[ Page 5819 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Presenting reports

Select Standing Committee on Agriculture first report. Mr. Bawtree –– 5819

Labour Code of British Columbia Amendment Act, 1977 (Bill 89) Committee stage

On section 6 as amended.

Ms. Sanford –– 5819

Mr. Barnes –– 5820

Mr. Nicolson –– 5821

Mr. Lauk –– 5821

Mr. Mussallem –– 5822

Mr. Barber –– 5823

Mr. Macdonald –– 5824

Mr. King S825

Hon. Mr. Williams –– 5826

Mr. Lauk –– 5827

Mr. Macdonald –– 5828

Mr. Wallace –– 5828

Ms. Sanford –– 5831

Division on section 6 as amended –– 5831

On section 7.

Ms. Sanford –– 5831

Mr. King –– 5831

Division on section 7 –– 5832

On section 8.

Ms. Sanford –– 5832

Division on section 8 –– 5832

On section 9.

Hon. Mr. Williams –– 5833

On section 9 as amended.

Ms. Sanford. –– 5833

Division on section 9 as amended –– 5833

On section 12.

Hon. Mr. Williams –– 5833

On section 12 as amended.

Ms. Sanford S833

Hon. Mr. Williams –– 5834

Report stage –– 5834

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

Mr. Veitch –– 5834

Mr. Levi –– 5835

Mr. Barrett –– 5842

The House met at 8 p.m.

MS. K.E. SANFORD (Comox): Mr. Speaker, seated in the gallery are Art Kube, Joy Langam, Len Guy and Geoff Hotter. I would ask the House to join me in welcoming them.

MR. C. BARBER (Victoria): Mr. Speaker, I would like the House to welcome John Schibli, who is in the gallery tonight.

Presenting reports.

Mr. Bawtree presented the first report of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, which was taken as read and received. (See appendix.)

MS. SANFORD: I have a point of order, Mr. Speaker, with respect to a matter which took place in committee this afternoon.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, matters which take place in committee should be dealt with in committee. The House does not have knowledge of those matters so it's

MS. SANFORD: Well, perhaps

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I would just advise you that whatever the matter might be, it will be resolved in committee, and if it's the decision of the committee to report the matter to the House or advise the Speaker, that is the procedure which must be followed. Matters in committee do not come to the House except on report by the committee.

MS. SANFORD: Well, Mr. Speaker, I would like to rise on a point of order, then, with respect to orders of the day, which do come under your direct jurisdiction, I understand.

MR. SPEAKER: Orders of the day do come under the jurisdiction of the Speaker, yes.

MS. SANFORD: Under orders of the day for today, Mr. Speaker, some amendments to the Labour Code, which is under discussion in committee, have been omitted. Now on Friday of last week, orders of the day contained some amendments which do not appear on orders of the day for today and

Interjection.

MS. SANFORD: They were not on the orders of the day for this afternoon. They were not there. The minister did move an amendment standing under his name on the order paper and it was not there, Mr. Speaker. I would like you to inform the House what that's all about.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: First of all, may I suggest to you that I am advised that during the process of committee today some amendments were moved and passed. Those will not be on the order paper this evening. Those amendments which have not been moved at this particular stage of the proceedings of the committee will still be on the order paper. There are also amendments which can be moved in committee by any member without notice, and perhaps those are the ones to which you are referring, hon. member, but any member of the House can move an amendment in the committee stage of any bill. It's either accepted, rejected or deferred, but whatever the decision of the committee might be, that's the decision of the committee.

MS. SANFORD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Orders of the day.

HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): Committee on Bill 89, Mr. Speaker.

LABOUR CODE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

AMENDMENT ACT, 1977

(continued)

The House in committee on Bill 89; Mr. Veitch in the chair.

On section 6 as amended.

MS. SANFORD: Mr. Chairman, just very briefly I would like to follow up on the comments that were made this afternoon about the section which requires 45 per cent of the employees now to be signed up before they can make application before the Labour Relations Board to be certified. I would like to reiterate that this indeed is another example of tipping the scales in favour of the employers. It is going to make it so much more difficult in order for the unorganized to become organized and become certified.

The minister indicated that there would be a stronger mandate if, in fact, we had 45 per cent signed up before the application was made, but, Mr. Chairman, the mandate remains the same. There was some fumbling originally with the 5 5 per cent, which he then put back to 50 per cent plus one, but the mandate is the same. In order to become certified, they still need the same mandate - that is, 50 per cent plus one - but what the minister has changed is

[ Page 5820 ]

the 35 per cent to 45 per cent before they can even make application to the Labour Relations Board.

Mr. Chairman, under this change there will be very few unorganized people in the province who have the opportunity to exercise their right to become organized. It's going to make it almost impossible for them. Coupled with all the other changes this bill has introduced, I would say it is a near impossibility for future organization to take place among the unorganized workers in the province.

MR. E.O. BARNES (Vancouver Centre): I have just a few comments, Mr. Chairman. Like the member for Oak Bay (Mr. Wallace) , who was speaking this afternoon, I am also inexperienced in labour matters as far as the technicalities and the finer points are concerned.

With respect to those members such as the minister and the member for Revelstoke-Slocan, I would like to share with the House my view on this section, which indicates that it's now going to be more difficult for those who may have the potential of becoming certified to do so. It's just a little step backwards, you might say, from what existed before. I'm thinking of something that I have experienced personally as a professional athlete. I hope you don't rule me out of order, Mr. Chairman, because I'm relating to the difficulties and the problems that people face - in fact, their ignorance of what they should be attempting to do in order to be given a fair chance at reaping the rewards of their efforts.

I've never stood in this House, really, and discussed this kind of thing before, but I think it's appropriate. Some 20 years ago when I came to this country as an athlete, I certainly was not involved in politics and had very little knowledge about labour or organizing and collective bargaining and so forth. I think this is a tragedy, because athletes, like other people who work for a living, have to know how to represent themselves and have to have some understanding about what the game plan is. They have to know something about the whole package on both sides so that they can get their fair share.

You will recall, Mr. Chairman, some years ago when Ronnie Knox, an American athlete who came to Canada to join the Canadian Football League - I think it was in Montreal - was very fortunate, because his father knew something about organizing and bargaining and made sure that his son's interests were protected. Very few athletes, I dare say, have that type of father. In fact, most athletes, like many workers, be they clerks or just people who are sincere and trying to make a living, rarely think in terms of their power bloc or their rights. In fact, most of them consider themselves very fortunate to be able to work for someone.

This is an attitude that has been perpetrated in our society, unfortunately, to the detriment of those people, who have a right to defend and try and protect themselves. I'm just trying to share with you from a perspective of an ordinary person who has come to begin to see the light over the years in terms of what is really happening.

When we talk about 45 per cent support before you can even apply for certification, this is not an encouraging situation. We talk about not having access to names and addresses or this kind of information of people who are your co-workers in order to discuss and make plans or try and inform them, to give them knowledge about what's going on. These are the kinds of things that make me wonder whether or not the minister is really enthusiastically concerned about assisting people to understand what they should be attempting to do. This isn't a matter of coercion. It's just making their rights known to them and giving them an opportunity. There certainly shouldn't be a figure set that high.

With the analogy of athletes, do you know what happened, Mr. Chairman, in the case of Ronnie Knox? This man came to Canada to play football. I understand he played very little football, but do you know that his fellow athletes scorned and condemned him? That's right. They said he was turncoat and a selfish person who was going to do the game a disservice because he was asking for his just share. Knowing that he was going to be exploited for his many years of experience in university, he was asking that he get his fair share. And you know, he was looked down upon by his fellow athletes because they were ignorant and unaware. It's true that athletes today have players' associations. They are much more organized than they were when I played.

But I must say, Mr. Speaker, that there is an analogy here between those young fellows even today who are involved in amateur sports, who are in the farm teams of hockey, who are involved in Little League and other sports where they are enthusiastically attempting to become a star one day. But the thing is that these young people are being fodder for our system. They don't share in the wealth. The problem is: do they realize that they have a right to reap some rewards? They aren't even as well off as sharecroppers, Mr. Chairman.

Too often we take for granted that people don't have the right to organize and that we should do all we can to keep them from becoming aware of their right to organize. This is what this legislation is doing. It's discouraging people from wanting to organize. What I'm suggesting is that there is nothing wrong -in fact in a free democratic society we should be telling people about their rights and encouraging them, because without the 50-plus-one per cent of the vote in any event, they. aren't going to become certified. They aren't going to have the ultimate power to do anything, but at least give them the right. Even if there are one or two people only, they

[ Page 5821 ]

should be encouraged. What has management got to hide?

When I think of the athletes and I think of myself and a former member for Vancouver Centre, in fact, who was a manager at that time of the team that I played for, the British Columbia Lions.... He suggested to me that it was an honour to play for the team. I said: "Yes, but what about my pay?" He says: "It's an honour." Imagine that! Talking to me in those terms, when economics is what it's all about - dollars and cents, not some kind of trip that has been laid on large masses of people, such as workers who are told they have the right to work but don't have the right to organize. That's exactly what's happening.

I'm just suggesting that although I'm far from the sporting field today, I still look back on that with dismay, because I feel that I should have been given some kind of representation. In fact, I know that I didn't understand. How could I go and make any demands because of peer pressure? If I would have stood up and said, "I'm going to fight the establishment, " they would have said: "What are you trying to do, give us a bad name? We're here for the sport. We love the sport." No one would ever say anything, Mr. Chairman, about the fact that somebody is making some money somewhere.

I'm suggesting that we deal equitably with all of the people involved. We talk about industrial democracy and these concepts, but we're not really sincere. We don't indicate by our actions that we're prepared to further these causes. I think it's about time that we did. I certainly think that at the very least, we should encourage people to experience some responsibility about their rights. Give them an opportunity.

I don't think that we should have to worry. I know I'm not an expert. I've never sat down at the bargaining table, like the Minister of Labour and others, in discussion of these matters. But I can tell you that we're not going to resolve anything by being restrictive in limiting people's opportunities. We should want people to feel that they have every opportunity, because in the ultimate decision, we'll require a vote before anything happens.

But why should the minister be suspect? Why should one feel that he has ulterior designs; that he's trying to make it appear as though he's in favour of the rights of the workers to organize, when all this time he's setting up neat little traps whereby it can't quite happen or it's going to be made more difficult? This is a retrograde step; there's no question about that. I'm just suggesting that there are many people who are not organized and who are going to be discouraged by the fact that it's more difficult.

