I would like to suggest that there is a good deal of confusion in New Westminster. I'd like to put that confusion to rest at the moment. The confusion has been created as to who might be the member for that area. The First Minister and the Attorney-General were in New Westminster a few days ago when they made this fantastic announcement. The Premier ...

MR. MACDONALD: Who else was there?

MR. COCKE: ... in the course of his address at that time, introduced who he termed to be the member for the area - Digger! The member for the area! (Laughter.)

AN HON. MEMBER: We haven't come to his vote yet!

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to introduce you to this very left-wing paper called the New Westminster Columbian. They've tried for a number of years to beat me, but they haven't managed yet. 'But even they saw the shame in what was going on in this clandestine meeting that occurred between those three individuals prior....

AN HON. MEMBER: And 400 other people!

MR. COCKE: No, no, no, no! I'm talking about the clandestine meeting that obviously occurred here before you presented yourselves ...

AN HON. MEMBER: Where? Never!

MR. COCKE: ... to the people in New Westminster.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, does this relate to vote 59?

MR. COCKE: This relates to the courthouse, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, when the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Loewen) .... They've never heard of him, incidentally, in Burnaby-Edmonds. From time to time the people of Burnaby-Edmonds have phoned my constituency office to find out whether or not we'll look after their needs because they certainly have no one doing so.

Let me quote the end of a front-page article in The Columbian: "Loewen said today that Cocke, as the MLA for New Westminster, should have been at the Wednesday meeting at the New Westminster Chamber of Commerce when the courthouse announcement was made."

MR. R.L. LOEWEN (Burnaby-Edmonds): You should have been there.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. COCKE: However, Mr. Chairman, the newspaper goes on to say that Cocke was not invited, that Loewen was invited. The member for Burnaby-Edmonds was invited by the Premier of this province. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. On a point of order?

MR. LOEWEN: Mr. Chairman, I happen to have that article in my office and what the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) is saying has no resemblance to that article in the newspaper.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, may I? That is not a point of order, hon. member, and any corrections which need to be made in a speech need to be made at the conclusion of the speech.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I really think that what is occurring is a situation where one member of this Legislature has one thing to say and the other member of the Legislature has an opportunity to get up and say his piece in his own time.

Interjections.

MR. COCKE: Table? My goodness gracious, I'll read it to you word for word.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE:

"Asked whether Cocke should not have been invited to sit at the head table at the meeting, Loewen said it was the chamber that made the decision as to who should sit there. However, the chamber of commerce manager, Ray McDonald said today, the chamber had received a call from Victoria stating who the government wanted."

[ Page 2958 ]

AN HON. MEMBER: Oh, oh!

MR. COCKE: "Regarding Cocke's participation in a meeting announcing their courthouse, McDonald said the chamber did not contact Cocke and was not contacted by him." How would I ...

MR. LOEWEN: Read the whole article!

MR. COCKE: ... contact them, Mr. Chairman? What do you want me to read?

MR. LOEWEN: The whole article.

MR. COCKE: I'm not reading the whole article, Mr. Chairman. It's here for those who would like to read it.

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

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I don't know if it's in order, but I'll read it into the record.

Interjections.

MR. COCKE: I think this silly kind of politics is ridiculous ...

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. COCKE: ... around a situation that I've been fighting for years. Everybody in that town knows it and I don't really appreciate a member from a neighbouring riding moving into my constituency and indicating that I'm not interested. I'm telling you that they know I'm interested. Certainly I was interested far beyond the courthouse. I wanted something there that would provide something ongoing for the needs of the economy of the town, which would have been ICBC headquarters.

Instead of that, of course, the new government has decided to pay exorbitant rents in perpetuity in order to relieve New Westminster of their economic development. It's too bad, but it's too bad for that government in any event.

MR. LOEWEN: Are you worried, Cocke?

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I only pray - and I say this tonight publicly - that that member runs against me in New Westminster at the next general election. I only pray that that occurs.

M R. LEA: That's quite an undertaking. (Laughter.)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, let's move to vote 59, please.

