[ Page 5607 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Community Resources Boards Amendment Act, 1977 (Bill 65) , Second reading.

Mr. Barnes –– 5607

Ms. Sanford –– 5613

Mr. Lea –– 5617

Mr. Lauk –– 5620

Mr. Macdonald –– 5622

Ms. Brown –– 5625

The House met at 8 p.m.

MS. R. BROWN (Vancouver-Burrard): Mr. Speaker, seated in the gallery tonight is the person responsible for the legislative business of the B.C. Federation of Labour, Johanna den Hertog. I would like the House to join me in bidding her welcome.

MR. E.O. BARNES (Vancouver Centre): Mr. Speaker, in the gallery this evening we have Miss Kay Lackner and Lauris Talmie, from the constituency of Richmond. I would like the House to join me in welcoming them.

MRS. B.B. WALLACE (Cowichan-Malahat): Mr. Speaker, in the gallery tonight are two of my good friends from the province of Alberta: Charlie and Jessie Mills. I would like to ask the House to join me in welcoming them.

MR. C. BARBER (Victoria): Hoping that it won't embarrass them or send their careers into a spin, I would like to welcome to the House tonight three members of the School of Social Work faculty of the University of Victoria: Brian Wharf, Marjorie Martin and Marilyn Callahan.

Orders of the day.

HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): Mr. Speaker, adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 65, Community Resources Boards Amendment Act, 1977.

COMMUNITY RESOURCES BOARDS

AMENDMENT ACT, 1977

(continued)

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, it has been a long time since I have seen so much activity in the province of British Columbia. In fact, the events of the day remind me of 1963 and 1964, when the B.C. Lions were in the Grey Cup. The city of Vancouver was quite enthusiastic and everybody was really charged up. Of course, as you know, Mr. Speaker, in such an event as that, after waiting so long to get in the Grey Cup, everybody was involved. It was a big issue. We did all right the second year. We lost the first one and won the second one.

Here we are with an issue that is almost as big and is certainly more important. It is slowly catching on and the people, I think, will even be more excited than they were in the Grey Cup of 1963, when we had the first championship game in the city of Vancouver. I know it sounds a little strange to compare it to football, but the minister has been comparing apples with oranges all the time in his debate, and I thought that that would be quite appropriate because it does indicate the amount of momentum that has been generated around the introduction and the discussions around Bill 65.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to try and be calm. I don't intend to get excited. I think this is a time for rational thinking and trying to appeal to this minister to withdraw this bill because I know that he has been misguided. Now at least the leader of the Liberal Party (Mr. Gibson) and the leader of the Conservative Party (Mr. Wallace) , who spoke against the bill when it was introduced

MR. J.J. KEMPF (Omineca): Where are they?

MR. BARNES: Well, they were here earlier this afternoon. They indicated, Mr. Speaker, that they had a change of heart; that they had come to realize the merit of the community resources boards and the value of a larger board - the Vancouver Resources Board - and spoke in favour of the kinds of things that have happened. I think that in politics, when you get the leaders of opposing parties saying they've had a change of heart and agree with something that they so adamantly fought before, that's progress. I feel that this Minister of Human Resources certainly has represented his viewpoint quite strongly, but I think that the time has come for him to indicate that he does have some feelings and is responsive to the requests and representations that have been made to him.

What I want to do first, before I get to what the minister may do in the end, is to ask just what the government's objective is. You know, what is really happening? I have been suspicious of this government's motives, Mr. Speaker, as I'm sure you will recall, when they were first elected in 1975. 1 was suspicious at that time of some of the moves they made and I have no reason to be less suspicious today. I think that there is a gameplan. I think there was a gameplan in fact, Mr. Speaker, when they were in the opposition and there were, at that time, five Liberals sitting over he re along with two Conservatives and the New Democratic Party was the government.

If you reflect back on those days you know that you had a pretty desperate and determined set of members in the opposition who wanted to remove the socialists, and because of that desperation, I think, they made a lot of commitments and had to do a pretty extravagant selling job on themselves and others in order to form a coalition. Of course, with money and with people's emotions being riled up, like the big challenge against Bill 42 and the campaign that was waged, I think they found themselves - even to their own surprise - successful in convincing the people of this province that the socialists were bad

[ Page 5608 ]

for them.

It's too bad we didn't have more time because I think the Liberal and the Conservative leaders indicated that more people would have changed their minds about a lot of things if they had had time, but people being people, and times being the way they are, and with the pressure of the media, they were successful in selling a plan.

Here they are. They find themselves without cohesion, without a sense of purpose and a real commitment to serving the province of British Columbia. It was because of their various personal interests, whatever they may have been, in commitments that they threw in as a coalition, and now we have some very interesting events happening.

Mr. Speaker, I think that this government has a lot to answer for. I never made the press on this phrase that I coined, but I said, after the first budget was brought in, that this government had what they call "the rubber-band plan." You may recall, Mr. Speaker, the government was suggesting to the people of this province at that time that they should tighten up their belts; that they should restrain themselves; stop making demands and live within their means; and that the government intended to do the same thing.

That was the first year they were in. They suggested that they would lead the way by joining the federal anti-inflation programme and demonstrating their good intentions. Mr. Speaker, what they didn't say was that they would activate their role after they had convinced everyone else that they had to refrain from overextending themselves. What happened was that the government jacked up.... They extracted the revenue they needed from the backs of the people before they began to restrain. I don't need to get into that situation, because I think everybody knows it. Everyone is feeling it. But the point is that this government has done nothing about the economy in terms of its thrust or in terms of its initiative in trying to generate revenue and get some action going, other than off the backs of the people.

That was phase one, Mr. Speaker, of the rubber-band plan - to tell the people that we have no resources. I remember the Premier stating that we have nothing of our own - no money. The only thing we have is people resources and that was in the throne speech. People are our most important resource. Our greatest resource is people. What they didn't say was that we intend to extract from them everything they've got, including their dignity, their money and their disposable income.

So that was what happened. That was the first phase. They ripped the people off and built up a surplus. Now they intend to take away their dignity, their rights, their freedom of movement, their civil liberties and their right to participate in the decision making in this province. They're going to take everything away from them, and you know it, Mr.

Speaker.

These moves have been undetected generally by the public. We've been yelling and screaming and saying, watch out for the new Government Reorganization Act. We've been saying, Mr. Speaker, that the Provincial Secretary is introducing this plan to reorganize the government to deny the legislators.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, that particular bill has nothing to do with the one that's before the House this evening. Bill 65 merely....

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, if you will bear with me, sir.

MR. SPEAKER: I've been trying very hard to bear with you but it would be very much easier, hon. member, if you occasionally referred to the principle of the bill.

MR. BARNES: Sir, I intend to do just that. There is a very definite principle of this bill - one that undermines the very essence of this free democratic society in which we believe in. There's one very definite principle involved. What I'm attempting to do is draw a few comparisons between this legislation and other legislation that this government has introduced, legislation that is very deliberate.

We've talked about centralization of power. They intend to deny even the legislators the right to debate the estimates that are going to be spent in this department. We argued that. It didn't get the kind of attention that it should get but it will, because there are too many things going on, Mr. Speaker, to continue confusing the public. I think the public will slowly begin to get the message of what this government is intending to do because it thinks it knows best what is good for people, despite the fact that we have a democratic system that has survived because people have believed that they really had something to say about their destiny, and about the direction that the community was taking. I think what we have found is that slowly this kind of orientation is being eroded. It's being eroded very insidiously, very subtly by the twist of the free marketplace, by the exploitive mentality and by the atmosphere of take what you can get, and forget about commitments of principles, and about ethics, and about a sense of compassion. These things have no place in the marketplace because they are not generally seen as exploitable. Mr. Speaker, would you keep that Minister of Mines in order? I'm trying to indicate to this House....

Interjection.

MR. BARNES: You obviously haven't learned, Mr. Minister. I'm going to have to give it to you again and

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again and again. If I have to use the methods that I'm sure your promoters use when trying to hammer away at people, nothing but fear tactics, by repeating the same thing over and over again - maybe we should use the same methods in trying to convince you that you'd better start paying attention to the people in this province who are protesting.

Mr. Speaker, besides the Government Reorganization Act there were the amendments to the Labour Code.

AN HON. MEMBER: The Labour Code?

MR. BARNES: That's right, the Labour Code, which denied the rights of faculty people in provincial institutions to organize. Again, Mr. Speaker, that is a deliberate move against organized labour in this province.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. member. The amendments to the Labour Code are still before the House for discussion and will be debated at that time. So I would hope that your references to any of the Acts or those matters before the Legislature will be very brief indeed, because otherwise you'll be in contravention of the rules, hon. member.

MR. BARNES: I don't want to do that because there's plenty that has to be touched. I will just say, then, that the second member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) , as you know, outlined this afternoon the thrust of what this government is doing with this legislation. He mentioned the Notre Dame University of Nelson Act and the kind of tricks that the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) attempted to do and later withdraw; but he covered himself very neatly in the statutes amendment Act, Mr. Speaker, which also had some hidden, devastating moves against people's rights. It made admissible information between professionals and their clients for court action -lawyers and clients, social workers and clients, doctors and clients. All of these have in the past been in confidence, Mr. Speaker.

HON. J.R. CHABOT (Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, I thought the House Leader suggested we were debating Bill 65. Am I correct in that assumption? If we are, the member for Vancouver Centre hasn't touched upon the bill yet.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. member for Vancouver Centre on Bill 65. I'm sure the member now knows that he must relate his remarks to the bill that's before us.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, I think that member who just attempted to call me to order will have an ample opportunity to stand up and defend the Minister of Human Resources in this debate. I'll be looking forward to hearing your comments.

Mr. Speaker, we had the Municipal Amendment Act, 1977, as well.

AN HON. MEMBER: Order!

MR. BARNES: Now, Mr. Speaker, the members keep yelling "Order!" and I'm trying to indicate to the House the relationship of those pieces of legislation to Bill 65. Why don't they want to hear it? What have you got to hide? What's wrong with me talking about section 28? What's wrong with talking about section 28 of the Municipal Amendment Act? You get up and defend it. If you think it's such a good Act, you stand up and tell the people of this province, Mr. Speaker, why the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Hon. Mr. Curtis) needs to override regional boards and municipal councils when they make decisions on bylaws and plans, simply because in his opinion he feels that it may be contrary to public interest.

Now isn't that something? These politicians who are elected by their own constituents no longer have the democratic right to pass bylaws in their jurisdictions because the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing may decide that it's not in the public's best interest. Now that sounds simple, Mr. Speaker, but....

MR. SPEAKER: It's the wrong bill that you're debating. Now back to Bill 65.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, Bill 65 is denying them democratic rights to participate. Here you have elected officials who don't have the right to participate. Can't you get the message, Mr. Speaker? What does it take? Don't the people begin to see that what I'm telling them is that this government is deliberately denying people their right to participate in what is their rightful duty. They should have the right to participate, and all I'm saying is that it's about time we started looking at this legislation a little closer. I think we are failing to do that.