It's going to be more difficult for the people who are trying to pass the message on, such as I would certainly try and do with young athletes who are coming into town and being given a free dinner and a night on the town, instead of being given some dollars to put in their pocket and told that they're going to have a good time. I've experienced that and I know that it's going on all the time, but it's wrong.

But if I go and talk to some of these people who are inexperienced and inarticulate, they're going to say: "Well, you're just going around trying to cause trouble. Why should you try and organize if Ve've been happy?" I know that this is the kind of situation which people are faced with and they have been held down. We've got to at least give them the information; free them up so they can do anything. They have to make the decision whether they want to be organized or not. I'm not suggesting that everybody organize if they don't want to, but there shouldn't be any stumbling blocks in between them getting organized and not.

MR. L. NICOLSON (Nelson-Creston): The minister has not responded to the remarks. I would wonder if the minister would respond, though, to this remark. In terms of these changes ... I would just like the minister to answer.

I believe that 43 per cent of the work force in British Columbia is now organized. What would the minister's objectives be before leaving that office, perhaps to take on another ministry? Or, by the time of the next election, what would his objectives be when leaving office - to have reached what figure? Would he see his tenure as Minister of Labour as having been successful if 45 or 50 per cent were then organized? What would he see as a goal, as a target? Forty per cent? What is his target? Would it be to increase the percentage of the work force in British Columbia that are organized? To see it increase? To see it decrease? If so, by what amount?

A goal doesn't have to be achieved and I don't think anyone's going to say you're a failure if you don't achieve 50 per cent by the time you leave office. That would be quite an achievement if one did. What would the minister see for himself as a goal in terms of organization? Does he really see it as facilitated by these amendments?

MR. G.V. LAUK (Vancouver Centre): Mr. Chairman, it's interesting to see how power resides itself in central locations, what process it takes. This government, for example, wields tremendous political power and considerable economic power with less than 50 per cent of those eligible voters voting in a general election. Most governments can garner that kind of economic and political power with somewhat less than the percentage of the popular vote that this government received in the last general election. It's so much power, as a matter of fact, that the present Minister of Labour can, in an elegant and less-than-un d erst an ding fashion, create obstacles for

[ Page 5822 ]

ordinary working people, many of whom - perhaps at that stage not the majority - have seen the opportunity in joining together in a collective bargaining unit.

Consider if you will, Mr. Chairman, the tremendous economic and political power of the great corporations that are carrying on business in this province, centrally controlled by a small board of directors in each case, with only periodic reference to their shareholders and quite often controlled in that policy decision-making basis by one man, the chief executive officer or the chairman of the board of that large corporation. With that kind of centralized, economic power on the one hand, and the diffused potential for power on the individual worker's side, we can see why this is the only jurisdiction in Canada that is making it more difficult to organize in trade unions, rather than the other way around.

Jurisdictions with Tory and Liberal administrations are moving in the direction of providing a more even-handed approach toward the organizing of workers and their ability to organize into collective bargaining units. This is indeed a retrograde step.

My colleague, the hon. second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) , out of personal experiences, demonstrated the kind of fears, misapprehensions and confusion that persons who offer their labour experience have when it comes time to consider what that labour is worth to them as individuals. No one in this Legislature argues - at least I hope not - that collective bargaining is a bad concept for labour as workers in the marketplace.

What do major corporations do when they want to make a decision about the value of the product that is being produced by that corporation? What do they do? They simply make a decision and they argue, based on the marketplace. The collective bargaining unit is the same thing. Collectively there is a decision made about the value, at this time, to be placed on the labour that contributes so substantially to the production of that product.

You have this tremendous power on the part of the corporation to increase its prices and to deal with its employees - who are quite often unorganized into collective bargaining units - in a very arbitrary and autocratic fashion. You get what you can. I don't think there is anyone in this province in 1977 who can rationally argue that the individual worker has any kind of power or bargaining strength to bargain his own salary or rate, particularly in a time when we're experiencing in British Columbia Adam Smith's concept of the necessary poor - the unemployed. With 10 per cent of this province's labour force unemployed, can the man or woman who is employed have any bargaining power when there is that residual pool of unemployed labour waiting to take that person's job? It is for that reason, Mr.

Chairman, that every other jurisdiction in Canada is moving toward making it easier - perhaps it's better to say making it less difficult - for the unorganized workers of this province to form collective bargaining units.

It's elegant sham, Mr. Chairman, for the minister to suggest that he's raising this percentage to qualify for an application for certification before the Labour Relations Board to avoid triflers. That is clearly implied in every move, and particularly this move that the minister is making to amend the Labour Code. It has worked well, Mr. Chairman. Ask your own Labour Relations Board. It's working very well. There was no need to tinker with this Code - none whatsoever. It's simply a parlour room concession to the friends of the minister who happen to be on management's side. There is no other basis, or rationale, or reason for this amendment than to throw up a roadblock.

It does not make the operation of the Labour Code more efficient. It does not ensure industrial peace. It is not in the interests of workers. It can only be interpreted as being in the narrow, selfish interests of those few people in this province who wish the unorganized to remain unorganized, to have them weak and ineffective in their ability to exact a fair return for their labour.

The minister, eloquent though he is, has offered nothing in this committee or in the debate in principle that cannot override that inescapable conclusion that this was a parlour-room concession to a few friends of the government. And that is my view of why every right-thinking member of this chamber should vote against this section.

MR. G. MUSSALLEM (Dewdney): Mr. Chairman, I very seldom get into debate, but I cannot help but stand in my place when I hear the arrogance of some members attempting to convey to this House the impression that this party is opposed to labour. There's nothing that could be further from the truth. Labour prospered. more under this party than any other party - certainly more than under the NDP.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. BARBER: That must be why they liked you so much.

MR. MUSSALLEM: And this percentage figure we speak about - what figure would he have? Would he have it at 30 per cent? Would he have it at 20 per cent?

MR. BARBER: It was 35 per cent, and it worked.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Would he have it at 10 per cent?

[ Page 5823 ]

MR. BARBER: It was 35 per cent, and it worked.

MR. N. LEVI (Vancouver-Burrard): It was 35!

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please.

MR. MUSSALLEM: It's a question of just a figure that you would have. In my personal opinion, it reflects more clearly the intention of the company concerned when you have a larger number proposing to join the union.

Mr. Chairman, we hear these loose remarks about unionism. But it is not everybody that is wanted in the unions. I've had a personal experience when I endeavoured to encourage all the automobile dealers in this province to join the union, and to my dismay, the union didn't want them all. They wanted only the larger ones.

MR. LAUK: Was it the Social Credit League?

MR. MUSSALLEM: No, the union organizers, I'm telling you. Don't get the idea that everything is union. Half the employees of this province work for small business - that is, in the private sector. But this half unions do not want. Let us not get sanctimonious. The hon. member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) has just spoken. He's talking about large corporations. Yes, large corporations are hard - true. They have to be. But large unions are hard - that's true. They have to be. There's nothing wrong with that. The principle is that unionism and management, as I've said before, must work in co-operation and not in confrontation. This does not encourage confrontation. This will encourage more of a standard of understanding between the employees and the employers. And that's what it is - nothing more. Forty-five per cent, we say. Would you have it 10 per cent?

MR. LEVI: Thirty-five.

MR. MUSSALLEM: What is the figure 35? Why 35? What about the other 6S per cent who didn't want to join? What about them?

MR. NICOLSON: That's not the point.

MR. MUSSALLEM: All right. So we bring it to 45, which is a more equitable figure and it's still fair. If you have 35 per cent, you'll have 45 per cent. If you don't have 45 per cent, I don't think you should be there.

I've just heard from the hon. member for Vancouver Centre the danger of centralized power. I think it is a real danger too, but it's a danger in the hands of the union as well as a danger in the hands of an employer. What We should be working for here is an understanding between employer and employee, between union and management. That's what we should do in this House. That is our purpose: to get employment rolling in British Columbia. We do not need any more confrontations. We do not need any more of the system of trouble, battle and action.

This party, the great New Democratic Party, would show its statesmanship if it would get off the party line and work for the province of British Columbia and recognize the fact of what this party is trying to do. We're trying to give equity to all British Columbians, not to any single group.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, before you proceed, the Chair has allowed a certain amount of leeway tonight in debate. In future, I would suggest that we stick strictly to those points relevant to the section at hand.

MR. BARBER: Mr. Chairman, I think it's fair to point out that if the government didn't want confrontation, if the government really believed in industrial peace, they would never have brought in a bill like this.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, we're speaking on section 6.

MR. BARBER: I'm speaking particularly to the section which has most certainly offended the trade union movement and sensible employer organizations in this province. They have all pointed out, as do we, that if you didn't want confrontation, you would never have conceived of, much less attempted to push through this Legislature, a section as backward and stupid as this one.

This section serves only one purpose, Mr. Chairman. It says that previously 35 per cent of those in a unit had to indicate that they wished a vote to be taken in order that the whole unit become certified. The government now says that figure should be 45 per cent before the vote shall be taken. That's what it says, Mr. Member for Dewdney (Mr. Mussallem) . It doesn't say that 45 per cent now or 35 per cent previously will win you the certification. It's merely the figure you need to obtain in order to take a vote - one out of three.

The only purpose served by this Section 1s the minister's political purpose. No employer organization whose name the minister has dropped in this debate has asked for it; no trade union organization has asked for it. The only source we can find advocating this foolish and conflict-producing section lies within the extreme right wing of this minister's own caucus. No one else wanted it. No one else wanted the trouble, the conflict; no one else wanted the difficulties that have ensued and will inevitably ensue from proclamation of this section.

[ Page 5824 ]

The minister says, without defending it, that somehow 45 per cent is more proper and fair a figure in order to obtain a vote for certification purposes than 35 per cent. Why should that be, Mr. Chairman? What reasons are there? There are none that make any sense at all. None that even form whole sentences have come from the minister. There have been a few across-the-aisle comments and nothing broader or more philosophic or more reasonable than that.

Now I want to make a comparison, Mr. Chairman, with another form of certification, so to speak, that is in the public life of British Columbia equally important. I'm sure you will understand the analogy which I'm drawing. Let's talk, if we may, about the vote required in order to obtain incorporation of a municipality or a village or a district in the province of British Columbia. I want to talk about an experience which occurred about a year ago in what we call the western community of Victoria - the Langford-Colwood-Sooke-Metchosin area of the Greater Victoria Regional District.