MR. COCKE: So, Mr. Chairman, I'm delighted. I congratulate the Attorney-General for doing what he could do about the economy of the area. As much as I congratulate him, I feel equally resentful at the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) , who is the old colleague of the Liberal Party who denied New Westminster an opportunity to grow with ICBC in their midst.

MR. N. LEVI (Vancouver-Burrard): I'm quite prepared to defer to my friend for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Loewen) if he can climb out of the hole he's put himself in.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to ask the Attorney-General if he would mind explaining - at least to me, anyway - what this new pre-trial procedure is that was announced last month which apparently is going to save the taxpayers a lot of money. We certainly need to save a lot of money in the court area. I have in mind the long saga of the Penthouse trial, which took the better part of 61 days. I'm not going to comment on the case, but just 61 days that case took. I understand it cost somewhere in the order of three-quarters of a million dollars.

On May 26 the Attorney-General and the federal minister, Ron Basford, announced a new trial procedure to reduce the need for lengthy preliminary hearings. I'm just quoting now from The Vancouver Sun for the 26th:

"As a result the preliminary hearings that have cost $10,000 a day and have lasted as long as a year could be a thing of the past in Vancouver according to federal Justice minister Basford and the Attorney-General of British Columbia ......

I'm deeply concerned about the delay in the cases coming to court, but particularly I think that everybody's very concerned about the amount of money it costs to put these cases through the courts.

So perhaps after I sit down the Attorney-General might enlighten us as to what actually is going to happen with this pre-trial procedure. For instance, it's not going to involve any plea bargaining or any of that kind of thing, I gather. I don't know.

Later on there's a suggestion here which is a highly technical thing. I'm not a lawyer so I don't quite understand what "evidentiary statements" being exchanged between the prosecutor and the defence counsel are. I gather that is a practice that goes on in the United States - that kind of thing.

Perhaps you might explain to us what it is. I understand it's a pilot project. It's not something, Mr. Chairman, that's going to happen overnight.

Do we have a new Chairman, Mr. Chairman? My colleague from Nanaimo (Mr. Stupich) is there. I just wondered; is he chairing this thing? Because I might like a much broader latitude than I've got and if he's in the Chair I'm sure I can get it.

[ Page 2959 ]

MR. D.D. STUPICH (Nanaimo): I'm listening very closely.

MR. LEVI: Oh, you're listening very closely. Are you chairing?

MS. SANFORD: He's not chairing.

MR. CHAIRMAN: On vote 59, Mr. Member.

MR. LEVI: Oh, you're not chairing.

I'd also like to make another comment about the arrangements in the court and perhaps the Attorney-General might comment. I know that he's a great upholder of tradition, pomp, circumstance and all that sort of stuff. But when are we, in our province, going to... ?

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: Yes, well Gilbert and Sullivan have got to be at least 90 years ago.

When are we, in our province, going to set up a court system where we don't have a box for the prisoner? He sits in this box. I don't know whether we need to have that kind of process going on. We've got the judge who sits 8 to 10 feet above everybody else. We have the jury, which can be over somewhere on the left of the judge. When are we going to get into some kind of structure that really brings us into the modern days? The business of the witness box and the accused sitting in the box - do we really have to have that kind of thing?

You announced earlier - or you reminded us -that there was an announcement about two family courts. I would hope that we're not going in for a great deal of pomp and circumstance in those kinds of courts. Where, for instance, Mr. Attorney-General, '. are we going to have these courts? Are they going to be located downtown somewhere or are they going to be located in some kind of residential district, where people have an opportunity of knowing that there is a family court in their area, that it's not something which is going to be away from where people are?

The main thing that the family court deals with specifically are civil matters. Well, there are some criminal matters, I gather, with some of the problems that happen at home. But basically family matters are dealt with. In that case, they need to be in a more informal but very visible kind of surroundings. I think that that was achieved to a large extent in the Surrey-Richmond-Delta unified family court. I hope that we're going in for that kind of thing as opposed to some of the old.... I guess the best way to talk about them is a kind of empire structure, that kind of large, monolithic structure that scares the heck out of people. It's tough enough going to court without having to take a look at the buildings which you're going to go into.