MR. SPEAKER: Just as long as we stay on Bill 65, hon. member,

MR. BARNES: Well, I'm just going to ask a question then. I ask the minister: why are you doing it? Why is your government doing it? Why is your government moving in the direction that it is moving? What is the hurry? Why is it that you say that because there are problems within the system, such as the community resources boards and the Vancouver Resources Board, these problems justify you denying those people the right to continue trying to come to

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grips with their community problems, Mr. Speaker? The Vancouver Resources Board was an experiment in democracy and participatory democracy. It was an attempt on the part of this government to show people that it had thrust and that it had faith in their judgment. The lay people as well as the professionals, and the ordinary, if you will, individuals who, in the past, have lost faith in this system, have lost confidence in the elected officials in terms of their motivation to represent their views and to give them access to information and to give them an opportunity to deal in fact rather than in theory.

That was an experiment that hardly had a chance to get underway. If you check Hansard, Mr. Speaker, I'm sure you will find it quite a profound turnaround for the Liberal leader (Mr. Gibson) and the Progressive Conservative leader (Mr. Wallace) to indicate that they have had a change of heart. I recall them standing in this House and debating vigorously in opposition to what the hon. second member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Levi) had to say when he was the Minister of Human Resources and introduced the bill.

We now have demonstrated with some pretty profound evidence, Mr. Speaker, the importance and the success of the Vancouver Resources Board. The kinds of representations that are coming forward, I think, are very, very important. We had the member for Oak Bay read a few names, but I think we should review for the record the kinds of representations that did occur.

I am going to check the one on the Neighbourhood Services Association, Mr. Speaker. The reason I use that one is because the Neighbourhood Services Association is an organization of "non-partisanism, " to coin a little phrase. They are made up of professional people who attempt to serve the public without concern for denomination or any of the usual things that make people hesitate to go to an agency for assistance. On June 28, the chairman of the Neighbourhood Services Association in the city of Vancouver, Hugh B. Smith, wrote a letter to myself asking me to represent these views. Of course, they have made representations on several occasions to the government. He states:

"Dear Sir:

"The board of governors, members and staff of the Neighbourhood Services Association of greater Vancouver, a private non-profit organization which has provided community services in the city of Vancouver for 83 years, is very concerned over the implications of Bill 65 and strongly supports the retention of the Vancouver Resources Board. At a meeting of b o a r d, staff and members of the Neighbourhood Services Association, which through its neighbourhood houses serves six different residential areas of this city, it was unanimously agreed that the association communicate its concerns to you.

"We believe that a logical reason for dissolving a branch of government is that it is not effective, but there has been no statement from the minister, Mr. Vander Zalm, indicating that the Vancouver Resources Board is not working well, and we know from observations and experience in Vancouver that the VRB is a great improvement over any social welfare administration this city has ever known. The function of the voluntary members of the VRB and of the citizen advisory boards has been ignored by the minister. The fact that citizens can, at the present time, communicate personally and regularly, at frequent public meetings, with their VRB representatives is overlooked. Citizen input is of vital importance in encouraging participation in our complex urban neighbourhoods, as it is in smaller communities.

"We are aware of the direct knowledge of local needs and conditions which go into the decisions of the VRB and the granting of funds for local services, and we also know how closely the expenditures of these funds is monitored by the neighbourhood individuals and groups. We believe this should be continued.

"It has been proven that the centralization of human services does not work. All other human services - health, education, recreation and policing - have been decentralized in Vancouver with their own boards. Even our justice department is decentralized with the development of the local citizens' council.

"That centralization brings more accountability is a widespread myth. Local administration with citizen control provides the mechanism for closer scrutiny and better utilization of dollars, because of knowledge and awareness of these needs and programmes. The VRB has proven to be an effective body for decentralizing services, with accountability to the people of the area and to government, and no complaints have been heard as to its performance.

"The community resources board concept is the greatest advancement in the field of public welfare since the days of Elizabeth I and is unique in North America. It should not now be taken away by the government of the province of British Columbia. Rather it should be, instead, further developed and extended."

To me, Mr. Speaker, that's profound, because you have not only that organization, but the United Community Services and various community groups that in the past have been frightened to participate in

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political matters. They were afraid because they feared reproaches and denial of their grants and so forth, and generally they were just not too prone to participate in questions of controversy.

I think these particular groups that we're talking about represent ordinary people who in the past have seen themselves as apolitical. They have not been particularly concerned about politics, having a more or less indifferent attitude unless it concerns a specific matter on a personal basis. But I think people are rising, as was seen at the demonstration a few weeks ago at the Orpheum Theatre that included ordinary middle-of-the-road Liberals, Social Credit, Progressive Conservatives, non-partisan people, all kinds of people who still respect the fundamental principles upon which we can co-operate with any free and democratic society, principles that must prevail and must continue unless we intend to move into another kind of system.

This is the question that hasn't been answered by the minister. Of course, he's had no argument, other than the fact that he had made a commitment right from the beginning that he would get rid of the Vancouver Resources Boards and all of the community resource boards. But that isn't a good enough answer.

I think that the minister has failed his colleagues. He has forced them into a dilemma. He's forced them into a divisive situation where they are.... Many of them, I'm sure, have a conscience, although the conscience may be questionable from time to time. But I think that many of them do have some kind of a commitment to something resembling service to the province of British Columbia, and they're having one heck of a time rationalizing this minister's persistence, What is going on with the minister? What is really going on with this minister who thinks that he has some kind of divine right to make decisions, notwithstanding the fact that we're in a democratic society, where people give mandates to government to reflect their views, governments that will be sensitive to their opinions and concerns? When you can get 2,600 people into a theatre on Sunday afternoon - people of all political stripes and interests who are trying to get this minister to pay attention - to simply come and sit and listen, and he sits steadfast and says: "It doesn't make any difference. It's a fait accompli. I'm going to remove the resource boards - period. . . ." That's what you're saying.

You have done nothing for your own colleagues. You have people over there, I'm sure, who are going to have one heck of a time standing up and defending you. I haven't seen any of them up yet. I'd like to see how many of them are going to stand up and have the gall to defend what you're doing in light of what is going on in this province. I'd like to see that. I'm looking forward to seeing what's going to happen to the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) . See if the hon. Provincial Secretary will defend you, or the hon. Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) .

Oh, I know you will get help from the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) . Oh, yes. I'm sure he's just dying to get up when he gets back into his seat. He's over there yapping now like a Cheshire cat. You used the phrase the other day; he's using it right now. He's sitting there grinning out of his seat. I hope he gets up. I'd love to see him attack the democratic principles which you are denying. You are denying the people, and you're sitting there laughing. I don't believe that's a laugh, Mr. Speaker. I don't want to attack the member personally, but I think it's a facade. I think he's hiding behind something.

We want to know what he is up to. Who do you listen to? You don't listen to your own colleagues. You don't listen to the people of this province. I don't think you listen to anybody. I think you think that you are the man.... When you were elected, you thought that that was the right to dominate, to dictate, to disregard people's interests and concerns.

It's obvious that the government is pretty much in favour of this, because none of them are standing up and defending him or opposing him. We haven't heard anybody oppose that minister yet. The only out for you people over there who oppose that minister is to disappear when the vote is called. I'm sure we're going to find many of you conspicuous by your absence when the House finally calls for the question.

AN HON. MEMBER: Don't worry about that!

MR. BARNES: No, no. Well, I can tell you right now, Mr. Speaker, that the rubber band plan is starting to fail. It's like anything else, you know. If you press it or push it far enough, it's going to begin to lose its resiliency. Now they attempted to stretch the people with their fiscal policies and now they're getting into the moral area. They are getting into the area of the spirit which they have no sensitivity for. They're now starting to erode the very fibre that keeps people together.

These are myths. The democratic process perhaps is a myth that we'll never really achieve and perfect but people believe that it can work. We attempted to give the people the right to try and make it work; we gave them the right to hold themselves accountable for their own affairs. This minister is saying: "No. Because of efficiency we're going to take that away from you." We've never said that democracy was perfect in the first place, but sometimes, Mr. Speaker, it's that element of inefficiency that keeps people struggling and trying to make things work. Now we're taking it away from them; we're telling them: "Because you didn't get the proper accounting system set up for a receipt where someone may have paid some rent, we're going to hold you accountable

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or we're going to take away your right to operate in the future."

I say this kind of rationale has its place in terms of details within the system. It has its place, but it's misguided; it's inappropriate. We're on the one hand talking about fiscal responsibility and accountability and stewardship and all of these things that any professional person may learn in his academic experiences, and we don't oppose these. But, Mr. Speaker, the removal of the VRB is not really a case of dealing in details. That's a disguise. Its not the details. This man is talking about a fundamental principle, the fundamental right.

This is the problem, and I don't think he understands. This is a tragic kind of situation because I believe the minister, Mr. Speaker, is misguided and perhaps well-intentioned. I'm not going to say that he doesn't even believe in what he's trying to do; he probably actually believes it. But you see the danger, Mr. Speaker, of a person who has the power of minister in the parliamentary system who is inflexible and insensitive and can't understand and can't listen. You see how dangerous it can be. Do you realize that that minister can almost do anything if he so chooses? And we can't stop him. What can you do if he won't listen to the people? He in theory could be a dictator because he sits over there and smiles no matter how. If every single person in the province of British Columbia came and pushed on his doorstep -for miles out you could see people - it wouldn't make any difference, not with that minister. He doesn't have anything to do with it; he is going to do what he is going to do.

The flimsy arguments he uses are a smokescreen. The things that were said in his speech and have been very adequately refuted in the way of a response by the chairman of the Vancouver Resources Board in quite a long document that outlines the responses to every single charge he made are all an exercise in futility, Mr. Speaker. My whole argument has been that the minister is doing the same thing the Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland) did, the same kind of trap, and this is the danger for the people of British Columbia. They're going to have to watch for this happening. The minister tells you something else.

This Minister of Human Resources is outlining a series of difficulties in the administration of these community boards and some of the problems of the Vancouver Resources Board, attacking volunteerism, attacking the inability to show administrative consistency and responsibility. He sets us up; he sets us all up, Obviously I'm not going to disagree with the minister, Mr. Speaker, because I too believe there should be accountability of public funds. I too feel that where there is fraud or the likelihood of fraud, we should try and run a system whereby we can scrutinize and review situations such as that. No one is denying that. But do you know, by him using that as his argument, the people out there think, "Well, there must be a bunch of things going wrong and those guys in the opposition must be the cause of it." Through a kind of heaping up of false premises, he convinces everybody that they have to do something pretty fast. But they forget all about the fundamental principle behind it all.

What he is saying is that democracy does not work, Mr. Speaker. The Vancouver Resources Board represents a democratic experience, an experience in participatory democracy that doesn't work; that we cannot afford to vest into ordinary people, into volunteers and to the little old lady on the corner and the part-time clergy who come down and put in a few hours, and a part-time business person who comes down and involves himself, or the elected politician who likes to double up and do something on behalf of the public without pay. We can't bother with those people. We've got to take it back and put it into the bureaucracy so that we can keep an eye on everything. That is what the minister is saying.

What I'm saying is: how efficient is that really? How efficient is it really to use a central system for anything other than to dispense checks and perhaps feed information into a computer? What chance have you to spend listening to the real problems of people who are afraid of bureaucracies; who are very inept in articulating their difficulties? These are the kinds of things that give people faith in the bureaucracy -when the bureaucracy recognizes the need for a good communicating system; a good system, whereby people can feed in. As long as you can show people where they are participating, or they have some say in the situation, Mr. Speaker, I believe you will be able to convince them that that system has some merit.