Did you hear then, Mr. Chairman, any call from that government or any bill requiring the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to obtain in writing the signatures of 45 per cent of the people of the western community of greater Victoria before calling for an incorporation vote? Did you hear any cry from those democrats opposite that in order to ensure that the people's business be done properly, the promoters of this incorporation procedure in the western community should have had to have by petition or some other means 45 per cent of the electors of that area on a roll before the minister would call a vote? You did not. You would not. Of course not - no one would call for such a thing. To the contrary, the minister decided on his own initiative that there was enough public interest out there that the people should be able to take a vote for the purpose of incorporation.

Mr. Chairman, before you cut me off, look at the comparison. A vote to incorporate a municipality, a district or a village is surely as important in the public life of this province as a vote to incorporate a trade union, if "incorporate" can be used in both those senses. They are applying a double standard. They are applying a hypocritical double standard when it serves their political purposes.

They never raised the question out in Sooke, Colwood, Langford and Metchosin of how many people should sign the list before they take a vote for incorporation purposes. When it serves their political purposes to deny the right of workers to organize in an effective and efficient way, then they will, of course, prattle on and on and on about raising the figure from 35 per cent to 45 per cent before they can even take a vote for incorporation purposes, speaking again in the sense of the trade union becoming incorporated through the certification process. In the case of the one in Colwood, Langford, Sooke and Metchosin, we told the minister he had no support at all. We told him that no one wanted it except the chamber of commerce. He didn't believe us.

He called a wasteful and expensive vote and he got less than 10 per cent of the people out there to endorse it. But he did so in the context of government policy which, because it serves their political purposes, allowed them to try for a foolish and absolutely unnecessary vote in the western community of Greater Victoria.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, your analogy may be in order, but delving into a particular vote in a municipality is not in order.

MR. BARBER: What I'm pointing out in detail, Mr. Chairman, is that in another case, where there was virtually no evidence whatever of a popular demand to take a vote for, if you will, certification or incorporation, because it served their hypocritical political purposes, they called the vote anyway and it went down the tube, as properly it should have, because nobody wanted it. Now that it serves the purposes of their supporters, their donors, their contributors and the people who pull that particular minister's strings, they've now decided that 35 per cent isn't adequate or accurate or fair enough a figure; that 45 per cent is somehow justifiable.

It's not justifiable. Were there a justification, we would have heard it from the minister. All we've heard are mealy-mouthed, meaningless justifications for what was obviously forced, either through him or on him, by his own caucus. The minister's defence is weak, hopefully because the minister's belief in this particular provision is equally weak. The minister's defence is lame, because no doubt he was kicked down the stairs in the first place in order to push it through. Otherwise, surely we would have heard a more vigorous and authoritative justification for changing from 35 per cent to 45 per cent the number of persons required before a vote was even taken.

This is a clumsy and foolish section. It has discredited the minister. No one believes his story about the 55 per cent mistake. I don't know anyone who believes that one. No one believes in the justification for changing it from 35 to 45 per cent. A friend of mine said in the hall a little while ago that this is a step backward. Another friend of mine said: "Yes, it is. it's a goose-step :backwards." What do they want to do this for? What's the point in engineering this kind of conflict in the industrial sector? Whose purposes are served? Mr. Chairman, let them have the good sense to leave well enough alone.

MR. A.B. MACDONALD (Vancouver East): Mr. Chairman, it's sad to see that the Minister of Labour

[ Page 5825 ]

should bring in this section, which, however you cut it, makes it harder for the unorganized to organize.

Here's another quotation from the Kidd Brothers produce case that I referred to this afternoon. This is the real world that I'm talking about when I'm referring to these kind of examples, not the world of lawyers, who have their Bar Association, or egg producers, who've got their Egg Marketing Board by legislation - they're all right if they've got their quota. You can go all through society and find the protected people, the big business monopolies. There are lots of the fat cats who are safe and secure, but out there are a lot of people who are unorganized and unable to protect, themselves against the economic storms. In the Kidd Brothers produce case, in the board's decision it stated that Karen Morberg resigned from the union a short time after Poatser. When it appeared that the employer had no knowledge of her union membership, that does not in any way negate the influence which the employer's conduct undoubtedly had on her decision to resign. Despite her protestations to the contrary at the hearing -protestations which were given in the presence of her employer - it appeared to the board she considered it risky to be involved with the union. Karen Morberg might very well, in a secret ballot, vote for the union that will protect her wages and conditions, but she probably wouldn't sign a union card to get that vote. Possibly she's unreasonably worried about the consequences of being pro-union in terms of her job and livelihood, and those she has to support. Maybe not. Maybe there were genuine risks. Maybe she just thought there were risks, but what I'm objecting to in this Section 1s that a Minister of Labour - not a minister of industry, or a minister of icing cake, or anything of that kind - should bring in legislation which will make it harder for people to have collective bargaining.

MR. J.J. KEMPF (Omineca): Minister of garbage.

MR. MACDONALD: Now what's the use of a Minister of Labour like that?

MR. BARNES: Right on!

MR. MACDONALD: We have one of the lowest percentages of unorganized people in the country. We are primitive in comparison to European....

MR. L.A. WILLIAMS (Minister of Labour): Nonsense!

MR. MACDONALD: I'm glad the minister spoke up. Let him speak up and say that everybody should be organized - that we should have 70 or 80 or 90 per cent organized. You're going the opposite way. Every one of the amendments of this bill which you brought in is anti-labour and making it harder for the unorganized, the weak, the low-income earners, the people with no job security, the people who are discriminated against, the women, the minorities. You're making it harder for those people in our society to organize and protect themselves. For a Minister of Labour to do that, excusable in a minister of industry, is inexcusable in a Minister of Labour. We say that there should be no second-class citizens in this country.

MR. L.B. KAHL (Esquimalt): Settle down. Do the lawyers have a good union now?

MR. MACDONALD: We're opposed to separation on the grounds of race, colour or creed in this country because we believe there should be no second class citizens in this country. In this bill you're dividing those who are all right, who've got economic bargaining power and muscle, and you're cutting them off as one privileged class against the unorganized. If you'd brought in the kind of legislation that would try to curb the power of big unions, or big business, we'd look at that, but I think it's disgraceful that you bring it in against the weakest segment of our society. That's what you're going to do.

Karen Morberg - that kind of person - whether she's in a bank or a service industry, or in Hudson's Bay or something of that kind, is probably not going to get a union as long as we have a government that makes it harder and harder for those people to have organization, and a government of people who are perfectly well off themselves in the legal profession, or whatever it is, where they have automatic bargaining power given to them by statute. But to cut it off from these people, the weak, disorganized, the unorganized, the low-income earners in society, is creating second-class citizens. That is not the work of a Minister of Labour.

MR. W.S. KING (Revelstoke-Slocan): I certainly associate myself with all of the remarks that my colleagues have made, and, of course, I indicated my attitude towards this particular section before the supper adjournment. I don't think we've really impressed the minister, Mr. Chairman. I think the minister is locked into some subservient position -either to the Munchkins or to elements of the Employers' Council and corporations of this province - which forces him to take a position which he can't defend in good conscience. He sits there in embarrassed hangdog fashion and offers no defence. I'm sure, Mr. Chairman, I've heard no defence that was of any value in this House as yet.

Interjection.

[ Page 5826 ]

MR. KING: He's getting exercised. Perhaps he'll say something eventually. I hope he makes it intelligent, Mr. Chairman. I hope he does.

AN HON. MEMBER: Get him on his feet.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: It'll be a change from anything you've offered.

MR. KING: I want to ask the minister if he has thought about the amendments contained in section 6 which changed the open period for rating. I don't particularly argue with the new criteria that the minister has introduced with respect to shutting out raids on an annual basis, I think there's a lot to be said for that approach. But that new provision, taken in concert with the higher percentage requirements for application, is something that I wonder if the minister has taken into consideration.

. I wonder if the minister has thought about a union under the possible raid attack by a competitor trade union that might contrive in one way or another, through a friendly or a fraternal relationship with another trade union, to mount an abortive raid - one that is calculated and destined not to succeed, but has the subsequent effect of rendering them safe and insulated from further raid by a valid and real competitor for a period of two years. I worry about that possibility in light of the language and the new framework that the minister has set up. I don't know just how the Labour Relations Board would come to grips with that kind of problem. It would be most difficult to unearth and prove, and yet it seems to me it is an option that is now available to insulate and protect the existing bargaining unit from raid by a competitor. I don't know; maybe that's a good thing too. If that is the intent, it should be done in a much more open and above-board way than the possible back door that's allowed through this language.

I don't know if the minister has given it any thought. I want to tell the minister that the trade union movement has certainly given it some thought. There are trade unions looking at the possibility of that kind of situation developing in the province under the amendments. I'm not sure that it's possible. I wish the minister would comment on it.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I'm glad the member for Revelstoke-Slocan raised the last point, because it was a matter that concerned us during the preparation of amendments to section 39. We have had representations - very serious ones - with regard to those consequences.

Considered opinion, however, makes it quite clear that if any trade union believes that it can use section 39 (2) as it is now under the amendment to bring forward any specious application - one which is not bona fide - for the purpose of attempting to propose an application for a raid, they will find themselves closed out.

The Labour Relations Board is alert to the particular problem whereby an attempt by a union to put forward an application in a way of foreclosing any others from bringing applications is something that is not to be permitted under this legislation or under the regulations or practices of the board. An application is a bona fide application, and there's to be no question about that.

Mr. Chairman, we've had a lot of interesting discussion this evening on section 6. A lot of it, I'm afraid, is ill-informed, obviously designed for whatever purposes may be appropriate for debate this evening. I only wish that the members who addressed themselves with so much concern to this section had, with equal concern, looked at the statistics that face the trade union movement, based on the records of the Labour Relations Board of this province. Those members would have recognized, as the government recognizes, the problem that is faced by the trade union movement under the present Code, and the serious implications there are for the trade union movement and for unorganized workers by adopting the guidelines that are presently established in the Code.

I might say in passing that the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson) asked me a question as to what my goal was with respect to the organizing of unorganized workers. I would have thought that the member for Nelson-Creston would have recognized that that is a very specific obligation of the trade union movement in this province. I suppose the trade union movement can well consider the way in which they discharge that obligation. It is interesting to note that in 1975 we had 965 applications for certification in British Columbia. In 1976 that dropped to 735 applications. That may be the product of 1975's work. Perhaps there are fewer groups that require organization. But when you consider that just under 45 per cent of our workers in British Columbia are organized, I think there is still ample scope for the trade union movement t o discharge that responsibility. That's their decision.

