[ Page 3037 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

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

On vote 62.

Ms. Brown –– 3037

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3041

Ms. Brown –– 3042

Mrs. Dailly –– 3044

Mr. Wallace –– 3044

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3045

Mr. Lauk –– 3045

On vote 64.

Mr. Macdonald –– 3045

Mr. Gibson –– 3046

Ms. Brown –– 3049

Mr. Nicolson –– 3051

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3052

Mr. Macdonald –– 3055

Mr. Nicolson –– 3056

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3057

On vote 70.

Mr. Wallace –– 3057

Mr. Skelly –– 3057

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3058

Mr. Macdonald –– 3058

Mr. Skelly –– 3058

On vote 71.

Ms. Brown –– 3059

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3059

On vote 73.

Mr. Wallace –– 3059

Mr. Skelly –– 3061

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 3062

Mr. Skelly –– 3062

Mr. Cocke –– 3063

Mr. King –– 3063

Mr. Skelly –– 3064

The House met at 8 p.m.

Orders of the day.

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF

THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL

(continued)

On vote 62: corrections, $40,974, 313 -continued.

MS, R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): Mr. Chairman, before I go into my statement I just want to welcome that strange face that is now sitting beside the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) . It's a very strange face, but I hope it will prove to be a very friendly face as time goes by.

If I can offer a word of advice for the new deputy minister, Mr. Chairman, through you, on this branch

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: That's not the new deputy minister? Who is that strange face, Mr. Chairman? (Laughter.)

MR. CHAIRMAN: If you wish an answer, hon. member, you'll have to be seated.

MS. BROWN: Who is that strange face, Mr. Chairman?

HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): Madam member, there is nothing strange about the face, This is Dr. John Eckstedt, the commissioner of corrections and also the acting deputy at the present time.

MS. BROWN: I'm very happy to the person responsible for corrections in the chair because my words are going to be very much in order tonight, I'm going to be speaking under this vote; I'm speaking about corrections.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: First time this session.

MS. BROWN: Really, what I wanted to talk about was the whole business

HON. MR. GARDOM: He likes your new dress.

MS. BROWN: He likes my new dress.

What I really wanted to talk about was the whole business of women and the justice system. But I realize, Mr. Chairman, that to do that I would have had to do it under the general vote of the Attorney-General. So I'm going to have to confine myself, of course, precisely to women and the justice system as it specifically applies to corrections. This is a challenge, but I have every intention of living up to this challenge tonight.

The justice system is really strange as it applies to women. If one looks at it specifically in the area of corrections and the way women are treated under the justice system in the area of prostitution, for example, then we begin to wonder what is going on in the justice system and certainly under the area of corrections. We have this really unusual situation where two people are involved in what we are told is an illegal activity, but the only person, usually, who ends up in prison, who ends up in the area of corrections, is the female.

AN HON. MEMBER: Should it be illegal?

MS, BROWN: That's an ideological question, Mr. Member, which we should probably discuss at some further time. I would like to discuss it now, but I'm afraid I would be ruled out of order and I don't want to be ruled out of order by the Chairman. I really want to stay within order, which is why I'm raising this question at this time under this particular vote with the person responsible for corrections here who can whisper to the Attorney-General and explain to me why it is that although it takes two people to break this law, the person who always ends up being incarcerated, the person who always ends up being in prison, is the woman. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's as ridiculous as saying that with the heroin addict it's the heroin we should send to jail rather than the addict. It's as ludicrous as that. We have the act of prostitution~ we have the person involved in it. The recipient of the service, if one may be so crass, is not the person who ends up in jail but the other individual.

Now how can the Attorney-General explain to me this contradiction under the justice system? I know that it is not the law. I realize that the law is fair and impartial and treats all individuals as equals. This is what I've been taught, anyway. Yet for some strange reason it is the woman who is harassed by the police and it is the woman who ends up as being incarcerated rather than the other way around. This is a strange thing about women and the justice system.

Now when you look at the statistics, Mr. Chairman, you find that they are really not all that amazing. There are 20,000 people in British Columbia prisons today. In fact, Canada's number of people in incarceration is the highest per capita in the western world. So right there we know that something is wrong, But 20,000 of these people in prisons are men. There are only 450 of these people who are

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women. So we are really talking about approximately - I don't know - 6 per cent, or a very small percentage, of these people who are women. Of the 450 women who are in prison, 50 per cent of them are there on their first offence. These are the statistics I have. If they're incorrect, I would appreciate the Attorney-General giving me the correct figures. But the figure I have is that of the 450 women who are in prison, 50 per cent of them are in there on their first offence.

The charges which they're in there for are primarily either prostitution or drug-related. We have possession, trafficking, fraud, forgery and, of course, prostitution. In one or two isolated instances, we have manslaughter. So we're not really dealing with crimes against human beings when it comes to the incarceration of women. We are dealing more with social crimes and, in many instances, crimes that should involve two people, as in the case of prostitution. Yet somehow it's always the woman who ends up in prison.

I don't want the minister to get me wrong. I mean, if it's illegal, it's illegal. But surely it should be illegal for both people involved and not just for the one. I would like some explanations about why it is the woman who is the one who is harassed by the police, it is the woman who is the one who is exploited, and, invariably, it is the woman who ends up in jail.

At the same time that we have all these crimes being committed against women, whether it is a matter of violence in the family, such as wife-beating or whatever, or other crimes against women, we don't have the same percentage in terms of charges being laid or incarceration. So I need to have some kind of explanation about this.

What I'm trying very desperately to do is to somehow fit my whole discussion about the justice system and women under this business of corrections. I'm trying to somehow fit it into this context by saying: how is it that the wife beater and people who commit crimes of violence against women have such a hard time getting incarcerated and ending in jail, whereas there are so many women who are involved in these other crimes - not crimes against people, but social misdemeanours, quite frankly - who end up in jail? For example, there is a very small percentage of women in jail on the charge of manslaughter. I think the Attorney-General has that figure.

As a matter of fact, in my travels around the world, I visited one country and, as I do wherever I travel, I inquired about the status of women in that country. I discovered that there was an even smaller percentage of women in jails in that particular country - which shall remain nameless - and all the women who were in jail were there on charges of manslaughter. In fact, when I inquired how it was that they didn't have prostitutes in jail, I was told that if they put the women in they'd have to put the men in, too, and the whole thing would get out of hand, so they decided they wouldn't prosecute the women.

AN HON. MEMBER: Right back where we started.

MS. BROWN: Right! But that's not what happens here. This is why I'm questioning why so much police time is spent in tracking down women who are prostitutes. So much of the police time is spent in laying charges. Why do so many of the prostitutes end up being incarcerated and so few of the men who use the services of these prostitutes ever get called to justice? I'm sure that the Attorney-General can answer that question.

I want to go on record that I certainly support the harassment and the incarceration of the pimps or the people who run the houses of ill repute. I have no problems about this. The only problem I have is the question of why the donor rather than the recipient, and how do you separate this out in terms of your decision?

Now one of the things I discovered, Mr. Attorney- General, when I visited the prisons and spoke to the women there, was that there were no services. There were no vocational or rehabilitation services for women in prisons. I found this really strange, because I discovered that one of the things most of the women in prison have in common is a lack of education. Twenty-six per cent of the women in prison have less than a grade 8 education. Only 6 per cent of them had actually finished high school or had more than high school.

Yet I discovered, when I visited the prisons right here on the lower mainland, in one prison there were a couple of sewing machines and that was all. Absolutely no attempt had been made to help these women to complete their education, and certainly no attempt had been made in the area of vocational services. What is worse is that there was a programme instituted under the previous government, which was funded by the adviser to the government on women's affairs, in terms of developing crafts and training in the prisons. That programme was terminated by the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) .

During the time I spent with the women in the prisons, all they talked about was the fact that they had absolutely nothing to do. There they were. No attempt has been made in the area of helping them to complete their education, There was no vocational training. They didn't talk about brutality - nobody was brutalizing them, as far as I learned from my visits with them - just the time wasted. Most of them were in for two years less a day. Most of them were in on drug-related charges. There were no acts of hostility against society or anything of that nature. Here is a marvellous opportunity to upgrade from the

[ Page 3039 ]

grade 8 standard that most of them had - the statistics show 26 per cent of them with grade 8 or less. There are no facilities - none at all.

What the women said to me was that they did not want their struggle to improve the corrections system to be separate from that of the men. They realized that in Oakalla, for example, with 85 women, any kind of struggle to do away with something like solitary confinement was meaningless if it was done in isolation, They really had to work in conjunction with the men in terms of fighting for these things. They were very actively co-operating through the prisoners' rights groups in terms of the improvement of the prison system as a whole. They recognized that with the process of unemployment and the escalating cost of living there was a double victimization involved because, incredible as it might seem, most of the women in Oakalla were native Indian women, and most of them, as I said before, were in there on drug-related charges. All of them were poor. I didn't meet any middle-class or upper-class women on my visits to Oakalla. They were all poor women.

Mr. Chairman, what I also discovered was that 90 per cent of them were in there for three months; 80 per cent of them were in there for one month or less; and I even found people who were in there for one day. I don't understand this. This is really a strange kind of system for incarcerating people. About one-third of those women have never, ever worked in their lives. They have never been employed. They have no skills. They have no training. They have never worked. I was, quite frankly, appalled by the ages of those women - they were so young. I don't understand what our system is doing to them. I found that 46 per cent were under the age of 25; 52 per cent of them were between 25 and 29. We are really talking about very young people and a breakdown in the system that incarcerates such young people. There were only 2 per cent of them who were over the age of 60.

What I also discovered was that a number of them really had become institutionalized, as the Leader of the Opposition mentioned earlier. They had been in there for a number of years, in and out, in and out. This was it. This was where they were most comfortable. This was where they had status. This was where they could speak with authority: "From my experience, having been in here since the age of 17, this is how I know the system works and this is what you have to do."

It really was quite frightening that no attempt was being made to help these women survive in the world outside. Oakalla was home. I really couldn't sense any feeling of even wanting to stay out when their time was up and they got out. I was amazed at the recidivism rate. So many of those women would sit and talk about, "when I was here, there and everywhere, " and mention all the other prisons they had been in and all the other experiences they had had in prison. There is something basically wrong with the system. The minister, Mr. Chairman, likes to talk about the changes and improvements, but I couldn't find it in my visits to Oakalla and to the other prisons to talk to the women. I couldn't see any indication at all of any change. I certainly was very upset by the lack of any attempt in terms of vocational guidance and in terms of helping them to deal with the educational system.

The only thing that really bothered me was what happened to the babies born to a number of these women who were in prison. Because if there wasn't a family there - a family unit that was ready and willing to take the child - then the child disappeared into the whole network of the welfare bureaucracy. It just totally disappeared and became a ward of the state and that was it.

I don't know what the solution is, Mr. Chairman, through you to the Attorney-General, but there seems to be something wrong with that system, especially when the mother is in there not for a crime against society or even for a crime against property, if somehow her child should disappear into this whole kind of red tape of the welfare system and be taken away from her. There was all this concern about where the child would be when she got out in the two years less a day, if she could prove that she would be a fit mother, if the child would be returned to her and so forth and so on. So certainly that was an area of major concern to me.

The other thing that really terrified me was when I read the Solicitor-General's statistic that indicated that between January, 1970, and December, 1973, there was a 179 per cent increase in the number of women ending up in prison. What does this mean? Because what I found out at the same time was that there's not an increase in violent crime, there's not an increase in manslaughter and there's not an increase in murder. What there is an increase in is trafficking and possession and prostitution. You know, this doesn't make any sense to me; this doesn't make any sense to me at all. Maybe the minister, when he responds, Mr. Chairman, will be able to give me some explanation for what this is.

The Law Reform Commission, 1976, in its report tells us that one out of every 1,000 people in this country is serving a sentence. That sounds like an incredible figure. I would like the minister to doublecheck that for me because I don't really like that figure and I don't want to believe it. It also tells us that half of the 4,000 people who are incarcerated each year are incarcerated for crimes not against people, but against property. That tells you something about us as a society too, I think - that we're concerned about locking people up who commit crimes against property rather than against people.

[ Page 3040 ]

The other thing that the Law Reform Commission said that was really interesting was that there's something like 4,000 laws on the statute books and that we're adding to these each year. It talks about the legalese. It talks about how mystified people are by this legalese, how unaware everyone is of legal services, how unclear people are about the charges that affect them.

If there is ever anyone in society who doesn't know anything about the law or what it means, it surely must be the women, because as you know, Mr. Chairman, that's right. We are trained to be incompetent. That's part of our socialization process. We're not supposed to understand things like law and politics and government and these kinds of things, which is one of the reasons why we're so baffled that two people are involved in a crime such as prostitution, yet only one person ends up in jail. I don't understand that, and that's why I'm asking for some kind of explanation.

