[ Page 5243 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Apprenticeship and Training Development Act (Bill 76) . Second reading.

Mr. Wallace –– 5243

Mr. Levi –– 5244

Mr. King –– 5246

Hon. Mr. Williams –– 5247

Division on second reading –– 5250

Division on motion to refer to committee –– 5251

Corrections Amendment Act, 1977 (Bill 55) Committee stage,

On section 6.

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 5251

Mr. Wallace –– 5251

On section 6 as amended.

MT, Wallace –– 5251

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 5252

Mr. Levi –– 5253

Mr. Wallace –– 5253

Mr. Levi –– 5254

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 5255

Mr. Wallace –– 5255

Mr. Levi –– 5257

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 5258

Mr. Wallace –– 5258

Mrs. Dailly –– 5260

Mr. Lea –– 5260

Hon. Mr. Gardom –– 5261

Division on third reading –– 5262

Independent Schools Support Act (Bill 33) , Committee stage.

On section 6.

Mr. Cocke –– 5262

Hon. MR. McGeer –– 5263

Division on section 6 –– 5263

On section 7,

Hon. Mr. McGeer –– 5264

Mr. Cocke –– 5264

Appendix –– 5265

The House met at 8 p.m.

Orders of the day.

HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 76, Mr. Speaker.

APPRENTICESHIP AND TRAINING

DEVELOPMENT ACT

(continued)

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): I just want to support this bill and say to the hon. minister

Interjections.

MR. WALLACE: The member for North Okanagan (Mrs. Jordan) wants it taken as read. I can only say that you can't get that lucky, Madam Member. But I'll be brief, I promise you.

The minister expressed the thought that it would be difficult for the members of the opposition to oppose Bill 82 and be in agreement with this bill. But that is exactly the position I find myself in, Mr. Speaker, because Bill 82, while companion legislation to Bill 76 and while it has good intentions, provides mechanisms that leave me very dubious about its effectiveness and the danger of a whole new layer of bureaucracy, whereas this bill responds, as I see it, to one of the very fundamental elements in the Goard commission and its report.

For example, the one area that seemed to have uniform agreement in the Goard commission hearings was the need for counselling. This bill, in outlining the duties of the director of apprenticeship, gives very clear and specific emphasis to the whole question of counselling. And it's very interesting that it should be so, Mr. Speaker, because just the other day, on August 30, the federal Minister of Manpower, the Hon. Bud Cullen, sent a letter to the local manpower manager, Mr. Purdy. He thought it important enough that he pass on copies of the minister's letter to trustees in the greater Victoria area.

I think I just want to mention very briefly that Mr. Cullen was addressing the Canadian Guidance and Counselling Association and he said that in Manitoba a survey of 3,000 teachers, parents and high school students showed that teachers put too low a priority on vocational guidance. In the survey, students and parents ranked guidance as the second most important function of education, whereas teachers ranked it as fifteenth. Mr. Cullen made the point that these figures would seem to support earlier studies that indicated that 40 per cent of high school students feel they are inadequately prepared to make a vocational choice. Mr. Cullen went on to say:

"When one feels, as I do, that proper guidance is the very basis of the choice of a proper career, one does not have to search very long for answers to why a PhD should be driving a taxi or why a sociology graduate should be typing letters. With inappropriate guidance in the past too much emphasis has been put on the importance of a university degree."

Now the minister has been in the House longer than I have, but during the years I've been in this House I don't know how often we've heard of the fact that we have PhDs driving taxis and there is too much emphasis on a university degree. Until now, however, I have not been convinced that the government was willing to do something practical and positive in developing alternatives and emphasizing alternatives in the colleges and in the vocational sphere. I think this bill is very much a step in that direction and I have no hesitation in supporting the bill. The degree of administration which is introduced in the bill through such mechanisms as the provincial apprenticeship board and the director of apprenticeship to me doesn't have the same danger that all these different councils had that we discussed in the other bill this afternoon.

It seems to me, in fact, that the kind of structure the minister is setting up in this bill is to try and bring together plans for better apprenticeship programming and better counselling, and altogether a better public awareness of the need for government intervention in this area is very well spelled out. There are certain parts of the bill that I would like to ask questions about, and perhaps that would be better in committee, Mr. Speaker.

One of the things about the bill which really encourages me is that from the beginning of the Goard commission.... I might say in passing, Mr. Speaker, that I have an ad which appeared in the British Columbia newspapers in July of last year when the Goard commission was advertising its hearings. Right in the middle of the ad, it says: "Of particular interest to the commission is counselling at all levels." Then it lists a lot of other concerns – entrance qualifications and selection procedures. I feel optimistic that the role of vocational training – technical and trade training – has been recognized by the government and I think that the tremendous importance of having skilled counselling advice available to young people not only has been recognized by the Goard commission but also has been recognized by the minister in this bill.

I also would like to comment favourably on the combined effort of this minister and the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) in combining secondary school education with some job experience. The Minister of Education put out a news

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release on June 17 of this year, and I won't take the time of the House to spell out the details, but the way in which this attempt is being made to combine secondary education with on-the-job experience, I think, is another progressive and positive step. Therefore, for these reasons and others, Mr. Speaker, I'm optimistic this government has a good bill in the form of Bill 76 and I have no hesitation in supporting it.

MR. N. LEVI (Vancouver-Burrard): The bill sets out to refine a process which certainly needs to be refined, in terms of the apprenticeship and training in the province. What concerns me is that we have in the province just over a million people in the work force and we have 13,000 people in apprenticeships.

The main question is, if we are going to move from this refinement of legislation into some kind of broad approach that the minister was talking about, in terms of an expanded economy and the question of broadening employment, how is this going to happen, particularly in relation to the apprenticeship system? Given the present circumstances involved, certainly in the unions related to the trades, it would seem that we may have reached the optimum number of people who can actually be apprenticed in the trades now. If it isn't, perhaps the minister has had discussion with particularly the building trades council, who are the people who provide a large number of the apprenticeships because of the related trades: electricians, iron-workers and carpenters. Just where do we go in terms of creating more opportunities for more people?

I don't have to go over the incredible statistics that exist in terms of young people who are in the ranks of the unemployed. The figure of unemployed that we have in the province is approximately 40 per cent of the people who we know are registered. We have many other people who are not registered and are not part of those statistics. We have the problem of young people who are not completing school, those who are dropping out. They are out there somewhere not really having too much opportunity, because we now find that we're into the phenomena of people who are over-trained competing for jobs which really do not require the 'A's. They don't require people who can do calculus. These university graduates who are not able to get the work in their own profession are having to step down. In many cases the people I've spoken to are quite prepared to go to Canada Manpower and say that they don't have a university degree, they simply have high school. It is simply that they have to have a job.

Following on from this legislation, I think what we have to have are plans to broaden the opportunities for young people in terms of apprenticeship and training. I don't hold, frankly, too much faith in what the federal government is doing. I've never been one who believes that the federal government should be involved in this area at all, other than as they are in the human resources system, and in the hospital system which is to cost share and to look at some kind of standards. The basic planning has to come from the province. I know that is a difficulty. That has always been a difficulty with the federal government. They want to have some say in this. They are looking at the whole general question of unemployment, and they've interested themselves in training. We only have to look at the experience of the federal government training programmes. There is great competition by people who are unemployed to get into programmes where they might wait a year or two to get into the training. Then they seem to take the kind of training which ensures that they are going to be unemployed; training in carpentry and welding. Welding is, I think, a very good example of where we're constantly enrolling large numbers of people into the welding business and then we find that many people drop out. A very small percentage of people remain who complete the course and of that group, usually a small fraction actually get into the business of working as welders.

During the minister's estimates we at least tried to start some discussions about what kind of real planning is going on in labour needs. If the federal government is not prepared to do it, somehow there's got to be an obligation by the provincial government, by the trade unions sector, and by business people to start laying down what it is they need in terms of employees over the next five and 10 years. Everybody talks glowingly about the ideas of matching the training with what's coming on line. We still see it today in Canada, albeit the figure is very small now.

At one time the Prime Minister used to say we have 500,000 unemployed but we have 165,000 jobs that need to be filled. Well now that figure has shrunk to about 38,000. There are still, then, 38,000 jobs that they can't find people to fill and of those 38,000, about a third of them require technical skills. The rest relate to jobs that are in remote areas. People don't get up there so there's a constant turnover. I suppose if you're going to try and resolve that question, you have to look at some kinds of incentives. But in terms of young people, what is going to happen to them? This really relates primarily to this legislation.

The bill is okay because it sets up a process, but it's got to go way beyond that. It's got to go into the area of what we are going to need over the next five or 10 years in terms of people in the work force. We find an ever-shrinking work force in terms of the industrial sector. We find an increasing demand in the service sector, In the service sector, there's a tendency in many cases to train people on the job.

We could probably make great strides in terms of

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this kind of legislation and the idea of apprenticeship and training if somehow we were to break from the traditional trade training that we talk about and look into other areas, because that's what we're talking about – preparing people for employment. The general tendency in apprenticeships is to think in terms of the journeyman idea and that's good; we need journeymen and we need people to do the apprenticeship. But there's a limited scope in that area, very limited. Some trade unions have constitutional requirements that only one apprentice is allowed for every 600 or 650 members. If a union's got 3,000 members, then you're talking about six apprentices who will work through that union.

Then there are the other problems related to the fact that because there is a skill in the family in terms of a journeyman carpenter ox- a journeyman ironworker and he has children who have no desire to go on to university, there's a tendency for those children to get some kind of entree into that field. There's nothing wrong with that; that's fine; I think that's okay. But what it does is exclude large numbers of young people. The horizon is very narrow in terms of the apprenticeship possibilities. So we have to move in a much. . . . Hopefully we can broaden it but I don't know how much broader we can make it.

With technology today, for instance, even in the house-building business, the way things are happening there seems to be less and less a requirement for more highly skilled people. Then maybe there's a question of dealing with the lesser skills. How do you break those people in? You're not talking about four or five years' training. You're perhaps talking about a one-year course where people have an opportunity and what is almost a commitment that if they complete that kind of course they have some chances of getting employment, Now along with this, while you have a plan to broaden apprenticeship to make sure that you have far more people who are in the work force getting into these programmes, you obviously have to have some kind of programme related to how you're going to get more people employed. After all, that's what the government was committed to during the election; that's what it keeps talking about.