Now we're taking a step backwards in the face of the fact that more and more people are being alienated; more and more people are faced with an inability to participate in the competitive society -any society that has by virtue of not recognizing the need to be more sensitive, to humanize more and more people. People are beginning to tolerate all kinds of negative developments in the community. I'm thinking very seriously that it's not by accident. The other day I charged the media with complicity, and I say that with respect because I don't think there is any one person, but by default it amounts to the same thing for the person on the end, because if you permit and tolerate the denial of access to have your views heard, if you are subjected to fiscal considerations at the expense of human considerations, if you find that every time you attempt to articulate a question of a non-exploitable situation that will result in nothing other than an act of humanitarianism, it is downgraded.

If you're going to try and get an audience to talk about just quality of life and the kinds of things that can really mean something to people who are cooped

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up in our congested areas, like in the highrises and some of these monstrosities that we call senior citizens' housing projects, these are people who have been put aside. There's no money in this directly, but in terms of our moral fibre, our strength, the continuity of the spirit of a free and democratic and caring society, there has to be an investment. That investment was, in part, being delivered through the community resources board system because many individuals were reaching these people. You can't reach them if you're going to set up a series of offices or departments of the Ministry of Human Resources with a few professionals in there - a social worker, an administrator, a few field workers, and what not -who are all paid to work from 9 to 5, Mr. Speaker, and who have no commitment, other than from a professional standpoint.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, you're on your final two minutes.

MR. BARNES: There's no disrespect, Mr. Speaker, intended to the professional people in that role, but there are many aspects that I think the minister himself should admit are valuable in the voluntary field because when we were in the government and they were in the opposition, they talked about volunteerism. The minister has had beautiful articles written about him on volunteerism and how he would like to promote the making available of funds to organizations which showed they had a high complement of volunteers. I recall many of those flowery speeches that he was making. Here he's wiping out one of the largest volunteer programmes in the whole province.

As I said, I didn't intend to get excited. I'm being very calm about this because I'm hoping the minister will reconsider. I'll tell you one thing; I'll be the first to admit that he has some semblance of feelings if, before this debate is over, he stands up in this House and admits that he had a hidden agenda, that he has been exposed, that the people now realize he was on an ego trip, or some other kind of trip, totally unrelated to his role as minister, as leader, as the person who sets the pace and who convinces people that he has a commitment, a feeling of compassion, and wants to encourage people and wants to ensure that they have some sense of respect and confidence in the parliamentary system on which we all rely, and that we won't have to resort to guerrilla warfare and indifference and negativism.

It's up to him, Mr. Speaker. It's up to the minister whether he intends to do a disservice to his colleagues, to the government, and to the people of the province of British Columbia; he has his own conscience to live with. i think that's more important. After all, Mr. Speaker, in my final words, let me ask the minister if he could stop having his dialogue with the government Whip. Mr. Minister, you are a very financially well-off man and, in many ways, you are insulated from the realities of the ordinary humdrum of life.

Could you take the time to read your mail? Do you realize that the people who are trying to talk to you are not NDPers, despite what you would like to say; that they're not all a bunch of pinko Commies, as you would probably like to say, and as the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Mair) has tried to say on occasion about renters. What I'm saying to you, Mr. Speaker, is that these are your people. They are Social Crediters, non-partisan. All of them are out there and they have become politicized because of what you are doing.

I'm asking you and I'm appealing to you.... I won't plead, although one person did plead to you and said: "Please, Mr. Minister, pay attention to us; please listen." Don't tell them, Mr. Speaker, before I sit down....

MR. SPEAKER: Your time has expired.

MR. BARNES: And please don't talk in degrading terms, like: "Well, if you are deserving, we will take a look."

MS. K.E. SANFORD (Comox): Mr. Speaker, because Campbell River was one of the first areas that was involved in setting up a community resources board, I would like to inform the minister tonight of some of the things that that community resources board was able to accomplish for the community of Campbell River, and some of the things that have happened since the resources board was done away with by this government.

Mr. Speaker, I think that this minister and this bill is very representative of the attitude of this government towards people. They don't care about what people think. They don't care that people have interests within their own community and wish to participate and contribute to decision making affecting the services of that community. They don't care, Mr. Speaker, about anything except their own power, their own ability to apply their will to the people of the province. That's all they care about.

I think this minister exemplifies that attitude very well and this bill certainly exemplifies that attitude. But in Campbell River - and as I say, Mr. Speaker, they were one of the first in the province to get involved in this concept, introduced by the former Minister of Human Resources, Norman Levi - once they were involved, they were, for the first time, communicating among all of the agencies and societies that were involved in delivering services in the Campbell River area.

They began to understand and to know what each of these societies was doing in terms of trying to

[ Page 5614 ]

provide services to people in need. As we all know, Mr. Speaker, before the resources board concept came into effect, every agency and every society was scrambling every year, going to the Ministry of Human Resources and trying to get funding to continue the programme that they were carrying out.

Very often, time after time, the people involved in a given society were unaware of what was happening with another society. There was duplication of effort, duplication of services. Here ' for the first time in Campbell River, they were communicating. They were -trying to figure out how they could cut down on the overlapping and how they could best deliver the services for the lower cost. They had a manager; they had a bookkeeper, a full-time accountant who was understanding and who knew how each agency was spending that money.

They acted as a watchdog on the delivery of social services in the Campbell River area. Now, Mr. Speaker, once the community resources board was done away with, the Youth Centre Society, which now, of course, has to go to the regional director for its funding every year, was given the responsibility for child-care grants. Mr. Speaker, these are for the child-care workers, who were not involved with the Youth Centre Society, and what they were trying to do with the youth of Campbell River.

These child-care workers were hired by the Ministry of Human Resources, but the budget for them was handled by the Youth Centre Society in Campbell River. Now, Mr. Speaker, I'm rather sorry to have to report tonight that the Minister of Human Resources did not keep a very close eye on the Youth Centre Society, which was busy trying to deliver services to the youth in Campbell River. As a result, they ran into some financial problems, because the Youth Centre Society was not equipped and was not set up to deal with the child-care workers and the grants that were made available for child-care work in the Campbell River area.

They ran into financial difficulties, Mr. Speaker, because that resources board, with its accountant, was no longer there and in place. Fortunately, they are going to hire a co-ordinator through the Youth Centre Society to deal with child-care workers, because they are still responsible for the child-care workers in the Campbell River area.

The minister has said that he wants advisory groups set up. At the time about a year ago that he announced that he wanted integrated social service societies to act as advisory groups to his ministry, concerned people in the Campbell River area who had been involved with the regional resource board there wrote a letter to the minister asking him how to go about setting up a society so that they could act in an advisory capacity, even though they were terribly disappointed that the minister decided not to proceed with their resource board and disbanded them.

They wrote to the minister. Nothing happened. They appeared before the minister at a cabinet meeting held in Courtenay in May and again presented the request. The minister said: "Well, if the community wants to set up an advisory group, then the council and the school board makes application or contacts the Minister of Human Resources and appoints such an advisory body." Now interestingly enough, Mr. Speaker, the council wrote to the Ministry of Human Resources and the response that they got back was that if they wanted to set up an advisory committee, they should contact the regional director for the Ministry of Human Resources.

MR. L.B. KAHL (Esquimalt):: Bill 65!

MS. SANFORD: If you don't think this relates to Bill 65, then you haven't even read the bill, because this is entirely the Vancouver Resources Board happening in Campbell River all over again.

MR. KEMPF: I knew there was a link.

MS. SANFORD: What happened, Mr. Speaker, was that eventually the group itself was informed that they would have to go to council. The Minister of Human Resources' guidelines say that council, through the ministry, will appoint. They got the runaround through the regional director, through the local director, and finally they were told: "Well, go to council yourself. They are going to have to appoint." But at this stage, everyone in the Campbell River area is so confused that they have no advisory board yet. They have been swept aside and they have been stalled and pushed around for almost a year, Mr. Speaker, and still there is no advisory board.

I say that this minister is not interested in any community elected board, nor is he interested in any kind of advisory board based on the experience in Campbell River. He doesn't want advice from anybody. He wants to run this show his way. Anyone that doesn't fit into that pattern - too bad. That's the attitude of that minister.

Mr. Speaker, I have some specific questions with respect to the labour aspects of the Vancouver Resources Board bill that is before us tonight. You know, the other day we were wondering why they would go ahead and do away with the fine labour-management relationship that existed between BCIT and the management staff there. I'm wondering tonight, based on the fine labour-management relations that exist at the Vancouver Resources Board, why, in fact, he wants to do in the three unions that now represent the Vancouver Resources Board and give them no indication what their future might be in terms of labour relations.

MR. KEMPF: Garbage!

[ Page 5615 ]

MS. SANFORD: They had disagreements. They had to bargain, and they often had to bargain hard, but there was never any threat of a strike of the three unions involved at the Vancouver Resources Board. They worked together. On many occasions they set up joint committees that would make decisions that would benefit the recipients of the social services programme in the Vancouver area. But here they are. These three labour unions that have been properly certified at this stage through the Labour Relations Board don't know what sort of future they face.

In the amendments that he has proposed to Bill 65, the minister indicates that employees of the Vancouver Resources Board become employees of the Crown in the right of the province. I guess one could assume that they would be covered by the Public Service Act. That in itself raises a number of questions with respect to the current status of these employees and what their future status is going to be under the Public Service Act.

For instance, the Vancouver Resources Board and the unions working for that board are now set up in such a way that if employees leave they can be replaced very quickly so that the service to the people of the Vancouver area are not going to be interrupted. But if you look and I'm sure you're aware of this, Mr. Speaker at the record of the public service in terms of replacing employees who have had to leave for health reasons or for whatever reasons, the waiting time can often be a month and a half, three months, six months and even one and a half years before staff is replaced through the Public Service Commission.

This is a concern for the people who are currently working for the Vancouver Resources Board. What does that mean? If an employee leaves and has to be replaced through the public service process - which as I say, can take up to a year and a half, and has taken up to a year and a half in many cases - what happens to those people who are currently being served by the worker who is now leaving? The only thing that can happen is that the other workers try to assume the workload of that particular workers until such time as the public service people can get a replacement in there.

One of the most difficult things that we have in terms of having fine social services in this province is that workers are already overloaded. They have far too much work to do for them to be able to deliver top-notch social services to the people. When you have the unions that are now involved suddenly put under the Public Service Act, and I am assuming that is what's going to happen, we have the possibility of delays up to a year and a half to replace employees who are now giving the services at the Vancouver Resources Board. In other words, the service is not going to be as good as it was. Right now they can handle that situation very quickly and replace employees when it becomes necessary. Who is it that's going to suffer? It's the people who are the recipients of the delivery of social services under the Vancouver Resources Board.

I would like the minister when he winds up on second reading, Mr. Speaker, to give us some idea what might happen to the fine affirmative action programme that is now in place at the Vancouver Resources Board. Very early after the Vancouver Resources Board was established, there was a joint management -union committee set up so that people who are handicapped, women and native Indians could be hired through the Vancouver Resources Board under an affirmative action programme. The people involved on that joint committee were very careful in terms of ensuring that the basic requirements for the job were met. Once they were met, then they could consider hiring the handicapped, the women and the native Indians. What's going to happen under the new system that the minister is introducing through Bill 65? What's going to happen to that programme? I wonder if the minister, when he winds up, if he has heard my questions, would deal with that aspect of it.