Also, I'd like the Attorney-General to comment, if he can, and I gather that a couple of these cases to which I'm going to refer are going to be appealed.... We recently had an example of sentencing....

Interjection.

MR. LEA: Okay, I'll talk about the general problem as regards to the specific case. All of a sudden, everything's under appeal. Is the Oliver case under appeal?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Yes.

MR. LEVI: Is the other case under appeal?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Yes.

MR. LEVI: Is the Philliponi case under appeal? There you are, Mr. Chairman. We're muzzled.

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: Right. You see, it's Gardom versus the rest, and we can't even talk about that. All right. let me see if I can deal with this, Mr. Chairman, in a rather specific way. Recently, in relation to some of the sentencing procedures which took place in court, I think to some extent the confidence of some people in the community was shaken by the kind of sentencing that took place. Now I don't know what kind of impact the Attorney-General can have as a matter of policy on sentencing procedures. I gather that a lot of it relates to appeal court precedents and that kind of thing. So I guess that we're going to have to wait to see what happens in these particular cases. I'm boxed in-, I can't really cover it because, as I recall, the two or three cases which got us a certain amount of publicity in such a way that brought to some extent - and I say this in a very meaningful fashion - some kind of questioning by the average citizen as to what exactly was going on.... There was some very serious concern because the two or three individuals involved happened to be lawyers -people protecting their own. Now I don't want to get any further into it than that. I can see the Attorney-General is getting very distressed by this discussion. He is a lawyer, of course.

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: He's not distressed. Oh, I can deal with it. He's not distressed. It's not fair to the court. It's not fair to me either, because I may not have an opportunity to bring this up again, will 1, Mr. Chairman?

[ Page 2960 ]

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: After the appeal. Well, I would move that perhaps what we might do is put this....

MR. MACDONALD: The Attorney-General might not be here.

MR. LEVI: No, that's true, too. We're in a very difficult situation here indeed. I thought I was going to have some very interesting remarks.

Anyway, I better go back to the original question that I asked the Attorney-General: would he mind explaining to the House exactly what the pre-trial experiment is and what they expect to get out of it in terms of shortening the time taken to get cases to court, particularly in the area of the preliminary hearing? I'm sure that he has all the notes and he may be able to help us.

HON. MR. GARDOM: The hon. member made some reference, Mr. Chairman, to the new family courts that are proposed in the city of Vancouver. We have not yet established firm sites but officials of my department are negotiating with the city. It's certainly our intention to see that they're adequately placed where they can best serve the people in the community who will be requiring their services.

I agree with the hon. member that the setting there should certainly be far less rigidly structured, as we find in, say, the assize court. Certainly, in general, there should be sort of a move to a greater informality of structure and of design.

Insofar as the pre-trial procedure is concerned and the mechanisms that have been jointly developed by myself with the Minister of Justice - and I would like to express my appreciation very much to him for his co-operation and interest in it - in the pilot project that will be handled down in Main Street in Vancouver, the object of the exercise, Mr. Member, is to encourage both the federal and provincial Crown counsel to make full disclosure of the particulars of their cases to defence counsel prior to court appearance. This kind of procedure is really based on the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission of Canada in its very interesting paper on criminal discovery. If you've not seen it, I'd commend it to you. We hope that this will reduce the need for lengthy preliminary hearings. It will certainly aid to reduce the delays between the arrest of an accused and the final disposition of his case at trial.

Under the project itself, defence representatives will be able to conduct a pre-trial meeting with Crown counsel, obtain the case particulars, and fully confer with the accused client, consult or re-consult with the pre-trial prosecutor, and make arrangements, where possible, for any kind of admissions before fixing the date for the trial or, if necessary, for a preliminary hearing. Obviously the intent of the exercise is to attempt to eliminate the non-contentious issues and better define those matters that could be areas of disagreement and that could be heard.