Those kinds of plans are not something that they can make by themselves. They've got to make them in concert with business, with trade union movement and with other people so that they can find out exactly what the options and possibilities are for creating more employment. It's true that we in this province create an incredible number of jobs every year. Every year 30,000 or 40,000 jobs and yet the hard-core unemployment composition is basically the same where about 40 per cent is made up of young people who have no possible options at all.

Perhaps the minister will talk about numbers in terms of the kinds of plans that he has for apprenticeship training, because one of the concerns that I have, in terms of what happens when you talk about creating employment, is that we always seem to be in the business of meeting emergency situations. For instance, all the governments – the Previous government and this government – are constantly concerned with having to find employment for university students. After all, they need money; they have to go back to university. This year we looked at the business of creating about 16,000 jobs. And yet, it didn't meet the need whatsoever. It seemed to focus very much on what is generally known as the middle-class area in meeting the demand for that kind of employment.

But we have a whole area of young people whose needs are simply not met. In fact, in a general way, they are somewhat ignored. There's the whole question, for instance, in terms of the Canada Works and before that LIP and OFY. We found that the people who involved themselves in those kinds of schemes were usually people who, again, were from the middle-class and we were not reaching the low-income people and the young people who make up a significant part of the work force.

I am not personally persuaded that the process used in schools in terms of counselling in any way meets the problem, because you can counsel young people to death, but if you don't have any jobs to send them to, what have you accomplished? It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation.

In order to really be able to make something like this work – or what, hopefully, will flow from this piece of legislation – you've got to have some expectation that there will be a broader possibility of job creation and job opportunity for young people.

I personally think that one of the biggest problems that we have to deal with has been the up-and-down, round-about kind of attitude that the federal government had. I think it's okay to kick the hell out of the federal government from time to time, Mr. Speaker, and partly because they are given to wanting to centralize things and to centralize decision making know there have been discussions over the years with the federal government about getting them to relax their grip on this situation. Of course, they don't argue it publicly, but the argument that they hang on to it is because they have very serious problems in terms of unemployment statistics. Right now, there are about 800,000 people unemployed, but there are probably 300,000 to 400,000 people in various forms of training.

In this province we have about 13,000 apprentices Of those apprentices, the completion rate – it's four or five years which we're speaking of – the number of people who move out of that group is not very large every year. That's not making much of a dent on the whole question of the unemployment situation.

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Mr. Speaker, when the minister sums up, I'd appreciate it if he would tell us what plans he has in mind beyond this mechanism, which certainly appears to be a necessary mechanism, about how he is particularly going to address himself to the problem of the people who are not from the middle class. They are not students who have graduated and can't find work. That's a very serious problem. That's a problem which we have to address ourselves to, whether we're prepared to spend millions of dollars in having young people go to university to come out with a bachelor's degree, which really doesn't equip them for anything. That's a very serious question in terms of scarce resources.

But the other equally serious question is: what kind of entrees do low-income people's children have in terms of getting employment? I'm not persuaded – certainly in the people whom I talk to – that these low-income children have this kind of entree at all. So what you really have is a consistent group of people that remains in the unemployment ranks, occasionally becoming casual workers but generally never becoming fully fledged functioning people.

We may have to address ourselves in a very serious way to the kinds of discussions we had during the Minister of Education's debate, about whether in fact, we should require that many of our children should go to school past grade 10, and whether at the same time, if we agree that is not desirable, we may look for a transfer of funds into something which is a work creation, which relates really to the business of what needs are there in the province that need to be done in terms of a youth force, where they can get some kind of employment. We have lots of work in this province that could be done and which in no way impinges on the trade union movement and their particular bailiwick. There's lots of work that can be done, particularly in the environmental area. But it requires the kind of funding that can only come from one area. It can only come from the government and it can only come from the two senior governments on a cost-shared basis. But if we're going to talk about apprenticeships and training, we've got to talk at the same time about job creation. We had no indication of this. Because if we're talking about job creation in terms of apprenticeship and training as it exists today, then there are literally thousands of people who are excluded from those kinds of opportunities. We do have an obligation to create new opportunities for these people.

If it's a question of somebody saying: "Well, where will the money come from?" then we'd better examine the effectiveness of certain aspects of the education system and say: "This is where we go, We take some money from that and go into another area so that young people who are not desirous of staying in that system have an opportunity to get into some other kind of system."

That is what we are really talking about here. Apprenticeship is not going to broaden in any meaningful way if we keep thinking in the mindset of the trades that we always think about in terms of apprenticeship. We have to look at the service industry in relation to environment, in terms of pollution, in terms of our forests. Those are other areas, other possibilities, other options, and those are the kinds of things, Mr. Speaker, we have to look at. The existing apprenticeship scheme is too narrow, and I don't see that it can be broadened in any way.

MR. W.S. KING (Revelstoke-Slocan): I am going to be fairly brief on this bill. I generally feel it's a bill that is overdue in terms of upgrading the existing legislation with respect to manpower development in the province. I think it makes some positive moves; I think it makes some negative moves. I believe there's a vacuum in some areas that should have been seriously addressed, and I find that regrettable, MR. Speaker.

The most serious problem that I find with the bill.... Here again it's difficult to treat this bill in isolation from other legislation that's been introduced and other policy initiatives that have been undertaken by this government. I talked earlier today, in respect to another debate, about the apparent – I don't know what you'd call it – almost czar-like posture of the Minister of Education with respect to a variety of areas that should be under the jurisdiction of other ministries. I find that this bill is no exception because when it comes to the vital crunch in terms of providing the spaces in the colleges and the vocational institutions and so on to accommodate industry's needs for projected manpower, there's a virtual monopoly by the Ministry of Education.

Mr. Speaker, history has shown that when the Ministry of Education has control in this area, labour's priorities – the priorities for advancement, upgrading and retraining of the work force – suffer because the Ministry of Education is inevitably geared toward the academic rather than the vocational. It's very unfortunate, both in this bill and the accompanying bill, that I see more and more power and authority being vested in Education and less and less in the hands of the Ministry of Labour.

The Ministry of Labour is charged with the responsibility, Mr. Speaker, of developing a manpower strategy for this province. There's the absence of any such strategy either in this bill or the accompanying legislation there's the absence of the authority of the Ministry of Labour to develop such a thrust. The implications are so far reaching that it's difficult to enumerate them all in a debate on this bill because I want to be brief.

Obviously, if we are to come to grips with the chronic problems of unemployment that seem to have gripped this province under the coalition

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government's regime, then we have to have a manpower training strategy. We have to have a strategy for training people in the skills necessary to take advantage of emerging industrial' opportunity, What we find here, Mr. Speaker, is the absence of any emerging industrial opportunity, sadly enough, and the absence of any manpower training priorities to come to grips with jobs that should be created in the province.

Ideally, Mr. Speaker, there should be liaison among the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Economic Development to project what the manpower needs will be in this province on the basis of where industry is liable to be setting the priorities and the thrust of their development, and certainly with respect to the kind of skills that will be required to accommodate the development.

If we expect a major coal development in the province, for instance, much lead time is required to work with industry, to work with the trade union movement and the Ministry of Economic Development to determine what kind of skills would be required to accommodate that development. If this is not done, Mr. Speaker – and it hasn't been done in the past – the end result is the shutting out of employment opportunities for British Columbia's workers and the importation of the necessary skills from Great Britain and other nations to accommodate the jobs that our workers are not prepared for.

I find a complete absence of any liaison, any preparation, any stated objectives in this statute in terms of coming to grips with those kinds of problems, and I think that's extremely regrettable. The most sorry part of this statute is the Ministry of Labour has again, in an apparently weak-kneed fashion that's becoming the characteristic of that minister and that ministry, abandoned their obligation to represent the interest and the needs of working people again to the Ministry of Education.

I can foresee the kind of circumstance, Mr. Speaker, where priorities for local training – aesthetic kind of training courses – will be set up in communities at the expense of seats that should be available for vocational and industrial training. This is the, kind of thing that is going to happen, The Ministry of Labour has no authority to negotiate effectively and demand that a priority be provided for working people to upgrade and retrain themselves so that they will be qualified for the kind of jobs that become available. It's a very weak bill in that respect. Indeed, I think it is retrogressive. I don't think the ministry has as much authority to set priority importance on worker retraining and upgrading as they did under the previous statute,

There are a variety of technical things wrong with the bill. I certainly wonder what the ministry has in mind to do with the provincial apprenticeship training board. He talks about a new agency to perform that function but the main support that that agency should receive in terms of a guaranteed budget and guaranteed seats and spaces in the vocational training institutes in the province is absent. Without that political support, Mr. Speaker, I doubt that much advance is going to be made.

I indicated earlier that there is a complete absence of any attempt to even enunciate a policy and a direction. There's also a vacuum in terms of trying to project what the needs of the industry might be in this province, of trying to set some projected schedule of development in the resource sector or anywhere else. That should be contained in the bill if it is to be comprehensive, if it is to be understood and to be effective.

I regret those things. I acknowledge that the minister is trying to do some good work in terms of some redefinition of some of the language in the old statute. I think he is making some token gestures in terms of involvement of the trade union movement and industry, but I don't see any real substance in terms of giving them a greater role and a greater responsibility in the important area of manpower development.

I was interested to hear the minister say that he placed a higher priority on manpower development than he did on the industrial relations side. Really, that is a good sign, but I find nothing in the bill to support that approach and that priority by the minister. So, Mr. Speaker, while we will be supporting the bill in general, I want to tell the House that I certainly have very grave reservations about the ability to deliver through this statute the kind of advances that the minister has in mind.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. minister closes the debate.

HON. L.A. WILLIAMS (Minister of Labour): Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the members for their very considered debate on second reading of this Bill 76 – at least some of the members. I must say that I have to take serious objection to the contribution made by the member for Revelstoke-Slocan (Mr. King) , who has just taken his seat. He would criticize the action which this government is taking with regard to this legislation, yet during all the time that his party was in government they did nothing whatsoever on this whole question of manpower and apprenticeship training or industrial training, or any other kind of training as far as that is concerned.