I have numerous other questions, Mr. Speaker, and I hope that the minister will take notes on this, because I'm afraid that he might forget to answer some of these. They're pretty important in terms of the people who are currently employed through those three unions of the Vancouver Resources Board.

MS. BROWN: He's not even listening.

MS. SANFORD: Right now there is, unique to the province of British Columbia, a service called orthopsychiatric services, which are provided through the Vancouver Resources Board. Here we have people who are hired as psychologists, people who are working in therapeutic tutoring for children, who are involved in assessing emotionally disturbed children, and who are working in co-operation with the Ministry of Education officials in setting up special programmes for those children. They also have special programmes for the retraining of social assistance recipients to become members of the work force. I know the minister will be very interested in that. I'm sure he'll turn around and listen, because the Vancouver Resources Board people at the moment are involved in the training programme to ensure that social assistance recipients can get into the work force. What's going to happen to all of those? Those people right now belong to one of the three unions that work for the Vancouver Resources Board.

I have a question to the minister. Since there is no Human Resources office in the province that is currently involved in orthopsychiatric services, first of all are those services going to be continued? If so, where will they fit in, in terms of collective

[ Page 5616 ]

bargaining, or will they become another added to the unorganized in the province? What's going to happen to them? There's no such classification at the moment through the Ministry of Human Resources, or through the public service. These are people who are employed in that capacity. They belong to one of the three trade unions that are now certified under the Vancouver Resources Board. What's going to happen to them? Where are they going to fit in? Are they going to become part of the unorganized? Or are you going to be establishing new categories that these people will be able to fit into, so that they will, in fact, become part of the collective bargaining unit?

[Mr. Veitch in the chair.]

I would also Eke to ask the minister about programmes which are somewhat like homemaker services, where people are involved in trying to keep families together by providing some sort of a homemaker service right in the home. Perhaps it's a single mother with children who is unable to cope with the problems that are presented to her in trying to make a living and keep that family together. This programme has been operating for about five years.

These people who are acting as homemakers under this programme are also certified through one of the three trade unions that exist. But there's no such category for them under the public service. Does the minister intend to create a category for them so that they will have the right to be certified as they are now or are they going to join the ranks of the unorganized? These are legitimate questions which are coming from the people who are now concerned. They have had no answers at all from the minister with respect to their future, their protection and their benefits. Are they going to become part of the public service? Are you going to create new categories for them? Are they going to be able to bargain?

What about the child abuse team that's now providing a model for other areas of B.C.? The child abuse team, working for the Vancouver Resources Board, Mr. Speaker, is also certified, but under the Ministry of Human Resources there's no such classification. What happens to them? Are they going to be able to bargain? What sort of category will they fit in, if so? Are you going to create new categories, new classifications for them? The people themselves who are involved in these programmes have been trying to get answers to these questions. They don't know what the future of their work is. They don't know what status they will have. They don't know what protection they will have, what benefits they will have.

How about those people who are working to assist seniors in a variety of ways - finding boarding homes for them informing them about what medical services are available to them in the Vancouver area, locating appropriate homes for them? Again, there's no such classification under the Ministry of Human Resources for the people who are employed to do that work. They are certified. What's going to happen to them? Are they going to be among those who are going to be decertified by this government? There are a number of them already, Mr. Speaker, who have become decertified by actions of this government -faculty members, changes to the Labour Code that we will be discussing later.

These are people who have already won the right to bargain who now face the possibility of decertification because they don't fit in anywhere. What does the minister intend to do with them? How is he going to accommodate them? Why hasn't he been able to give any answers to the people who have been making these inquiries? They have been asking; they've been wondering. They've met with the minister. He hasn't given them any answers. He doesn't even know what's possible under the Public Service Act or through his own department or anything else. He just does not know. In terms of the effects of the anti-labour sections in this bill, he just does not understand that at all.

He doesn't understand what he's doing as far as delivery of services. He doesn't understand what he's doing in terms of community involvement and participation decision-making for the delivery of services, nor does he know what he's doing to the employees of the Vancouver Resources Board. He just does not know.

What about seniority? Here's another question, Mr. Speaker. There were six municipalities taken over by the department on January, 1977. Social services in Surrey, Coquitlam, Richmond, New Westminster, Burnaby and North Vancouver were all taken over on January 1,1977. What happened to those employees who were there as probationary or temporary employees? They lost all of their accumulated seniority. People who had been employed on a part-time basis could collect seniority and could add it up, but once this minister took over, Mr. Speaker, they lost all of that.

Now the Vancouver Resources Board unions have been able to work out a system also whereby their employees could accumulate seniority through temporary positions so that they would have a better chance of getting a permanent position with the Vancouver Resources Board. Is the same thing going to happen to them, Mr. Speaker, as has happened to the people in Surrey, Coquitlam, Richmond, New Westminster, Burnaby and North Vancouver when the minister took over? They lost all of those privileges.

He doesn't care about what sort of benefits may be won through collective bargaining. He doesn't care what happens to the classification of these people. He has not even had the courtesy to explain to the

[ Page 5617 ]

people who are personally affected what's going to happen to them.

Mr. Speaker, based on the kind of work that the people in Campbell River were able to undertake through the resource board concept, based on the fact that they've been shunted aside for a year now trying to get into a position of being mere advisers, and based on the fact that this minister is not interested in what happens to those employees who are certified under the Vancouver Resources Board now, I suggest to you that this minister wants to run the entire show on his own. Anyone who gets in his way, look out! He's not going to pay any attention to them. He's not interested in the delivery of social services in this province. That's evident. He's certainly not interested in any sort of community participation.

Mr. Speaker, we adamantly oppose this bill.

MR. G.R. LEA (Prince Rupert): Mr. Speaker, we have to go back a little way in history to even find out why we're discussing Bill 65 tonight and why we're discussing removing the decision-making from local community groups into a centralized decision-making process in Victoria.

Mr. Speaker, in the life of the minister's political career, it goes back to when he first made his first redneck remark and drew some favourable response. It then began to be a pattern. First there was a redneck remark and approval from some sections of the population. Then there was the desire for more approval, and therefore the necessity for more redneck remarks and actions, going back to "give them a shovel" and to "let Quebec go; we won't lose any sleep about it." All of it is designed to build the political reputation of an ambitious politician.

AN HON. MEMBER: Hear, hear!

MR. LEA: That's all it was for - building a reputation on the backs of the poor and the working poor, At that time, discussing the methods of the minister in caucus, we said that sooner or later a person who builds a reputation that way will make one step too many, because the method of operation has to be topping your last topper. You can't stop once you've gone down the trail to being a redneck. You have to keep it up, and the next remark has to be more rednecked than the last. The next action has to be more rednecked than the last, or you soon begin to be forgotten and your reputation begins to wane. Pretty soon, because you've had nothing of substance to say except redneck remarks, people soon begin to forget that you even exist.

Then we find Bill 65. How does legislation get into the House? I would assume that it conics from the minister's office to a committee of cabinet reviewing legislative programmes, and then probably on for approval to cabinet as a whole. Obviously, if that's the course, and I believe it is, the minister went through that route - the drafting of the legislation, or probably the approval in principle from cabinet; to the drafting of legislation-, and then back to cabinet committee; and then to cabinet for full approval - to do away with the Vancouver Resources Board.

I'm sure that at that time cabinet itself in its entirety thought that it wasn't going to be that politically embarrassing or that big a political issue. They thought they could once again make a redneck decision - a redneck utterance - implement it, and gain approval. But, Mr. Speaker, this is the one step too far. People have absolutely had it with a minister who wants to build a reputation that way.

So what happened then, Mr. Speaker? We had some people in cabinet and some people in the back bench starting to feel the political vibrations of the resentment against that course of direction in the city of Vancouver - a little nervousness, but not too much. Then, as the people who felt that they had been done in started to organize, to gather people around them and to start to protest in a democratic way, some of the members of that cabinet and, more particularly, some of the members of that cabinet who happened to have their constituencies in Vancouver, like the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) , the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) , the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Wolfe) and some others, started to worry.

There's no worry about getting rid of the Vancouver Resources Board. They have already approved that - approved it in principle and approved the legislation to do away with the Vancouver Resources Board - but now there's this pesky little catch called political unrest. People had finally had a stomachful of a minister and a politician trying to build his reputation on the backs of those who are less fortunate - they'd had it. There then became a combined, non-partisan opposition to what people in Vancouver see as a democratic process that works at the local level and should be there.

The leader of the Liberal Party (Mr. Gibson) and the leader of the Conservative Party (Mr. Wallace) , neither of whom at first approved of this legislation, after seeing it work, said: "We're wrong. It does work." A lot of people from a lot of different political persuasions and a lot of economic and social backgrounds decided it was time to dig in their heels, but they didn't reckon on a politician who was going to have his main plank pulled out of his platform. If he had his teeth pulled on this one by his cabinet colleagues, then there would be no more approval for rednecks in the form of a political figure who happens to be the person who should be giving needed social services to people as designed and implemented by local people, who have a better idea of what it's all about. His cabinet colleagues became

[ Page 5618 ]

more nervous and then they made the approach in this Legislature to the minister last week. They said: "How about pulling the legislation? It's politically hot."

We now have a piece of legislation that we're discussing in this House that is here because of blackmail - nothing more, nothing less. This is a minister who says: "Try and ruin my reputation, try and pull Bill 65, and you've got my resignation." The Attorney-General and the Deputy Premier - the Provincial Secretary - are now faced with a double dilemma: if they go ahead, they have the wrath of the people for bringing in Bill 65; but if they stop, they've got a minister who will resign. We heard it over here. We're not deaf. We heard the minister say: "I'll resign if you do that." What were you talking about - playing tiddlywinks? You were talking about Bill 65, and you were talking about the House Leader walking down that centre aisle, along with the government Whip, and saying: "Do that and I'll resign."

So always with an eye on what's best for the people, the Attorney-General and the Provincial Secretary decided to let them suffer and have their political fortunes soar a little bit. So now we have in this Legislature a bill that is here because a minister threatened to resign if it didn't come in.

We all know in this House - all 55 of us - that that's the truth. You can giggle and you can laugh, but it's the truth.

HON. W.N. VANDER ZALM (Minister of Human Resources): Come on. You know better than that, Graham.

MR. LEA: I know it's the truth. I heard it. I heard a minister saying that he'll resign. Now we have a Premier and a cabinet who will put up with blackmail from a minister to get his own way. That's what we have. What next? If nothing else, we should have a cabinet and a Premier who will say to an individual minister: "You can't have your own way whenever you want it."

When it comes down to it, every cabinet, every Premier is always faced with a minister who may make that extreme statement and mean it: "If I can't have my way, I'll resign." And who backed him? He didn't do that without help. There had to be backers in that cabinet and in that back bench. Are they going to talk? Are they going to take the opportunity, as the people in their respective communities gave them the power to come into this Legislature and speak on their behalf, and give their opinions and make their stand? What about the members for Vancouver South, first (Mr. Rogers) and second (Mr. Strongman) ?

AN HON. MEMBER: They're here.

MR. LEA: They're here? One has been sent away to keep his mouth shut. Will the other one speak?

We saw, after the argument in this House, that the House Leader and the Provincial Secretary went down to see that minister, and he said: "I'll resign." We heard that and we saw the people who went up afterwards and patted his back on the way by.

Interjection.