It may not be the justice system. Maybe this is just the way in which the police operate and this should have been raised under the police vote. I don't know, Mr. Chairman, but certainly this is the way in which it happens. There are not very many people in Oakalla who are in there because they utilized the services of prostitutes, but there are a number of prostitutes in Oakalla. Now you can't be a prostitute all by yourself. It just doesn't work that way. I want some kind of explanation from the Attorney-General.

Now one of the things that came out of the last convention was a number of resolutions. I just want to go through them very quickly for the Attorney-General so that he can comment as to whether he thinks they are useful to him or not.

One is that there should be established an advisory council of concerned women who will be recognized by the Ministry of the Attorney-General to deal with the whole issue concerning women in the prisons, the whole business of vocational training, educational training and the whole justice system as it applies to women. There should be regular tours of all of the facilities in these prisons where women and girls are held in detention and they should have an opportunity to be interviewed personally and privately.

The other thing that the women talked about was that there was no real procedure for grievance. If they were unhappy about something or wanted to complain, there was no established grievance procedure that they were aware of that they could use,

The other thing they asked was that they ensure that there is physical and mental health care available to them as well as the educational programme, recreational facilities. . . , The recreational facilities, quite frankly, are a joke; they are so totally non-existent that they are a joke. There should be some meaningful job-training facilities and that was another thing that they complained about.

All of these women had marvellous ideas about what they wanted to do with the time that they have there but there weren't any facilities for them. They couldn't come out of Oakalla with any kind of skill. They couldn't be trained while they were in there for any kind of job so that when they came out they would be able to go into the labour market. This was especially tragic in talking with the young mothers, the ones who had had babies when they were in there. When they came out they wanted to be able to work so that they could apply to the welfare department to have their babies returned to them and say they were fit mothers. They went in without any skills and they were going to be coming out of Oakalla without any skills at all. They are asking for facilities.

They also talked about re-evaluating facilities for post-release. This was particularly relevant to the native population. The native women say that they want their own halfway house.

Don't yawn, Mr. Attorney-General, please.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Pardon me!

MS. BROWN: They were really concerned. What they have done. . , .

HON. MR. GARDOM: You don't mind if I blow my nose, do you?

MS. BROWN: Yes, I do. I really do!

MR. D. BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): Ask her permission! (Laughter.)

MS. BROWN: Sometimes I wonder whether he is a friend or a foe!

BON. D.M. PHILLIPS (Minister of Economic Development): Yeah, I bet you do!

MS. BROWN: It's so nice to have the Minister of Economic Development back in the House after an absence of three months, Mr. Chairman.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Too bad you wouldn't be absent for a few months!

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, the Vancouver Indian Centre Society presented a brief to the Attorney-General on the whole business of the halfway house and the prison liaison programme for women. I don't know whether the Attorney-General has this brief or not, but it asks for a post-release home for women. It says they recognize the fine work being done by the Salvation Army and the

[ Page 3041 ]

Elizabeth Fry Society, but they specifically feel that they need a house just for native women, where they can feel they are involved in terms of their own culture and their own needs.

I know there is a lot of hostility in the community to this and there is the whole question about being divisive and separating one particular cultural group and this kind of thing. But this is what they are asking for. I know it's not easy because I have received mail from the neighbours in the area where they purchased the home and wanted to open it, saying they were opposed to it. In fact, the parent-teacher association of the school in the neighbourhood wrote to me and said that they were opposed to having a halfway house for women coming out of Oakalla in that particular neighbourhood.

The Vancouver Indian Centre hasn't received any kind of response from the Attorney-General on this particular brief about the post-release facilities which was submitted to him. They want a halfway house just for native women - nobody else - staffed by native women, to deal with the whole business of moving back into society and moving into the labour market. They want specific programmes supervised by the Vancouver Indian Centre. They said it should be located within walking distance of the Vancouver Indian Centre. All of the counselling, recreational programmes, personnel and facilities of the centre would be at the disposal of this halfway house. The House would facilitate 8 to 10 women. What they need is some kind of response from the Attorney-General about this.

They want more community-based and -placed programmes, Mr. Attorney-General. This same proposal from the Indian Centre deals with the whole concept of a prison liaison worker. Maybe you can respond to that. They want a female native person hired to become a part of the prison liaison team, with both Oakalla and Twin Maples.

Mr. Attorney-General, I don't know if you have a copy of this brief or not ' but I would certainly be very happy to let you have mine.

They are also talking about a liaison worker within the prison programme itself. They are asking for someone who would be a member of the corrections service and with whom they could talk about rights, medical attention, education, day passes and transfers; and who could assist them with legal problems arising from the Indian Act that covers things like status, property and marriage. This person would assist the inmates with family problems by using the team, the facilities of the Indian Centre, human rights personnel, the Canadian Bar Association, interested lawyers and the native court workers - all of these groups - to deal with the general legal problems which they face.

The other really major problem faced by a number of these women from the reserves is the language. There are a number of them who are not fluent in English and would like this liaison person to be able to speak to them in their own particular language.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to repeat again before I sit down that while women make up only 6 per cent of the prison population, they accept that for that reason they receive the smallest percentage of the funding, but they recognize that to deny them a vocational and educational service is very short-term. In fact, what it ensures is that they do return to prison because having been there for their two years less a day, without any kind of rehabilitation programme, vocational training, education or whatever, they come out and they're back in in no time at all.

Another concern has to do with the children born to mothers who are within the prison system and who claim that their children disappear in the labyrinth of the welfare machine. They are very concerned about this.

If the minister will answer those questions, since my time is up, then maybe I'll get an opportunity to ask the rest of my questions.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You've got more to ask?

MS. BROWN: Yes. I have a couple more things to talk about under the whole business of women and the prison system but the red light is on now. Would you and I together Eke to break the rules of the House, do you think?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, have you got other speakers?

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

MS. BROWN: The Attorney-General is inviting me to break the rules.

MR. G.V. LAUK (Vancouver Centre): Unaccustomed as I am.... Corrections, isn't it?

MS. BROWN: Yes.

MR. LAUK: Yes. I think that if the Attorney-General has to spend that much money on corrections he's made an awful lot of errors. (Laughter.)

I would like to defer to the hon. first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) .

HON. MR. GARDOM: That's a good system.

First of all, dealing with the specific offence of prostitution which the lady member was referring to, she's not advocating the legalization of

[ Page 3042 ]

prostitution....

MS. BROWN: No!

HON. MR. GARDOM: She was concerned as to what happens to the other side of the coin. I suppose it would be possible, under the Criminal Code ... and once again I can assure you I am not trying to hide behind the Criminal Code of Canada, but the hon. member does appreciate in the period of time that she's been in this country that the Code is a national Code and....

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, she does. I'm not being snide. She appreciates that fact. Insofar as the success, dealing with this specific topic, I must say that CLEU was very, very successful in a recent project of theirs wherein there was a fairly major ring broken and a number of procurers went to jail as a result of it. If you just check the police records you'll see that a lot of those people are ending up with prison sentences, and I'm personally not unhappy to see that.

Dealing with some other of the aspects, the proportion of women relative to men coming to jail over the last few years has increased. I can't tell you, really, the reason for that.

MS. BROWN: Careful!

HON. MR. GARDOM: Maybe it might deal with the liberation of ladies. They're in more activities today than they were before and that might be a reason, I don't know the sociological reason for that, ma'am, but if you have all of the answers to it, it's surprising to me that during your term of office you weren't able to produce completely magnificent results that would have suited you to the core.

MS. BROWN: Oh, oh!

HON. MR. GARDOM: Insofar as the programmes are concerned, certainly I agree that women are required to have equal access to programmes within correctional centres as have the male inmates. The need for a full range of community resources for women as for men is certainly a goal that we're wishing to move to and are making some strides towards. This summer a women's community correctional centre should commence operation in Victoria with a capacity for women under the next-stated categories: those receiving first prison sentences for non-violent offences; those serving weekend intermittent sentences of imprisonment; women who are placed on probation in the community or who require short-term residence; and women who receive temporary absence from other correctional centres.

As to the opportunities within the Lower Mainland Regional Correctional Centre at Oakalla, for the women there there are educational opportunities: there's cosmetology, shop work, beauty parlour facilities, tailor facilities and a sock shop.

In April of '74, as you know, there was a centre set aside in Prince George for women and some programme and work activities are carried on there on a co-educational basis. The Twin Maples facility near Maple Ridge provides the corrections branch an open setting for female offenders. It has a farm, general maintenance, kitchen work and a tailor shop.

Dealing with babies being born during incarceration, that is true. In addition there are allowances for younger children who are under the age of 12 to visit and spend time with their mothers and stay with them on a weekend basis and in some situations up to two months.

After a couple of years of planning, a women's community correctional centre in Vancouver did commence operation in April of this year, and there are training and educational opportunities for them via the Vancouver Vocational programme and the BCIT.

So I agree with you. It might not satisfy you, Madam Member, and it might not satisfy me, but we're moving toward providing similar equivalent facilities and programmes that are available for the men.

You asked a question about the liaison workers. Three of those have been hired over the last few months, and one of those is an Indian lady.

MS. BROWN: I'm not going to deal with the Attorney-General's response about what didn't happen when the New Democratic Party was government because the Attorney-General knows that I didn't hesitate to question these things when the New Democratic Party was government and I'm not going to hesitate to question them now. I wasn't satisfied then and I'm not satisfied now.

I want to know whose idea it is that every woman wants to grow up to be a cosmetologist. I know there is cosmetology in Oakalla, but this is precisely what the women are complaining about. Not every woman wants to grow up to be a cosmetologist. A number of these women with grade 8 education and less want to be able to complete their education,

HON. MR. GARDOM: Did you hear what I said about BCIT and Vancouver Vocational School, for instance?

MS. BROWN: Okay. It's on the books but it's not happening. This is what I'm concerned about. The women say to me when I visit them that it's not

[ Page 3043 ]

happening. Sure, if they all want to be hairdressers they can be hairdressers. They said there are two sewing machines there, Mr. Chairman, if they want to learn how to sew or whatever you do on sewing machines. But for the women who want real vocational training and want to develop employment skills so they can get into the labour market when they get out of there, they say the facilities aren't there. I know there was a time when society believed that every woman in the world wanted to grow up to be a cosmetologist but somewhere along the line we have broadened our horizons and we want to do a couple of other things too.

BON. MR. GARDOM: That's right; that's what I just said.

MS. BROWN: Right, and the facilities aren't there. Now maybe what we need is to check up on what I'm saying. Check up on Oakalla and see really how much usage is being made of the BCIT facilities and of the vocational training that is available through there, because the women are complaining that it isn't. They sit around all day. Those who like to crochet, crochet. For the ones who don't like to crochet, there really isn't that much for them to do. They complain about this because they want to be able to come out of there prepared to do a job.

The real reason - if we want to be honest about this - why there aren't decent vocational and training facilities for women in the prison system is because society still takes the idea that the major form of employment for women is marriage. That's the reason why all of the money on vocational guidance and employment training is spent on the men and there isn't that much money being spent on the women's side of Oakalla. So let's be honest about it! More and more of the women are saying that they don't want to use marriage as their major form of support or their major form of employment,

One of the things they asked is regular visiting and inspection of the facilities. If the Attorney- General would afford himself that and check for himself, as I have, on the facilities there, he'll find there are two sewing machines, a hairdryer and some other stuff for those who want to learn how to dry their hair. But there really isn't very much more than that.

The other thing which I didn't get a chance to mention was this business of the women preferring to stay in provincial institutions and in institutions near where they live rather than being sent off to Kingston penitentiary. This certainly is one thing that the Attorney-General should look into, especially when we realize....

BON. MR. GARDOM: We're looking into it.

MS. BROWN: You are looking into it? Good. Most of the crimes which they're committing are not violent crimes and they are not crimes against people. They are crimes, quite frankly, against themselves. There really should be more concentration in the area of rehabilitation than in the area of punishment. That's where the concentration should be.

And what about this business of the prison test? Maybe the Attorney- General would like to answer some questions about the prison team. I'm very glad to hear that there is a woman now who is working as a prison liaison person. But the request in their behalf for part of the prison team to help them find employment, to deal with ex-convicts and parolees and these kinds of things he hasn't answered. There's also the business of the post-release home for native women, which is a very specific recommendation they made. They said as far as they're concerned the preparation and work with the liaison officer must begin behind or within the prison walls and not wait until after they leave. So maybe the Attorney-General could answer just those two questions for me.

I want to say very briefly, Mr. Attorney-General, that the law in particular is quite fair. What we are concerned about is the way in which the law is arranged. The law itself is okay; it's how it's interpreted and how it's warranted that concerns us as far as women are concerned. I'm not going to stray from the point of corrections except to give an example of a really strange way in which it does this.

If we look at income tax legislation, for example, it makes it possible for workers - working men, primarily - to deduct income tax costs for their cigars, books, their booze and this kind of thing, but it only allows a working mother to deduct $500 a year for child-care expenses for her children. It's not the law; it's the way in which it's arranged that I'm concerned about, That's the area in which the Attorney-General comes. I know this stuff is federal. But the way in which it's administered is your responsibility, and that's what I'm talking about.