Now what kind of success are we hoping to anticipate from this? Well, we're very hopeful that admissions will be made as to non-disputed facts which, as I say, should result in a shortening of trials and also in the eliminating of the need to call a number of witnesses. Consent committals to trial could be agreed upon. Guilty pleas could be entered and, in the event there's insufficiency of evidence, then of course it would be open to the Crown, as it is now, to enter stays of proceedings or to have the cases dismissed, depending upon relevant circumstances.

In this particular area there have been some very outstanding methods fairly recently developed in other areas of the world. England, I gather, for practical purposes has eliminated the mechanism of a preliminary hearing, as has Israel. They are having a great deal of success with it. The federal Minister of Justice made the suggestion that this might be an appropriate route to be taken in Canada, and he received a lot of support in some sectors of the country and a lot of opposition in others. We're hopeful that this project will produce an effective result. We're looking forward very much to being able to assess its results. As I've said, what we're attempting to do is standardize and - what will I say? - harmonize the pre-trial procedure in criminal cases in the province.

Without getting into specifics in the last point that you raised - sentencing - I know the hon. member knows, as a result of his professional training and activities in this field over the years, that this is a difficult area. It is again one wherein society attains a balance over a period of time. The law perhaps does not lead an area such as this; it sometimes follows, but it follows the mores of society. Our society shows a general indication that there should be stricter penalties. It's been advocated tonight in this House. I must say I've heard more talk about stricter penalties in this Legislature tonight than I probably had in the 12 years that I've been here. The talk used to be the other side of the coin five or six years ago. I think you could well remember that. Some of the advocates on your side of the House were exceptionally strong on those points.

The judges, of course, have to determine a case on the evidence that is before them. The evidence that is before the judge is not necessarily the evidence that is ever reported in the press; nor should it be. They produce a précis of a trial, a précis of an account, then indicate what the sentence is. Fine, that's proper reporting, but that is not on what the court is basing its judgment decision. It's basing its judgment

[ Page 2961 ]

decision on essentially four tests which have stood the passage of time over several hundreds of years: the gravity of the offence; the opportunities and possibilities for the reformation of the accused; the protection of society; and to what extent a penalty would constitute a deterrent against other people doing the same thing. There are mistakes made, and if there are mistakes made then it is certainly open to the Crown to appeal and open to the defence to appeal.

MR. LEVI: Mr. Chairman, with the explanation by the Attorney-General, I get the feeling that in the pre-trial procedural thing that was made out, we may be entering the area - and I used the phrase earlier -of something a little bit related to plea bargaining, where, in fact, you're having these meetings.

I recall some years ago a Mr. Curley came up from Los Angeles. He was a public defender. He explained that in his office they handle 75 per cent of all of the felony cases in Los Angeles County. Because he had an investigatory staff and they have this arrangement, where they would meet with the defence people, only 25 per cent of those cases ever got to court.

Certainly this particular project you're outlining interests me because so often when you go to court you watch cases going on and then you find it suddenly gets thrown out. So I think that if it's leading toward that kind of thing as well, that's okay.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Can I ask you a question? Would you prefer the Israel route or the Great Britain route yourself?

MR. LEVI: Well, I'm not disagreeing with the project.

HON. MR. GARDOM: No, I'm just wondering what your attitude....

MR. LEVI: I'm aware to some extent of the project that's going on in Israel. I'm not familiar with what's going on in....

But I just want to go back to the point that what we're doing here involves a great degree of informality. I don't disagree with that; I think that's fine. I think that any way that you can make the machine work better is fine. The only thing that I want to know specifically is: would there be a chance that we might get into the plea-bargaining area? That's the thing that worries me. That's the only thing that worries me.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I welcome all members back to the House, and would you please contribute to the silence? (Laughter.) The second member for Burrard.

MR. LEVI: Mr. Chairman, is there something going on somewhere else that you and I don't know about? There must be something else going on. Is that what it is?