MR. LEA: Oh, we're not guessing, Mr. Whip. We know. By you saying that we're guessing, you've admitted it.

AN HON. MEMBER: He knows we know.

MR. LEA: We saw the Munchkins from the back walk by the minister and say: "We're with you, Bill." We should have known before we even saw them move who they would be. There was the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) ....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, back to the principle of this bill, please.

MR. LEA: We're talking about it.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'm sorry, but you're varying very much from it.

MR. LEA: Right now, we're talking about the reasons for a government bringing a bill into this House, a bill that is here and being discussed because of inner blackmail within the cabinet.

If that isn't true, I want to put a few people on record, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to see the Provincial Secretary and the member for Vancouver-Little Mountain (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) , along with her co-partner, the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Wolfe) . I'd like to see them. I'd like to see the members for Vancouver South (Mr. Rogers and Mr. Strongman) . I'd like to see the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) and the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) . I'd like to see them stand up and say: "We are wholeheartedly in favour of Bill 65." What they're doing behind your back is telling people that they're not really in favour of it, Mr. Minister. Back in the ridings, that's what they're doing.

AN HON. MEMBER: They're embarrassed by it.

MR. LEA: They're a little embarrassed, and they're a little afraid of the political consequences. But they're a little more afraid of a minister who will resign over this issue, and so they've made their choice. They'll live with the minister and they'll live with the future with that minister as he becomes more rednecked and more rednecked and more

[ Page 5619 ]

rednecked. It can't stop here. If it stops here, the minister is finished. He has to bring in something that will top the last, because that's the way it is. You can't stop a. reputation like that and expect it to linger. You have to keep adding fuel to the fire.

AN HON. MEMBER: What happened to your fire?

MR. LEA: You add fuel by making more rednecked statements and doing more anti-democratic planning and implementation of those plans.

AN HON. MEMBER: What happened to your reputation, Graham?

MR. LEA: You take a look at the record of this government. On the Queen Charlotte Islands in my riding, they have a health and human resources committee that was set up when we were government. So far the minister has let it live. But let it live how?

AN HON. MEMBER: Tell him how.

MR. LEA: He let it live by this government telling an elected board on the Queen Charlotte Islands: "You fire certain people or there will be no board tomorrow." I don't think the government can deny that one, because if they do they ain't going to be able to prove it. That's what they did.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You haven't been up there for years.

MR. LEA: That's what they did. They said: "Do what we say from Victoria. Fire that person who works for you or there'll be no more Health and Human Resources Board on the Queen Charlotte Islands." I talked to some of those people from that board. They said: "What choice do we have? We think they mean it." You know something? I know they meant it. Bill 65, 1 think, should prove to the people of the Queen Charlottes that they meant it. If they wanted to save any portion of that Health and Human Resources board on the Queen Charlottes so that there could be some local decisions made without interference, they had to crumble that time. I wonder about next time, because it's coming. You can't stop, once you've started down that road. Time after time, a government that says one thing and does another. A government that during the course of a campaign said they wouldn't raise taxes, and couldn't wait to do it. A government whose political leader, the now Premier, when he was in opposition during the last election campaign sent a telegram to the people of Prince Rupert, saying: "We will not close down the pulp mill." It's closed today.

They closed it. They said, rent controls.... It goes on and on. A Government Reorganization Act that takes power from the Legislature and gives it to the cabinet.

What we are seeing, slowly, slowly - but not so slowly that we don't notice it, us other people in the province besides that cabinet and their Munchkins -is freedom being destroyed day by day; the democratic process as we know it, through the British parliamentary system, being destroyed, day by day; a centralization of power into Victoria that this province has never seen the like of.

You should ask and have to ask: why are they doing it? Mr. Speaker, the answer is simple. It was mentioned before in this House. The answer is: we now have a government and backbencher supporters who don't trust the people of this province. They don't. They had people out there in the majority sense that trusted them and put them in power. The thanks they get back is a complete lack of trust in the decision-making process of local people to make decisions that affect them locally. They've done it with the Municipal Act; they've done it with this legislation; they've done it with the Government Reorganization Act, because that Act takes power away from representatives of the people and puts it behind the closed doors of cabinet.

We have a Health minister, along with the Human Resources minister, who threatened the locally elected board of the Queen Charlotte Islands to fire some staff, or the board would disappear. We have a Minister of Education who takes unto himself, with Bill 33, the Independent Schools Act....

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, you're reflecting upon another vote of this House. Please return to the principle.

MR. LEA: I'm not reflecting on the vote. I'm reflecting on the legislation, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. member, as you well know, you cannot debate something further that's already been passed in this House.

MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, I think there's one thing that the people of this province should have. I think what they should have is the honest views of the legislators in here. I don't think it's going to be enough for the government backbenchers or cabinet colleagues of the minister to stand up and vote. This is an issue about fundamental freedoms where every member of this House should stand up and make his or her views known.

Let the Social Credit members who do not support this bill stand up and say so. It's your duty, because if you don't stand up and say so, what will happen is you'll end up like the rest of them: the stomach bile

[ Page 5620 ]

will boil up through your body and it will clog off every channel of fresh air to your brain and mind. That's what it will do, because when it comes right down to it, everybody in time is going to know the duplicity of this legislation. Everybody in time will know that the minister, for sure, made his resignation threat. They will know those of you who in your caucus room said one thing and voted another. They'll know for sure, because history has a way of letting all the cats out of the bag, Cheshire or not. Everybody in this province will know. If not your children, your grandchildren or their children, but sooner or later everyone will know how many people on that side of the House spoke in caucus against this legislation and voted for it.

MR. D. BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): Like the Attorney-General.

MR. LEA: Because you can never hide it over the course of history. You can't. You can sit there today, smug in your secrecy knowledge, but sooner or later it will be out.

MR. BARRETT: Garde, you're not in favour of this. You lost the fight to No. 2.

MR. LEA: You may not have to face it personally, but your reputation as legislators will someday have to face the test of time in history. It will. The only reason that this bill is going ahead is to politically give advantage to a minister whose reputation has been spawned on the backs of the poor. That's how that government is going to die, because you cannot help but die when all you want to do is further your cause with those who are less fortunate. Sooner or later justice will catch up to you, and you'll no longer be here, whether it's next election or the one after.

Mr. Speaker, in closing I would like to say that in my opinion, because of this Bill 65, which contains so much about what freedom's all about, that group of people do not deserve to hold the office they do. They don't deserve it. I believe the people in this province are going to take care of that in the next election. Whether it's us in power, whether it's the Liberals or whether it's the Conservatives, at least they'll know who to go to. Who do they know where to go to over there? Ex-Liberals? Ex-Socreds?

AN HON. MEMBER: Ex-people?

MR. LEA: Ex-people, because that's what you become. Someone, an ex-cabinet minister from another government, told me that in the Social Credit government the price you paid to stay in that cabinet was your souls. I believe that the price here is going to be the same.

MR. G.V. LAUK (Vancouver Centre): Mr. Speaker, I want to establish first of all what area of agreement there may be between the minister and myself, as somewhat of a personal exercise. There must be some area of agreement. I think that the minister would agree that this bill represents clearly the difference between that side of the House and this side of the House. Will the minister agree with that? Is that the area of agreement that we have?

I want to speak about political courage and the politics of fear, Mr. Speaker. This minister particularly exemplifies this government's and this Social Credit party's design to play on fear with the public of British Columbia. The hon. member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) gave an example of the health and welfare board in the Queen Charlottes. There are the examples of people taking rental accommodation in the city of Vancouver who are on the waiting list for public housing. They know that the general public is very fearful of losing what they have.

They understand that concept and they are willing to do anything to make sure that that fear keeps them in office. Political courage is the other point that was touched upon by the member for Prince Rupert when he asked that the backbenchers, who have stated quite openly their opposition to this bill, stand in the Legislature and make their feelings known. There's one very, very dangerous concept in the Legislature. In theory, we are all individual members. We are to stand in our place and give our own view, to represent the people as best we can in our constituencies.

I know that the members of the Social Credit Party who represent Vancouver ridings have had an overwhelming amount of mail and entreaties from their constituents to oppose this bill. They have said so and they have said so openly. They indicated earlier on when the bill was introduced, Mr. Speaker, that they would do everything they could to encourage the cabinet to reverse its decision. This culminated in the little display that was described by the member for Prince Rupert earlier. The Minister of Human Resources threatened his resignation.

I think the difference between that side of the House and this side of the House clearly is Bill 65, Mr. Speaker. I think the minister would agree to it, although he hasn't the courage to admit it now. The difference is that we do care about bringing the decision-making process closer to the people. We do believe that that is more efficient, more democratic and cheaper. On the other hand, for people such as the minister who desire political power, centralization is the order of the day.

What are the arguments of the minister? I won't go over them again, nor need I go over the refutation of his very skimpy arguments made on Friday last. Those were well published. We can see that the

[ Page 5621 ]

minister's argument for this bill was a pathetic defence; there must be another motivation for this bill other than what he stated in the Legislature. We know that the Vancouver Resources Board is more efficient than a centralized organization dispensing services of government to people.

We know that if he wished to detect welfare fraud, the best way to do it is at the community level where people can know what is going on. If he's interested at all, Mr. Speaker, in eliminating or greatly decreasing the need for social assistance, he would see as clearly as Liberals and Conservatives and Social Crediters do throughout the city of Vancouver and throughout the province, that the first step is resource boards providing dignity, sensitivity and immediate service to people in that situation.

Centralized bureaucracy, on the other hand, leads to the kinds of inefficiencies that we all know so well and this Keystone Cop nonsense that the minister tries to establish with respect to fraud. Centralization is short-term-, the benefits are short-term political goals. Community resources boards, on the other hand, are long-term. That takes political courage and avoidance of the politics of fear.

As I say, Mr. Speaker, the VRB is closer to the people, and centralization leads to more cost not to less. I think the minister should know that the greatest gift to society from his ministry would be to allow the less fortunate people who are on social assistance to live in dignity and to in some way provide an opportunity to those who are poor and to those who are receiving social assistance to help themselves in their own cause and for their own betterment. The Vancouver Resources Board, by having its physical presence in the community, enabled those receiving service from the government to feel that the community cares about them as people, to feet that they belong in that community and that there are people who live up there with them and work for the board and will provide services on a personal basis.

The minister's job should be to smash down the cultural and financial barriers to a better life, instead of creating greater layers of bureaucracy and centralization. As I say, centralization in this case, Mr. Speaker, rather than offering some hope that those on welfare or who receive disabled pensions can become more productive and feel more useful to society, will cut off hope. The long-term result will be more welfare, more cost to the taxpayer. The long-term result is not that there be some who will get off welfare, but rather no hope that they will be off welfare, and no contact. There will be a permanence of generation after generation of welfare.

I wonder if the minister has considered who else much more articulate than I has described that situation. Adam Smith said that the capitalist system requires a permanent section of the community that's poor. He called it the "necessary poor" to fulfill a system that the minister obviously wants to perpetuate. It's permanent welfare, a permanent drain on the public purse. The poor and the working poor perpetuate a wantonly cruel and wasteful economic system that for humanity's sake should be part of history by now.