BON. MR. GARDOM: Insofar as the women’s programmes are concerned, I've said it, I think, twice tonight. They are being looked at. I've expressed to you the fact that, yes, it is our goal that we'll have the same range of community resources available for women as men. I really can't do more than that for you.

MS. BROWN: I'll check with you next year this time.

BON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, I'm sure you'll check. I recognize that fact. Do you promise to use a paucity of words again, as you did tonight?

MS. BROWN: Yes, I will.

[ Page 3044 ]

MRS. E.E. DAILLY (Burnaby North): As we heard earlier today from the Leader of the Opposition, the whole area of penal reform is one which all governments of all political stripes have struggled with for years. Despite all the many reports that have come forward, there still have been no major changes. I'm concerned - as we all are, I'm sure - with penal reform for both men and women.

I'm particularly concerned, though, because we have the institutions which we have now; we have to deal with them as they are at this particular moment, with the hope that the Attorney-General and his staff are going to be listening and working with all the most progressive new ideas that are coming forward in penal reform.

HON. MR. GARDOM: We're heading the country.

MRS. DAILLY: I hope we are.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You know that.

MRS. DAILLY: I'm not denying it. I think there have been some major changes made, but I do think the Attorney-General would agree with me on touring Oakalla or the federal prisons that we have a long way to go.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Right.

MRS. DAILLY: What I specifically want to deal with, though, is that as we have the incarceration of women in prison today, we have to also look not only at the inmates but we have to look at the people who are in charge of the inmates.

My question specifically to the Attorney-General is: could you tell me just what programme is available today for the training of security officers for the Oakalla women's section? From any information I have, Mr. Chairman, it seems inadequate. We are thrusting people in there into a very difficult job who, I feel, are not being given the opportunity to be properly prepared. They do, unfortunately, find themselves in situations which are certainly not very desirable situations. I'm wondering if you could tell us if there is a specific training programme for new personnel who come into the women's section of Oakalla specifically. Could you describe to us if you have supervisors who are specifically given the job of assisting in training the new security officers? That's all, Mr. Chairman.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I gather that the training of matrons in the past has been certainly not of the best. Again, by golly, we're making strides there too. What did you do before, Alex? (Laughter.)

Interjections.

HON. MR. GARDOM: How come things are all coming to light tonight?

Insofar as training the matrons is concerned, apparently the training of the matrons in the past has not been good at all. Insofar as the levels of training for the other correction workers, there are two weeks of course work, there are two weeks of on-job training, three weeks of classroom and then two weeks of supervised work. That's a total of nine weeks of training. I would assume that more and more people today, by virtue of the courses that they're taking at the universities, are becoming interested in this field and we're going to have better trained people, I think the, training on balance is definitely improving, but at the present time we have a total nine-week type of course training.

MRS. DAILLY: Just a very quick response in question to the Attorney-General. He asked why are these questions coming up now and what happened when we were government. The very reason I brought this up, Mr. Attorney-General, is that I understand that when the NDP was in government, we did assign at Oakalla, for the women's section particularly, specific people to train. Now unfortunately I don't think these people are being given the time to do this training. So I'm trying to point out to the Attorney-General that the NDP did attempt, in my understanding, to provide specific training personnel. But to my knowledge today, for some reason or another, they don't seem to have the opportunity or the time to do it.

I don't know why it's not being done, but I do know it was the intent under our government to see that that was given priority. I'm just asking the Attorney-General if he would look into that.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'm delighted to. According to the information that I have received, your information is incorrect, but people can make mistakes. We'll find out and let you know.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Chairman, I couldn't help but notice in tonight's Vancouver Sun a very poignant headline which said: "Prisoner In Fire Too Poor To Pay And Too Young To Die." This concerns an 18-year-old who died in a prison in Saint John, New Brunswick, along with 19 others, and who was in there because he was charged with drinking under the legal age. He was fined $100, couldn't pay the fine, was sentenced to seven days in jail and died in the fire. This same article details several others of the unfortunate 20 prisoners, many of whom were in there for very minimal reasons and some of them simply because they couldn't pay a small fine.

Now I'm just wondering, and the thought went through my mind: what is the position of British Columbia in our jails, our municipal lockups and our

[ Page 3045 ]

provincial system? I want to go into this in some greater detail at a later vote, Mr. Chairman, under the fire marshal's regulations.

AN HON. MEMBER: Who set the fire?

MR. WALLACE: Apart from this idiotic interjection on my left as to who set the fire, I want to ask, since quite often we have to learn from other people's mistakes and from tragic situations elsewhere, if this could be a kind of a warning to British Columbia that maybe the situation in our jails in regard to dealing with tragic fires.... How well prepared are we and what is the situation regarding people who are in for relatively short stays and who are perhaps kept in the municipal lockup rather than transferred to Wilkinson Road or Oakalla or whatever around the province?

I think back to the situation in the smaller centres such as Courtenay and other small towns and cities around the province. I'm not suggesting that we haven't got adequate preparation, but I think that this incredible tragedy in Saint John, New Brunswick, should surely have all the 10 provinces, including New Brunswick, looking at the fact that some individuals of a very young age spend a few nights in jail.

There's another example in this case, Mr. Chairman, of a man of 25 who was charged with the illegal use of a credit card and was sentenced to five days in jail. The case is also quoted of a pensioner who left home saying he was going to the veterans' hospital, but on the way he got to drinking. He was picked up because he was drunk; he was put in jail overnight but he never came out alive.

It just seems that this might be an example of a tragedy elsewhere where we should look at our situation in British Columbia. Maybe the Attorney-General would either care to respond now or under the later vote because there's a very important report about fire regulations which I think we must deal with in this same committee debate. I would be interested in the Attorney-General's comments regarding the fire safety or lack of safety in our jails.

HON. MR. GARDOM: It's my understanding, Mr. Member, that there are adequate protections and facilities to fight fire in all of our jails. An occurrence such as this is the very type of thing that can well alert our own staff as to the need to recheck. It wakes up society. Quite frankly, I thank you very much for those remarks. There is every likelihood that we might not, as a Legislature, have drawn those matters to the public attention but for the tragedy that happened.

MR. LAUK: I would like to add a couple of remarks that could be useful. This was certainly a national tragedy. If I thought for a moment, Mr. Chairman, that our jails, remand centres or any one of them could admit to that possibility, then there should be a full and complete investigation not only by the fire marshal but by the deputy minister in charge of corrections. I don't know what they're doing in New Brunswick, but that is an absolute disgrace.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, I know that on this particular point we're going to have the support of all members on the bill that's been introduced in the House, which, you see, provides a method of inspection and standards heretofore never known in this province.

Vote 62 approved.

Vote 63: regional justice co-ordination, $392,576 - approved.

On vote 64: Legal Services Commission, $7,300, 000.

MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): Mr. Chairman, this vote clearly shows either a mistake, a typographical error, or that the Attorney-General's been short-changed at the treasury. I think the Attorney-General remembers what I said, but you've got a budget here that will maintain the present level of legal services, including legal aid, until about September. Then the whole thing will blow up in your face.

HON. MR. GARDOM: No.

MR. MACDONALD: Well, it has to be. How much did you spend last year on the legal services that come under this vote - about $9 million?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, we can only ask questions one at a time. If you would like the Attorney-General to continue, you'll have to take your place.

MR. MACDONALD: Well, let's not forget what was spent last year. What was budgeted last year was $7 million. So you have a grand increase of $300,000. That will not cover the normal salary increases of the people in the Legal Aid Society and the other people in the legal aid offices, the community law offices and so forth. That's not even normal inflation in the budget. At the same time, the Attorney-General has taken and allowed the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Wolfe) to pocket an extra $600,000 to $800,000 that has been received under the revised legal aid agreement, which went up from 50 cents per capita

[ Page 3046 ]

to 75 cents per capita. So, Mr. Chairman, the Attorney-General's been put in the same position as the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. MR. Vander Zalm) who, when the federal vote gives him an increase, pockets it and turns it over to the Minister of Finance, who spends it on computers - $94 a day to hire a secretary. He gives that to Woods Gordon. That's a good secretary, boy!

Anyway, the Attorney-General should have a chance to explain. But clearly, the philosophy he expressed about legal aid was totally wrong and, incidentally, it was in total contradiction when you said that repeaters shouldn't get legal aid; drunk drivers shouldn't get legal aid; drug traffickers who were charged shouldn't get legal aid.

Who said that?

MR. G.F. GIBSON (North Vancouver-Capilano): The Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. Chabot) .

MR. MACDONALD: I distinctly heard somebody agree with that.

That particular philosophy is, incidentally, directly contrary to what's been said to you by the Legal Services Commission, which was unanimously set up by this Legislature. I'm just going back to that other point where the Attorney-General subscribed to these very retrogressive ideas in legal aid. They said, in their report of 1976: "The nature of the charge should not determine whether or not a person gets legal aid. Murderers, drug traffickers, robbers, child molesters, rapists and drunkards, though they be distasteful persons" - and I wouldn't apply that necessarily to all of them - "are all entitled to a fair hearing before our courts."

So here you have the Legal Services Commission, made up of lawyers and two public representatives still hanging in there - or is it down to one now? -who are expressing the proper idea of what legal aid should be, and the Attorney-General is running to Ottawa and saying: "No, somebody who has a past record shouldn't get legal aid." I suppose he's doing that because this budget is so pinched that it's not going to maintain the present level of services. So I think the Attorney-General should bring down - he has to bring down - a supplementary estimate or you're just turning your back on the legal aid programme in this province. Assure the House that this budget is a stenographic error as it appears in this vote.

MR. GIBSON: I want to compliment the hon. member for Vancouver East for his presentation and to ask the Attorney-General if he's aware that the way things are going now, the legal aid service is going out of business in October. What's he going to do when things come to that pass in the province of British Columbia?

Very specifically, what did he do with that extra federal three-quarters of a million dollars? Where did it go? Which one of the voluminous government pockets did that go into and why was it not passed on to the legal aid system? Is the Attorney-General trying to starve the legal aid system into his way of doing business? Is he trying to starve them into agreement with his astonishing pre-judgement of those people who may be innocent and those who may be guilty, and the separation of one category from another, and saying some people are entitled to legal aid and some are not?

It's a pretty extraordinary thing to me, Mr. Chairman, in terms of civil liberties. While the Attorney-General is mulling that over, I want him to consider as well some of the things which the Legal Services Commission has been investigating in terms of the delivery of legal services to the ordinary person in this province. Mr. Chairman, perhaps the greatest need in this province is certainly not the high-income groups, or the companies generally, although small businessmen do have a lot of problems, but the working poor and the middle-income groups. The lower-income groups, the truly indigent, are eligible for legal aid to the extent that this Attorney-General funds it, as it should be. But the ordinary person, Mr. Chairman, doesn't have general knowledge of the kind of lawyer or the specialty required for a particular problem. They don't, in most cases, qualify for legal aid. There are many examples where a family of modest means has found itself stripped of the family savings and mortgaged in order to pay fees where they have little or no control over the situation that brought them into the dispute.

I'm thinking of areas of internal family disputes, or custody problems, or a small business destroyed as the innocent victim of a major labour dispute.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Good point.

MR. GIBSON: I have in mind a person I know very well who called me the other day and spoke of how a large international corporation was keeping him in the courts with one deferral after another while the situation in dispute - just or unjust - was bleeding the small company to death and affecting the large company not at all. There could be immigration problems, or WCB problems for those not fortunate enough to have the services of a union representative, and so on.

Legal services in these areas can be very, very costly and so many families and small businesses are ill-equipped to deal with them. Mr. Chairman, I'm not suggesting any panacea in this regard. The Canadian Bar Association and the B.C. branch have been asked and they have looked at this suggestion of some kind of system of prepaid legal aid, and they don't seem to

[ Page 3047 ]

have been able to come up with the right answer. God knows, I don't know what it is, Mr. Attorney-General, but I wonder if your department couldn't do a little research as to what the solution could be for the ordinary person.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Some unions fund it, you know. There are some union programmes and corporate programmes.

MR. GIBSON: There are some union programmes, I agree, but everybody doesn't belong to a union, Mr. Attorney-General. Many people don't, and they don't have the advantage of that.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I know that,

MS. BROWN: Do you think everybody should, Mr. Attorney-General?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Do you?

MR. GIBSON: The Canadian Bar Association does have a good programme. This referral programme, which I think is $5 or $10 for the first visit - the initial 30 minutes - is an excellent programme. I don't think it's well enough advertised. The ordinary person doesn't know about it. We ought to talk about it whenever we can. But beyond that, the bills really start to mount up.

We're still talking about the delivery of legal services. Mr. Chairman, by looking in the telephone book you can learn more about the kind of restaurant you want to cat in that night than the kind of lawyer you need to solve your legal problem that day. If you want to go to a French restaurant or a Chinese restaurant, or whatever it may be, they are listed there in the Yellow Pages. They advertise their specialty. If you want to go to a lawyer who specializes in family law, in wills, or whatever it may be, they are not allowed to advertise this. Isn't this correct, Mr. Attorney-General?