The member for Revelstoke-Slocan suggested that there should be a liaison among the ministries of Education, Labour and Economic Development. Well, it just so happens, Mr. Speaker, that that is precisely what we have in this government. As a matter of fact,

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the – initiatives taken by the Minister of Education (Hon. MR. McGeer) and this minister in order to establish the Goard commission that produced before this House today Bills 82 and 76 is a clear result of just that kind of liaison, together with the Minister of Economic Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) , who had very particular concern for the matters raised by the member for Revelstoke-Slocan. None of that was done during the years 1972 to 1975, none whatsoever.

There was a statement by the then Minister of Education, who is sitting in the House tonight, and the then Minister of Labour, who has just taken his seat, with regard as to what should be done in this area, but nothing was accomplished. There was no attempt to get together with the trade unions, with the employers, with the people who are really concerned about this type of legislation and produce anything positive. Nothing whatsoever.

The member for Revelstoke-Slocan suggests that under this legislation the control of the Ministry of Education is geared towards academic matters as opposed to vocational matters. It is the clear statement of the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) of this government, joined by the Minister of Labour, that that has changed now. We are concerned about the vocational and skilled training of our young people.

The Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act, which was debated this afternoon together with this particular legislation, is designed specifically for that purpose – to ensure that there is a new emphasis placed for young people in this province – and those who are not so young but who require retraining – to be able to upgrade their skills so that they can make a major contribution to the economics of this province and their own best interests.

It has often been said that we have been able to graduate in British Columbia the best-educated unemployables of any province of Canada, Well, Mr. Speaker, I tell you that under Bill 82 and Bill 76, we will graduate the best-educated, best-trained, employable young people that any province has ever seen before.

The member for Revelstoke-Slocan (Mr. King) talks about manpower training strategy, with regard to major initiatives which are being undertaken by this government in this province today. Just let me say.... I really hate to say this, Mr. Speaker; it pains me to say this. But we came to government recognizing that there was, on the books of this province, not one major industrial strategy left over from the previous administration. And there was not one attempt to train our young people and those not-so-young people in the needed manpower skills to fill any strategy whatsoever. That's the legacy they left for us.

So we start from scratch, recognizing that the industries of this province are going outside the boundaries of this province and of this nation in order to import the skill that we require. Well, Bill 82 and Bill 76 are going to put a stop to that. In this province we will train our young and not-so-young people to fill the needs that this province has. Under that Minister of Economic Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) , there will be the greatest demand that you've seen in the last decade.

I must compliment the second member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Levi) for his contribution to this debate. Yes, there is a very serious concern, Mr. Member, with regard to federal government involvement in this matter. I have to assure you that this government, along with the other provincial governments, has expressed major concern with respect to the manpower strategies of our national government. I have had the opportunity of expressing to the federal Minister of Manpower those thoughts that I think the second member for Vancouver-Burrard would also express, and that is that it is time that the provinces and the national government should begin to focus their resources, both fiscal and human, on the problems that we perceive in this nation today.

Unfortunately, we still have at the moment a number of parallel sponsored and financed by the national government which duplicate those programmes which are established in this province and other provinces of Canada. But slowly, Mr. Member, I see that the light is beginning to dawn in the national government – that manpower strategy is not something which can be controlled by any one single government and that there is the need for continuing consultation and co-operation between the federal and provincial governments in order to achieve the destiny that we believe is Canada's.

Now this requires the national government to recognize that some of the politically motivated concepts that they have – and you, Mr. Member, made mention of them in the course of your remarks – have to be very carefully reconsidered, because some of the programmes – LIP and CREEP and all of the other programmes that are announced by the national government – are not serving the best interests of this nation. We really can use our young people, and when I say "use, " I mean it in the sense that they can make a major contribution towards their future and the future of Canada in a much more positive and effective manner.

There needs to be a breakout in trade training; I agree with you in that respect. I think it's valuable that you have raised this matter during the course of this particular debate, because while this bill concerns itself largely with apprenticeship matters, let me assure you, Mr. Member, that if you will consider some of the earlier sections of this legislation, you will see that the thrust of this legislation -- and

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through it, the intentions of this government – leads itself into other training concepts.

Industrial training is certainly one of them, whereby, aside altogether whether he wished to go into an apprenticeship and become a journeyman – in other words, a craft tradesman – is perhaps set aside and not given this superior position that has also been accorded to those people who would seek academic programmes in some of our institutions. But there is the opportunity for our young people, whatever level they may see themselves in society today, to make the fullest advantage of their potential.

I must quarrel with one remark that you made, Mr. Speaker. The member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Levi) said that there is less and less requirement for highly skilled people. Quite frankly, that is not the case. As we see the demands that are placed upon us for manpower in this province, it is just the opposite. The province, industry and the young people themselves recognize the need for more and more skill development. As a matter of fact, in the decades to come the salvation of this province will be in high-technology industry, not in the resource industries.

We are still locked into a resource-based economy, but with God's help and a lot of serious industry on the part of the people of this province, we will extricate ourselves from this grip and will move into those areas of high technology where greater skills are demanded and greater opportunities will be made available for all the people of this province, at whatever level they may find themselves. Whether they are in the major industrial segments or the service sectors, high skill is what is required. There will be greater rewards for them during their work life and there will be less toil for those people as we move into that type of economy. It is that kind of thrust that you will see in this legislation.

Of course, it's not spelled out with the utmost clarity, because manpower strategy is something that government must undertake as a major responsibility, not of one ministry, not of two ministries but of several ministries. The Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Human Resources and the Ministry of Energy, Transport and Communications are all involved in this concept of manpower strategy. It is in that way that we will resolve our problems. Whether it be one spokesman with regard to these matters, it becomes a major government policy responsibility and initiative.

The hon. member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) , I think, has, of all members of the opposition, read the bill very carefully. He has recognized what we recognized when the Minister of Education and the Minister of Labour addressed themselves to this particular area of responsibility. It is the nature of the counselling that is provided to our citizens, young or old, in the work force that is essential to the success of the manpower strategy of which I recently spoke. There is, for anyone who would care to examine, a wealth of counselling opportunities available in this province.

You can get counselling at high school – you may criticize the quality. You can get counselling from Canada Manpower; I doubt that you can criticize the quality of that kind of counselling. You can get counselling from private institutions who, for a fee, will provide you with the opportunity to assess what your desires might be and what your skills might be with regard to your future career. But what we perceive is required in this province for the first time is to bring those several counselling agencies together and to start to provide for our young people in our secondary and post secondary institutions the fullest opportunity to recognize two things: what are the opportunities available to them? What are their desires? And then to fit with those two what their skills might be.

This is the beginning, in my view, of something that should have been started a decade ago in this province. Too long have we languished under a situation where the counselling was fragmented and where guidance to our young people was almost non-existent. As a consequence, what did one do? Depending upon your station in life, you were attracted to a particular course of studies, dictated by your peers and by your parents. As a result we have had too many young people who have high skills moving into academic careers when really their best opportunity and their best contribution could be made elsewhere. We propose to give the opportunity to those young people to make a better decision for themselves. If you will look at the earlier sections of this legislation, it will indicate clearly the direction this government proposes to go with regard to counselling activities.

Again, we have to move other governments. We have to convince the Minister of Manpower and Immigration of the federal government that, again, as in other programmes, they should join with us in focusing the resources we have upon the problem for the purpose of resolving that problem. I think, from my discussions with the Hon. Bud Cullen, that some major steps could be made in this regard. But this legislation and the legislation with regard to Bill 82 will be our vehicles for presenting to the federal government an opportunity for doing that job better in this province than has ever been done before.

Now if I may just comment about one other matter raised by the member for Oak Bay, he talked about the councils in Bill 82 and of public awareness of need for government itself to be aware. I don't think that the member should fail to recognize that those councils that are established in Bill 82 are

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specifically designed to meet problems not only in the vocational and technical field, but also in the whole range of programmes that are offered in our institutes, our colleges and our vocational schools throughout the whole of British Columbia. This will enable us to bring together people with experience and skills to focus upon that whole range of post-secondary responsibility below the university level and to make something really worthwhile out of that level of education in British Columbia.

Interjection.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, we would be delighted if it could be accomplished with less personnel and with less structure, but when you consider the enormity of the responsibility that faces us in this regard. I think on reconsideration it will appear that the three councils only which were established for the purpose of administering the facilities will seem to be not beyond what is adequate.

Now the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) , who opened debate, raised a number of interesting matters, I want to deal in particular with two. It was suggested by the member for Comox that somehow or other the director of apprenticeship was having withdrawn from him some of the responsibilities which were specifically spelled out in the legislation. Let me assure the member that is not the case. If she considers the wording which is presently in this bill, and which we will refer to in committee, Mr. Speaker, I think she will recognize that her concern is not one that need worry her long.

I would also assure her that money is not the reason. As a matter of fact, when one talks about moneys being made available for this kind of educational programme, may I remind you, Mr. Speaker, and the members of the assembly, that under the careful consideration and guidance of the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) , he was able to go to our national government and recoup from that government in excess of $80 million which was left on the table by the government which was the government of this province between 1972 and 1975. There's $80 million which was available for the training of our young people in the province that was left on the table by the NDP. Well, Mr. Speaker, it is not the intention of this government to ignore its responsibilities and to shortchange our young people by leaving in Ottawa those moneys which are available to them for training in the province of British Columbia.

The member for Comox also referred to the question of the training of women in. the apprenticeship programme. Under the Ministry of Labour we have already instituted a programme to encourage and expand the availability of apprenticeship programmes for women. As a matter of fact, it can be expected that in the space of the next few weeks there will be major announcements from the government with regard to this whole aspect of women and their place in the work force as a result of studies which have been undertaken by the Minister of Economic Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) , the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) , and the Ministry of Labour. I wish to assure the member for Comox that apprenticeships will be included within that particular announcement.

But, you know, it shouldn't be overlooked that apprenticeship is not a goal in itself. This has been referred to by the members opposite and I just wish, somehow or another, the members of the NDP would make up their minds. Do you want apprenticeships with people who are trained in skills, able to carry out their responsibilities without hindrance, or do you want the trade union movement to control apprenticeships? It's got to be one or the other. You can't have it both ways. I'm not suggesting what the result might be, but on the one hand we have the member for Revelstoke-Slocan (Mr. King) speaking about the workers and their rights – and we recognize those and we are prepared to support them – and on the other hand you talk about the rights of apprenticeships and the right to carry on your occupation, and yet you have to contend with the concerns that the craft unions express in this regard, I just wish that the NDP would somehow stop talking out of both sides of their mouths on the same problem.