The elimination of the resources board is an act of egotistical pique by a person who places his political career before the welfare of the commonwealth, who places personal ambition before social justice, and who places himself above all others; a person whose singular lust for power casts off even the pretence of the democratic process. His defence of this bill was chippy without substance and will go down in history as a most senseless exercise of unchecked political power. The arguments he uses have been described in this chamber as "redneck." "Redneck" means, Mr. Speaker - and I know you're not familiar with that term - an irrational lashing-out at those less fortunate than oneself as an excuse for one's own predicament.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That's in the NDP dictionary.

MR. LAUK: That's my definition, a definition that took me some months to come up with, because I've been watching the minister for these months, and he fulfils the definition perfectly. He argues about single employables on welfare. He argues about welfare fraud. He argues about the political character of the resource board. May I point out, Mr. Speaker, that if the resource board is political, which I think it's not.... Whatever may appear to the minister as being political is a response to his irrational, senseless and cruel attitude towards the people who must come to the public for help. Do you think that devoted and committed public servants in the resource board will sit idly by and watch their clientele be run roughshod over because of the personal political ambition of this minister? The answer is no. That's the kind of courage that minister and this government will not understand and never will understand.

Need I say to a man who will not listen that for every single, employable person receiving welfare, there are 1,000 children with a home - perhaps not with an automatic dishwasher and a two-car garage, but a home provided for them because the state at this particular time in that family's history has intervened to assist? May I say to a minister who has no ears to hear with, except to hear the sound of his own voice, that for every welfare fraud he can dig Lip, there are 500 families who, because of social assistance, can stay together and not be split up and separated because of poverty? Does he understand these things? I think not. This is a piece of senseless, unnecessary legislation, a kind of mindless arrogance

[ Page 5622 ]

that I don't think any other cabinet minister even in that government is capable of.

Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party fought a very difficult battle bringing in the Vancouver Resources Board legislation. We lost the election; you may have noticed. I tell you who else has noticed: the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen this systematic destruction of the Vancouver Resources Board system.

I received a letter from a 12-year-old boy from the West End who said he was walking near the resources board office. There was an elderly gentleman, using a cane, who inquired where the resources board office was. The boy knew where it was and assisted the gentleman to the office. While he was at the office he discovered during the course of the discussion that this bill was on the order paper. He asked his parents who his MLA was and he sent me a letter and he described the situation.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: He saw the bumper stickers on the counter.

MR. LAUK: I will get the letter for the members and table it in the House. Perhaps they can get some of the civil servants to read it to them.

He asked: "Why are they doing away with the human resources board?" This gentleman couldn't possibly go to Victoria. He can't afford to call long distance to the minister's office or to officials in Victoria.

MR. KEMPF: Ask Charlie to give him a LIP grant.

MR. LAUK: A 12-year-old person could recognize the senselessness and the stupidity of this move. Contrast that, if you will, with the understanding of the minister.

MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): Mr. Speaker, I'm not going to shout at the top of my voice, but I think this is a very sad night for the B.C. Legislature. I think we in British Columbia embarked upon an exciting, brave experiment in community participation throughout the whole range of social services. That is being abandoned tonight on the most inadequate grounds. I have listened to the minister's explanation. I read the Blues to make sure I didn't miss anything. I have listened to his explanation since this Bill 65 was introduced, and I have tried in vain to find the reason why this experiment would be abandoned.

I have seen some of the cost accounting. There has been a bad case where a family of six - it might have been eight - received too much, and this kind of thing. Maybe there are things to be corrected. I'm sure that through the whole range of social services of British Columbia there are things like that to be corrected. But the minister has gone through the Vancouver Resources Board's accounting and services over a period in the last year, and he has tried to pick this and that petty mistake that may have been made. You could do that in any ministry of government. You could do that with more success than you found in the case of the Vancouver Resources Board, which, after all, had their accounts approved by the comptroller of the province. The examples are petty.

I've listened to the first member for Burrard (Ms. Brown) , who's put up a courageous fight to prevent this kind of an experiment being aborted, when it was beginning to be a shining example for all North America. I've listened to the people such as Save the Vancouver Resources Board people and the union people, too, who are vitally concerned about it, not only as a union matter, but as a social matter for the community. They have made good sense in the past three or four months since this bill was broached. The minister has not brought down any reason why this board should be disbanded and this experiment should be dismissed and discarded into the ashcan of the history of this province.

It was and it is a good experiment, Mr. Speaker, because all of the human problems that are out there in the community are interrelated. What the prosecutor in the courtroom does; what the worker who is concerned about battered children does; what the psychiatric counsellor who goes into the home and tries to prevent a breakdown of that family does; what the policeman does on his beat - all of these are closely related. And for the first time - and it was one of the brightest spots in the history of North America - all of this array of services was brought together in one place.

The idea behind bringing these services together was not to increase the cost of the community of social service and the rest; it was prevention. It was to rehabilitate individuals. It was to prevent family breakdown before it happened. It was to prevent the young person who was going to become a juvenile delinquent from following that course and ending up in a long life of crime, costing the community before his death $100,000 or $150,000 - who could tell?

This is the kind of experiment that we're abandoning tonight in this Legislature if the government majority has its way.

I suppose, Mr. Speaker, there's no use appealing to that group over there and saying you're being forced by the Minister of Human Resources to gun this legislation through, even though you don't believe in it. Oh, the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) believes in it. Of course he does. Anything that seems to be anti-people and pro-company he believes in. But you have conscientious people ...

MR. KEMPF: With your quarter-of-a-million-dollar

[ Page 5623 ]

house in Point Grey you can say that? You're a hypocrite!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: ... in your caucus who have objected to this bill being brought in and the disbandment of this Vancouver Resources Board. They would have prevailed in the Social Credit caucus except for the minister standing up and saying: "If you do that, I resign." You buckled under. Yes, you did. You left your consciences aside and you buckled under to the political pressure of the Minister of Human Resources. Everybody in this chamber knows what has happened. This bill was to be dropped because the people who are opposing the dismantling of the Vancouver Resources Board had made a good case not only within this group, not only within the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party but even in the ranks of the Social Credit Party. They had made a good case.

The minister has not been able to support his own case. But the minister used political blackmail and he said: "You go ahead with this bill and pass it through and cancel the resources board because I don't like local democracy, I don't like community participation. I want to have all the strings of control safely under my control." That's been the way this government has gone from the beginning. Centralize. Bring it all under the control of the government.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, we look at some of the reasons as to why the Vancouver Resources Board has done well and why it is a brave, exciting, new experiment in terms of social problems that may prevent Vancouver, if it is given a chance, going the way of some of the big American cities like Detroit and New York where you let it go when you think that from the state capital you can really look after these social problems that are out there in a very unjust and inegalitarian society. You think you can solve them by sending a cheque from Victoria and controlling it from Victoria without that preventive work that can take place in the local community. If you think that, then our province can easily go the way of these other cities in the world. We've seen some of them go past the point of no return. So it's kind of a tragic step that we're embarked on tonight.

The reasons the minister gives.... He says: "A civil servant in the resources board defied me." He says: "John Lynn defied me because he published information to the public that I said was confidential." What he did was perfectly lawful and proper under the Vancouver Resource legislation. He gave to the public the information they should have in terms of the cost accounting of the resources board. Yet the minister has the audacity in his speech to say: "I have to get rid of this board because some of the people who are working for the Vancouver

Resources Board are defying me by releasing some of the factual actuarial accounting costs to the public." But the public had a right to know those things and the board was set up with a degree of independence which should allow it to make its case to the public.

I don't want to go through all the other examples that the minister has given as to why the board should be disbanded, but one by one they're petty things. If they were wrong, they were being corrected through the Vancouver Resources Board. There may have been an overpayment to a family here or there. Who knows? And there will be mistakes made when you establish a huge bureaucracy in Victoria, after you've centralized the services. Does the minister really seriously mean to say that he can't go through the whole gamut of social services through the length and breadth of B.C. and not find the same mistakes here and there? Of course you can find those same mistakes in other services throughout B.C.

The minister says that special consideration should not be given to the city of Vancouver. That argument bothered me for awhile because the city of Vancouver has the last resources . board in the province. But it is the minister's own action that has abolished the resources boards in Port Alberni and Kaslo and all of the other parts of the province of B.C. Fourteen of them have been abandoned by the minister. Then he says: "There's one left, and to leave that would mean I'm giving special consideration to the city of Vancouver." If there's special consideration given to this experiment in the city of Vancouver, that I can attest to is doing very good work in terms of prevention of social problems, Mr. Minister, then you should have left the other boards in existence.

There are certain very basic reasons why this kind of service should not be conducted through the city of Victoria and the state capital in terms of one bureaucracy. The reasons, I think, have never been better expressed than by Mr. Crane, who is a professor of social work at the University of British Columbia. He says that the four main reasons why this kind of local community participation is valid are these: first, he says it makes it possible for clients to obtain an array of services under one administration.

Just stopping there, Mr. Speaker, that's the point I was referring to earlier. It's very difficult to tell whether it's a justice case, a police case, a psychiatric case, a broken-family case, an alcoholism case, a potential juvenile delinquency case and then assign it to a separate department of government here in Victoria because it's a human, interrelated situation where all of these matters should be considered at the local level.

You know, when I was Attorney-General of this province I tried to say: "Where does justice stop and health begin?" I couldn't find the answer to that. Where does justice stop and education begin? I

[ Page 5624 ]

couldn't find the answer to that. Where does justice stop and employment opportunities and employment training begin? I couldn't find the answer to that.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Since when did the VRB become justice and health and all of these other... ?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please.

MR. MACDONALD: Mr. Speaker, let me answer that question. You know, the popular conception is that the resource board is just social welfare handing out cheques and things of that kind. That's a lot of nonsense.

MR. D.G. COCKE (New Westminster): That's what he thinks.

MR. MACDONALD: What has it got to do with justice? Let me answer the minister with an example. The Vancouver Resources Board has assigned a youth worker to the Vancouver police team experiment in the Cedar Cottage-Kensington area. They work with the young people of that area to prevent juvenile delinquency. Put it like that. There is an example of where the social services tie right in with police work in preventing crime.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You're as bamboozled as the rest of them.

MR. MACDONALD: If you look into the riding of the hon. member who is sitting opposite, the second member for Vancouver South (Mr. Strongman) , you will know that there are very serious racial problems in terms of outright racial discrimination and racial tension in that area. Is the Vancouver Resources Board simply a social service to hand out cheques and spend the taxpayers' money, or is it also an instrument to go in and relate those community problems to some kind of a solution? Oh, they're a cost-conscious government.

MR. BARRETT: It will cost more in the long run.

MR. MACDONALD: Bottom-line government! You're trying to figure out how we might be able to save money, but I tell, you that you're throwing away the money in terms of the abolition of that preventive programme. You're throwing the money away when you're not there with local participation to try to hold a family together, to try to prevent the battered-child situation, which is very common in cities and the town of British Columbia.

When you're not trying to prevent juvenile delinquency by participation before it's too late, you're not saving money, Mr. Speaker; you're throwing it away. What you think you're saving you're going to spend in Oakalla, you're going to spend in Riverview and you're going to spend to support a deserted mother with an alcoholic husband who has run away. She has five or six children and the community, of course, will support that family, or what's left of it. But it's going to cost you a lot more than if you have the services designed to the needs of the local community to prevent that family breakup in the first place.

The second reason, Mr. Speaker, that's given by Mr. Crane, is to render the services more accessible by locating them in the neighbourhood. Well, that goes without saying. The minister's window-dressing that the advisory boards will continue is simply that -window-dressing. Because they will no longer have the power to solve the problems, and gradually they'll just atrophy and die.