MS. BROWN: That's right.

MR. GIBSON: Isn't it about time that the chief law officer of this province went to the Law Society, or the B.C. branch of the Canadian Bar Association -I'm not sure which it is - and said: "Listen, you fellas, get with it! Have the good grace to at least allow your practitioners to advertise to the public what their specialty is."

HON. MR. GARDOM: They are looking at it now, Gordon,

MR. GIBSON: I know they are looking at it, but they have been looking at it for years.

HON. MR. GARDOM: No, they haven't! They have just started to look at it.

MS. BROWN: Since 1901!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Perhaps if the Attorney-General could wait until the member for North Vancouver-Capilano is finished with this, we could maintain a little order and decorum in the House.

MR. GIBSON: All these lawyers are very tender, Mr. Chairman. They don't like to hear that maybe there is something wrong, but my god!

Getting back to the ordinary person, the Attorney-General knows that there is a firm that has opened up in Vancouver. As a matter of fact, one of the principals of this firm was a very fine Conservative candidate on Vancouver Island. This firm has opened up and has the intention of giving lower-cost legal services to the ordinary person through the use of standard forms. Is the Attorney-General aware that that particular firm is being chased by the benchers now in terms of some disciplinary action because they apparently went on the Jack Webster show and had the gall to tell the world what they were doing?

MR. WALLACE: Laymen's law!

MR. GIBSON: Laymen's law - exactly, Mr. Member for Oak Bay. The legal profession is a public monopoly and the public has no opening into the control apparatus of that monopoly and no way of getting inside there and saying: "Now listen. We want these kinds of services." Look at paralegals. I want to particularly seek the support of the hon. first member for Vancouver- Burrard (Ms. Brown) on this.

MS. BROWN: You have it!

MR. GIBSON: Paralegals in this province are predominantly women. They are also, in many transactions in legal offices, the ones who do the work.

MS. BROWN: All the work.

MR. GIBSON: They're the experts.

MS. BROWN: Right!

MR. GIBSON: The lawyer in the particular case hands over the file, whether it's a mortgage or a conveyance or any of these fine things - I'm not quite sure what they all mean. They say: "You go and do that."

[ Page 3048 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, perhaps if you address the Chair then the debate would get back to a more orderly fashion.

MR. GIBSON: Mr. Chairman, if I thought you understood this field any better than 1, I would address you. But I will, in any event.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It's not one of the requirements of the Chair. (Laughter.)

MR. GIBSON: Or of the speaker, fortunately.

MR. WALLACE: Oh, confession is good for the soul!

MR. GIBSON: But, Mr. Chairman, it seems to me this is a good field for those interested in women's rights to examine because the lawyers have kept this tight control over the field of paralegals.

Notaries public. The number of seals available in this province for notaries who are enabled by law to look after certain simple legal transactions has been regulated by law for many years. They're like taxi licences. There aren't any more of them being made. The population of British Columbia is growing. It's been years and years since the number of notary seals have been increased.

I'm informed that there's a cosy little deal between the Law Society of British Columbia and the notaries as to how these things are going to be distributed and how that field is going to be regulated. I ask the Attorney-General to comment on that because, again, notaries are a type of paralegal who have the ability to provide legal services at a lower cost to the ordinary person who needs it.

Public education in the law. We often look to our education system to try and solve all our problems, and we can't and it can't. But I wonder if the Attorney-General has ever given any thought to working with the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) with a view to a kind of a capsule course in the school system of "This is the Law, " whatever it may be.

As you grow up there are some law courses available at the grade 12 or grade I I level, but they're elective and very few take them. And as you grow up there are certain kinds of law that you have to know, or you should know.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Do you advocate that?

MR. GIBSON: Yes, I do advocate, Mr. Attorney-General, a set of packages that you would give to the Education department and say: "This is the law in this particular area. Family law - here is a pamphlet. Let's discuss it in class. This is the law as it relates to drugs." We've been talking about drugs in this debate a good deal. "This is the law as it relates to drugs, " and so on and so on - all of the ordinary problems that a person is likely to encounter, particularly in the early years of their life.

I ask the Attorney-General to do something - and this is something he can do directly - about the process by which the legal profession regulates itself, namely the benchers. Will the Attorney-General stand up and say to this House, "Yes, I think there should first of all be four to five laymen on the governing body of the Law Society, ordinary people who would be appointed - not just one - but in sufficient numbers that they won't sit there and be intimidated by all these Latin phrases; enough of a body that they can be there and say: 'Now listen, you people, we question the way you are doing this or that or that.' "?

And then will the Attorney-General go on and stipulate in his legislation that the meetings of the benchers should be open, in public? Is the Attorney-General aware that this question was canvassed among the benchers in the recent past? I don't know how many were there and voting, but I'm informed that only three voted in favour of open public meetings. To me, that is an absolute disgrace. There are some things that you have to do in private, I agree, when it relates to disciplinary questions, when you're holding hearings concerning the conduct of a particular practitioner and might very seriously and unfairly injure that particular person's reputation until you've come to a conclusion as to whether they have acted correctly or not.

But with those kinds of exceptions, the meetings of the benchers should be open so that when the question arises of what should be the certification procedure for a lawyer from outside British Columbia, which of course is something which seriously affects the competitive nature of the legal profession in British Columbia, the public should be able to hear the arguments as they flow back and forth, and any other number of things.

Again I say to you, Mr. Attorney-General, it is a public monopoly. There is a regulatory board set up under law - the Law Society of British Columbia -to regulate this public monopoly, and the proceedings of that regulatory board should be public.

I want to quote a distinguished British Columbian who said on March 20,1971: British Columbians are burned up with the way the government continues to fiddle around with law reform. People want action, not more committees, not more reports and not more delay. That distinguished British Columbian sits across from us now and holds the portfolio of the Attorney-General of this province. I want to tell him that British Columbians don't want any more delay in this question of how the profession regulates itself and the way it delivers services to people.

It is a profession with an enormous amount of

[ Page 3049 ]

competence in this province, an enormous ability to do good. It's a profession that in the past has done a good deal of good in the way that it initially set up the giving of legal aid and so on. I think now it needs just an extra little kick in the rear end to once again rekindle its spirit of public sensitivity. We're in a day when the average person looks around and says: "What's wrong with this system?"; when the highest-priced brains go to abstruse and complicated tax questions rather than social questions that affect the lives of tens of thousands; when the most successful lawyers work for the most successful criminals; and when all in all the system somehow doesn't seem as completely tuned to the service of the ordinary person as it should be.

HON. MR. GARDOM: There are a lot of successful businessmen who do boom-all too.

MR. GIBSON: Now I'm not implying any criticism of the Attorney-General in what I'm saying. I'm just reflecting to him what I believe to be a general public concern with the way that legal services are delivered in this province at this time. I would ask him to give some comment on that and above all bear it in his mind as the months go by in his meetings with the Law Society and with the B.C. branch of the Bar Association. I would pose that to him and I would once again say to him on the legal aid side: what has he done with that extra $750,000 that he got from the federal government, that, like the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) , he did not pass on for the purpose for which it was originally intended?

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I would certainly like to associate myself with the comments made by the member for North Vancouver-Capilano (Mr. Gibson) . I certainly agree with everything that he said. I made a couple of notes, certainly, in terms of his statements on the paralegals. He's quite correct. There isn't any question about the fact that the work done in a legal office is done by the secretaries, Certainly the closed-shop attitude of the profession sees to it that they're not the ones who reap the benefit but that it's the lawyers who do.

I want to go on record as saying that I am much more concerned about consultants to the government getting $300 to $400 an hour for their work than I am about the secretaries getting $95 because I believe the service being given by the secretaries is much more valuable than the service being given by the consultants, If ' I had anything to do with the paying of it, I would do it the other way around.

MR. MACDONALD: She doesn't get it; Woods Gordon gets it.

MS. BROWN: Woods Gordon gets the $95, yes. Certainly there isn't any consultant who can say that their contribution is worth four times that of the clerical or the secretarial person involved.

But what I want to talk about, Mr. Chairman, through you, is the community law offices. I'm not sure whether this is the vote to do it under or not. Is this the vote? Okay, fine.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, if I can just interrupt you before you begin, I shall read the description: "It provides for policy directly in all areas of criminal and civil legal aid, legal information and education programmes related to legal services available to the public, and funds for legal aid programmes." So the community law offices would certainly come under this vote.

MS. BROWN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. What the storefront offices and the community law offices are trying to do is to change a system that is really very resistant to change. In fact, what the Attorney-General's office did was to send in some professional people to do an evaluation of the community legal services offices in Vancouver. They sent professional traditional people in to evaluate an alternative system of doing things, to evaluate a system that was addressing itself to people who can't relate to the traditional way of things and who don't want to relate to the traditional way of things because they're intimidated by the professional and traditional way of things. Yet the professional people who went in and applied the traditional criteria and prepared the report which was submitted to the Attorney-General really submitted a very devastating report.

That really was very unfair because the community law offices are evolving as an alternative form of delivering service to people. If everyone wanted to go down to the Bentall Building or to the MacMillan and Bloedel Building and see a lawyer in one of those carpeted offices - you know, Bigelow on the floor, and the name on the door, and the keys to the executive washroom kind of thing - you wouldn't need these community law offices, But your storefront offices and your community law offices developed because there was a need for an alternative.

So it doesn't make sense, does it, to send someone in to evaluate what they're doing who is locked into the traditional way of doing things. It's like sending an orange to assess apples, or vice versa. The orange comes away and says: "They're lousy oranges." Of course they're not oranges, they're apples!

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

[ Page 3050 ]

MS. BROWN: Yes, and that's what happened with the report which was submitted to the Ministry of the Attorney-General, Mr. Chairman, about what the community law offices are doing.

Now I'm really concerned about the damage that that report is going to do to the community law offices. The community law offices deal with a lot of women - they really do - deserted wives, abandoned women, single-parent mothers who really couldn't face that stone structure downtown, that MacMillan Bloedel, that granite structure, you know, and that elevator to the 27th floor or whatever, and all of those oak floors and oak desks and other things. They can walk into a community office and talk about their concerns. If the Attorney-General's ministry withholds funding from those offices, what does that mean to us? What does that mean to women who use the justice system? We're in enough trouble, quite frankly, because we're dealing with laws which are made by men and interpreted by men. You know, you go before the courts and you're dealing with all of your male justices. The community law offices are an alternative. It's something that we really can relate to.

Now what I'm asking, Mr. Chairman, through you, to the Attorney-General, is: what is going to happen to their funding in light of the really devastating and destructive report which was submitted to the Attorney-General's office by these people - these traditional professional people - who were sent in to do an evaluation of those offices? That's my first question, and that's a very important question as far as we're concerned.

The other question has to do with another alternative system. That is the People's Law School. They're really weird, the people in the People's Law School, because what they have set out to do is to demystify the law. What they've set out to do is to put the law into language that ordinary people can understand. Suddenly you cease to be the first party of the first party and start to be you, and the other person ceases to be the third party of the second party, or whatever, and becomes them, you know. The language is written in such a way that we can understand it. That's what the People's Law School does. What it does is it publishes all of this material in language that even the most intelligent person can understand, instead of this legalese that you can't understand unless you have gone back to law school and learned this strange new language that they have evolved in which to shroud the weird and unusual things that lawyers do. What is going to happen to the funding for the People's Law School? That is my second question. You know, they've published things like "Women and the Law." Are you looking, Mr. Chairman?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Chairman is not required to look. He only has to listen. Please proceed.

MS. BROWN: Okay, Mr. Chairman. It would be nice to have a Chairman who looks as well as listens but, in the absence of sight, I guess I have to settle just for the ears only.

The People's Law School, Mr. Chairman who listens but never looks, publishes books like "Women and the Law, " "The Law and the Environment, " "Youth and the Law." It explains consumer law, drugs - all of these kinds of complicated, legalistic pieces of legislation - in language that you and 1, Mr. Chairman who listens but never looks, can understand. What is going to happen to the funding for the Vancouver People's Law School in their attempt to demystify the law?

I'm going to tell you what their latest project is. They are now in the process of compiling the law as it applies to the battered woman. This is their latest project. They're trying to find funding to put this material together. The average woman who is beaten, as the member for Kamloops (Hon. Mr. Mair) knows, has two alternatives: she can go to a transition house - again which depends on its funding from the government - or she can just sit there and take the beating. So the People's Law School has come up with an alternative, which is compiling the law as it affects the woman who is beaten. This is going to be published and made available for everyone who is able, or who needs it, at a very reasonable rate. If you can't afford it, it is going to be free.