Lastly, the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) I thought made a very important contribution when she talked about the waiting list for people who are going into apprenticeship programmes. Yes, this was a major concern of ours when we came to government. It is a continuing major concern. I can only assure the member for Comox that under the facilities to be provided under Bill 82, the operation of the occupational training council, and Bill 76, that we will solve the problem that the NDP were unable to do.

Interjection.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to find that the opposition is going, to support Bill 76 and I have pleasure now in moving the second reading.

Motion approved unanimously on a division.

Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House,

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I move that the bill be referred to a Committee of the Whole

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House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Motion approved unanimously on a division.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Committee on Bill 55, Mr. Speaker.

CORRECTIONS AMENDMENT ACT, 1977

The House in committee on Bill 55; Mr. Veitch in the chair.

On section 1.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper to section I – just a housekeeping amendment.

Amendment approved.

Section 1 as amended approved.

Sections 2 and 3 approved.

On section 4.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I would similarly move the amendment standing in my name on the order paper to section 4.

Amendment approved.

Section 4 as amended approved.

Section 5 approved.

On section 6.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Speaking to section 6, Mr. Chairman, I have handed to the Clerks an amendment to section 6, specifically changing the word "may" in new section 40, subsection (1) in the. first line, stating that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council shall, to advise him in policy and administration under this part, establish a youth programme committee.

I would like to express my appreciation to the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) for drawing this matter to my attention. It was always the desire and intention of the government, and certainly within the ministry and the advisers to the ministry, to see that a youth programme committee would definitely be in place and it be mandatory as opposed to permissive.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Attorney-General's initiative in this and I appreciate his remarks.

For clarification, Mr. Chairman, are we to go through section 6 in total, picking out references to the new sections – 41, 42, et cetera – or shall we go through new sections number by number. I'm just asking clarification because I want to speak on two or three of the new sections.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, I believe we could do it as one.

Amendment approved.

On section 6 as amended.

MR. WALLACE. Well, Mr. Chairman, on the understanding that we will deal with the whole of the section 6 of this bill, which in fact incorporates new sections in the bill – 39 through 51 – so that.... I want to be absolutely clear that we are now debating section 6 of this bill which incorporates new sections to the bill from section 39 through 51.

MR. CHAIRMAN: That is my understanding, yes.

MR. WALLACE: Dealing with new section 40, 1 wonder if the Attorney-General could give us some information, which I understand will probably be written by regulation. One of the reasons that I opposed this bill in second reading was that I didn't have enough information to assure me that this was just not a matter of locking up the more troublesome youth in our community without the emphasis on rehabilitation, which surely has to be the longer term goal of any legislation of this kind. It's very easy to take any individual off the street and lock them up. What you do while they're locked up and the programmes you develop to reintegrate them into the community are far more important than the mere business of putting them into so-called containment centres which in effect are juvenile jails. There are two or three specific points I would like to ask the Attorney-General.

First of all, the question of the assurance that youths coming before the courts will have legal representation. Both the coalition task force on children and the law made a very specific request, as did the brief from the association of social workers.

I think it surely is right that youth should have no less guarantee of protection of their legal rights than an adult. Therefore I would like to ask the Attorney-General how the assurance that youth will have legal representation will be contained either in this bill or in regulations.

Secondly, under this new section 40 setting up a youth programme committee, there have been very clear reasons given, again by the social workers in the coalition task force, as to why there should be lay representation on this programme committee. I wonder to what degree the minister agrees with that

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request and the way in which he intends to carry that out. In other words, is it by regulation or will it be simply that the minister intends that this be done and we have to take his word for it that lay members of the community will be involved in the youth programme committee? It is very obvious that this youth programme committee is a key to any sincere rehabilitative efforts that are to be made with those youths who have to be treated in this particular manner.

Another point raised by the coalition task force is related to the high proportion of native Indian children who finish up in our correction system. Since the culture and values between the Indian and the non-Indian differ significantly, it was recommended that native persons be included among the youth supervisory staff – that is, both in remand and containment facilities. It was also suggested that native court workers be provided to native children prior to enduring court appearances. Native court workers should also be present when children are interviewed by legal counsel. The high proportion of native Indian children and the young adults in our correction system surely would warrant this particular emphasis on having native Indians as staff members and counsellors.

The third point, particularly in relation to new section 40, would also relate to the services for these children when they are in these facilities. Again, I'm referring to the need for trained counsellors. The coalition task force expressed concern that properly trained counsellors should participate in programme planning, referral procedures and discharge planning, and should offer counselling services when requested by inmates.

Now I realize that in this new section 40 (l) (a) it is stated that the cabinet will establish a youth programme committee composed of persons providing services for children. I think that the repeated use of the word "children" emphasizes the vast difference in this kind of bill compared to the corrections bill dealing specifically with adults. I want to mention that a little later also – that there would be a very distinct, separate and different approach to the handling of the juveniles than to the handing of adult offenders.

Perhaps, Mr. Chairman, we could cover these three points – I have some others – rather than go on to a whole range of issues. It might be more convenient for the minister if we covered these three points.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Insofar as the first question is concerned, as I indicated during the debate in second reading vis-a-vis legal representation for these youngsters, they will be eligible for legal aid, of course. They will make the necessary application or it can be made for them. Either the court can request it or the probation officer who is in attendance. Those that have resources of their own or families that can assist them, of course, have the complete right to take that option as well.

Dealing with the composition of the youth programme committee, it is certainly intended that this committee will be comprised of the best, most knowledgeable and dedicated people we can find to do the job. The suggestion of "lay" representation is certainly not one that offends me, providing we can find adequate people. We might find more adequate lay representatives than professional. I would tend to doubt that by virtue of expertise and the interest of the professional, but we wish to have a well-rounded committee. The government will be flexible in this as it will in the whole concept of the bill. The bill was built around flexibility. That is the whole demonstrative thrust of the bill – and that's deliberate. It is far better to maintain that flexibility than enshrining some of these things in stone within the legislation itself. By maintaining that kind of flexibility we have got the kind of flexibility that really emanated shortly before the days of Henry II in the common law – the concept of equity. By not enshrining things into legal parameters one can have a far greater degree of flexibility. This bill is planned to deal with matters and problems as they arise.

Perhaps the thrust of that will be taken in this legislation, and in the operation and the maintenance of the programmes in 1978, will be very, very different indeed in 1980, but we have the opportunity and the power to do that within the bill itself.

You made a good point concerning the native Indian children. We are certainly hopeful, for our part, that we will have native people who can be part of the component. With the native court workers, of course, it isn't any difficulty at all. Insofar as the staffing component is concerned, it's a question of finding the most suitable people. We're looking for the most suitable people irrespective of their race or ethnic or religious background.

Dealing with the services – that will be made available to the youngsters in the programme, I think this was really covered extensively during remarks in second reading. There will certainly be the educational and the recreational components built into it, as well as the health component and forensic psychiatric services where required. I would like to assure the hon. member that every step that can be taken will be taken to see that these youngsters are properly taken care of and their needs are met, as well as those of the community. As you have said, and as is abundantly clear from the bill and from the background paper which you have received here, certainly there has to be a different approach to juveniles, and that approach is covered in this legislation. Of its kind, it's hallmark legislation in the country.

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MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, more specifically now, with reference to new section 44....

MR. LEVI: On a point of order, I'd just like to stay in section 40.

HON. MR. GARDOM: That's fine.

MR. LEVI: Can we go all over the place?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, the ruling was that you could deal with the whole new section.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I think it's a little easier if we follow some order, I agree with you.

MR. LEVI: Perhaps the minister could just restate the issue of the legal aid. I'm a little out of touch with legal aid so I don't know, but are juveniles eligible for legal aid at the moment under the legal aid programme? They are eligible?

HON. MR. GARDOM: That's my understanding, yes.

MR. LEVI: Could the minister just quickly outline for us what the process is in terms of the committal? Is it the same process that exists today? Is this the committal process as is under the juvenile Act as we know it?

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: Well, that's what I'd like to know: whether there's any change in the actual committal process. The child is found to be a delinquent and then there's a committal process. This presumably involves a committal process. Could the minister just outline that?

Give him a chance to find his notes, Mr. Chairman. Maybe while he's looking, the member for Oak Bay can carry on.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You're in section 44. You're in the wrong section. That's why you're throwing me.

MR. WALLACE: Well, Mr. Chairman, if we've covered new section 40, I just have one or two comments about the youth containment centres and the admission to them. Again, the people who have done a great deal of work in analysing the bill and who have submitted a lot of suggestions to the members of the House point out that the administration of this youth containment programme appears to be tied to the adult criminal justice system. The commissioner of corrections is responsible for the adult prison and probation systems and is a major force, decider and decision-maker with regard to staffing, programmes and release procedures under this youth containment programme. The directors of these containment centres under the bill, Mr. Chairman, are accountable to regional directors of corrections who also manage adult programmes.

I know the minister has given me his personal assurance on this, but before we move on to other points I just feel that the whole problem of juveniles is so very different from adults that I just hope there might be a more distinct and separate administrative structure set up within the minister's ministry to emphasize very clearly and unmistakably the differing approach both in structure, staffing and the additional expert personnel that are required compared to the situation for the containment of adult offenders.

In second reading debate, I made the point that these youths can only be kept in these containment centres if they're guilty of an offence for which an adult would be sentenced to two years or more. Subsequent to the debate I was really quite amazed to find the list of offences that can get you into jail for two years or more, These include theft, breaking and entering dwelling houses, breaking and entering other than dwelling houses, narcotics and custom offences. So perhaps I was a little naive to think that you had to commit some fairly serious offence to wind up in jail for two years. There are numerous offences which bring that penalty, but in the debate we had in second reading it was made to sound as though these young juveniles would only be put in a containment centre if they were committing violent crimes. Mugging individuals and cracking skulls and breaking arms, I think, were some of the examples that were quoted.