At any rate, in 1976, there were 735 applications for certification in this province, but 119 of those were withdrawn by the trade unions on their own behalf for their own reasons. Of the remaining ones, 67 were dismissed for a variety of reasons, 34 more were beyond the jurisdiction of the board, and in 11 cases the application by one trade union was rejected because the employees were represented by a different trade union. Of the remainder, 22 were rejected outright by the board. Now when you total those figures, you find that out of 735 certification applications in 1976 - and those members of the opposition who are involved in the trade union movement will know the work, the energy and the

[ Page 5827 ]

expense involved in producing those applications....

MR. KING: So you're going to make it tougher for them now. That's your answer. Make it tougher for them.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: If the member for Revelstoke-Slocan would just like to wait until I finish, then maybe he will understand what it is that he's done to the trade union movement.

MR. KING: That's utter nonsense!

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Of 735 applications in the province of British Columbia in 1976,253 - a third of them - came to naught. Now is this the way in which the trade union movement performs its responsibility to the unorganized workers of this province? It involves them and their employers and the unions themselves in all of the difficulties that there are in approaching organizations, only to find that a third of those applications - 253 out of 735 -come to nothing.

MR. LAUK: The master of sophistry.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: The fact of the matter is it's not sophistry at all, Mr. First Member for Vancouver Centre. The statistics clearly show that the applications which fail are those which come in at 35 per cent. Good trade union practice brings in applications at a much higher figure than that, with most of them over 50 per cent in the very first instance.

I With this record, you would suggest that somehow or other we're doing a disfavour or an injustice to the unorganized workers by challenging the trade union movement to make sure that when it does its work in the organizing of unorganized workers, it follows the example which is always followed by good, solid trade union practice in this province. You don't skim in at the bottom, because that's where you fail. When you fail, you fail not only the trade union movement, but you fail those unorganized workers whom you have committed to join the union in the hope that they're going to be organized. You let them down.

So you're complaining because we offer a higher standard, a higher goal for the trade union movement, before they go to all of the problems that are involved in applications for certification. I trust that the members of the opposition are not suggesting to the government and to the trade union movement that they can't meet this challenge; that they can't meet this higher test; that they can't do a better job for the unorganized workers than has been the case heretofore, as the records clearly show. Is that what the official opposition thinks of the trade union movement in this province? If it is, let them stand up and say so, because I don't happen to believe that's the case at all.

I just happen to believe that the trade union movement has to have its attention drawn to these kinds of statistics and to the consequences that can flow from a continuation of this kind of performance. Not only is it costly to the trade unions, to the unorganized worker and to the employer; it's also very costly to the government. We don't handle this number of applications in a Labour Relations Board in this province except at very great expense, interfering with the other important work which the Labour Relations Board in this province is obliged to carry on.

It's been an interesting debate on this whole issue. If you take the time to study the statistics, you will recognize that the workers in this province who are to be organized must be clearly organized. The union, having completed its responsibility - and it is their responsibility - are entitled to have from their workers, and are entitled to show to the employer that they have, the clear mandate to represent the unit. When they have that, then they will enjoy all of the rights that the Labour Code provides them and they will have the full support of this minister.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, that was an example of the elegant kind of sophistry that I mentioned when I opened my remarks on section 6.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: You can't even pronounce the word.

MR. LAUK: This minister has taken a group of statistics to support his argument, without relating the provisions in the amendment under section 6 to the statistics he provided the committee. They were totally uncorrelated. A third failed, he said. Having regard for the comments by the member for Revelstoke-Slocan (Mr. King) , the first member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) , the second member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Barnes) , and so on, which graphically illustrate the difficulties presented, to those workers who wish to collectively bargain and have themselves certified as such, a one-third failure rate is pretty fair going. Was the minister listening to the first member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) when he said that the unfair labour practices, and those were the ones that surfaced and were brought to public attention... ?

You know, Mr. Chairman, through you to the minister, what kind of insidious pressure there could be subtly brought to bear on the workers of any workplace not to bargain, not to join a trade union. The minister knows this, and it's unfortunate that he would get up and give us those statistics. How many of that third that failed had 45 per cent signed before receiving their vote? How many had 35 per cent?

[ Page 5828 ]

How many had 50 per cent? He did not relate the number of persons signed to the third that failed in the ultimate test before the board.

The minister asks: does the opposition say that labour will not meet this challenge because he has raised the ante? Can labour not take on this higher test? Mr. Chairman, they could and they will meet this challenge and take this higher test, but they don't need to. The stumbling block is a caprice on the minister's part and a clear demonstration of his prejudice against organized labour in this province.

The organized trade union movement in this province have met greater challenges than the Minister of Labour. They have met Bill 33 in the past. They've met challenges from other anti-labour governments and they'll meet this one as well.

MR. MACDONALD: I just want to add a word to what was said by the first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) . Those statistics were meaningless, Mr. Chairman. Of the 700 applications, how many were there that prevailed in the case of an existing union where there was an application, or were these all new applications for certification?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: New applications.

MR. MACDONALD: You're talking about new applications with no union.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Unorganized workers.

MR. MACDONALD: The member for Vancouver Centre is perfectly correct. You know, in the kind of economy and employer pressure that these people are facing today, that's a very good record of success. I think it's disgraceful that the Minister of Labour should say to the trade union movement: "We're going to decide for you when you ask for a vote to save you some money." Why don't you let the trade union movement decide for itself whether it will put in an application for certification and ask for a vote? Why don't you allow the working people of the province of B.C. to decide whether they'll go out on an organizing campaign and try and organize the unorganized? Why should this government make it harder for them to organize and make it easier for the employer to practise unfair labour practices? That's what we're talking about.

Now I suppose there is some additional work and maybe public expense in terms of processing the applications, but this government should not step in and tell the working people of this province: "We're going to decide for you. It's too costly to organize." Let them decide that for themselves.

It's a Big Brother attitude for this government to say: "Just in your own interest, fellows and boys and girls out there who are looking for trade union organization to protect yourselves, we're going to make it a little harder for you in your own interests. This coalition of car dealers, millionaires and political turncoats of many colours will decide what's best for you." What are you going to do? Blow the nose of the labour movement next? I think the labour movement should be allowed to decide the question of when they'll pool their resources and try to help their brothers and sisters in the unorganized industries and when they will apply for a vote.

MR. KEMPF: Point Grey lumberjack!

MR. MACDONALD: While most of the industry is organized, there are a lot of lumber buccaneers who should be brought to heel. One of them is making a lot of noise in the back corner right now.

This is a tragic night, you know, when we see here in the name of the Labour ministry a turning back of the clock in terms of organization of the people of the province of B.C. Giving in to this redneck bunch in the back benches to whom the Minister of Labour is a hero - that's what it's all about. It's internal politics within this coalition striving to keep together on the basis of: "If you don't hang together, you're going to hang separately." That's your philosophy and that's all the political philosophy you've ever had. You've got a group down there - and you can hear them from this end of the room - that says: "Oh, we've got to show them that we're not going to give in to these big unions and this trade unionism and that sort of thing, and not let the ordinary people have the protection that we've enjoyed all our lives."

I think it's a tragedy. You're just making it harder for the unorganized to organize. Labour didn't ask for that, so let's have no crocodile tears about it. You're increasing the, weapons of unfair labour practices in the hands of the employers when they do try to organize.

MR. G.S. WALLACE (Oak Bay): Mr. Chairman, just in case the pearls of wisdom which I cast before the House just before supper were disregarded, I would like to return to the debate.

The minister has stated that because a third of the applications cannot come up with success - 35 per cent is a minimum requirement of signed-up members - perhaps it should be 45 per cent. I think that really is arguing in reverse.

As I pointed out earlier this afternoon, if we apply what is a reasonable percentage of support that any person should seek in a manner as important as this, many members would not be sitting in this House if that kind of rigid requirement were tied in to municipal and provincial and federal elections. Surely the standard that a person has to attain seeking a mandate to represent many thousands of citizens is of far greater importance than the whole question of

[ Page 5829 ]

certifying one of many thousands of unions. If you want to draw comparisons, I would think that anyone sitting in this House with 41, 42 or 43 per cent of all the voters in their riding is not too different from 35 per cent of employees seeking to become organized in a union. I think we're losing sight of the central issue here by arguing specific figures.

We've got, the KKK going over there again, Mr. Chairman. I'm really surprised that with all the redneck outbursts from over there week after week, we've taken so long to realize that it originates from the KKK.

Interjection.

MR. LAUK: Go and iron your sheet.

MR. WALLACE: Mr. Chairman, it isn't as though the existing legislation we have is so different from other jurisdictions. I'd like to remind the minister that in Tory Ontario, of all places, the number of signed-up members who can apply or who can justify application for certification is 35 per cent.

MR. LAUK: They recently lowered it.

MR. WALLACE: I don't think that anyone could suggest that Bill Davis is some kind of pinko, to use the suggestion from one of the KKK delegates.

Well, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to vote against this section, so I imagine that I'll be returning to the description of "pinko" by the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) . But seriously, it does seem to me that we're losing sight of the fundamental thing. I do wish the minister would realize that I'm deadly serious when I say this; I'm not just standing here to try and make a speech. The fact is that balance or the appearance of balance in the attitude of this government between management and labour is what is at stake. Whether or not the minister might feel quite justified in what he is doing in this particular respect, it is creating, whether he is willing to admit it or not, a strong suggestion of anti-labour policy by this government. That is what disturbs the balance: the feeling, rightly or wrongly, by unions that this government is out to get them, to weaken their power and to make it more difficult for the trade union movement to make the kind of progress that it has made over several decades.

I don't care what anyone says, the overall advantage to the community as a whole as a result of trade union activity going back to the days when children worked in the mines has been good for society. The back bench can squawk all they like, Mr. Chairman; the fact is that we've now reached a point in society where the good that the union movement has done is indeed likely to be dangerous if any one of the two sides becomes overly powerful. That's what we should all be concerned about: the fact that we have neither excessively powerful management nor excessively powerful unions. It's a little bit like justice, Mr. Chairman. It not only has to be done; it has to be seen to be done.

AN HON. MEMBER: Why don't you take a stand, Scotty?

MR. WALLACE: This kind of Section 1n this bill in my view does disturb considerably the sense of balance which in the past 18 months or two years has created the kind of reasonable harmony in a very sensitive area of human relations which all the columnists and all the commentators and all the experts in labour management seem to be agreed upon. About the only thing they are agreed upon is that in the last couple of years we've had a very reasonable degree of harmony in a field of human relations which until not too long ago was one of constant confrontation and acrimony which was to the disadvantage of everybody. Nobody really gains from strikes and lockouts.