Where is the funding for the People's Law School, Mr. Chairman? Is this going to be discontinued, or can they depend on the Attorney -General's ministry for continual funding? Where is the funding for the storefront offices? Where is the funding for the community law offices? Where is the funding for the women's legal aid office on Kingsway? These community services are in even more need now that the minister responsible for Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) has decided to wipe out the Vancouver Resources Board, which used to give a part of the funding for these particular services. Now they have absolutely nowhere to turn for their funding except to the Attorney-General's department.

In the absence of the Attorney-General, I don't know who is here to answer for him, but I know who is here to listen for him. Maybe the Deputy Attorney-General would make some notes and some responses so that when the Attorney-General returns he will be able to answer some of these questions. I know that the Deputy Attorney-General always listens. That's why I'm so upset that he is leaving.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Oh, the Attorney-General listens?

[ Page 3051 ]

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: I see. The Attorney-General has returned.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Shall vote 64 pass?

MS. BROWN: No, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Then I must ask you to continue.

MS. BROWN: Well, the Attorney-General is back!

MR. CHAIRMAN: The presence of the Attorney-General in the House has no bearing on the matter. If you would like to take your seat the member for Nelson-Creston has indicated that he wishes to continue.

MR. L. NICOLSON (Nelson-Creston): Mr. Chairman, I was rather surprised when reading some court proceedings in connection with something that actually had to do with the Ministry of Human Resources. A case came up in court where a woman who has been on social assistance was charged with improperly blowing for a breathalyser test, or refusing. In the proceedings the presiding provincial court judge cautioned the defendant on several occasions and asked if she wanted legal counsel. The charge was read, and at that point the court said: "Do you understand that charge. Mrs. AT'

She said: "Yes."

The court then said: "Are you ready to proceed this morning or do you wish an adjournment to get some legal advice on this serious criminal charge?"

This woman said: "Well, I'm pleading not guilty."

The court said: "Very well, will you read the next charge, please?"

The next charge was read by the clerk of the court, and following that the judge again said: "Do you wish an adjournment to get legal advice on that charge?"

. The woman said: "Yes, I plead not guilty on both of the charges."

The court said: "Was it your intention to see a lawyer to act for you in the trial of this matter?"

She said: "Well, I'd prefer to have it settled without one because I can't really afford one." The woman is on welfare; she's charged with this very serious charge.

The court said: "Well, if you can't afford a lawyer I don't know if legal aid is available for these charges or not." The provincial court judge said he didn't know whether legal aid was available for these charges on October 18,1976! The point that I'm making here is that the judge didn't know one way or the other. This degree of confusion.... Frankly, I'm not citing the case but I have it here.

Then the prosecutor, whom I know to be very new - in fact, a former student of mine - said: "My understanding is that it's not available for summary conviction matters although usually, I think, people who work there do give advice as to how to handle these matters."

The court said: "Well, I adjourn the matter for one week to give you a chance to go to legal aid and discuss these charges and a week from today somebody can appear on your behalf or you can appear and a date will be set at that time. Do you understand that?"

So what happened as a result? Here is a provincial court judge who doesn't know and can't give advice as to who qualifies and doesn't qualify....

HON. MR. GARDOM: What was the charge?

MR. NICOLSON: I said it was improperly blowing a balloon for a breathalyser test. I'm not going to speculate as to why, but that was the charge. I could read the charge....

HON. MR. GARDOM: What does it say - "failing to blow"?

MR. NICOLSON: The charge said: "This is for the information of Roy Martin, a sergeant, a member of the Nelson City police department, of the city of Nelson, province of British Columbia."

HON. MR. GARDOM: You don't have to give the person's name.

MR. NICOLSON: No, I'm not giving names of the individuals, or the judge, or even of the prosecutor.

"The informant says that he has reasonable and probable grounds to believe, and does believe, that on or about the 19th day of September, A.D. 1976, in the city of Nelson, county of Kootenay, British Columbia, ---did unlawfully drive a motor-vehicle while her ability to drive a motor-vehicle was impaired by alcohol or a drug, contrary to the form of statute in such case and provided."

And then:

-a) On or about the 19th day of September - - - - of the city of Nelson did, without reasonable excuse, fail to comply with the demand made to her by a peace officer pursuant to section 235 (l) of the Criminal Code of Canada, to provide them, or as soon thereafter as practicable, such samples of her breath as were necessary to enable a proper analysis to be made in order to determine the proportion, if any, of alcohol in her blood, contrary to the form of statute in such case made and

[ Page 3052 ]

provided."

The point I bring here is that there have been changes made as to what types of charges are eligible for legal aid, and perhaps a judge isn't to be expected to keep up with the types of changes that have been going on. Certainly as an MLA I feel I should know what types of charges would qualify a person for legal aid. But in terms of the types of changes that have been going on in this field and the lack of some kind of pamphlet being sent out that is current and up to date, not only an MLA, who is charged with responsibilities of everything from knowing what to do about a blocked culvert, or a university that is going down the tube, or many other things, but a provincial court judge, while not a magistrate but one trained in the law, cannot give this advice. He then was given, I think, the correct advice, without the prosecutor wanting to appear impertinent. It was volunteered and I believe that it was the correct advice.

I would submit three things here. A person on welfare is trying to protect herself against a very serious charge. What I'm doing here is going after the Ministry of Human Resources to see if they can pay for this. This is the type of thing that is going to come out of one pocket of government or another -or I hope it will.

What is being done to keep people who are vitally concerned with this matter current, competent and up to date in their field? It's difficult to keep competent if things keep changing all the time, and if you have special little categories here and there where if something isn't quite socially acceptable as a crime or a misdemeanor or something, it is disqualified from receiving legal aid. This categorizing is getting like the welfare system, almost, under that ministry. We're starting to categorize legal aid to the point where a provincial court judge cannot keep his competence current and cannot give a very simple piece of advice such as this.

I think, Mr. Attorney-General, it is absolutely shocking and deplorable. I can only imagine how you would have reacted to this had you come upon this piece of information three years ago. I'm sure you probably would have torn up the piece of paper and acted very petulant, Mr. Attorney-General, and sat down and demanded some kind of an answer.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Don't throw it over your shoulder, you'll hit Rosemary in the eye!

I'd like to say a few words here if I may, Mr. Chairman. First of all, I would very much like to refer to the federal-provincial agreement, which is the agreement that is in place for the provinces in this country, and the section that the members are speaking of as to the offences that may be covered under the federal-provincial agreement is section 4 (3) . It says:

"The provincial agency"

- and in this case provincial agency would refer, in our province, to the Legal Aid Society -

"may define circumstances under which an applicant may be determined to be ineligible as a recipient of legal aid by reason of So you see, first of all it is permissive.

". . . (a) the applicant being charged for an offence the same as or similar to one for which he has previously been convicted;

" (b) the total amount of legal aid that the applicant is currently receiving or has received from the provincial agency"

repeater situations;

" (c) the application not being ordinarily resident in one of the provinces or territories of Canada except that the provincial agency shall not deny legal aid to an applicant subject to proceedings under the Extradition Act or the Fugitive Offenders Act solely on the ground that the applicant is not ordinarily resident in one of the provinces or territories of Canada."

These issues were, I gather, initially raised by the province of Ontario and they were raised after a great deal of consideration and consultation between the various levels of federal and provincial governments. The feeling that was expressed that gave rise to it was that there were situations where people were constantly coming to the source and they felt that they were, putting it simply, ripping off the system. In doing so, they were ripping off the taxpayer. This is criminal legal aid only.

As everybody knows, the only aspect of the agreement that we have with Ottawa deals with criminal legal aid. This is why we took the initiative in this province this year and very strongly advanced that at the last provincial Attorneys-General meeting. This province was given the mandate by all of the provinces in this country to re-approach the federal government on the basis of: "Please do not restrict your contribution just to criminal legal aid."

Interjection.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, yes, they do, sir! With every respect, under their agreement the federal government's contribution is for criminal legal aid. Now that is not correct. We feel it should be expanded into family law - into preventive medicine, shall we say - and into the civil areas, and all of the provinces agree with that, my learned friend. That's why this brief is now in the hands of the federal Minister of Justice and I indeed wish him the greatest of success with his federal Treasury Board, because if something comes of this we're going to be able to provide legal aid on a more expanded basis, in my view, not just for people who are charged with offences. You know, this is one thing that I think

[ Page 3053 ]

really does grate the taxpayer. The fellow who is a contractor or digging a ditch or a doctor or whatever he may be says: "You know, golly, I don't mind paying some taxes for legal aid. That's fine and dandy. But why is it only restricted to the criminal side? Why can't we go ahead and provide something else in other areas?"

Again, insofar as this agreement is concerned, it is interpreted here that the province, being the agency, has the option to exclude in some reconviction cases - these are the Legal Aid Society's rules - unless there is the likelihood of loss of liberty or of livelihood. Now with all respect, I don't know the circumstances which you're speaking of, as to whether the court should have been better informed or not or as to whether the individual in your case did receive legal aid, You didn't mention that to us. But you certainly have an excellent legal aid office in Nelson and I'd say it's manned by one of the finest people whom I have met - just a first-class gentleman - Dave Miller. So you see, the options are there.

But you know, in my view, there is a pretty darned good argument for not giving legal aid to a person who happens to own a $4,000 or $5,000 car and who is charged with impaired driving. They've got to get that....

Interjection.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, you don't agree with me, my friend; that's all right.

MR. MACDONALD: I agree, but does he qualify?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, unfortunately no, but people have been qualifying under those circumstances. This is why it should be tightened up. This is referring only to some reconviction cases.

Insofar as the dollars that have been spent in this province, let's just look once again at what has happened over a fairly short period of time. In 1970, $221,000 was spent; next year, $594,000; in 1972 -$858,000; 1973 - $1.1 million; 1974 - $1.8 million; in 1975, a considerable increase to $3.7 million. So you see, from 1970 we moved, as a province, from $220,000 to $3.7 million, Now we're up to a figure here in this vote - which is not the total amount of money that is available for legal aid-, I want to just expand this a little for you so you fully understand, as I am sure you do - of $7.3 million. From $220,000 in 1970 to $7.3 million in a vote by 1977 - now if anybody's prepared to put up a hand and say that that's not a pretty darned good increase in seven years, I'd just like you to do that right now because it is. If you're going to say to the taxpayers of this province: "We want to spend $50 million of your taxes right now for legal aid, " all right. From what priorities are we going to take that?

Now let me point this out to you. What, for example, is B.C. doing per capita compared to other sections of the community? The per capita amount spent on legal aid in B.C. last year is $3.11; per capita Ontario, $3.05; Quebec, $3; Manitoba, $2.92; national average, $2.72; Saskatchewan, $2.50; Alberta, $1.65; Nova Scotia, $1.34; New Brunswick, $1.30; Newfoundland, 67 cents; and Prince Edward Island, 57 cents. So the highest per capita expenditure in the country is the province of British Columbia with $3.11.

Apart from that, just let me make a few other points dealing with legal aid.

MR. MACDONALD: How much was spent last year?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

HON. MR. GARDOM: An aspect of legal aid is traffic direction, unless everybody in this room thinks the only legal aid is going to a lawyer. Now we've been talking about paralegals; we've been talking about education; we've been talking about people receiving different kinds of legal assistance in different areas. Okay. Apart from the lawyers themselves, paralegals are providing assistance via the community law offices and in no end of other areas. There is a degree of legal aid provided via the consumer services offices in the province. One form of legal aid is provided via the rentalsman, via the Law Society, the $5 referral situation.

I commend all of the people in the province of B.C., if they have a specific problem, to please get in touch with their law societies and take advantage of that system. If they don't have the $5, I'd be darned surprised if one lawyer would not be prepared to see them and do the work for nothing. If they were, I'd be delighted to know what their names were.

The legal profession performs a great deal of free legal service every day of the week. We've got maybe four or five thousand lawyers practising in the province of B.C. You might suggest maybe they should take a greater bit of the criminal load without compensation at all. Even if they agreed to take three or four cases each, that would certainly assist us.

There is no reason in my mind why a corporate lawyer today cannot go ahead and take a legal-aid case. If he has to go down to traffic court, I think it would be a first-class experience for him. That should not only be left to the younger people of the profession to do. You'll find no end of senior people in the profession who do it all the time.

MR. MACDONALD: Name names.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

[ Page 3054 ]

HON. MR. GARDOM: My goodness me, are you really, honestly suggesting that the legal profession is as a whole not in the slightest bit altruistic?

AN HON. MEMBER: Bob Bonner's always down there. (Laughter.)

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, would you like him to take your case, my friend?

But just carrying on as to the availability of traffic direction or service actually rendered, the notaries do a lot of free work. A lot of legal services are performed via the ministries of government to people, giving people a helping hand: "Yes, you will go here, or, no, you can go there." This is the wrong approach.