When you end up in jail for theft, you're not really committing any physical violence against anyone when you steal their money, embezzle bonds or carry out some of the very large financial offences that some fairly prominent citizens in and around North America have done lately, and have gone to jail for. I think the earlier impression that I gave in the debate that it was only serious crimes of physical violence that could earn you a two-year stint in jail is not accurate. I would hope that the minister could perhaps give us his reassurance that in non-personal-violence crimes such as theft and the like, these will not result in youths placed in these containment centres.

One of the other points that I was concerned about, and I would like to explore the matter a little more at this time, is the question of assessment of the juvenile before, and not after, sentence. There's plenty of provision in new section 44 for a youth to be assessed after he's been sentenced to one of these containment centres. Again referring to some of the

[ Page 5254 ]

excellent briefs we've received from the social workers in the Coalition Task Force, they make the very obvious point that the medical, psychiatric, and psychological assessment should surely be made before a sentence is decided. I don't wish to belabour the point I made earlier on of teenagers committing suicide in jail and this sort of thing. It happens. It would seem to me, in at least one of the cases that I'm familiar with, not only was psychiatric assessment done, but the assessment said that this child could only be made worse by being restricted in jail. She was dumped in jail and hanged herself. I think we can't possibly overemphasize the need for prior mental, physical, psychiatric assessment of the young offender before the judge is landed with the very serious responsibility of deciding how best the case should be disposed of.

I would like the minister to comment on this question of adequate assurance that these important assessments will be done prior to sentencing, and not after the youth turns up at the containment centre door to be put in and then undergo assessment. Even then the circumstances under which he will then be assessed are perhaps anything but natural or normal if it's a jail setting and a cell.

The other question that I would like to ask the minister in regard to admitting these youths is, can we be assured that plans to reintegrate: back into the community will begin the day he or she goes into the centre, not a day or two before they're ready to leave. Again this is a strong sentiment expressed by social workers and others, who too often find that separation from the community for any length of time, particularly if there are not active rehabilitative efforts made during incarceration, just means that the young offender comes out of jail one day and is probably back in trouble the next. The minister has said that you can't record some of these commitments in stone and it's better not to write them into the bill. But we on this side of the House, and I for one, want to have the best reassurance I can possibly get from the minister that this emphasis on rehabilitation and treatment, mental and physical assessment to determine why the youth is behaving in this bizarre and unruly manner in the first place will be made before he goes to containment, and programmes will be embarked on to minimize the chance that on release he will return at a later date.

I have one or two other questions in relation to subsequent new sections if the minister would like me to continue, or would he care to answer?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Please continue.

AN HON. MEMBER: Are you in the same section, Norman? 44? Okay.

MR. LEVI: The member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) has raised the old question of assessment. In the section that we're dealing with, section 44 (b): "Should they admit a child from the youth containment centre unto us, the child, " and I'm going into section (b) , "is found by the court to be apparently or actually more than 14 years of age and unsuitable for inclusion in any other programme for youths available through the Minister of Human Resources, or through the branch other than the containment programme."

I would suggest to the Attorney-General that what you really have here is that for a number of young people, this is the end of the road. They have been rejected out of, or not functioned in, a series of programmes. They're going to go there. Apparently, I presume, as used to be some time ago when I was in the business, if you looked pretty big and husky they were more likely to get transferred up into adult court. If you get a big strapping 15- or 16-year-old, they worry about whether he'll fit into a programme. The suggestion here in the Act is that this young person has gone through a series of programmes that exist either in the division, in the Attorney-General's department or the Ministry of Human Resources.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Or may not have it, might be a "first" situation.

MR. LEVI: That's the question. You might wind up with someone who goes straight from the street into that without having been into any other kind of situation. I really want to come to the point that the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) , was starting to pursue, which is what happens to an individual who has gone through a series of resources and finally is committed to a containment centre. There was a question that you have not answered yet. The member wanted to know whether you would have assessment prior or after the child goes into the containment centre. It would seem to me that the way the Act is written, it wouldn't make any difference what kind of assessment is going to be done as it is based on that particular child's performance in other facilities. If he doesn't function he goes in there, and that's it. That's the way that works very specifically.

The objection that we have talked about on this side of the House has been the business of what we are winding up with. It's a kind of an end of the road situation. It becomes a bit of a dumping ground. That's the whole point that we made in second reading. We can't on the one hand talk about containment centres and then in the same breath about assessment, psychiatric, psychological evaluation, when none of that is going to contribute in any way as to whether that young individual is going to go into that centre. He is going to go in, What is available to these young people before they

[ Page 5255 ]

get to this stage? What is available then? That's the important thing here. Otherwise what you're doing is saying we can't deal with this individual in any other way than put him in a containment centre, in a jail.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I don't know if I'm able to respond to these chronologically, Mr. Chairman, but I will respond to them in any event.

First of all, dealing with the point that was made by the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) dealing with separate administration. This was one of the recommendations of the Berger Report and the ministry has opted for integrated regional administration of justice which we think will ensure a great deal of consistency and direction, good communication and more available response to local problems. So it will not be a separate administration per se.

Secondly, the Berger recommendation essentially was to the effect that secure assessment centres would be advisable. The advice that I've received, hon. member, is that the ministry has not opted for that and we feel that assessment should primarily be separate from the institutions and available in the community. I want to re-emphasize that our primary response to youth in conflict with the law is the community first of all. Firstly diversion, and secondly community supervision, the restitution and compensation programmes and the attendance programmes. This without question takes care of the bulk of all the youngsters who do come into conflict with law – about 98 per cent of them.

This programme that you have before you today is addressed to the 2 per cent who are not able to fit within the parameters of the programmes I've mentioned, and it is in their interest and in the interests of the community that they receive a more intensified kind of a programme. But the lockup is certainly going to be the last resort and it's not going to be immediately available.

You talked about rehabilitation. I think that you will see in the spirit of the Act and, again, in the material supportive of it, we're certainly going to do everything we possibly can to rehabilitate these youngsters and see that they can develop a sense of responsibility and be functioning and enjoy life the way everyone else does. That's the concept of it, and I think we'll have a good measure of success. It will never be perfect, the system never is perfect and, unfortunately, there will always be some failures.

Now let's deal with the admission to these centres. Again, it's three-tiered and you have to remember that. It's not a one-tiered situation and it's possible for these people to move from one tier into the other, and, of course, from the final tier right smack back into the community. But the option is not only that of the court. The option is that of the person who is in charge at the youth containment centre, as to whether or not that particular child can still be admitted. Before that decision is made, the person in charge of the centre has to first of all be convinced that this youngster is adjudged by the court, as the section says, under the Juvenile Delinquents Act to be a juvenile delinquent; and, again by reason of an offence, which, if an adult had committed it, would have been liable to imprisonment for more than two years; and also has to be found by the court to be apparently or actually more than 14 years of age; and unsuitable for inclusion in any other programme for youths that would be available through the Ministry of Human Resources or through this branch or through anything other than the containment programme.

So if we don't find those ingredients available – fine and dandy. The youngster would not then be admitted, because the thrust is not to put him in there and it is a last-resort situation. It is an end-of-the-road situation, I would not call it a dumping situation at all, because I think that we have built in enough safeguards to see that that will not happen.

I'm going to say again: it is not our concept, our desire or our intention to start building mammoth areas of containment. It's a small situation. As the province grows, there may well be a need for an increase in this programme. Let's hope not. We find that there is a reduction occasioning in crime, and hopefully this will soon start to appear also within the juvenile side as well.

I think I've replied to the questions that were asked, and my colleague to my right is certain that I have.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Speaker, I just would like clarification. The minister talks about "assessment separate from institutions." This was the phrase he used, and I'm sorry, I don't follow what he was making out. If a judge decides all of the conditions that the minister outlined are met – the kid's over 14, it's an offence that would get an adult two years in jail and he's a juvenile delinquent – if he meets all these requirements, what does the Attorney-General mean by "assessment separate from the institution"? I assume that the kid is sentenced today and goes this evening to the containment centre on Cook Street or wherever. When does the assessment start and under what circumstances? Who does the assessment and what about the kid's psychiatric condition? Do we find out after he's hanged himself that he probably should have seen a psychiatrist before the judge sentenced him? Because that's what happened to the case up island. I don't know how often I have to say it – all the bland assurances that, "yes, the kid will be assessed after he's in a cell, " by which time his emotional state is probably such that he or she will do something irreversible.

[ Page 5256 ]

HON. MR. GARDOM:Well, sometimes they're first-time situations; you know that.

MR. WALLACE: Now granted. The Attorney-General interjects that sometimes it's a first situation and I agree. But the tragedy of the case I'm talking about was that it was about the seventh or eighth or ninth such situation. I know there are mistakes; we all make mistakes and I'm not suggesting that the system can be perfect. But I am suggesting, Mr. Speaker – and I think the Attorney-General agrees with me – that the maximum degree of assessment must be made before you put the young person behind bars, because the very human reaction to being behind bars can be a devastating one. We're not dealing here with the hardened adult criminal who's probably in for the third or fourth time or who's committed repeated violent offences against other individuals, We're dealing with some disturbed juvenile who probably has a psychiatric problem which will never be solved by putting them behind bars. That's all I'm trying to say.

Now, sure, there are some juveniles who just want to fight the system and who are in no way psychiatric problems. But there are others who indeed have psychiatric trouble, coming from very often a disturbed, psychiatric parental background and a completely chaotic home environment. These kids will not be helped one little bit by putting them behind bars. That's just a fact of life, and I don't know how often it has to be said.

I just want an assurance that the differentiation will be made between the two groups before the individual child is put in the containment centre, and I don't have that in this bill. I accept a great deal of what the minister has given me in assurances about my reservations about this bill but I have not been reassured at all that a young juvenile who is a psychiatric case Will receive the medical and psychiatric and physical examination and assessment before he or she is deposited in one of these containment centres.

Now I don't know how often I have to say it. If the minister can come back and assure me that we will not finish up with disturbed, psychiatric youngsters in fact almost given the encouragement to take actions against their own life simply because they are disturbed to start with and you dump them and lock them up in a cell....