AN HON. MEMBER: Right on.

MR. MACDONALD: And the third: by providing an opportunity for clients and other citizens to have a say in human resources programmes in their own neighbourhoods, to render the services more relevant to client needs. You know, this was a funny kind of a thing, this Vancouver Resources Board, because you could have - and they did have at the board meetings - citizens of the community affected who would come in and make complaints and make suggestions. I suppose you can say that's not according to the dignity of big government that the ordinary citizen should say "my cheque was too little, " or "the service rendered was not adequate, " or that you should have done something about the Jones family down the block before it was too late. But the Vancouver Resources Board would sit in public and they would hear these complaints by the people affected. The result was that the people affected felt they had some voice, some feeling of self-esteem. It was a public process in terms of an initiative to solve the social problems that are found in the big cities of North America. That was a definite plus.

The fourth: to eliminate the humiliations traditionally inflicted on persons who apply for social assistance. We live in a very unfair society, and the first member for Vancouver Centre referred to that just a few minutes ago. The idea that because somebody who is unable to get a job - a wife who's deserted by a husband, somebody who needs help because there's a psychiatric problem in the family, somebody who gets tangled up with the law and needs counselling - the idea that the person should feel offended and humiliated by having to come to big government and beg for a cheque is offensive. But to solve those problems in a participatory way in the

[ Page 5625 ]

whole community, with open public meetings of the board, with open discussion with not only the resources board, but the counsellors and the social workers and all of the other people, that helps to give that person who's in trouble a sense of dignity. That makes it easier for the person to apply for help before it is too late. It helps to give that person a feeling that they can make a go of life, and that they have some self-esteem and dignity and a right to live in society. All of that's been abandoned. You go to a mechanical monstrosity run by Victoria and you apply for a cheque.

Another thing that the Vancouver Resources Board did which I think is very significant - and I'd like to refer to the figures - is that they were concerned about attracting volunteers in the community. You know, all of the people who were attracted to the work of the Vancouver Resources Board were not on the public payroll. Increasingly, citizen participation was taking place. Citizens would volunteer for jobs such as this: family support, drivers, youth group leaders, psychiatric patients' friends. There would be groups who would turn up at a community centre and make sure that the senior citizens had a free ride to go for recreation - the bridge, the bingo or whatever it was, the company in a senior citizens' centre. Increasingly, the Vancouver Resources Board was attracting these volunteers and drawing on the resources of the community, giving satisfaction to those who volunteered their service, and giving help to those who needed those services. You take it out of the community. You disband the volunteer system. You say it's all up to the taxpayer, to the bureaucratic machine to answer these problems. That's not good enough.

The whole purpose, Mr. Speaker, in this bill is to centralize power and control in the government at Victoria. No doubt the minister is impatient with the kind of criticism and the free procedure flow of ideas back and forth - and undoubtedly he is - between a freely elected board in the community, and his own ideas of what social welfare should be. I say, Mr. Speaker, that was a productive discussion. I say it's perfectly legitimate for the minister of the Crown to receive ideas that he doesn't agree with from the community. Another of the organs out in the community are the justice councils, I think they should be prepared, knowing the needs of their local community, to contradict the Attorney-General when they think that's in the interest of justice in the community generally. Why not?

But this minister, like Marie Antoinette, is not prepared to abide by that criticism. He's not prepared to abide by the democratic process and have it out in the give and take of ideas. He's not prepared to see experiment in the various communities of the province of British Columbia, to see which one is solving the social problems in that community better than in other communities.

I think that's a great tragedy. If there's anything that has happened under this government, it's that centralization. It's the Big Brother syndrome that Big Brother knows best and it can all be done from Victoria. Maybe it's a desire for political power and control over the whole system - maybe that's the reason - but it's a black night for British Columbia when we have to debate this kind of legislation. Mr. Speaker, if we abandon this kind of a brave experiment in social rehabilitation, in solving our social problems locally in the community with community input, if we abandon that kind of democratic input, it's going to cost us not only in dollars, but also in terms of a disrupted social life in this province.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, I am the designated speaker on Bill 65.

You know, I suddenly realized that we have been flattering the Minister of Human Resources. We have been assuming that the Minister of Human Resources knew what the Vancouver Resources Board was all about. Suddenly we discover tonight, from a bit of bantering across the floor, as you, Mr. Speaker, usually say, that the Minister of Human Resources has no understanding whatsoever of the Vancouver Resources Board. He asks the question: "What does the Vancouver Resources Board have to do with justice, health and education?"

AN HON. MEMBER: Incredible! What a nut,

MS. BROWN: Now if the Vancouver Resources Board had been so lucky that the minister had not even heard about it, we would not be here tonight debating this piece of legislation. The unfortunate thing is that he heard about the Vancouver Resources Board but took neither the time nor the effort to find out what the Vancouver Resources Board was all about.

Of course, that explains, Mr. Speaker, why his speech of Friday was so thin, why his speech of Friday made no sense, and why he made that great psychological, Freudian slip of not moving second reading - he really didn't want to move second reading, Mr. Speaker. He didn't understand even then what he was doing. He was reading material that was placed in front of him as best lie could. He did it very poorly, but lie did it as best he Could. He read it without understanding what it was all about. So although my decision, Mr. Speaker, was to deal at some length with the Vancouver Resources Board and the reasons why it should be saved, it seems I'm going to have to extend my remarks to include an education for the minister as to just what the Vancouver Resources Board is all about.

Mr. Speaker, that is true - the Vancouver

[ Page 5626 ]

Resources Board is all about justice. Because the Vancouver Resources Board was doing its job so well, the Vancouver Resources Board is under the axe today. I want to tell you the story of how we came to be where we are now.

The people in Vancouver who are part of the Vancouver Resources Board, alarmed at the rate at which this government was cutting back on services to people, requested a meeting with the minister. They thought it would be a good idea for the minister to meet with them, to see them face to face, to recognize that they were responsible citizens and had some understanding of what they were all about, and to share with them some of their concerns about the deterioration of services in the Vancouver area as a direct result of some of his government's policies. This meeting was set up at city hall. The minister turned up, and all the representatives of the Vancouver Resources Board were there, including a number of Vancouver city councillors and various groups in the community. They were very open, very honest and very frank with the Minister of Human Resources. That, Mr. Speaker, is where they made their mistake, because if it is one thing that the people of this province have learned, it is that you should never be open, honest, and frank with the Minister of Human Resources.

The Minister of Human Resources returned to Victoria, having heard the message very clearly that the people of Vancouver were dissatisfied with his tampering with the system and dissatisfied with the policies of his government. The following day, the axe fell. On the morning of June 22, Mr. Speaker, nearly three months ago - is it? I received a phone call from my constituency secretary. She said that an anonymous phone call and a message had been left on my answering service. The message was that the Vancouver Resources Board was dead, that the minister would be introducing legislation that afternoon in the House to ensure that that became a reality,

I started phoning around frantically, Mr. Speaker, to confirm this fact, hoping against hope that the call was from a prankster and that in fact there was no truth to the message which was left on the answering service. I contacted two of the councillors at the Vancouver city council who sit on their human services committee. One of them read to me a letter which was received by the chairman of the Vancouver Resources Board on that date from the Minister of Human Resources. I want to read this letter into the record:

"Mr. Ron Fenwick, chairman,

Vancouver Resources Board,

1675 West 10th Avenue,

Vancouver, B.C. V6J 2A3

"Dear Mr. Fenwick:

"It is the intention of the provincial government to provide for the full integration of the Vancouver Resources Board into the Ministry of Human Resources."

"And I want to just for a minute sidetrack, Mr. Speaker, to talk about the word "integration." One of the things that has happened to us over the years is the evolution of the English language. Now when you kill something, you don't say you kill it; you say you integrate it. When the Americans were bombing the life out of Vietnam, they didn't admit that they were bombing it. They referred to it as their "pacification programme." What we are witnessing today, Mr. Speaker, is the pacification of the Vancouver Resources Board.

"This will be accomplished through an amendment to the Community Resources Boards Act, providing for the dissolution of the VRB and the transfer of responsibility for the services and programmes operated by that agency to the Ministry of Human Resources.

"The move is in keeping with the general direction of the province to consolidate and integrate all social services under one administration."

AN HON. MEMBER: Namely me.

MS. BROWN: He said it all; he said it all right there.

"In January of this year, the ministry assumed responsibilities for services operated by municipal social service departments in Burnaby, Coquitlam, New Westminster, North Vancouver city and district, Richmond, Surrey and West Vancouver. Previously, municipal social service departments in Chilliwack, Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton, Saanich and Victoria, along with the Victoria family and children services, were integrated into the ministry."

A very, very busy ministry indeed, Mr. Speaker.

"At present, the VRB is the only significant body outside of the ministry with responsibility to deliver statutory social services and income assistance. Takeover of the VRB allows the provincial government to better assure the same standards of services throughout the province, with no special treatment or consideration being given to one region at the expense of others."

MR. BARBER: Uniformly crummy.

MS. BROWN: That means uniformly crummy, as my colleague to my left here says. I am going to be dealing at much length and at great length with the

[ Page 5627 ]

uniformly crummy service coming out of that department in the weeks that lay ahead of me in this debate.

"Accountability for services to the public through the Legislature will be assured." The same kind of accountability that finds us here in the ninth month of 1977 still without an annual report from that ministry - that's the kind of accountability that we have been promised in this letter.

MR. BARBER: The VRB has published its report.

MS. BROWN: Of course the VRB has published its report. That's the problem with the VRB - it was too efficient. Mr. Fenwick was doing too good a job compared to the Minister of Human Resources. He couldn't handle that kind of comparison.

MR. L. NICOLSON (Nelson-Creston): He can't even get out an annual report.

MS. BROWN: No, he can't even do that.

Interjections.

MS. BROWN: Did you say "soul brother"?

MR. BARNES: Soul brother from Omineca.

MS. BROWN: Withdraw! (Laughter.) This is the only soul brother in this House, Mr. Speaker.

"Moreover the integration and direct control of services by the Minister of Human Resources will result in long-term cost savings and programme efficiencies through better. deployment of staff and the elimination of duplicate administrative structures."

One of the terrible things about the written word, Mr. Speaker, is that it comes back to haunt you. That's one of the most frightening things about the written word. When that minister talks about efficiencies, it certainly is going to come back to haunt him.

Interjections.

MS. BROWN: The first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) has just brought to my attention the new axis - Omineca and Surrey!

"The integration of services will be carried out in stages as provided for in the legislation. As a first step, my deputy minister, Mr. John Noble, acting in his capacity as director of community resources, will assume direct control of the VRB. Under Mr. Noble's direction we will proceed with plans to reorganize the administration of the VRB towards the objective of full integration . . ."

Think "pacification" as you hear the word "integration." ". . . in the Ministry of Human Resources."

MR. R.E. SKELLY (Alberni): The ultimate solution.

MS. BROWN: It's the ultimate solution; the final solution.

The member asked about his anti-personnel capacity, Mr. Speaker. This gives you the answer to the anti-personnel capacity. "Subsequently the VRB will be dissolved." That is his anti-personnel capacity.

"The VRB will be dissolved and all staff, assets and responsibilities transferred to the public service. The entire process of transfer is expected to take four to six months from the proclamation of legislation to completion. Regular staff of the VRB are to be guaranteed jobs within the public service."