This Section 1n itself may not be as acutely important as both sides of the House are making out. But what it is doing, without any doubt at all if one cares to read all the reaction ' in the press and elsewhere is fostering in the trade union movement the strong conviction that this government, one little step by another, is spelling out its anti-union bias. That's where the problem lies, not in whether really it should be 35 per cent, or 40 per cent, or 45 per cent minimum of signed-up members.

Interjection.

MR. WALLACE: We've got another chirp from the background here. We're not suggesting that this is the figure which should vindicate recognition or certification. We're only asking for access to a vote. What's so bad about that? If you give people access to a decision, what's so wrong about that? We have criticisms of Rene Levesque for all his fancy ideas about a referendum. He's simply asking that people in Quebec be given access to a vote~ What's so bad about that? I thought that's what democracy was based on - the right of individuals to free expression of their views and ideas.

Here we're suggesting that it's not right to allow as small a number as 35 per cent to ask for the total people in the group to be given a chance to express their opinion. Personally I think that's reasonable, and I'm not just thinking in terms of trade union activity; I'm thinking about the many kinds of activities that human beings become involved in.

It would seem to me, Mr. Chairman, that even although the minister has pointed out that one third of applications fail, again I would say: is that so bad?

[ Page 5830 ]

Do you buy democracy with dollars? The minister made the point that we can't afford to have one third of applications fail. Is that too much a price to pay for labour-management harmony?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I didn't say that at all. You're putting words in my mouth. I didn't say we couldn't afford it. We can afford to have them all fail.

MR. WALLACE: The minister says I'm putting words in his mouth. I'll try to rephrase it. I'll say that the minister pointed out that there were 735 applications in 1976, and 253 of them failed. He said: "This isn't only costly to management, and it's not only costly to the unions, but it's costly to the government." I think these were the words you used.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: And to the employees, too.

MR. WALLACE: At any rate, Mr. Chairman, I don't even want to argue in great strength on the point of view of cost. I'm arguing from the point of view of the reasonable degree of harmony which now appears to exist in this province to a degree which hasn't existed in all the years I've lived here, which isn't more than 16 years. I can recall some of the terrible problems we've had in the past, and when that minister sat on this side of the House he knows how the government of that day waved red flags to the trade union movement. Now this isn't a red flag, but it's certainly an indication that this government, for whatever motive, would like to make it tougher for trade unions to be organized, to increase their activity, and to successfully organize those who are presently unorganized. That is the root and the heart of the problem that arises in section 6 of this bill.

I feel that there is still time for the minister to reconsider, and I believe that it isn't just failure or success on section 6 that is the all-important issue. The all-important issue is how the trade union movement will react in other ways to try and prove to this government that it is not about to be pushed, shoved, or otherwise manoeuvred into a position of greater weakness in what, as the minister knows, is a constant, ongoing battle by either side to try and persuade the government of the day to give them a little extra advantage in the battle. I don't know how often both sides of this House have talked about the importance of trying to keep both sides as equal as possible and not giving either side an advantage or a strength which will weaken the other, but that's exactly what this section 6 does. It weakens the capacity of the trade union movement to continue on its path from 42.6 per cent of the organized. Of all the work force in 1971, 42.6 per cent were organized. In 1976, it was 44.9 per cent. The clear message is that the government today wants to make sure that that 44.9 per cent will certainly not increase, and, in fact, in the passage of time, may decrease.

There is no question, Mr. Chairman, that even although the minister's point is correct in itself -namely, that this will increase the validity of the mandate which a union would gain - that is only a statement that is literal in itself. It doesn't obscure the fact that it makes it more difficult for unorganized workers to become organized because of the higher demand made on the minimum number of workers who must be signed up before application for a vote is accepted.

It's easy for this government to pass this section by virtue of its own majority, by virtue of the kind of strong feelings that have been expressed from the back benches of his own party. For the benefit of the member for Fort George (Mr. Lloyd) , who was interjecting, I'm saying that in 1971 - now I'm quoting Statistics Canada figures if you want to argue with them - it was 42.6 per cent of the work force, and 44.9 per cent of the work force in 1976.

AN HON. MEMBER: What does that mean?

MR. WALLACE: I think the backbenchers are a little restless tonight. Maybe they're just a little uneasy when they hear the reasonable force of some of the arguments that are being made, Mr. Chairman.

I'm saying that it is not the validity or otherwise of this section which is important; it's the fact that, by the trade union movement and by many individuals who are reacting publicly, it spells out an anti-union bias on the part of this government. In the; light of that evidence, we can expect a degree of confrontation and hostility between management and unions which at this point in time is something which appears to be quite unnecessary, to keep coming back to the point which has been raised in this debate both in second reading and in committee. Usually we've had legislation in this province that caused problems when it was an attempt to solve an existing problem. If there is any existing problem at the present time, I don't think the minister has spelled it out.

He stated on an earlier section that he had requests from employers to bring in the amendment we debated in section 2, and it may well be....

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: I didn't say that at all.

MR. WALLACE: The minister interjects that he didn't say that at all. If Hansard shows the opposite, I'll certainly withdraw that remark, but I can recall quite clearly. I think I may be wrong in saying section 2; 1 believe it was Section 1 on the definition of an employee and the whole question of enlarging the scope of the group of individuals who should not be covered in a collective agreement. So for the sake of Hansard, I'll readily correct that mistake: it was

[ Page 5831 ]

Section 1 where the minister stated this afternoon that he had received requests from employers.

I would like to ask the same question in regard to section 6: has the minister received requests from employers that the minimum number of signed-up employees should be increased above 35 per cent? If this is the case, then of course it just adds further force to the argument that this amendment clearly paints the picture of the government as being one which wishes to shift the balance of power so that it is more difficult for the trade union movement to enable unorganized workers to become organized. I hope the minister will care to answer these questions. Did he in fact have requests from employers to increase the percentage?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, in answer to that question, the answer is categorically no.

MS. SANFORD: I think we discovered in the minister's remarks earlier on in this section that one of the major reasons we see this change from 35 per cent to 45 per cent relates to the general philosophy of this government, which revolves around money, Mr. Chairman. He mentioned that it was expensive to indulge in the democratic process.

I have to agree with him. It is expensive to have democracy. It is expensive for- the people involved to put on campaigns and go to the pools, as we have to do and as municipal councillors have to do. It's expensive to go through the Labour Relations Board.

Mr. Chairman, I'm afraid that aside from the red flag which this Section 1s - when you take that with the other sections of this bill, it is a red flag in front of the labour movement - it's the concern with money, that it's going to cost.

Mr. Chairman, right now it costs the labour movement about $1,000 for every new member that is signed up and becomes certified. In some cases, it runs as high as $6,500 for a unit per member to sign up. But it's not the labour movement that's asking for 45 per cent. It's a terrible expense to have people certified. It's a tremendous amount of work, effort and time, but they're not the ones who are asking for the 45 per cent. It's this minister. And I suspect it relates to money as much as to anything else, Mr. Chairman.

* Section 6 as amended approved on the following division:

YEAS - 26

NAYS - 16

Ms. Sanford requests that leave to asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

On section 7.

MS. SANFORD: Mr. Chairman, here we have the situation where a group of employees can apply for certification when they have not less than 45 per cent and not more than S5 per cent of the members signed up in a union. Now this creates a very strange situation, because if they have 54 per cent of the people within a unit actually signed up - actually holding cards - they then would go to the Labour Relations Board and the Labour Relations Board will say: "No, you do not have 55 per cent yet, therefore you must take the vote." If the vote says 50 plus one, it's accepted. But they already have 54 per cent of the people or 54.9 per cent of the people signed up in that unit.

The reason that we have this strange situation, Mr. Chairman, is that the minister fumbled the whole thing from day one, because he had intended it all to be 55 per cent. He defended that for three days before he changed his mind and changed just one section of it. Now we have the ludicrous situation, . Mr. Chairman, where the minister or the Labour Relations Board says: "You have 54.9 per cent of the members actually signed up. Here are their cards. Yes, I can see that. But because the minister in his legislation said that it had to be 55 per cent, I have to order a vote. But then if you get 50 per cent plus one, you can be certified."

Mr. Chairman, if the minister had not had such sloppy drafting, or had not changed his mind, or had not been influenced by the Premier, or whatever happened in those three days, we would not have this ludicrous situation.

MR. KING: I think, by the minister's own arguments, he must recognize that this is an anomaly that should be corrected. The minister's approach previously, Mr. Chairman, was that where the trade union movement was experiencing problems, he put a few more obstacles in the way. When they applied

[ Page 5832 ]

with 35 per cent, he suggested that they weren't very successful, so he is going to make the obstacle course a little steeper, a little more difficult for them.

That's a typical old Gaglardi approach to labour. You know, kick the slats out of them and tell them you love them at the same time. Embrace them; say you're doing this in their interest. It's a typical Gaglardi approach, and that shocks me, coming from a Liberal, Mr. Chairman.

But really, as the member for Comox (Ms. Sanford) has pointed out, a representation vote in labour law has never been required when a union could demonstrate they had a majority of the units signed up with cards.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: It is now.

MR. KING: I appreciate that it will be under this law. I appreciate that, and I want to draw to the minister's attention the anomalous situation that creates. As the member has said, the requirement just to win a representation vote is much higher than the requirement in the percentage to win that representation vote. That surely is an anomaly in an terms. Only a lawyer, I suppose, Mr. Chairman, could rationalize that kind of requirement.

The problem with playing the percentage game -and the minister seems to like to play with statistics - is that working people are not statistics, they're real live human beings. The problem with percentages in terms of winning a representation vote is not just the statistical track record of how many succeed before the Labour Relations Board. Thinking and justification went into that provision. In some particular units an organization campaign has to be mounted quickly. The union has to try to win a quick representation vote because of a variety of weapons the employer has at his disposal to frustrate that campaign. That's one of the important reasons that the margin percentage was lowered, allowing trade unions the representation vote.

To say now that it's 45 per cent to make an application, but we won't accept membership cards signed up as a representation vote - when they clearly demonstrate that a majority in that unit supports the union - flies in the face of the argument the minister put previously. He said he was concerned about the cost. Well, in heaven's name, why would you subject a union and the Labour Relations Board to the double task of a representation vote when it's already demonstrated clearly that they hold a majority by the membership cards that they've signed up? Obviously a representation vote is redundant -

54.9 per cent signed up, but you force them to go through the test of demonstrating in a representation vote that they can win 50 per cent plus one. Maybe that's Social Credit funny money calculation. I don't know, but it's anomalous. The minister knows , it's anomalous. If he'd do the right thing, he'd withdraw it.

Section 7 approved on the following division:

YEAS - 26

NAYS - 16

Ms. Sanford requests that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

On section 8.