Now I'm not suggesting for a moment that the medical world has some magnificent solution either. They haven't, But at least if it's a medical psychiatric problem and you put them in the Eric Martin institute, you're dealing with trained medical personnel who know how to deal with that kind of situation. They take the appropriate measures. A psychiatrist takes responsibility, prescribes medication and, if need be, puts some in some restraining room or some facility where they can't harm themselves. All I'm trying to ask in this bill is that it's before the event, not after, that we bring in the kind of medical and psychiatric experts who would be in a position to decide whether it makes sense to put that particular individual youngster in a containment centre or whether that particular individual should be put in the Eric Martin Institute, for example.

That's why I like the minister's statement that assessments would be separate from the institutions. By that I hope he means that the kind of assessment I am pleading for would be provided by people not within the corrections system at all. I would like to think that a private psychiatrist or a private general practitioner could be asked to see and examine this child prior to the judge deciding where the child should be looked after. I get the impression from the legislation that it's only after the child goes through the front door of the containment centre that the wheels start to turn whereby that child's condition will be assessed medically and psychiatrically. All I'm saying is that half an hour after the kid goes in, the whole life of that child could be over, as has happened and will happen again unless we have this strong emphasis on assessment before a decision is made as to where the child should be contained.

HON. MR. GARDOM: It's our intention, hon. member, to provide the most complete information, first of all, to the court when disposing of the matter. You must appreciate that we're only talking about children here in conflict with the law. There are a lot of very, very sick children who don't come into conflict with the law who have psychiatric problems, health problems, learning problems – call them what you will. You're aware of the agencies – in society and the interested groups in society and family. I'm not going to waste the time of the House and bore everyone to death talking about that. But those facilities are available and those requirements are available for people.

Now sometimes they slip through; they are not adequately taken care of. Sometimes they end up in the justice system, so I can only respond, really, to the justice system. I am happy to get into a philosophical discussion about the other components but I don't think if s going to do justice to the debate or justice to the bill. But insofar as the justice system is concerned, when they come to the attention of the juvenile justice system, once again every effort is made before they will ever get into a programme such as this to see that they can receive adequate assistance. That's done today.

True, there are tragedies occasionally, such as the one that you have referred to. I would like to mention a few things about that in a couple of seconds as well. But once they are within the justice

[ Page 5257 ]

system at that point in time, we will do whatever we can to find out what is wrong with them, with the components we have available. Then, if the youngster is still brought in front of the judge, certainly the probation officer who is primarily responsible for managing assessment will bring in the mental health assessment as soon as that can be identified, if it's necessary, or the health or children protection legislation can take over.

There will be reports to the court and this information can take the form of a predisposition report. In some cases, it will take the form of a social history prepared by a social worker or a psychiatric report prepared by a psychiatrist. The Forensic Psychiatric Services Commission has agreed to provide the psychiatric services as needed for use in the programme. But again, if you take a look at 44 (b) , a person.... Well, this is assessment after he's put in, I agree with you. But if the individual who is in charge of the 44 (l) (b) , in charge of the youth containment centre, reaches the conclusion that this youngster is unsuitable for inclusion, fine and dandy. Then he's not going to be there; he should be somewhere else. If you've got a person who's ill, the object of this exercise here is not to have the custody of those kinds of people; they should go to other areas.

Now shortly after this Courtenay matter came up, and it was discussed slightly during estimates and also during the question period here, I indicated that to the best of my knowledge there were not adequate mechanisms existing in the province at that point to really take care of youngsters and find a place for them when they got into conflict with the law. It was a children-in-crisis type of thing.

We have had a meeting of the deputies of the ministries concerned: this ministry, Human Resources, Health and Education. They presented a report to my colleagues, which we have accepted. It is now in the process of being implemented, to the extent that the children-in-crisis programme, under the direction of the deputy ministers of Human Resources, Health, Education and Corrections, have given approval for the provision of a small facility for them which I think will be located in the Willingdon Maple complex, and that one could be used for children who are not suitable for placement in existing facilities.

Now this is really the unique and very, very tiny area of concerned children which I'm talking about, and up until now in British Columbia we've had to do our level best to maintain them in the community if possible, sometimes with terribly unfortunate results vis-à-vis the Courtenay case. Failing that, they have been sent to Menninger's or to Quebec or Saskatchewan or to Manitoba, which had very, very small components available. But then they got a little discouraged in receiving people from other areas of the country, and they wished to have their own programme. But no, I agree with your concept; I don't think we have any quarrel about that.

MR. LEVI. I've got just a couple of questions for the minister. He made reference to the forensic clinic. Now if they are getting the assistance of the forensic clinic, let me just put one example to him: supposing you have a child who is grossly disturbed and who, in the opinion of the psychiatrist who is on loan from the forensic clinic, is mentally ill. Now where will that child go? Will that child go to the forensic clinic out at Riverview? Or where will he go? Or where will she go, because I gather this is a co-ed programme? This doesn't relate to children. That's one question I have. Then I have a question – can we go to 46 or are we just dealing with 44? Yes.

Then I have a question in respect of 46. Now one of the principles of the legislation which we perhaps have not discussed in the House – and I don't want to get into the principle – but Solicitor-General Goyer some years ago, when he was trying to put forward the Juvenile Delinquency Act, was trying to use the principle of responsibility. He said that juveniles have to have the same feelings of responsibility toward the community as adults. Now this legislation moves in that direction. If a child is found to be a delinquent and has committed an offence for which an adult can get two years or more, then he could be sent to a containment centre. Now I don't see anything in this bill, if you're going to treat the child as an adult in some ways – and that's the impact of this – that's part of that whole discussion that went on four or five years ago, Mr. Chairman. These young fellows have got to be responsible. Now what we have really is a one-sided system, I don't see anything in this bill which treats people who will be subject to this process in terms of, for instance, time off for good behaviour or eligibility for parole. There is one section of the bill, section 46 (3) which says: "Notwithstanding subsection (1) or subject to section 48 (2) , a youth who has served 75 per cent of the term specified." Let's say a young fellow gets a year; that means nine months. If he is an adult and he gets a year, he's eligible for parole after one-third time. There aren't these advantages to a young person here now. What we have, according to this section, is that it will be at the discretion of the commissioner, but there is nothing in there which is implicit in the fact that this young person....

Interjections.

MR. LEVI: Is there? I don't know. Is there a parole section? Is there a time off for good behaviour? Well, answer it, because I don't think there is, I think that if you're going as far as to deal with people, is that what you've said? You're going to

[ Page 5258 ]

make them serve sentences equivalent to what an adult would serve – at least more than two years – I certainly don't see anything in there that treats them on the other hand with the same kind of provisions, by allowing them time off for good behaviour and the eligibility for parole.

HON. MR. GARDOM: First of all, hon. member, to your first question, you asked: could they be transferred to the forensic clinic? The answer is yes, if that is required. That programme is in developmental stage at the present time. Also, they could be transferred to the Willingdon-Maples complex for that relatively small group that I talked about. Conceivably they could also be transferred to the programmes that are available in other provinces.

Now dealing with your second question, I think you will find the response to that question in the terminology in section 46. There is the responsibility to review a case in three months or at shorter intervals as directed to determine whether to continue to confine the youth or to grant a conditional release order. So the conditional release order conceivably could be granted almost on day one. We have built in here the optimum of flexibility. That's the intent of the Act.

MR. WALLACE: Further, Mr. Chairman, going down to new section 45, could the minister respond to the recommendations by the association of social workers regarding teachers, first of all? Because of the unique and distinct problems of the individual children involved, the teachers should have some expertise in dealing with learning and behavioural problems. I would hope that the minister can give us the assurance that such teachers will be employed. The social workers association also made the point that there should be at least one teacher for five children, which of course is a very small number of children per teacher compared to the normal public school system. Once again, I wonder if the minister has got far enough down the road in planning the implementation of this bill so that lie could tell us if he has had discussions with school boards or within the Ministry of Education to ensure the inclusion of the phrases in new section 45 (2) that they will participate in an educational or other programme. The definition could be very v ague or it could be very specific, but it would seem that those who have dealt with these problems in the past are very concerned that the teachers should have that background and that there should be only five students per teacher.

The other point I would very quickly try to clear up relates to a point I raised in second reading where I was quoting from the brief entitled "Youth Containment Centres in British Columbia" by the B.C., association of social workers. It was under the headline of recommendation 10 with a subsection entitled "Security Staffing." It quoted extensive sections of the draft manual of operations devoted to security.

One of the areas of concern which they pointed out was the power of the director or an officer to isolate a youth for up to 16 hours on the order of an officer, or up to 72 hours on the order of the director. They went on to point out how, over the years, there have been consistent reports in the media and in the courts of the horrors of isolation. They wish to know exactly what the minister, or this bill in particular, made possible in terms of isolation. I presume we are talking about complete isolation, or solitary confinement, or whatever the modern euphemistic phrase might be. They made the point -and again we are talking about an immature, developing, disturbed person of tender years – that if it was considered necessary to put a child in solitary confinement, perhaps there are psychiatric problems, which again brings me back to seeking an assurance that we are not going to be making already disturbed psychiatric children more psychiatrically disturbed by going in the opposite direction and putting them in solitary confinement.

Now the minister, in second reading, stated that my information was incorrect and that the manual of operations in the corrections department had been modified, I would like the minister to put that on record if, in fact, that is the case.

HON. MR. GARDOM: You found that out yourself, but if you want me to repeat it for you, that's fine with me.

Dealing with the teachers, we are certainly going to have the local school boards involved. It is their responsibility to provide us with the necessary skills and dedications of teachers to do an effective job there. We have received the utmost of co-operation from the Ministry of Education.

Dealing with the one to five, I can't give you a commitment on that today. That might be too low or it might be too high, but again it depends on needs and requirements. I can assume you that we are going to do the level best to see that these youngsters receive proper training while they are there and that they can be equipped to re-enter the community and, if necessary, re-enter schooling. That's again the concept. As you know, there are quite a few programmes available today in the public schools for youngsters. One in Vancouver that I can think of is Operation Step-Up, which deals with youngsters who come into conflict with the law. Most of them have had some learning disabilities. That is one of the emphases that is attached to the direction of the teaching community.