The churches and service groups and MLAs and the Sally Ann - all of these and no end of provincial agencies, as you know, are funded by government. I don't think it's worth spending the public money to give you a breakdown and an evaluation of the amount of public dollars that actually go into legal assistance in one form or another, but if the opposition would really like to have it.... I think it would be a waste; I'd rather see the money get down to the pavement where it can do some good as opposed to spinoff and a survey on the thing. But when you take into account all of the ministries of government, all of the agencies of government who themselves are offering assistance on a daily basis, it would be very, very difficult for me to comprehend that an individual in the province of B.C. today can be devoid of assistance. We are as a province doing a darned good job in the thing and I think as a province we should be proud of the job that we're doing instead of knocking it.

Then we have the hotlines, and the cold lines and the medium-warm lines and so forth. These people are performing a degree of legal service, constantly referring people. All of you people who've been on them have heard them go off the air and say, "Yes, Mrs. Jones, yes, you've got a problem there, all right, " and direct them to Manpower or direct them to a certain office to get the thing reconciled. Or they'll say: "Will you please phone up legal aid? Will you get hold of the Law Society? Or, by golly, why don't you phone Alec Macdonald? He's done this kind of a case before and he'd be happy to take it on for you again, He certainly would." Wouldn't you?

Interjection.

HON. MR. GARDOM: That's right. Now I've covered the advertising points you've raised. I've already advertised you, you see.

Interjection.

HON. MR. GARDOM: They perform very good services.

Now look, there is another point that you've got to pay a lot of attention to, and I think it is one that is deserving, both philosophically and practically and from the point of view of evaluation of the public dollar, of a lot of additional consideration. My friend, the former Attorney-General (Mr. Macdonald) used to have a discussion with me about this and he was of the same mind. I don't know whether he is today or not, but that is this: is it a duplication of service between the legal aid and the community law offices? One side feels it is; another side feels it isn't. I think they're both exceptionally well motivated, both trying to do the very best job, but I think they're having pretty subjective assessments there.

Some of them say: "Well, of we're going to perform the actual service of legal aid, and we look upon legal aid as client A meeting lawyer B, there should be lawyer B there and it should not be paralegal. There should not be traffic direction and so forth. There is enough traffic direction. Or maybe we should expand the legal aid office to have traffic direction."

I'm very happy to see that the Legal Services Commission and the Legal Aid Society did get together in Kamloops and Williams Lake, and they amalgamated. They joined their service together and on balance I think it's probably doing a better job. I'd really be happy to see if they could better reconcile those differences between themselves.

But at the present time, as you know, we have an independent Legal Services Commission, and it is doing things other than hiring lawyers. Now the legal aid position essentially is, yes, we would like it to be run as a legal office.

Now I'm not going to quarrel one bit with the Legal Aid Society's attitude in that respect. It's valid. It's absolutely valid. But I'm not necessarily going to differ with the Legal Services Commission attitude either, because they say: "Well, we're supposed to do a little more than just do that." Maybe that could be done a little better in-house, I don't know. It might be able to be done better in-house than the way it is at the present time, but I'm going to say this to both the Legal Aid Society and to the Legal Services Commission: we're continuing to look at their activities and at what they're doing. I think, on balance, they're performing well, but when one side feels that the other is not doing as well as it should.... And I have that impression. I'll probably be criticized tomorrow. They'll say I'm full of bananas when I make that point but, in my view, that's the situation.

Interjections,

[Mr. Schroeder in the chair.]

[ Page 3055 ]

HON. MR. GARDOM: I think it's high time that we had a very serious look at it, and I intend to do that.

Interjections.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, sorry. There's another question here.

Interjections.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Let me swallow my ice.

The first member for Vancouver-Burrard was asking a question about the Vancouver People's Law School. That was funded by the Justice Development Fund: 1976, $35,000, and 1977-78, $37,446. What was going to happen to the funding of the community law offices? There's a funding budget of 10.61 per cent of the budget this year, amounting to $865,753. The moneys that were received from Ottawa went into general revenue. The moneys that were allocated to the Legal Services Commission this year are $7.3 million. Legal aid has received additional moneys from the Law Foundation, which are the dollars that are collected from the interest on trust funds. Now on that point, I pose another question to the opposition and also to the....

AN HON. MEMBER: They're your estimates, not ours.

Interjections.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I answered that just a minute ago. You're not listening, my friend. Insofar as the interest on trust funds is concerned, as you know, as the result of legislation, the interest on lawyers' trust funds, unless it's specialized accounts.... For example, if somebody was handling the affairs of the lady member for Vancouver-Burrard, they might be deposited in a separate account because she'd wish to have that interest maybe, or she'd say: "Oh, no. Please put them in the general milieu." If they did, the interest on those funds would go to the Law Foundation, and 30 per cent of that is made available directly to legal aid. But again, by golly, we find that they, too, are doing separate legal aid via education, via funding - VCLAS, for example.

Maybe that interest-on-trust-fund concept could be expanded outside of lawyers' trust funds to the trust funds of notaries public and perhaps the real estate industry in the province. It's worth looking at, and I intend to look at that.

MR. MACDONALD: I won't be long, but the Attorney-General's been all over the lot, you know, talking about the Sally Ann and so forth. I want to say that I do agree that there should be co-ordination in one small town of the local legal aid office, the community law office, and the Consumer and Corporate Affairs office. They should be good premises at the street level and they should be co-ordinated. They're all dealing with the same kind of thing. So you save money there.

But I want to ask the Attorney-General one question before I make my remarks on the budget, if he's listening: how much was spent under this vote? I don't mean how much was voted last year, because it's $7 million, but how much was actually spent under this vote last year?

HON. MR. GARDOM: It was $7.1 million.

MR. MACDONALD: That's $7.1 million for the Legal Aid Society, the native court workers, the whole thing, eh - just $7.1 million?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, no. Under the vote there was $7.1 million spent - that's a round figure -plus there were funds received from the Law Foundation and then funds for the native court workers. The funds from the Law Foundation have been ingested again this year and, similarly, will be the resources for the native court workers, you see. Again, I'm going to say this: I'm hopeful, and I certainly hope I've got the support of everybody in here. We have the support of the other provinces that we're going to get a better deal from Ottawa.

MR. MACDONALD: Well, Mr. Chairman, the government of B.C. has got a better deal from Ottawa. It's not what we want. I know we want to expand into the civil areas but, in fact, you're going up from $7.1 million to $7.3 million under this vote, and you have received an additional 25 cents Per capita, so you're cutting back on legal aid in the province of B.C. How much is the additional amount you're getting now that it has gone up to 75 cents per capita from the federal government?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: Oh, it's $800,000. So you're going up $200,000, which barely looks after the increase in salaries. I don't think it would - just normal increments. The Legal Aid Society officers are quite correct when they say that under that budget you can't carry on beyond September or October with the present level of services.

You are pocketing the federal money. You've let the Minister of Finance take it and you're cutting back on legal aid in the province of B.C.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, come on!

MR. MACDONALD: Sure you are.

[ Page 3056 ]

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh now, come on!

MR. MACDONALD: Well, that's the plain fact of the situation. Instead of additional steps that have to be taken - to provide staff lawyers who can be at least part-time in the community law offices and expand them so we might have one in Vancouver East and other areas where they're needed - let alone any expansion in improved training of the legal aid system in the province of B.C., you're cutting it back since you joined the Social Credit government. Well, I'd have an awful time meeting your record because.... How long, 19 months and....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Chairman, I've laid out the facts, have I not?

AN HON. MEMBER: Shut him up, Garde.

MR. MACDONALD: A $200,000 increase - that's barely enough to cover the natural increments of salary. There's about $800,000 additional received from the federal government. That's a cutback in the budget for legal aid and we can't possibly support that, because that's turning our backs upon the kind of legal services which we're developing in this province.

HON. MR. GARDOM: It is not.

MR. MACDONALD: Well, there it is. What's the answer to that?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Last year the Legal Aid Society refunded money that it received from the Law Foundation because it didn't spend its full budget.

AN HON. MEMBER: It spent $7.1 million.

HON. MR. GARDOM: They refunded about $200,000. The year before, the Legal Services Commission made a miscalculation of their budget, or whatever it was, and they found that they had another $400,000.

MR. MACDONALD: Well, Mr. Chairman, supplementary: are you saying that the director of the Legal Aid Society, Bryan Ralph, is wrong when he says that they cannot maintain the present level of legal aid under the budget that's been presented to this Legislature?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, Mr. Ralph is not presenting a budget to the Legislature. His budget is presented....

AN HON. MEMBER: The one that you presented.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Now come on. You must remember the procedure of the thing.

AN HON. MEMBER: The one that you're presenting.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Ralph's budget, as you well know, sir, is to the Legal Services Commission, not to this Legislature. Okay? This is the Legal Services Commission and it has allocated a certain amount of dollars to legal aid. Now it might have been your decision, as a commissioner of the Legal Services Commission, to increase the amount of money made available to the Legal Aid Society, and it might well have been mine, too. But the Legal Services Commission chose to cut the pie the way it did, and it's an independent commission.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the gentleman member for Point Grey would clarify for me his response to my question about the community law offices. There was some kind of a garbled, mumbled thing about 10 per cent or whatever. I wonder whether the gentleman member for Point Grey would repeat that answer for me.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'm delighted to repeat the answer to the hon. lady member for Burrard. The amount that is allocated to funding the community law offices from this vote is $865,753....

MS. BROWN: That's the People's Law School.

HON. MR. GARDOM: No. It's the community law offices.

MS. BROWN: Oh, okay.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Okay?

MS. BROWN: Yes. Thanks to the gentleman member.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, two things now come to my mind. The Attorney-General asked us if we would like to see the budget increased to $40 million now - I think that that might be a little bit steep - and he asked us at the expense of what programmes and what other services. Well, I would suggest that we could go up to $20 million and the additional $13 million could be raised by having your colleague increase the coal royalty. That would bring in $13 million and we wouldn't have to sacrifice any other programmes. We could have an expanded legal aid programme.

You talked about Mr. David Miller in our area, and

[ Page 3057 ]

believe me, he is a credit. He's doing a fine job. But I know that he's run off his feet; he can't do everything. There's a tremendous amount of things.

Now, Mr. Chairman, under this vote I'd like to play "This is the law." I explained this case here. I didn't exactly get the answer. So I'd like to challenge the lawyers in the House. What is the law? Does Mrs. A get legal aid in this case when she's charged under Criminal Code section number ...

HON. MR. GARDOM: Could I explain that to you later tonight?

MR. NICOLSON: .. .235 (l) ? Does she qualify for legal aid? What is the law in this case? The Attorney-General didn't even....

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'll give you a letter on it in the morning. I did tell you earlier tonight.

MR. NICOLSON: Yes, but you don't know the answer; just like the judge.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I do. I told you.

MR. NICOLSON: You told me? She qualifies? Does she qualify? Because she has a bill for $175 from a lawyer whom she was referred to after.... You know, and possibly because MR. Miller is swamped.... So one way or the other we probably could do with more legal aid funding.

HON. MR. GARDOM: As I said before, there has to be need.

AN HON. MEMBER: She's on welfare.

HON. MR. GARDOM: There has to be need. The Legal Aid Society has the option to exclude some reconviction cases. I would assume that this would have been a summary conviction case. It's an indictable offence but presumably they were proceeding summarily. Now there's an option to the Legal Aid Society to exclude not handling summary conviction offences if there's a possibility of loss of livelihood or a possibility of incarceration.

Now it may be that in the case that you have given me, if the lady was on social assistance, conceivably she would have been in the position of being an applicant. She would not qualify by virtue of the other rule because there is no likelihood of her going to jail. That's right.

Vote 64 approved.

Vote 65: Justice Development Commission, $1,721, 000 - approved.

Vote 66: legal services to government, $2,277, 050 - approved.

Vote 67: judiciary, $5,350, 841 - approved.

Vote 68: coroners, $980,080 - approved.

Vote 69: British Columbia Parole Board, $114,416 - approved.

On vote 70: Law Reform Commission -$291,353.

MR. WALLACE: The Law Reform Commission did an excellent report several years ago now regarding the idea of consolidating all legislation regarding expropriation into one single statute. I wonder if the minister could give us any comment on this government's policy regarding the obvious need to do something about expropriation instead of the piecemeal, fragmented, very difficult for the citizen situation with expropriation scattered through about 37 or more different pieces of legislation. Would the minister care to comment?

MR. CHAIRMAN: I think the Attorney-General knows this requires legislation perhaps not in order under vote 70.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'd like to respond, if I may very quickly, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your admonition. It is under consideration.

MR. R.E. SKELLY (Alberni): I have a quick question under this vote for the Attorney-General. I'm wondering how the Law Reform Commission has terms of reference referred to it. Does that come from your office? I think he's got the question.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'm listening to you. Go ahead.

MR. SKELLY: Okay, what I'm concerned about is a problem that one of my constituents has had in amassing points under the Motor-vehicle Act against her driver's licence.

Interjection.

MR. SKELLY: No, it's not the same as the member for Nelson; it's quite a different thing. But it amounts to quadruple jeopardy in this case. And what happens is first she is stopped and, without going to court, points are assessed against her driver's licence. I realize that comes under the Motor-vehicle Act which is no longer the jurisdiction of the Attorney-General.