MS. SANFORD: I wish to state that we are opposed to this section for the same reasons that we have outlined under the previous section. We intend to vote against this section as well, Mr. Chairman.

Section 8 approved on the following division:

YEAS - 25

NAYS - 15

[ Page 5833 ]

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

On section 9.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, I move the amendment to section 9 standing in my name on the order paper. (See appendix.)

Amendment approved.

On section 9 as amended.

MS. SANFORD: This section as amended, Mr. Chairman, clarifies the original confusion around this bill and we still don't know what happened. We don't know what the minister intended originally. We all suspect that he intended to have 55 per cent throughout the bill but then had some pressure from somewhere or other, although he said it was a drafting mistake and he has since changed it to a majority.

But there is a section here that I would like to comment on, Mr. Chairman, and that's the section which allows the board to direct that another representation vote be taken in the event that fewer than 55 per cent of the eligible employees have cast ballots. Now if fewer than 55 per cent of those who are eligible to vote did not vote, the LRB can say: "No, that vote did not, count and we're going to ask you to do it again."

Now I would like to compare that to what happens in municipal elections, Mr. Chairman, because there are numbers of aldermen, school board representatives and mayors who are elected in this province with less than 55 per cent of the eligible electorate voting.

AN HON. MEMBER: Rafe Mair's a good example.

MS. SANFORD: According to this section of the bill, 55 per cent of the eligible voters have to have cast their ballots or else the LRB may, order another vote taken. Now that does not follow the principles that are established, for instance, in the Municipal Act. There's no such thing in the Municipal Act, Mr. Chairman, that says that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing (Hon. Mr. Curtis) can order a new vote and say: "No, the council that was elected on that vote was not really elected, because there were fewer than 55 per cent of the eligible voters voting."

So why does the minister want to have this Section 1n here? Has he talked to the Minister of Municipal Affairs? Have they thought about changing the Municipal Act so that it would be more in line with what the minister is proposing here? It's incredible to me that we in this province allow regional board directors, school board trustees, mayors, aldermen, and, I would assume, MLAs sometimes to be elected with less than 55 per cent of the eligible voters voting. But no mention is ever made about having to take that vote over again. Is the Minister of Municipal Affairs considering changes that will make his Act come in line with this Act? Has there been consultation between those two?

Mr. Chairman, I'm opposed to this Section 1n the bill.

Section 9 as amended approved on the following division:

YEAS - 26

NAYS - 11

Ms. Sanford requests that the division be ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.

Sections 10 and 11 approved.

On section 12.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman ' I move the amendment standing under my name on the order paper. (See appendix.)

Amendment approved.

On section 12 as amended.

MS. SANFORD: Mr. Chairman, I have a few questions under this new section 12, with respect to the definition of perishable property. The question that I have is one which is a hypothetical one, I guess, to a certain extent, in that perishable property, under this duly amended section, could include all sorts of things. I'm wondering if the minister has spend much time or has had much advice with respect to how this new section might be interpreted by the Labour Relations Board.

[ Page 5834 ]

For instance, I would have guessed that lettuce, as an example, could always be considered a perishable product because lettuce is in some stage or another of growing year-round and it matures all year round. As a result, you could consider lettuce a perishable product at any time. But there are all sorts of other things. For instance, newsprint dries out and is not suitable for print after a certain period of time. Could that be considered a perishable product?

I would like to suggest, Mr. Chairman, that under this section they could extend that 72 hours' notice for ever and ever, if there's any threat against this government in terms of a strike, because one of the most perishable products I know is that government.

Mr. Chairman, I would really like the minister to make some comments about the perishable products and the 72 hours' notice.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, I think the member for Comox is again failing to read the Section 1n its entirety. The definitive word is "imminently." That means almost forthwith - spoilage which will result from remaining unattended. It applies in the case of lettuce, which in the course of transport might become subject to damage if it were unattended, and imminently so.

But also there are other products that can become dangerous to life, health or other goods if unattended. We have in mind some chemical products which, in the course of transportation or even processing, might become dangerous to other persons or other adjoining property. That's the reason, of course, that the amendment was offered to section 12, to make it certain that the opportunity that the board has to extend the strike notice or lockout notice beyond 72 hours could not be used in every instance, but only when property was itself subject to loss or damage - perishable property. So I think it's a matter of the imminent prospect of some damage that is the key. That is the intention of the government and certainly there is not the intention to extend it to products that might deteriorate over a period of time. In any event, it will be the board that will make that decision. On the application of a person who believes that the notice period should be extended, they will have to bring themselves within this definition. The definition isn't a conclusive one, as the member will note, and it leaves the scope of the board on the representations made to it to find whether it's perishable property or not.

Section 12 as amended approved.

Title approved.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Chairman, I move the committee rise and report the bill complete with amendments.

Motion approved.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Bill 89, Labour Code of British Columbia Amendment Act, 1977, reported complete with amendments to be considered at the next sitting of the House after today.

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

HON. G.B. GARDOM (Attorney-General): Mr. Speaker', adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 65.

COMMUNITY RESOURCES BOARDS

AMENDMENT ACT, 1977

MR. E.N. VEITCH (Burnaby-Willingdon): Mr. Speaker, I don't want to take up too much time on the debate this evening, but when I spoke on Bill 65 last Friday, I spoke of accountability and the Vancouver Resources Board or, in some cases, the lack of it. I gave a few examples and I could use many, many more.

I could cite the young man from Vancouver who, on October 19,1976, moved at the cost of the Vancouver Resources Board and again, on November 4,1976, the same young man moved at the cost of the Vancouver Resources Board. On November 12 of the same year he moved again. He had a very moving experience, Mr. Speaker, at the cost of the people of British Columbia. I think these are small things, but the list goes on and on.

Mr. Speaker, there are many out there who deserve more help. They certainly deserve greater assistance from the people of British Columbia and from the Ministry of Human Resources. But bureaucracy and people who would beat the system cannot swallow up the entire gross provincial product of this province. The productive sector can only pay so much.

Mr. Speaker, how can we improve the services if funds are siphoned off to those who ~ should not receive them? We cannot and will not sustain an organization such as the Vancouver Resources Board, in its present form, which permits this type of thing to continue.

Mr. Speaker, there is a real need with some people for more direct aid, but there is a greater need, sir. It's a need to lift people up; it's a need to help them to become productive members of society. We've got to help them in a way, sir, that endures, and that's what the hon. Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) is attempting to do.

The first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) commented at some length about the provincial Jobfinder. She stated that the Jobfinder

[ Page 5835 ]

had not procured as many jobs as it would have liked to. Mr. Speaker, with great respect to the hon. member for Vancouver-Burrard, the high crime that this man, Mr. Ron Stew, was accused of is the crime of enthusiasm.

I believe it's more important for the individual and for society to spend money putting one person back into the mainstream, so that he can feel a part of the solution and not part of the problem, so that he can endure with a feeling of self-esteem and confidence. I believe this is more important than spending dribbling sums on moving people around the province from one place to the other, because they may or may not like their place of residence at that point in time - three times in two months.

We cannot continually pump in government aid without any clear aim or direction, Mr. Speaker. There's an old saying in the United Church mission field which goes something like this: "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for life." If you get a person back into the system, not only will that individual endure, but through his productivity and influence, others around him will endure. I say to all the social workers and others in the VRB: forget about the bureaucracy. Go out and serve people and lift them up.

Someone once met with the great Dr. Albert Schweitzer in the heart of deepest Africa. After observing his work for a day, he said: "Dr. Schweitzer, what are you doing here? You're working against seemingly insurmountable odds."

Dr. Schweitzer said: "I work as hard as I can all day, and, when necessary, I go to bed. By God's grace, I get up again the next morning and work as hard as I can that day. I'll work as hard as I can to lift an individual up, to serve people, even if I have to kick against the whole continent. That's all that really matters."

I say to the people in the Vancouver Resources Board, who are going to be brought into the mainstream of the Human Resources system: forget about the bureaucracy and the makeup. Go out and serve people. Serve them in a way that will lift them up higher than they have ever been lifted up before. Lift them up in a way that endures, and, wherever possible, put them back into the mainstream of society. When you do that, you'll know that that's all that really matters.

MR. LEVI: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to pay a tribute to my colleague for Vancouver-Burrard, who spoke at great length last week, enabling me to come back and be able to speak, because I was away doing some business for the Legislature.

When the previous speaker opened his remarks just before, he talked about accountability. We've heard a bit about accountability, particularly from the minister who introduced the bill, but one of the things that puzzles me is: where is his accountability? In the 18 or 20 months in which he's been the minister, he has yet to file a report of his own making in respect to the affairs of his ministry.

Here we are, 10 months into this year and nine months into the fiscal year, and we don't even have the annual report from last year. We have no facts. All we have is a lot of generalizations about how it's supposed to be going. I read the minister's speech. I see that he's one of those kinds of ministers who has speeches written for him. Then he has to sort of stand up and recite them.

AN HON. MEMBER: Read for him.

MR. LEVI: Well, read for him, too, I guess, in some respects.

But I think that what he completely misses is the intent of this legislation when it was first introduced four years ago. He's completely missed it. He didn't understand it then, when he was part of a group of mayors of municipalities whom I met with. I talked to them about the resources board. He doesn't understand it now, nor does he want to understand it. Apart from all of the information that has been given in the speech by the first member for Vancouver-Burrard, and the incomplete, inaccurate information given by the minister ... because I would refer the minister to the response to his speech by the Vancouver Resources Board staff. I'm sure that he's taken a look at it, and they have put the lie to some of the statements that he's made.

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

MR. LEVI: Oh. "Wrong, " he says. Well, it's always been a practice of ministers, if they have nothing good to say or if they've got any facts, to lay them on the table. He has yet to lay one fact on the table of this Legislature about the conduct of his department.

We have an unusual situation in this province, in that the staff of an agency, who are public servants in the Vancouver Resources Board, have laid down their jobs in terms of protest against the actions in relation to this bill. It's an unusual step for people to do that, because some of them can fully expect to be fired. That may be the objective of the minister.

When he gets through firing Mr. Schreck he may start going down the list and firing other people. The nature of the legislation is that it's basically vindictive. It's basically a piece of vindictive legislation. He's not able to sit with a piece of legislation which is viewed by a large number of people around this country and in parts of the world as a unique piece of social policy.

One of the contributions that this province - it

[ Page 5836 ]

doesn't matter about which government - has been able to do in terms of the development of social policy is to create a window through which the rest of the world can look and examine and see what is going on. The origins of resources boards did not happen during the time of the NDP government in terms of the basic thrust. It's been a long-standing debate in the field about the idea of integration and decentralization. Those arguments have been discussed both in the field and in legislatures for years.