Now dealing with your last question, this isolation point, I believe you have satisfied yourself in discussions with officials. These regulations that are

[ Page 5259 ]

proposed are not etched in stone either, and they will be changed. In maintaining a flexible programme ... if you think you can maintain the best kind of a programme by you and I tonight making up our minds the way it should be as opposed to being responsive to needs, that's not the way to go, in my view. I have no intention of following that route, and I'm sure you wouldn't either. What might be a regulation today will not necessarily be a regulation tomorrow. The isolation aspect that was initially conceived in the regulations has never been approved or considered by cabinet, and certainly will not be approved and considered by cabinet until the bill is in place. I think in the initial instance there was the figure of 72 hours, but the isolation is up to a maximum of 16 hours for control only. Experience from other areas has proven that this is only used where necessary to deal with uncontrollable behaviour.

Now you are back again to talking about children with psychiatric problems. We are not trying to have people with psychiatric problems in this programme. I want to reiterate that.

MR. WALLACE: No politicians.

HON. MR. GARDOM: They might qualify. You can never tell

MR. WALLACE: While I have the greatest respect for the Attorney-General's personal word, I have to say, with the greatest of respect, that he won't always be the Attorney-General. If you have regulations that say a child can be X number of hours in solitary confinement, then you may well finish up with a psychiatric problem on your hands if you didn't have one to start with. I trust and appreciate the minister's comments, but I am very concerned about what is going to be written into the regulations. We have had an assurance tonight that the period of confinement of a juvenile on his own in solitary would not be more than 16 hours. I just can't seem to get the message through to the Attorney-General that many of these juveniles who finish up in this serious degree of conflict with the law are, in fact – some of them -if not psychotic, then pre-psychotic.

My whole point is that down through the centuries, when we used to chain people to dungeon walls and treat epileptics as though they were seized with the devil, and so on, I thought we had left all that behind. I thought we realized that these people had serious mental disturbances that should be treated on a mental, medical basis. I agree that many youngsters have problems and never come in conflict with the law, I agree that the minister is correct in saying there are many agencies that can provide them with treatment.

What I have seen are teenagers who are in conflict with the law who have psychiatric problems and they're treated in a completely negative, destructive way. And everybody says when the disaster happens: "Well, wasn't that tough. Somebody had to make the judgment and they made the Wrong decision." I know we shouldn't take too much more time perhaps on all this, but I do hope that the minister can use his personal influence while he's Attorney-General to see that a regulation is very realistic and that there should not be more than the minimum number of hours in which some juvenile causing a behaviour problem is put in solitary confinement.

The last questions that I want to ask are twofold, The minister mentions that there is a review of these cases every three months, and I would suggest that every three months for this unique, small group of very disturbed young people is not often enough. I realize that section 46 says the cabinet can review the case more often. But again, Mr. Chairman, I have to say regretfully I'm not impressed with the past record in this general area. I'm talking about patients held during Her Majesty's pleasure in the Riverview forensic clinic. I'll say this for British Columbia legislation: at least there is a review mechanism. There are some provinces in this country where there's no guarantee that the person will be reviewed. It's during Her Majesty's pleasure and they can be locked up and forgotten about for 10 or 15 years perhaps.

But I happen to have had direct, personal contact with cases who are not granted the review of their condition as often as every six months, It seems to me such an important decision to make that somebody is found guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity and detailed during Her Majesty's pleasure in a prison-type facility and given some public reassurance that their condition will be reviewed every six months or every 12 months or whatever, and this has not been done. The record shows that that has not always been done. I can quote chapter and verse if I have to.

HON. MR. GARDOM: It's better now than it ever has been.

MR. WALLACE: I agree that things are better than they were. But it's often because MLAs or other people in the community make a song-and-dance about it and bring it to the government's attention.

HON. M. GARDOM: That's why there is a youth programme committee.

MR. WALLACE: The Attorney-General interjects, and quite correctly: that's why we have a youth programme committee here to have enough persons, professional and otherwise, involved in ensuring that these matters will be reviewed as guaranteed by the legislation. So I just quickly would say that I think

[ Page 5260 ]

the reviews should be more often than every three months. I would hope that the minister would recognize that the record in the past leaves some doubt as to whether this will be adhered to.

Similarly I might say in section 50 that every youth containment centre is to be inspected annually by the commission of the superintendent of child welfare and any others as designated by the Attorney-General. I don't think once a year to check out these places is often enough either.

My final question, Mr. Chairman, would be asking a comment from the minister regarding the proposal by the coalition task force for local review boards of perhaps three to five community volunteers acting under the aegis of the regional justice councils. They felt there should be the strongest link between the important persons in the life of the young offender – volunteers, parents, guardians and other individuals such as foster parents, resource staff personnel, social workers, doctors, teachers and so on, and that there should be some specific provision to have local review boards composed of these kinds of people. I wonder if the minister has any specific intention in that direction which perhaps he plans to put into the regulation.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Dealing with the separate area, hon. member, to be used for these youngsters – referring to this regulation that you were mentioning – it's only going to be used if it's considered to be in their best interests and in the interests of the effective performance of the programme.

Officials have informed me that in Alberta where this has been utilized it was essentially for the peace and quiet of the juvenile. It was not looked on as a punitive measure at all. So they've got to go ahead and practice it with a degree of flexibility.

Insofar as review is concerned, certainly there can be reviews at shorter intervals than the three months. Reviews can be requested by the youngster. I think something that a lot of people are not taking into account in this debate is that the powers of the office of the ombudsman will also be open to these kinds of barriers. That's right. And if there happens to be an abuse in the process, that can be brought to the attention of the ombudsman by the youth concerned, by the social worker who is looking after the youth, by the family, by the youth programme committee and so forth. The youth programme committee will certainly be able to monitor the practices to see that the youth are receiving good treatment and not abused.

MRS. E.E. DAILLY (Burnaby North): I'll be very brief because I know this has been gone over and over. But I do want to go on record tonight in this House as saying that I am completely opposed to the use of solitary confinement cells for children. At a time, Mr. Chairman, when there is serious questioning that they should even be used for adults, we have this government ready to take us backwards again and put children in solitary.

I want to ask the Attorney-General if he has actually visited the solitary confinement cells in Willingdon. I have, and when I went through there and saw those cells, and realized that children were placed there, I'll tell you, Mr. Chairman, I think you yourself would think of your own children. Here we are, sitting here tonight, ready to put into legislation the confining of children in a cell, a cell where there is a small opening that they are just peered at through, there with just a mattress to lie on. In 1977, that's what we're going back to in this province.

I would like the Attorney-General to explain once more to us why.

MR. G.R. LEA (Prince Rupert): Mr. Chairman, I think any clear-thinking person should be able to understand what the Attorney-General's trying to do. I'm sure everyone can think of all sorts of reasons why we should put children in solitary confinement. First of all, it will cure them. Of what? What earthly good will it do to put young people in solitary confinement? Absolutely none.

The most pitiful part of it is that we are going to pass into law in this Legislature the fact that we're going to put juveniles into solitary confinement. And who's going to know about it? About 90 per cent of the people in this province won't know about it, nor will they care, because they won't know about it. It's stupid, absolutely stupid!

I'd like to know how many people in here have even been in jail. Probably one or two, overnight, What does it mean to be in jail? What does it mean for a young person to be toted off – detailed and put in solitary confinement when solitary confinement has broken mature, adult, habitual criminals? It has broken them psychologically. Now we have a government and an Attorney-General who is going to do the same thing to children.

What have we become? Are we so afraid of our own young people that we see as the only cure to banish them to solitary confinement so that they will act as we tell them they should? The only way they are going to start acting the way society thinks they should act is for society itself to start acting in a proper way so they can look at all of us and say: " we would like to be like that. We would like to emulate the adults that we see around us." You're not going to have any cure either individually or collectively of any juvenile problem by sticking them in a hole in solitary confinement. There isn't anybody in this room who believes it will. There isn't. If there is somebody who believes it's going to help a young person or help society to stick them in a hole in solitary confinement, stand up and say it, I don't

[ Page 5261 ]

believe there is a person in here who believes that.

But there are people in here who believe that it's politically advantageous to stick them in a hole. They believe that there's a clamour out there. They believe that it's politically opportune to take young people and put them in solitary confinement in jail. That's what they believe. So because of that political opportunism, there are going to be kids going to jail and to solitary confinement. Everybody in this Legislature and everybody in this province should hang their head in shame. Just hang their head in shame. We're going to be part of it. The government, elected by the people of this province, is going to be part of putting young people in solitary confinement. Collectively, they should hang their heads in shame. We should all do it, Mr. Chairman, every one of us, because we all know down deep in our hearts that we're going to cure nothing, that it's not going to solve any problem that we're facing in society to do that. It won't help the children individually or collectively, or society. It's not a matter of regulations and keeping an eye on it. It's just plain, ordinary stupid – that's what it is. Stupid! Inhumane and stupid.

For what? A few lousy votes? A few lousy votes, that's all it means. The Attorney-General and his government know that it's wrong. They know it's wrong and they know it won't help but they're going to do it.

You know, Mr. Chairman, all political parties do things for political opportunism. They all do it. But I think that this is the most despicable political action I've ever witnessed. It shames me that I'm part of this Legislature to see it happen.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, I'm not going to respond in kind, Mr. Chairman, to the hon. member. It seemed to be his position that this is a political activity. We don't view it as a political activity. I don't think anyone in the House really does. Insofar as the concept of the bill is concerned, it is only to deal, as has been indicated many, many times, with that small group of hard-core individuals who have not been responsive to any kind of programming, who are creating continuing difficulty for themselves, who are not rehabilitating in the slightest and who also are creating a large problem, notwithstanding the smallness of their numbers, for society. Unfortunately, anywhere in the world there are people who do end up in containment, both juveniles and adults.

I think the bill, without any question, has built-in safeguards to an extent hitherto unknown. I've indicated from the very commencement of my remarks that even what is within this legislation is not etched in stone. If it is determined that there can be improvements to the legislation over the years irrespective of the administration, conceivably those improvements will certainly receive a high degree of profile.

I would tend to think that the government and the dedicated officials.... You've got to remember that this programme and these suggestions didn't come down a beam of political light as you attempted to indicate was the case. That wasn't the situation at all. This has been a direct and specific recommendation by learned professionals in the field. It's true that there are two philosophies. There is the one philosophy of community only and the other philosophy of community plus a balance. This is the balanced approach. You may not agree with it.

MR. LEA: Do you agree with it?

HON. MR. GARDOM: Yes, I certainly do. The government agrees with it. If we didn't agree with it, sir, we wouldn't be bringing it in.