Then the superintendent of motor vehicles, after

[ Page 3058 ]

she's amassed a certain number of points, can make an assessment against her after a hearing, or she's entitled to a hearing. Then he can lift her licence and, in the case of the person I'm thinking of, lifting her licence constitutes an additional financial penalty because she uses her car as part of her employment.

Fourthly, she gets a letter from the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia once her licence has been reinstated, saying, "Because you have this number of points against your licence, you must pay this additional premium. If you don't pay the premium, then your licence will be lifted."

There's a real problem here. I think the B.C. Civil Liberties Association has approached the Attorney-General in the past, outlining in part the lack of due process involved. The points can be assessed if you don't have the money to obtain a lawyer or the time to get off work to go to trial. You simply accept the points and that's it.

Then the superintendent of motor vehicles calls you down to Victoria. If you can't afford the time off the job, you possibly lose your job to attend the hearing. He simply assesses the financial penalty and that's it. If you have enough points after that, he simply lifts your licence, and again it's very difficult to make any kind of a defence against it.

Has the Attorney-General taken into consideration some of these problems? People do face the problems of quadruple jeopardy, and it is a tremendous financial burden considering in some cases the lack of seriousness of the offences.

I think it's a good topic that should be referred to the Law Reform Commission, to maybe combine some of these penalties into a single penalty so that people don't have to face the number of hearings, the number of court appearances, arbitrary decisions on the part of law enforcement officials and the superintendent of motor vehicles, and on the part of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. I'd like the Attorney-General's comment on this.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'd like to review your remarks and consider them. You've made some interesting points. As you know, this is not my jurisdiction. I think it was determined by this Legislature a few years ago that they wished to impress upon the people in the province of British Columbia the need for safety on the roads. As a result of that, the Legislature gave the power that it has given to the superintendent of motor vehicles. Driving is no longer a right. By virtue of the complexity and interdependency of society, it's become a privilege, but I'll consider your remarks.

MR. MACDONALD: I have just a word on this point, You can challenge the points that have been levied by the superintendent of motor vehicles by paying $10 and getting a court hearing. But the point that the member for Alberni is making includes the fact that ICBC can judge you a blameworthy driver in an accident and then not give you the discount. Your colleague, the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) , has said: "Well, you can take that to court." Well, you can't take it to court unless there's some kind of certiorari or something of that kind. I'm going to ask you that one day in oral questions. I'm just giving you some notice about it. How can you take that to court?

HON. MR. GARDOM: I'll take it as notice.

MR. MACDONALD: Well, won't you nibble at it now? You know, that's arbitrary justice and you're the Attorney-General.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Good point. I'll look into it.

MR. SKELLY: I think the Attorney-General inadvertently missed one of my questions, Mr. Chairman. That is: how are matters of this nature referred to the Law Reform Commission? The B.C. Civil Liberties Association took it under consideration, I think, in 1971. I realize that the amendments were made to the Motor-vehicle Act back in 1969 when.... Maybe it was Robert Bonner who was the Attorney-General at that time; one of those guys anyway.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, no. The heavy hand of. . .

MR. SKELLY: One of the heavy hands, yes.

I'm wondering how those types of things are referred to the Law Reform Commission. I think this is one that should be because of the number of penalties that are imposed for the same offence and the arbitrary type of jurisdiction.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Member, I'd refer you to the Law Reform Commission Act at chapter 14. Section 3 sets it out in detail.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I have a very, very short question. It has to do with the promised legislation on matrimonial property which was promised in the Speech from the Throne, which the Attorney-General, when questioned recently, said was almost ready.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Don't be breathless!

MS. BROWN: Hold my breath?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Yes, please.

[ Page 3059 ]

MS. BROWN: Don't be breathless? Oh, Mr. Chairman, what does that mean? Are we going to get this piece of legislation during this sitting?

HON. MR. GARDOM: If you're not breathless, you see, everything will turn out okay and you'll receive that piece of legislation. If you are breathless, you won't be here to appreciate it.

MS. BROWN: The universe unfolds! Oh, I see.

MR. CHAIRMAN: If the hon. member would just hold her breath a little while, this is out of order on two counts: No. 1, it doesn't come under this vote; No. 2, it requires legislation.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I've been saving this for this vote because I thought the Law Reform Commission's recommendation was the one that was going to....

HON. MR. GARDOM: The legislation is on its way.

MS. BROWN: It is on its way.

Mr. Chairman, I really missed vote 67 because if I had been here when vote 67 was called, I would have asked why there were so few women on the bench but I missed that opportunity to do so.

MR. CHAIRMAN: It is incumbent upon every member to attend the House. (Laughter.)

MS. BROWN: I tried, Mr. Chairman. I don't know whether the Attorney-General will want to avail himself of the opportunity under this vote to explain to us why there are so few women on the bench, Mr. Chairman, why there are so few women on the bench, Mr. Chairman, so few women on the bench.... (Laughter.)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Are you putting in your application?

MR. SKELLY: The Attorney-General, Mr. Chairman, whispered across the floor something relative to section 3 (c) of the Law Reform Commission Act. Am I to understand that you are going to refer the matter to the Law Reform Commission?

HON. MR. GARDOM: I didn't say that. You asked me what the reference was. I'll look at your problem, as I've mentioned to you.

MR. SKELLY: It's not my problem, but I hope you will look at it.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I will.

Vote 70 approved.

On vote 71: Criminal Injuries Compensation Act, $1,500, 000.

MS. BROWN: I just want a clarification. Is this the Act under which the victims of rape are able to file, Mr. Attorney-General?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Yes, I think so.

MS. BROWN: Yes, the Rape Relief Centre wanted me to double-check that with you, that victims of rape now can file under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act.

HON. MR. GARDOM: They can always make a claim there, but whether or not the claim would be recognized is up to the fund. Any person who is injured as a result of crime is enumerated under the statute. If you take a look at it, that's the source to go to.

Dealing with that, we've been giving a great deal of emphasis in the debates in this House over the last day or two on the person who is the criminal. Let's think a little bit more, also, about the victim. I'm very strongly in favour of that.

Vote 71 approved.

Vote 72: public trustee, $1,179, 013 - approved.

On vote 73: fire marshal - $745,692.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I mentioned earlier on tonight the tragic fire in the prison in Saint John, New Brunswick. I would like, under this vote, to just recall for the members of the House and for the public of British Columbia that two years ago the Keenleyside report which had been requested by the then Attorney-General of the day who felt that fire services had been sadly neglected in this province. He had received representations about concern over the deteriorating quality of services.

The problem bears a little mention, even at this late hour in the evening, because the fire record in British Columbia is the worst of any province in Canada, both in the number of fires and the intensity and the fatalities and the morbidity.

At the time that the then Attorney-General asked for the investigation, the situation was deteriorating. The problem, very clearly, is that the organization, the training, the equipment and the ongoing conditions under which firefighters operate is quite

[ Page 3060 ]

inadequate in a modern era. Many areas have no fire protection; there is no central management. The Fire Marshal Act is weak and the fire marshal's office is understaffed.

There is no common fire code or training manual. British Columbia has not even accepted the national fire code. We have irregular and incompetent inspection functions. We have very variable rates of pay as between one group of firefighters and the next. Generally speaking, Mr. Chairman, working conditions and benefits for firefighters are quite unsatisfactory.

I'll just run through the Keenleyside proposals very briefly because I would like the minister to give me something better in the way of a response than to say: "It's under study."

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, I'm not going to be able to do much more than that, but I'll do my best.

MR. WALLACE: The main proposals that were incorporated in that very comprehensive study by Dr. Keenleyside were that we needed better publicity of fire figures to try and get the public response and involvement and pressure on the government by the public to do something about it. We need a comprehensive B.C. fire services Act which embodies all relative legislation. We need a B.C. fire commission with a strengthened fire marshal at its head. We need efficient staffed branch offices for the fire marshal throughout the province. We need a provincial fire college to train officers, with extension service throughout the province. The labour regulations need to be upgraded and we need standards for fire chiefs.

Something that was mentioned in the report which the Minister of Labour might be interested in, while he's not in the House: the right to strike should be preserved as long as life-support systems are maintained.

The report also suggested wage parity with the police. There should be new regulations regarding hours of work. The member for Burrard would be very interested to hear that it advised a greater recruitment of women. The report talked about training and the need for a consistent system throughout the province - to have a common manual and a common standard for firefighters and a common standard of examination. We should establish an apprenticeship system and a higher level of first-aid training.

The report pointed out that we needed a much more efficient inspection function and there should be increased penalties for violators. We need better fire regulations for mobile homes and highrises, and some staffing and system to ensure enforcement of these regulations.

We need better federal-provincial agreements to define fire responsibilities for aircraft, airports, marine facilities and Indian reserves. We need improved communication between different fire departments. We need a standardization of equipment with a central purchasing and supply centre.

We need more money for the municipalities to improve fire departments. Believe it or not, Mr. Chairman, there is no compulsion involved that municipalities should even set up fire departments.

Because the hour is later, I've tried to give a very quick resume of what was a very important report. Mr. Chairman, I suspect from the chatter around the House and the general attitude of the Minister that this is being treated a little lightly and all too flippantly, Mr. Chairman, where lives are involved. We're all paying lip service to this tragedy that's headlined in the papers tonight, but I don't really think there are too many people in this chamber who are really concerned about the fact that fire regulations, supervision and control in British Columbia is an absolute, shocking disgrace! Just because it's 25 to 11 at night, I don't think we should be sitting here chattering and laughing and smiling. There are many people dying needlessly in fires simply because the inspection function is inadequate, the legislation is inadequate....

MR. L.B. KAHL (Esquimalt): Don't talk to the House! If you want to talk to the Attorney-General, he's over there. I'll do my work without you lecturing me! Get on with the job. Who do you think you are?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please! The member for Oak Bay has the floor. Please proceed.

MR. WALLACE: To the Attorney-General, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest that this report, which pointed out some comprehensive, serious deficiencies in fire regulation and fire services throughout the province, is now two years old. As far as I can determine, Mr. Chairman, from many private inquiries, nothing has been done to implement the recommendations which are very straightforward. If anyone cares to read the report, the recommendations seem very logical and reasonable and nothing more than in keeping with the kind of standards and goals which a province of the degree of economic development and affluence that British Columbia has should be trying to adopt.

So, M r. Chairman, I sense that the Attorney-General can say nothing more tonight than that the matter's under further study, but I would like to know one or two specific things. Is there any particular committee or subcommittee within his department actively involved in taking steps to implement the recommendations? If so, can the minister as I asked him about the jails, at least give us some approximate date or timeframe within which

[ Page 3061 ]

we can anticipate either the legislation, or changes to the regulation, or action that does not necessarily need legislation?

The final point, I think, is the degree to which the minister is prepared to embark upon one of the first recommendations which emphasizes the tremendous need to educate the public about the incidence of fires, the particular cause, in many cases where it is preventable, to try and make the public more aware of the problem and, in other words, tackle it in the most effective way, namely by emphasizing prevention,

MR. SKELLY: I asked pretty well the same questions of the Attorney-General last year. At that time, I pointed out some of the points made in the Keenleyside report - the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) has just outlined some of the recommendations made - and I think they should be read into the record again because it is important that over the 10 years that Dr. Keenleyside studied he found out that 95 lives were lost, on the average, each year in British Columbia between 1963 and 1972. That was 75 per cent above the national average. On Indian reserves, 46 people lost their lives in the province of British Columbia. Property and financial losses amounted to $12.33 per capita over those same 10 years. The expenditures for the fire marshal's office this year amount to 31 cents per capita, whereas financial and property losses are $12.33 per capita throughout the province over a 10-year average. Residential fires were 88 per cent above the national average in those losses; manufacturing plants - 50 per cent; institutional buildings - B.C. has lost $1.03 per capita, whereas the national average is 55 cents. We're almost double the national average loss in this province. We've got the worst fire-loss record in British Columbia of the industrialized world - not simply in Canada. We've got a higher loss than in the United States, which had the highest loss in the industrialized world.

The Attorney-General, since the tabling of the Keenleyside report back on May 31,1975, certainly has had the opportunity to give a thorough examination to the recommendations and to receive briefs, He stated in 1976 that he had been receiving briefs and recommendations on that report, but absolutely no action has come out of the Keenleyside report and his ministry's study of the report. Now because of your inaction, lives are being lost. As the member for Oak Bay pointed out, property is being lost in this province and it's because of inaction on the part of your ministry. We want to see some type of action coming out of your ministry, not simply the setting up of committees to bafflegab through and not make any substantial reduction in the losses in this province.

In one of the final recommendations of the Keenleyside report, he mentioned that every $1 million spent on fire-fighting services in the province could reduce the losses by 10 per cent. He recommended in that report an immediate expenditure, throughout the province, of something like $2 million, just as a beginning, in order to get those losses reduced to a more reasonable level.