In 1968, in Great Britain with the Seebohm report, they looked to an integration process. They couldn't find a vehicle; they couldn't make it happen. In 1970, Claude Castonguay, when he was the minister of social services in Quebec, introduced Bill 65, in which he attempted to create a vehicle which would give a decentralization concept, an integration of service and a representation by the community in having a say in the development of those services. He was also not able to succeed because he could not develop the vehicle.

With all of this knowledge that we had, with the people that we sent to Minnesota who were attempting to do work along the lines of integration and creating a citizens' involvement.... The province of Alberta in 1966 in its social services Act first saw the real need and desire to involve the public in the administration of social services and the concept of decentralization. They also were not able to develop a vehicle.

What is unique about the resources board legislation is that there is a vehicle created there to make the integration process take place, to make the decentralization process take place, to have citizen involvement and, at the same time, to have accountability. It's no good for the minister to stand up and say that he has no access to accountability. That's a lot of nonsense. He obviously does not understand the system. He is not prepared to understand it because it was brought in by another government, so he simply wants to destroy it.

When there was a debate in this House in 1974 at the time of the introduction of the legislation, we discussed at some length how much power the minister could give up and at the same time be accountable to this Legislature. And at no time in the operation of the Vancouver Resources Board has the minister - whether it's the present minister or the previous minister - not been able to be accountable in this House. The mechanism was there. The best mechanism was people who were in the community who were involved.

One of the biggest farces, Mr. Speaker, that we've heard from this government is its concern that there be a continuing interest in the voluntary sector. Since they have been government they have set out to destroy any effectiveness that the voluntary sector could have; they've set out to destroy it. We hear a lot of pap: "We've got to have an involvement in the communities, by the voluntary sector." What this present bill seeks to amend is the voluntary sector. People who sat on the Vancouver Resources Board and all of the other resources boards around the province were volunteers. They received no money, they were elected, and they did the job. That was the essence of the voluntary involvement that that piece of legislation created.

In the minister's speech he points out a number of infractions that he looks at in terms of people who were involved in receiving money they were not entitled to. He makes a big thing about the number of fraud cases that he has brought to the attention of the authorities, but he does not point out that the volume of fraud and prosecution, and successful prosecutions, is no different today from what it was five years ago. He has not been able in the 20 months, or 22 months, to prevent that sort of thing, and yet that is what he has concentrated on. He has not concentrated on the development of the service.

The member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Veitch) talks about people picking themselves up by their bootstraps and teaching them how to fish - how to fish! All they want to do is eat. Don't teach them how to fish. There's all of this platitudinous nonsense that they spout over there about how people are going to lift themselves up. I could tell you one way people over the age of 65 can lift themselves up - with some more money. I can tell you how the handicapped can lift themselves up - with some more money. Ah, and the member, Mr. Speaker, bangs on his desk. Well, talk to that minister over there because he hasn't given an increase since January, 1976, to the handicapped or the people from 60 to 64.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Wrong again!

MR. LEVI: "Wrong again, " he says. Do you want to use April, 1976? You haven't passed on any money to the handicapped since 1976. It's the everlasting shame of this province that you should save $15 million off the backs of people who are handicapped and people between the ages of 60 and 64. "Wrong again, " he says, and the member for Burnaby-Willingdon pounds his desk. He knows as much about this bill as this minister knows, which is virtually nothing.

I have been back east recently, in the last few days. I was in Ontario and talked to people there where they are talking about introducing the resources board concept in terms of their operation. Saskatchewan is looking at introducing the resources board concept in terms of its home-care programme. But this province, for four years, in terms of the rest of this country and places around the world, was the object of some envy in terms of this concept. Now

[ Page 5837 ]

they're seeking to destroy it.

That is the sad part about it. That is the sad part about their inability to understand that here they have an opportunity to make an outstanding contribution in terms of the service and the giving of service. The member from Burnaby-Willingdon talked, Mr. Speaker, about what we should do for people. That's the vehicle - people helping people; not bureaucrats helping people. We know this. We understood it. It's difficult. You know, it's a wonderful thing.

I can remember the debate in 1974, when the leader of the Conservative Party (Mr. Wallace) didn't understand it either and voted against it. The leader of the Liberal Party (Mr. Gibson) voted against it. He didn't understand it, but as it started to operate, he saw it and understood it. He saw it as being something worthwhile, something that needed to be kept, to be treasured. They both stood up and made statements in support of it.

What is remarkable is that the people over there see no value in it. They talk about the bottom line. We weren't talking about the bottom line when we introduced it. We talked about relieving the responsibility of the municipalities in administering social services, and we did that. You haven't done it yet, but we did it. We took the responsibility away and the costs - from Vancouver and Kelowna and Kamloops and Chilliwack - and bailed out the minister's municipality when he ran $3 million over his budget. We were there and provided it.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Wrong again!

MR. D. BARRETT (Leader of the Opposition): You'd like to forget that, wouldn't you? You blew $2 million.

MR. LEVI: We did it with Kamloops, and we did it in Victoria when we co-ordinated the services here. And then they came to the deputy minister and said: "Do you think the minister will bail us out? Please, we made a mistake." We didn't bail him out; we bailed the people out. That's what we did.

That's the level of the minister's understanding: you never got any help from us. No, we never gave him any help. He had such a magnificent tax base over there that he didn't need any help, but every time he went to the UBCM he screamed about the lack of his tax base. Yes, you can sit there and blush, Mr. Minister. I can remember when you used to crawl a little bit when you needed money.

AN HON. MEMBER: It wasn't a pretty sight, either. You gave up your dignity crawling to the social worker. I remember.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You bought it up for an oil refinery.

MR. LEVI: What were we trying to do? What were we really trying to do when we were relieving municipalities of the burden of using their very scarce tax dollars in terms of social services?

MR. BARRETT: Remember that meeting in Surrey?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I was there. You must admit I won that one, Dave.

MR. LEVI: One of the things we have to understand about this minister is this: he is using the Vancouver Resources Board as a stepping stone. He has established himself out in the community as the kind of the rednecks. He's going to articulate anything that the rednecks want to hear, particularly in relation to the welfare system. Why is he doing that?

AN HON. MEMBER: You can call him Bill.

MR. LEVI: Because what is going to happen is very clear with this minister. He's very ambitious. He's going to probably take over the Premier's job. That's what he's got his eye on next. He wants the Premier's job.

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: Well, I happen to think it was the other way around. But the important thing is that he articulates the kinds of things that people want to hear. I think what's interesting is that he's already showing a diminishing return on the kind of attitudes that he has towards people - already a diminishing return for his party and for his government.

It's not by chance that 2,500 people will assemble on a Sunday afternoon in a theatre, in the Orpheum - not as the minister suggested, Mr. Speaker, that it was silly, it was foolish, and that these people were somehow being led by a few people who work for the resources board. If he would have been there and seen it, he would have realized that what he had was the very essence of the idea of a resources board: people participating and people attempting to protect something that they see value in. The idea worked. It was something they wanted to protect and it was something that had to be continued.

So he brings in a bill. Of course, he didn't really need the bill. We know this. He could have done without the bill. He could have taken care of most of what he wanted to do without any legislation. He could have done that without any legislation. He wanted to do the grandiose thing, but he slipped up. He got trapped. He identified the issue with a bill and

[ Page 5838 ]

then, all of a sudden, hundreds and thousands of people around this province started to understand what he was attempting to do: to dismantle something that had a people base on the basis that somehow he was going to save the public money. He has not demonstrated that at all yet.

He's going to save the people money. He should tell us, when he sums up, how much the per capita is for the municipality. It's higher now in terms of the cost than it ever was.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Come on, now! Wrong again.

MR. LEVI: You haven't answered the question on the order paper. We've got to make some kind of summation. Get your deputy minister to take it down and provide the information tomorrow. Answer the questions on the order paper. Tell us what amount of money you're taking from the municipalities to help pay for some of your services. You haven't told us anything. You're not prepared to give us any information on the operation of your department no information whatsoever.

MR. BARRETT: The annual report.

MR. LEVI: He hasn't got an annual report. It's sitting somewhere in the printer's.

You have an accountability system in that department that should deliver you the facts within 10 days of the end of any month. That's the kind of accountability system you have in your department, and you've yet to walk into this House and provide us with any up-to-date figures.

MR. BARRETT: He's the worst person for accountability in the Legislature. He hasn't come square with this House yet.

MR. LEVI: Nothing! He has no ability to answer the question. You're worse than Ralph Loffmark used to be. He used to make up stories when he'd stand up; you make them up while you're sitting down. You never get up. He's an incredible individual. You're my successor.

MR. BARRETT: But he's got a nice smile.

MR. LEVI: Oh, yes, and he dresses well, and that's important. That's very important. He smiles nicely and he dresses well and he sticks the knife into the poor every time he gets an opportunity.

Why does he do it? Because 49 per cent of the people out there love to hear what he says. That's what it was at election time. You can be sure of that. If anything is going to bury this government, it's going to be this bill. It's this kind of legislation that's going to lead to your defeat. You simply cannot ride roughshod over the rights of people in terms of their participation and in terms of resource boards.

It wasn't an easy concept to develop. We knew at the time we developed it that the greatest enemy of the resource board was the Union of B.C. Municipalities. They were scared to death of it. We said to them when we met with them: "Why should you be so exercised about the development of resource boards, which is going to take care of social services at the local level, when at no time have you ever indicated any interest whatsoever in doing anything in terms of social services?" Year after year the UBCM had resolutions on its order paper at their convention asking the government to take over the administration of social services. That's exactly what we did. But we did not want to centralize it. We did not want a bureaucracy.

What are you going to do next year when you bring 1,500 people into the bureaucracy and somebody in the Vancouver area resigns or goes somewhere else? You'll have to fill that spot; you're going to work it through the Victoria bureaucracy. You're going to have great gaps in service. You've already indicated in your speech that one of your intentions is to reduce the amount of service because you're going to reduce the amount of staff. Then what is going to happen to people out there?

It's no good using the argument that Vancouver has a third of the system. Then he uses some idiotic argument that because they have 1,500 people, somehow they have more staff than the rest of the department put together. Examine what it is those people do. In 1972 and 1973 we had to examine what they did. No new jobs have been created in that resources board since 1973; no new jobs have been added. We put three agencies together, including some public servants who were there for years, reorganized the administrative structure, decentralized the offices and made it possible for people to get services when they needed them in their own area. That was the principle.