MR. LEA: I don't believe that.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Well, it's up to you to believe whatever you wish.

Now dealing with isolation situations – this type of thing you referred to is not what's contemplated in this legislation at all. Regarding something like this, which is a proposal in regulation, if it wouldn't work, it would be disposed of, I would think, very, very quickly. I can assure you that the officials who are....

MR. LEA: How will you tell if it doesn't work?

HON. MR. GARDOM: You would tell from the people whose business it is. I have a great deal of respect for the professionals in this field. Surely to goodness, don't you think they have the interests of their patients...?

MR. LEA: Their own interests, too.

HON- MR. GARDOM: I think they do. I think to cast aspersions on a person who takes this on as their life work and to say that they don't have an interest in it is silly and it's not really deserving of a response.

There's no intention that these isolation situations that you are talking about are going to be in the historic sense at all. We're planning a new programme here, and we're trying to get away from that. I don't differ with the attitudes that have been expressed. We're not intending to use this as a punishment or as a consequence for a breach of conduct, nor necessarily as a cure. It's a cooling-down process – that's all that's suggested. It's a cooling-down process.

Section 6 as amended approved.

[ Page 5262 ]

Sections 7 and 8 approved.

Title approved.

HON. MR. GARDOM: I was just seeing if my colleague was here. Otherwise I'd call a division, unless the hon. Conservative leader (Mr. Wallace) has changed his mind.

MR. WALLACE: I was going to call a division on third reading.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Oh, would you like to do it then? All right, that's fine and dandy.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Bill 55, Corrections Amendment Act, 1977, reported complete with amendments.

MR. SPEAKER: When shall the bill be read a third time?

HON. MR. GARDOM: With leave, now, Mr. Speaker.

Leave granted.

Bill 55, Corrections Amendment Act, 1977, read a third time and passed on the following division:

YEAS – 25

NAYS – 15

Division ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.

HON. MR. GARDOM: We will now go to committee, Mr. Speaker, on Bill 33.

INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS SUPPORT ACT

(continued)

The House in committee on Bill 33; Mr. Veitch in the chair.

On section 6.

MR. D.G. COCKE (New Westminster): Mr. Chairman, it has been a long time. Some surprise amendments today. However, on section 6 we're seeing here an inspector empowered to approve independent school funding. It surprises me that we are creating this situation, and this very day a person by the name of Macdonald – I believe his name was Archie Macdonald – got a phone call.

Archie Macdonald is the chap who wanted to have his profoundly deaf child educated at Jericho Hill. Archie Macdonald got a phone call today from the Ministry of Human Resources saying that the Ministry of Education ordered them to tell him that if he demonstrated tomorrow morning, they would take the child away from him and put him in a foster home.

Interjections.

MR. COCKE: "Not true, not true."

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, what has that to do with this section?

MR. COCKE: It has plenty to do with this section. Here is the minister setting up an entirely new school system and he can't even look after his own school system.

Threatened today, according to him. I had a phone call from him telling me those very words.

HON. W.N. VANDER ZALM (Minister of Human Resources): Wrong again!

MR. COCKE: Wrong again? Well, I got that phone call, Mr. Minister. Don't you tell me it's wrong again.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You're wrong again.

MR. COCKE: Oh, I'm wrong. The Minister of Human Resources, all he has to do is just sit back and smile and say, "Wrong again." Rubbish! Rubbish, Mr. Minister, rubbish!

I have a couple of questions that I'd like to ask on section 6. I'd like to ask about the curriculum, I'd like to ask whether or not it's the same guide. What's the minister suggesting in terms of the autonomy of

[ Page 5263 ]

the independent schools? Is he taking that autonomy away by providing all the basic curriculum that the schools must follow? I would like to know from the minister – he didn't answer this the other day – just what, to him, is a satisfactory programme.

It says here that there is to be established a programme satisfactory to the inspector of pupil testing. I would like to know what the minister feels would be a satisfactory programme. Just how expensive is this programme? Is it teach to test? Is it test every so many months? Is it test at the end of a school year? Just exactly what is it?

MR. H.J. LLOYD (Fort George): Why don't you read the next section?

MR. COCKE: Why don't you let the brilliant member for Fort George answer?

HON. P, L. McGEER (Minister of Education): Cute observations are always in order across the floor, Mr. Chairman.

I wish to respond to the member by saying that it's our wish that the independent schools provide the same academic programme as our public schools, to observe the same core curriculum, to respond to the same learning assessment programmes, to develop, as we're encouraging the school boards of British Columbia to develop, their own testing programmes and thereby to demonstrate what they will have no difficulty demonstrating – namely, their capability to provide quality education to the people who are their students. So there's nothing mysterious and nothing unique; just the same quality education that we have come to anticipate in all our schools in British Columbia.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, a very short question. And if they don't?

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, exactly the same situation that we would find in our public schools that were not meeting the standards that were established as the acceptable standards for British Columbia. We would point this out to the school in question and request that remedial action be taken.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, they pointed out requests for remedial action would be taken. That's a rather vague answer to a specific question. Will you or won't you fund the schools who decide to go their own way with their own children?

HON. MR. McGEER: Not for group 2 classification, Mr. Chairman, no. That group 2 classification is contingent upon academic standards being reached in the school that are equivalent or better than those of the public school system. If the independent school is incapable of that, then no, they won't reach group 2 classification. We would not encourage them to apply for group 2 as they'd only be disappointed. Group 1 classification is a little easier hurdle to manage than Group 2.

MR. COCKE: MR. Chairman, I guess we can discuss this under section 7, but group 1 obviously will be permitted to go their own way with their own curriculum, other than the fact that the minister, through his inspector or designate, might admonish them to hew a little bit closer to provincial standards. Nonetheless, they can still get financing according to the minister tonight, whether or not they adhere to any kind of a provincial standard.

HON. MR. McGEER: Disagreements with decisions of the inspector come under section 13. We could discuss it under that section of the bill.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, under (d) I would like the minister to suggest tonight how many school boards in the province have a programme presently respecting the whole situation of learning assessment, Section (d) says: "that agree to participate or has participated in a learning assessment programme established by the minister or local board respecting school-aged children in the area served by the school, and submit it to the inspector." I would ask the minister how many school boards to date – prior to his provincial learning assessment programme which is not implemented yet – have, in his way of thinking, an assessment programme right now.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, the learning assessment programme has been in effect for a year now and the second round of assessments will be coming up very shortly.

All the school districts have co-operated in this. There is one minor holdout in Sechelt where the chairman of the school board was himself a teacher. But with that single exception there has been universal acceptance of the provincial learning assessment programme, which is beyond the pilot stage at the present time. All of the school districts, Mr. Chairman.

Section 6 approved on the following division:

YEAS – 25

[ Page 5264 ]

NAYS – 14

Mr. Cocke requests that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

HON. MR. McGEER: I move the amendment to section 7 on the order paper. (See appendix.)

On the amendment.

MR. COCKE: Let the minister stand and explain his amendment.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, the amendment says that the following subsection be added: "Notwithstanding subsection (1) the inspector may accept a report after the dates referred to in subsection (1) ." The amendment is self-evident, Mr. Chairman.

MR. COCKE: The amendment was demanded by the opposition.

HON. MR. McGEER: Oh, and then he asked for an explanation?

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I....

AN HON. MEMBER: You're too much!

MR. COCKE: I am.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. COCKE: This bill's too much. Mr. Chairman, as far as we're concerned we offered no amendments. Everybody knows that. Anyway....

HON. MR. McGEER: Oh, did you demand it or offer it or what?

Interjections.

MR. COCKE: We offered no amendments. If the Minister of Mines will just keep his cool and relax, he could go down the shaft tonight and it would be better for all of us.

In any event, Mr. Chairman, on section 7: the minister, in telling us that there was no possibility of any delay in this bill, has shown in section 7 that there is every possibility for a delay. Nothing, in fact, occurs until, at the very earliest, November 15....

MR. CHAIRMAN: Are you speaking to the amendment?

MR. COCKE: Yes, I am. Oh, to the amendment? No, I think I'll let the amendment pass.

Amendment approved.

On section 7 as amended.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, the critical date is May 15. May 15 of next year, 1978. That's the critical date. In assessment, they're always a year in hand, Mr. Chairman. Don't forget they're not even talking in terms of financing until the year 1978-79, according to my understanding. The critical date for any kind of a comprehensive look at the independent schools from the standpoint of financing is May 15,1978. But, Mr. Chairman, the minister said there was an urgency about this thing. We had to get it through. He couldn't get it out to the public so that the public could have a look at it. Not at all. He could do that, incidentally, with his core curriculum and his other road shows. But he couldn't do it here. But in this very section he proves, Mr. Chairman, that in fact, he could have, but wouldn't.

Section 7 as amended approved.

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

Leave granted for division to be recorded in the Journals of the House.

MR. SPEAKER: Prior to taking the motion for adjournment, hon. members, I note that I neglected to declare Bill 55, Corrections Amendment Act, 1977, after third reading. And it is an Act.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11 p.m.

[ Page 5265 ]

APPENDIX

33 The Hon. P. L. McGeer to move, in Committee of the Whole on Bill (No. 33)

intituled Independent Schools Support Act, to amend as follows:

Section 7: By adding the following subsection after subsection (2):

\(3\) Notwithstanding subsection (I) , the inspector may accept a report after the dates referred to in subsection (1) .

Section 9 (2) , line 3: By deleting "on" and substituting "by".

Section 11 : By deleting section 11.

Section 12: By renumbering the section as section 11, by deleting subsection (2) , and by renumbering subsection (3) as subsection (2) .

Section 13: By renumbering the section as section 12.

In subsection (1) , by deleting "Group 1, Group 2 or local support grant"

and substituting "Group 1 or Group 2 grant".

Section 14: By renumbering the section as section 13.

Section 15: By renumbering the section as section 14.

55 The Hon. G. R. Gardom to move, in Committee of the Whole on Bill (No. 55)

intituled Corrections Amendment Act, 1977, to amend as follows:

Section 1, line 12: Delete "section 53" and substitute "Part V".

By adding after section 4 the following:

"4A. Section 11 is amended by adding 'or youth containment centre' after

'correction centre'."