The same kind of guarantees as the ads that were run during the election campaign. Who remembers those ads, telling the civil servants how secure they were, how nobody should worry about their jobs, they were safe? Oh, and the tenants didn't have to worry about rent control, The same kind of security they have. The same kind of guarantees. Oh, the promises. We know how really worthwhile the promises made by that government are, but this is the interesting part in the letter. After saying that everybody's job is secure, he goes on to say: "With the reorganization of the services, we will not require the same number of positions."

AN HON. MEMBER: Does that mean Dianne Hartwick gets a real job?

MS. BROWN: Dianne Hartwick, Dianne Hartwick. But I am going to do what the minister did on Friday when he lost his place. I'm going to repeat the paragraph, Mr. Speaker. "Regular staff of the VRB are to be guaranteed their jobs."

AN HON. MEMBER: What about the irregular staff?

MS. BROWN: Thank you for clarifying that for me, Mr. Member. Now I understand. With the reorganization of the services, we will not require the same number of positions within Vancouver, and you are saying that the irregular staff are the ones who are going to be let go. Also,

"to better ensure equity of service throughout the province, it will be necessary to transfer a number of staff positions to different locations. Transfer of permanent staff resulting from the reorganization will be limited to the lower mainland area, so as to minimize disruption to these employees and to their families. Where it

[ Page 5628 ]

is necessary, however, to move positions to locations elsewhere in the province, this will only be done as and when vacancies become available."

You know, (sings): "Sometimes you say you do and then you don't." Really.

AN HON. MEMBER: Do it again.

MS. BROWN: What is he saying? Everyone's going to stay in the. lower mainland, but sometimes they will have to be moved out of the lower mainland. What are we dealing with here?

AN HON. MEMBER: Sing us another song.

MR. LEA: Schizophrenia.

MS. BROWN: Schizophrenia. Vander Zalm flim flam. But this is really frightening. The model of administration for Vancouver will be identical to that used by the ministry elsewhere in the province. And that, Mr. Speaker, is why I am wearing black tonight. Because anyone who knows anything about the model of administration of that department of human resources through the province knows that that is a giant step backwards for Vancouver. We are really down the tube now. A giant step backward. A goose step backward.

Instead of that minister being committed to raising the level of services to that enjoyed by the people of Vancouver, he has decided to move Vancouver to the level of administration identical to that being used throughout the province. I'm going to give you some examples of that, Mr. Speaker, in the weeks that I have ahead of me. "Services will be organized into three regions, each with a regional manager and a number of community or district offices. With this reorganization, it will be possible to reduce the number of senior management positions for Vancouver from nine to three."

That's how you create jobs, Social Credit style, right? Right. "All new senior management positions for Vancouver will be filled by competition through the procedure laid out for the public service."

MR. BARNES: Excluding our blacklist.

MS. BROWN: Oh, yes - absolutely. "VRB employees who are in positions covered by a collective agreement, however, will not have to compete for their jobs but will simply be reassigned." I am not sure whether it's a good idea to have a collective agreement or not, under those circumstances.

MR. BARRETT: Oh, well, a little fiddle here, a little fiddle there.

MS. BROWN: "Moreover. ." Reclassification, pacification, integration - oh, he's got them all. "Dissolution."

"Moreover, present salary levels for persons covered by a collective agreement as VRB employees will be retained in their new positions within the ministry. Those VRB employees not covered by a collective agreement will be placed in job classifications that meet the administrative and staffing requirements of the ministry and which best use their experience and knowledge."

What does that mean to you? "Those VRB employees who are not covered by the collective agreement will be placed in job classifications that meet the administrative and staffing requirements of the ministry, and which best use their experience and knowledge." It's the kind of language that intimidates very effectively, Mr. Speaker. That's what I'm reading to you, the language of intimidation -reclassification, integration, dissolution, pacification, reorganization.

MR. BARNES: All arrived at unilaterally.

MS. BROWN: But here comes a compassionate part.

" It is my earnest hope that this move can be accomplished with a minimum of disruption to existing levels of service. I will be asking for the co-operation and support of all VRB personnel in assisting with the transfer.

"I would also like to take this opportunity to thank yourself and the Directors of the Vancouver Resources Board for your contribution to the development of social services in Vancouver and to commend each of you for your unselfish commitment of time, energies and knowledge to this important task." I cannot remember the exact words but how did he describe Mr. Fenwick on Friday again'? Does anyone remember?

AN HON. MEMBER: It wasn't very complimentary.

MS. BROWN: He was a puppet, a manipulator ...

AN HON. MEMBER: A manipulating administrator, I think.

MS. BROWN: That's right. "The puppet of a manipulative administration, " That took him through the tulip beds, through the Cheshire cats and the grass, or something. Right? The same person to whom he refers to and says: "I commend you for your u n s elfish commitment of time, energies and knowledge." How could so much have changed, Mr.

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Speaker? How could so much have changed in so short a period of time? And he goes on to say:

"I know it is your wish, as it is mine, to see a consistently improving delivery of services to people. I am therefore confident that the citizens of Vancouver can expect your continued co-operation with government in making this new direction and approach a success.

"I would also appreciate your assistance in arranging for copies of this letter to be distributed to all Vancouver Resources Board staff."

That was the first thing that hit the Vancouver Resources Board members on June 22,1977.

1 know that Omineca is just so excited that he has moved across the hall so that he can be nearer and listen more intensely to what I'm saying, and that his yawns have no bearing whatsoever on the content of the materials I'm dealing with.

AN HON. MEMBER: More intensely or more intelligently?

MS. BROWN: More intensely. I wouldn't use the word "intelligently."

The second thing that hit the staff was a letter from the deputy minister. First we had the "Dear Mr. Fenwick" letter. Now we have the "Dear Staff" letter.

"Dear Staff:

"I appreciate that you may be experiencing some personal anxiety as a result of public announcements. . . ."

Now no public announcement had been made up to this point, except for the one comment the minister made earlier on in his career that the civil servants only work three and a half hours a day and spend most of the rest of the day drinking coffee and stuff. That was the only public announcement.

"I appreciate that you may be experiencing some personal anxiety as a result of public announcements regarding the government's decision to integrate the services of the Vancouver Resources Board into the Ministry of Human Resources."

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Oh, yes. Or Abby - one or the other.

"It will be some time before all the necessary adjustments are made to achieve this transition. In the meantime, I would ask you to continue the delivery of services within the existing reporting structure.

"It is my hope that this transition will be accomplished with the full co-operation of all the staff to ensure a minimum disruption of service. "

That was the second thing that hit the staff and people of the Vancouver Resources Board on June 22, in the year of our Lord, 1977.

Then the third thing came down. The bill still hasn't been introduced in the House yet. All of this correspondence is happening in the morning; the bill hasn't been introduced yet.

"To all staff, Vancouver Resources Board, from David Schreck, regional manager.

"About the time you receive this, you will probably have read in the media of the integration of the Vancouver Resources Board into the Ministry of Human Resources.

"Attached you will find correspondence that is self-explanatory. There is a letter from the Minister of Human Resources . . ." That was the "Dear Mr. Fenwick" letter, ". . . and a letter from the deputy minister That was the "Dear Staff" letter. ". . . to all staff of the Vancouver Resources Board.

"I hope that the transition will be as smooth as possible for all staff. I also hope that we can keep in mind that our function is to continue a smooth delivery of service to our clients."

And this was signed by David D. Schreck.

It's interesting, you know, that the minister, the deputy minister and the regional manager all appeal to the staff to co-operate and ensure the smooth transition of the Vancouver Resources Board into oblivion. They could do that because all of them recognize and realize that the first commitment of the Vancouver Resources Board has always been to the clients whom they serve. They knew that the staff would co-operate with that, and that is the only reason they asked for that co-operation.

June 22 is not over yet. June 22 was a very long day, Mr. Speaker, that has brought us to today and will take us through the next two, or three, or four, or five weeks that lie ahead of us. One June 22, a news release was issued by Mr. Ron Fenwick - that is the Mr. Fenwick of the "Dear Mr. Fenwick" letter -re the disbandment of the Vancouver Resources Board. For the first time we hear an honest statement about what's really happened to the board. It has not been integrated, Mr. Minister of Mines, as you sit and yawn. It was disbanded, and Mr. Fenwick used the term "disbandment, "

"It is with a great deal of regret and concern that I learn of the minister's intention to introduce legislation to take over the Vancouver Resources Board. Quite frankly, our board does not agree with this action and further we do not concur with the reasons given.

"In our view, the most serious consequence

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of a takeover is that the public of Vancouver would not have direct access to the policymakers. To quote from the Hon. W. Vander Zalm's letters: '. . . to thank yourself and the Vancouver Resources Board for your contribution to the development of social services in Vancouver, and to commend each of you for your unselfish commitment of time, energy and knowledge of this important task.'

"This outstanding collection of Vancouver citizens meets in public at least twice a month without recompense of any kind to carry out the duties of this critical service. At this time, 1, too, would like to point out their contribution. Their effort is all the more commendable when you realize that most were elected to perform other civic duties: Alderman Marzari to council; Alderman Ford to council; Trustee Pratt to the school board; Trustee Glass to the school board; Commissioner Fowler to the parks board. Murray Leith is a most respected businessman who devoted precious time and expertise to this enterprise. Those individuals not only bring diverse skills, but also, if the truth were known, very different political viewpoints. Yet this political diversity is never overt, nor does it interfere in the process. The board remains non-partisan.

" It is my sincere opinion that the recipients of a vital service will not be as well served under such a reorganization. A society is not known by the ground that it paves, the water that is dammed or the bridges that are built, but for the manner by which it treats those who find themselves temporarily or permanently in unfortunate circumstances.

"Community advisory board. The public has grown accustomed to seeing the CAB's representatives sitting at this table offering direct community opinion. It is not so obvious that in each community there are 10 to 12 elected volunteers contributing to the process. Every important issue is discussed first at the community level and the advice welcomed before the voting members take action. This process of direct access and community participation would be lost. We would hope that the non-profit societies will continue to meet and offer advice on community grants.

"In recollection, one must be reminded of the special contribution of Alderman Harry Rankin, the first chairman of the VRB. Under his capable leadership, three major services -the Vancouver Welfare and Rehabilitation Department, the Catholic Family and Children's Services, and the Children's Aid Society - were amalgamated and the decentralized to the communities of our city. I doubt if any other social organization has ever accomplished such a radical change with such minimal destruction to service. Our board is particularly grateful for the advice and diligence of our staff of 1,400.

"The VRB has full confidence that under David Schreck's careful management we are not only fiscally responsible, but also organizationally sound. A board could not have received more competent leadership than we have enjoyed over the past few years.

"To return to my opening statement, it is with a great deal of regret and with a great deal of reluctance that I received the minister's statement of intention to take over the Vancouver Resources Board. It is my sincerest hope that each member of the Legislature will recognize the need for a lay group to oversee this essential service in the interest of service to our clients, and that each member will carefully consider the implications of the proposed legislation. In the meantime, this board will continue to serve until the legislation is proclaimed."

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of things that I would like to add; however, the House Leader - the Attorney-General - has asked that I move adjournment of this debate until the next sitting of the House. He has committed himself to accepting adjournment of this debate.

Ms. Brown moves adjournment of the debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 10:59 p.m.