AN HON. MEMBER: Do you mean the rest of the world?

MR. LEVI: To the Attorney-General, Mr. Chairman: I think that the experiment is certainly something that's going to be very useful. My only area of concern is: are we approaching the hoary question of some plea bargaining? That's the point I want to make.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, in regard to the courts and sentencing and a few other points, I wonder if the Attorney-General could comment on the fact that weekend sentences are becoming more popular. I think they serve a useful purpose. If someone gets 14 days to be served in seven weekends, this is very much more a penalty to them if they are out of circulation at the weekend, and it also means that they sustain their families and earn a living during Monday to Friday.

But, again, to refer back to the jail situation in Courtenay, for example, the police officers brought to my attention the fact that this creates a very substantial congestion of the jail on certain weekends. If you had several prisoners turning up each weekend to a facility such as the jail at Courtenay, there are some weekends when they are pretty full. If there were a rash or crimes or arrests over that weekend period, there might be problems in accommodating prisoners.

I wonder if the minister would tell us to what degree the use of weekend sentencing by the courts is increasing. Is this a policy which clearly is being used by judges more often? Again, as a reflection of the lack of co-ordination in our court system with all the parties concerned, is this another area where it seems like a good idea but the planning to deal with the new system of sentencing is quite inadequate?

Everybody seems to be very itchy and twitchy and wanting to get away home, Mr. Chairman. If they all want to go home, let's go. But I have some points to make, and if we're going to make them I'll make them. But if we're all going to sit and talk, maybe we should all go home.

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please, hon. members. The member for Oak Bay has the floor.

MR. WALLACE: One of the fundamental problems of our court system is the appalling waste

[ Page 2962 ]

of personnel, time, money and energy due to the fact that the various people who make the court system work are completely, it appears, unco-ordinated and not integrated. One of the reasons that we had so much trouble not too many weeks ago with the Crown counsel in the province was that they were simply reflecting and speaking out in public about their frustrations as part of that inadequate system whereby such things happen as, for example....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please, hon. member. Crown counsel is in vote 60.

MR. WALLACE: Yes, but I'm talking about the courts who function along with many people, including Crown counsel, Mr. Chairman.

If you will just give me a minute, I just wanted to quote from the Colonist of Friday, May 27, where the headline said: "Court Case Delayed Two Weeks Because No Judge Available." And when you read the report it turns out that - and I won't mention the name necessarily - this person was standing trial on a couple of charges.

"Crown counsel Robert Johnston told Judge E.J.C. Stewart, who was not scheduled to hear the case and who had a full slate of cases, that no judge was available, so Judge Stewart granted his request for an adjournment until June 9.

"Outside the court Johnston said in an interview that he was really not sure why a judge wasn't available to hear the case which was scheduled some time ago.'

Now another example, and I don't have the precise clipping with me. Not too many weeks ago a judge in Vancouver was somewhat shattered to discover that he couldn't find the prisoner. He couldn't find the prisoner, Mr. Chairman. Apparently the prisoner had been transferred from one facility to another, and the system is so inefficient and ill-coordinated that even the simple keeping of records as to where the prisoner is housed are such that a judge and sheriffs and court clerks - I don't know how many other people - can meet the responsibility of turning up in court to deal with a case and they can't find the prisoner. On that basis there's a further waste of time and energy and money and the efforts of personnel.

Now I know that one of the really great contributions that the Deputy Attorney-General (Mr. Vickers) has made while he's held that office has been to use computers to try and have an accurate record of not only cases that are to come to court but to try and use the computer data to schedule the utilization of court time in an efficient way and get around some of these incredible situations that I've quoted where you either can't find a judge or you can't find a prisoner.

It is too late tonight to get these answers, Mr. Chairman, but I wonder if the Attorney-General would make note of this point and perhaps report back to the committee as to what progress is being made in bringing about a more efficient use not only of courtrooms and the facilities but also the output and the efficiency of the many different personnel involved in our court system.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

Hon. Mr. Williams moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 10:59 p.m.