What has happened since this government has come to office is that there's been a loss of urgency with regard to emergency services. That includes ambulance services as well as fire services. More work has been placed on to volunteer fire departments and rural fire departments in particular than has been the case in the past. I'm thinking of fire permits. Under the forest legislation in the past, the Forest Service rangers issued permits for fires in rural areas. I understand that as of next year that burden will be placed on the volunteer fire departments.

I also understand the volunteer fire chiefs in rural areas are now expected to do more and more work with regard to fire inspections as kind of associate fire marshals throughout the province. No extra money, but a lot of extra services are being forced on those departments. I have something like 14 or 15 volunteer fire departments in my area, and one municipal department that's financed through municipal taxes. Every other week I get a request from a volunteer fire department asking for financial assistance for equipment to build fire halls to keep up those services.

MR. LL KEMPF (Omineca): Name names!

MR. SKELLY: We've got some time, so I'll name the names: the Parksville Volunteer Fire Department; the Qualicum Beach Volunteer Fire Department; the Deep Bay Volunteer Fire Department; Coombs-Hilliers-Errington Volunteer Fire Department....

Interjections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please, hon. members. The member for Alberni is trying to make a speech.

MR. SKELLY: Somebody asked me to name names, Mr. Chairman. I get reports every week from volunteer fire departments in my riding, I get requests for funding.

Interjection.

MR. SKELLY: That was a recommendation of the Keenleyside report. It's simply a recommendation; it doesn't have to be adopted by the government.

What we're asking for, Mr. Chairman, is what the priorities of this government are. We've seen expenditures go up in the field of community recreation facilities. Last year they spent nothing; this year

[ Page 3062 ]

they're spending $8 million. The increase in the fire marshal's office vote is only $88,000. In Manitoba they spend more money than we do for fire services and they have less than half the population of this province. A recent news release coming out of Manitoba said that $300,000 was spent providing fire extinguishers and instructions on how to use them for homes in rural areas. In British Columbia, there's virtually no increase in fire services in the province.

Last year you said there would be a regional office established on Vancouver Island. You said that positions would be increased by four, although I understand that although the number of positions was increased, the positions weren't filled with bodies desperately required by the fire marshal's office. I'd like to know if regional offices have been established, Are additional funds being made available to volunteer fire departments? If not, when will they be made available to those departments so that they can provide adequate equipment, adequate fire halls and adequate service to people in rural areas?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to respond to the two members who spoke.

I'm not satisfied with the progress that has been made in this area, to be very frank with you. I think more can be done, and I'm just going to mention a few points here to you.

In 1976 there was a total of 7,433 fires which, I'm glad to say, was a small reduction in the province. It is down about 4 per cent from the previous year. There were a number of deaths, and it is not any encouragement for anyone to say that they were down statistically too, but they were to the extent of 7 per cent.

But here is a very interesting thing. Careless use of smoking, materials continues to be the greatest single cause of death by fire. In 1976, this category accounted for 40 per cent of the fire deaths. I daresay that the majority of those were all alcohol related. That is really a terrifying statistic when you think of it.

We're looking at many aspects. Some things have been done. No. I is the early release of fire statistics. This has been initiated: they are now being published as soon as they become available. That was not the case before.

There are increased penalties for violation of safety regulations. These were brought about by earlier amendments to the Fire Marshal Act. Now, by virtue of a bill that is in the House - I can't debate it - you will see that the penalty under the Summary Convictions Act will be increasing from $500 to $2,000. If you will take a look at the Fire Marshal Act, which was open here a few seconds ago, it says:

"The fire marshals shall aid in the enforcement of all laws and regulations relating to combustibles, explosives and other inflammable matter, means of egress, alarms and exits from any building in the case of fire."

So if we get into a situation of repeating violators, now there will be some teeth in the law to effectively deal with that.

Insofar as the Keenleyside report is concerned, a committee was struck to deal with the Keenleyside report. Then we had the governmental reorganization come into play, and the individual in charge of that was relieved of that responsibility. I have to re-strike the committee. That is now being attended to and the chairman of the committee is the fire marshal. He has been asked to take over the chairmanship with the objective of making a report to this ministry within the near future, placing particular emphasis upon which recommendations of the Keenleyside report can be seriously considered for adoption, the priorities for implementation and the estimated cost.

We're on the road but, as I said before, frankly, the progress over the past year is not as good as I would have anticipated it was able to be.

MR. SKELLY: I think one of the reasons the progress isn't that good, Mr. Chairman, is that the Attorney-General doesn't take emergency services and fire services as a serious priority. If he did, there would have been some progress over the last year.

I asked him a question about the regionalization of services. Have regional offices been established? You promised last year in response to my questions that a regional office would be established on Vancouver Island. No regional office. Training has been cut back.

One of the things that volunteer fire departments desperately need - and you've received requests, as I have - is money to build fire halls and equipment. We're charging tremendous premiums in rural areas for people to provide fire insurance and loss coverage on their homes and property. Because of the lack of adequate services in those areas they're paying more premiums than they would pay if the adequate services were provided.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Can I respond to that?

MR. SKELLY: The problem is lack of money going to those fire departments in rural areas. You don't need any committees to tell you that. They'll tell you that themselves. We have a lot of people in my constituency and in other members' constituencies who do all the work voluntarily. The people in the voluntary fire departments build the fire halls and buy the equipment, all on a voluntary basis. It's difficult in some cases to get taxpayers to vote mill rate increases because of already high taxes. All of it is done voluntarily.

We have a fire chief in the Alberni Valley who keeps a telephone pager by his side 24 hours a day.

[ Page 3063 ]

He has a regular job. When he comes home at night he's got this pager attached to his belt. He goes to bed and the thing sits beside his bed. He gets up at 2 or 3 in the morning. The guy is sacrificing his health; he may be sacrificing his job....

MR. KEMPF: Oh, garbage!

MR. SKELLY: Garbage? The member for garbage. Whenever he has nothing else to say he pipes up, "garbage, " halfway through the night.

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

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Who said that?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. To vote 73.

MR. BARNES: Who said garbage, hon. member?

AN HON. MEMBER: Mein Kempf.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Chairman, I think that most people, other than the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) , recognize that these people are making a tremendous sacrifice – risking jobs, families and their health in a lot of cases - to provide a necessary service.

What's needed isn't applause; it's simply money. All the government has to do is make money available, perhaps on the same basis as they make it available for community recreation facilities. What are your priorities? Last year, nothing for community recreation facilities; this year, $8 million, The Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) goes around the province and says we've saved the people $100 million on the Human Resources budget. Where's that money going?

HON. K.R. MAIR (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs): To make up your deficit!

Interjection.

MR. SKELLY: It certainly isn't going to emergency services. As a result, lives and property are being lost in this province. How about a little of that $8 million - or a little of that $100 million - going to support volunteer fire departments in rural areas, making it easier for those people to provide necessary services for the protection of lives and property in British Columbia?

I see the Attorney-General is attempting to shuffle it off again, "Wait till next year, " he says. "We got another committee struck; the other one got sacrificed under the government reorganization bill." But we can't shuffle it off forever when lives and property are being lost.

One member mentioned: "What about the succession duties?" About $30 million went down the tube, back to the rich kids of the province.

AN HON. MEMBER: Thirty-six million.

MR. SKELLY: Well, $36 million, S32 million, whatever. All we need in the volunteer fire services of the province - all that's needed to reduce the losses in this province by 10 per cent - is $1 million. If you applied one-third of the succession duty remission that we granted to the rich kids of the province under that succession duty legislation, we could reduce the losses in the province drastically. We could have the best fire-loss record in Canada rather than the worst.

I really question the government's priorities and that minister's priorities and his sincerity when in one case he votes for the succession duties remission and in another case he says: "All we're doing in fire services is striking another committee to look into it." We've had enough committees; now what we need is the money.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I think it's important to take a good look at what the member for Alberni has said. But I think more importantly, let the record show what the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) said during his criticism from his chair of what the member for Alberni was saying, and that is: "His hostility toward the ambulance service in this province. . . ." I think that was totally deplorable.

MR. KING: Mr. Chairman, I think the minister should respond. I just want to add another dimension to the ...

Interjection.

MR. KING: Mr. Chairman, I don't think the Attorney-General has taken seriously enough the need for the implementation of the Keenleyside report. I want to draw to his attention that there's another dimension involved, and that is the dimension of industrial relations, which is very crucial also.

Many of the problems that have been associated with interruptions of fire services in this province over recent years have been the result of disparate training and disparate wage settlements in various communities and municipalities throughout the province. This largely comes about as a result of disputes and disagreements over the level of training and expertise of the people involved in a rural or urban fire department as opposed to those in the large metropolitan areas.

Indeed the Keenleyside investigation was commissioned with the involvement of the Ministry of Labour. I would hope that the Attorney-General

[ Page 3064 ]

would be consulting with the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. Williams) on the need to standardize training programmes, upon the need to increase and raise the level of professional expertise, not only in terms of training but in terms of the latest technology, tactics and strategy for firefighting, because it certainly has a tremendous impact on the stability of industrial relations and an essential public service,

I honestly feel that the Attorney-General has brushed over very lightly what were serious and well-presented dissertations by both the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) and the member for Alberni (MR. Skelly) . What the opposition is urging and asking of the Attorney-General, Mr. Chairman, is for some commitment that the implementation of the Keenleyside commission report will be a high priority with this government, because there is a matter of the threat to the life of B.C. citizens.

We pointed out that the fatality rate is extremely high. Certainly the property loss is extremely high. As a consequence, and incident to that high loss, insurance rates are extremely high also. Insurance rates are not productive and contribute nothing to the gross national product of this province or the nation.

It would be money much better expended in preventive programmes rather than in high insurance costs. So it's not a total outlay to the government. All we're looking for is a commitment to this House that the vigorous pursuit of the Keenleyside report will be a high priority with the government.

MR. SKELLY: The Attorney-General hasn't answered one question.

AN HON. MEMBER: He hasn't had a chance. You keep getting up on your feet. You keep bouncing up with that smarmy garbage.

MR. SKELLY: The imposition of additional duties on volunteer fire departments has become a more burdensome problem over the last few years. I mentioned that the Forest Service has now turned over to volunteer fire departments the obligation of issuing fire permits. The Forest Service has paid British Columbia government employees, and yet in rural areas they're now turning over to volunteer agencies the right to issue fire permits during fire season.

That's an additional burden on rural volunteer fire departments. Also they're turning over to local volunteer fire chiefs the obligation to do fire inspections. So while no more money is coming down from the provincial government, more and more obligations are being shuffled off onto volunteer agencies. *

Somebody down on the silent benches of the Social Credit Party demanded that I should mention names. So I'll do what the former Attorney-General used to do and read a letter. It's a very short letter:

"As one of your constituents, I have long been contemplating writing this letter to you. Chiefly, having been associated with the Coombs-Hilliers fire department for the past four years has left me wondering just what priority emergency services have been receiving from the incumbent government.

"The present administrators revealed their true colours when medical service training was sharply curtailed. We, too, are amazed at the more recent cavalier treatment the citizens of this province are receiving when Willy Windmill, our illustrious Minister of Human Resources, haughtily announced a $100 million surplus in funds. And no one in B.C. has suffered because of it, he says, "

AN HON. MEMBER: Signed, "Your loving father." (Laughter.)

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please!

The hon. member for Alberni has the floor. I must remind him, though, that the authorities provide that we cannot say indirectly what cannot be said directly. We cannot use someone else to say something that would be out of order to say in this House. I would have to ask the hon. member to retract the statement of some name-calling to the minister. I don't recall exactly what it was.

MR. SKELLY: It was Willy Windmill, and I withdraw that section of the letter.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you.

AN HON. MEMBER: Besides, it's Willy Woodenshoes! (Laughter.)

MR. SKELLY: It goes on:

"The question I'm begging on behalf of our fire department, and others, is: why can't this prosperous, provincial, plutocratic government of ours assume the cost of federal excise tax and provincial sales tax on any equipment purchased by essential emergency services like ours? We are not a financially sound organization. In fact, this year we hope to take steps to increase our mill rate by two for the next year. In the meantime, can you possibly intervene on our behalf to see that these burdensome taxes can be waived on fire-fighting equipment?

"Further, the Forest Service has relinquished its responsibility in issuing fire permits in designated fire protection districts. We have

[ Page 3065 ]

been asked to assume this responsibility and have willingly consented to do so for this year anyway. Now the Forest Service has hinted that next year we will be required to provide our own fire permits at our own expense. We resent this continued depletion of government services at our expense and strongly urge that you protest to the minister. It seems that this inhumane provincial administration is deliberately reducing its services and increasing the costs."

AN HON. MEMBER: "Signed, Bob Williams."

MR. SKELLY: It's signed by the fire chief of the

Coombs-Hilliers Volunteer Fire Department,

AN HON. MEMBER: Bob Williams!

HON- MR. MAIR: Your campaign manager!

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Chairman, it seems that the government benches are a little reluctant to consider this matter seriously.

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 11:01 p.m.