Now he indicates in his speech that they may just keep that going. The essence of service is to deliver it when people need it, not when some bureaucrat in Victoria is going to make a decision that it should be delivered. It's got to be done at the local level. Otherwise it won't work; it won't achieve what some of your people say when they talk about helping people.

That minister, Mr. Speaker, knows as well as I do that we're not just talking about people who are in receipt of social assistance; that's a very small part of the operation of his ministry. But everything you look at - in terms of day care which has been reduced, special services for children which has been reduced, homemaker programme which has been reduced, despite the fact that he has increased the

[ Page 5839 ]

budget - the service level is being reduced.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Wrong again.

MR. LEVI: Wrong again. You produce the figures and prove me wrong. I'm telling you that these are the facts. Prove to us that you have not reduced the day-care operation in the Vancouver area. Prove it to us. Produce the facts. Tell us the true facts. That's what we've not got from this minister ever since the day he's been the minister. He hasn't had the guts to come into this~ House and tell us exactly what's going on in his department.

There are a range of services that are operating in that city that are unique, not only in British Columbia but in all of Canada.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Wrong again.

MR. LEVI: No ability at all to demonstrate to the public what exactly is going on. One of the reasons is this: if he was to tell the facts as they are, you would see a system that has been developing over the past four years, that is developing service, that has a trade union structure that works. One of the unique things about the trade union structure in the Vancouver Resources Board was that we were able to take four unions, put them together under a poly-party agreement, negotiate a master contract, never have any problems in terms of labour relations, and keep developing the system. You had people involved in the system. There were no problems there in that area, no problems whatsoever. It was all part of the uniqueness of developing a new administrative vehicle.

For the first time in the province, for the first time in North America, there was an attempt made to develop a new administrative vehicle. That's what the objective was. Mr. Speaker, the minister suggests in his speech that somehow it was modelled on other resource boards around the province. That's nonsense. The uniqueness of the Vancouver Resources Board, Mr. Speaker, was that it combined the statutory and non-statutory services. The other boards didn't do that. The other boards were already responsible for the non-statutory, so-called "voluntary work" that was done by the voluntary sector, but the uniqueness of the resources board was that it was a vehicle that could combine the administration of those services. It was not a perfect structure and it was not easy to develop, but I can tell you this: thousands upon thousands of hours of voluntary time went into the development of that structure. People were proud to be involved in it because they could see that there was something very basic about it. One of the most basic things about it was that it was democratic - people had a feeling that they were having some input into some decision-making.

MR. LAUK: The minister doesn't understand that word.

MR. LEVI: Well, of course he doesn't understand it, because they are bottom line; they talk about centralization. They really are saying that people out there are not capable of making those kinds of decisions. What is unique is that three of the people whom the minister has appointed are absolutely opposed to him in terms of the action he has committed in destroying the Vancouver Resources Board. Those three people he appointed have gone way out on a limb in terms of protesting the action of this minister.

Now it's quite obvious that they haven't been able to reach him to have a rational discussion about what exactly it is that he's doing and the kind of damage he's doing to the system. One can very well ask: what is going to happen once the legislation goes through and he can get his hands on it?

Well, the first thing is that when we come back in the spring we're going to ask the minister responsible for the public service how many public servants there are. We'll probably wait six months and then she'll tell us there are 37,500. Now that's a surprise to me because I don't recall that the previous government ever had 37,500, and one of your commitments was to reduce the civil service. Now you're going to have to tell us that if you had 37,500 in 1977, in January, 1978, you're going to have to add 1,500 more public servants to that number.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That's right.

MR. LEVI: Yes, that's right. That's the bottom-line government. You're going to have 40,000 civil servants.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: No, 37,500 plus 1,500 is 39,000.

MR. LEVI: You're going to have 40,000 civil servants, and that's your great contribution to cutting back. Then you're going to have this massive, centralized bureaucracy. You're going to have people waiting to be assigned jobs because the personnel officers can't get the okay to select. Then you're going to get a reduction in service. Then you're going to see again the emergence of the long lines and people protesting about the lack of service. What are you going to say then? What are you going to do then? How efficient is it going to be? It's not going to be efficient because what you're going to try and do is run the thing from Victoria. One of the things we discovered very early in the game is that you can't run anything from this place. It's got to be run from

[ Page 5840 ]

the community.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You proved that for yourself.

MR. LEVI: You've got to have enough people over here who have enough faith in people in communities so that they are prepared to give up some of the decision-making.

So we've gone a full circle in four years. We've gone from what was a highly centralized system to a decentralized system, and, when this bill passes, we'll have gone back to the centralized system. Why? What is the argument? The argument they offer is that it's going to be more efficient. Well, 40 years of the operation of the social service system in this province have told us that centralized systems are not efficient. They do not deliver service to people, and neither can people find access to those kinds of systems.

So we're not going to have any great plaudits because it's going to be more efficient. It's not going to be more efficient; it's not going to be less expensive. What's going to happen is that they are simply going to destroy a most progressive piece of social policy, because that's the politics of it. It has nothing to do with what people need. It simply has to do with what the politicians need.

Somewhere along the line, this government has to distinguish between what it's prepared to do for people and how far it's prepared to go to climb over the backs of people in this province, particularly poor people, to get re-elected again, to simply listen to the screaming and screeching of a right-wing group of rednecks who happen to support that party, and to hear the kinds of things that they say.

We have no information that the minister can back up to say that he has been successful in any of the things that he set out to do. But one day - not in this session of the Legislature, I'm sure - we will have the same set of facts tabled in this House in the general way that we had once before from another minister of the Crown from the previous Social Credit government. He had the Provincial Alliance for Businessmen and he tried to tell us how many jobs were created.

It's always amazing to me that this minister who has so much to say about how he's going to change the system has yet to come in here and show us the facts on exactly how he's been able to achieve that. All we've been able to hear from this minister is what he's going to do to the poor, how he's going to remove what is a great source of irritation to him -that is the Vancouver Resource Board - simply on an issue of vindictiveness. There he has a group of people who have been going at it now for four years in attempting to develop a system that is different from any other system that has ever been brought in,

One would have thought, if he had any sense, he would be prepared to examine that and accept it for what it is - that it's worthwhile and progressive -and be proud of it. Take some of the credit, some of the warm feeling that you can get from being involved in that kind of thing. I was interested in reading in the early part of his speech how in some way he bends over backwards to try and associate himself a little bit with the previous minister. Why? We didn't do anything that was any good, according to you people. In his speech he already starts pointing out some of the good things that we did. It's very noble of the minister to acknowledge that we were able to do some good things.

MR. BARRETT: You read the speech and you don't even know what you were reading.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Did I say something good about you, Dave?

MR. BARRETT: You're an incredible plastic hollow person.

MR. LEVI: I don't know whether he read the speech. He must have a new typewriter in his office, this is awful big print. Are you short-sighted, Bill?

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: That's my own typewriter.

MR. LEVI: He's got here on page 4: "But in all fairness I don't think that either of these positions was, or is, correct. I can't agree with the VRB. I cannot agree that the VRB is not an improvement over the existing tri-level system. To the credit of the previous minister" - and I'm about to duck under the desk - "the effort was better." We're talking now about the services in Vancouver. "Social services are more effective in Vancouver today than they were five years ago." Yes, of course they are. That's what we set out to do. That's what you should be doing, but what you're going to do is to roll the clock back. It goes on to say: "People who face long lineups and scattered services are being dealt with in a much more equitable fashion." That's true. That's what we were attempting to do., Why can that not continue?

There is no way that you can expect that that Vancouver Resources Board or the services - because there will be no resources board - will continue in the same way if you're going to centralize them. There's no way whatsoever, and that's based on 30 to 40 years of experience in'this province. It's idiotic that you don't learn from the previous Social Credit government.

They poured money down a rat-hole in the Vancouver area into private agencies, into children's agencies and into the Vancouver rehabilitation department with no accountability whatsoever.

[ Page 5841 ]

MR. BARRETT: For years!

MR. LEVI: -For years. They were not doing any good for people, but we looked at it. It took us almost two years to conceive the idea that we would have a resource board. The minister, in his speech, accepts that it was a worthwhile thing. Then after saying that in one breath, in the second breath he said: "But we've got to get rid of it." Why do we have to get rid of it? He's not been able to demonstrate with one fact.... It's no good him listing for us a catalogue, as he's done in the book, of infractions. That's not what social services is all about. That's not what dealing with people is all about. I can show you the same catalogue of facts about abuse in the income tax system, in the ICBC system, in any system, but that's not what social service administration is all about. It's got to be about how you deal with people, not picking up this kind of chippy nonsense and using this as a justification for your action in destroying the Vancouver Resources Board.

MR. BARRETT: Would you resign if we showed cases under your administration? Of course not.

MR. LEVI: He knows that there is abuse under his administration. Why it suddenly stopped.... Of course it didn't stop. It's a very difficult process. You have to make a decision that you're going to spend incredible amounts of money in order to keep track of it or to address yourself in the main to the really important issues of dealing with making the lives of people better. Those are decisions you have to make.

The decision that the minister is making, Mr. Speaker, is exactly the decision that his predecessors in the previous government made. Gaglardi used to run around this province saying: "We're going to chase the welfare bums out. We're going to arrest the people who defraud." You look at the figures over the last 10 years, and where are the facts? The facts are there. Sure there were lots of people. There were almost as many people charged in those days as there were under the NDP, and still there were only the same number of convictions. He somehow seems to feel that if you chase people and you get the evidence, you're going to get a conviction and somehow it's going to stop.

We will have an opportunity over the next year or 18 months to really find out what kind of abuses have existed under the system. But if that's what we're going to make the criteria for developing social services for people, then we're on the wrong track. We are completely on the wrong track. We have to be concerned about children. We have to be concerned about men and women in terms of them being individuals and in terms of their needs, not in terms of putting great fear into them or treating them as second- and third-class citizens, because that makes no contribution at all to their lives and does not do what the member for Burnaby-Willingdon (Mr. Veitch) so much wants. He wants people to somehow become independent, to do things for themselves. There is no way you're going to terrorize people that way into doing anything for themselves. What you have to do is give them some sense of dignity. That's what we set out to do - to give them a sense of dignity about their lives and their involvement in some of the decisions, and then people change.

Don't tell me that there wasn't change in the number of single women with children that were on welfare that went into work because of the progressive day-care system, because there was. That doesn't exist today, and that's at incredible cost to the taxpayer. What you've done is not progress. That kind of minister decided that the only way he could placate the right-wing of your party and the supporters is to go after these people and mention the words "fraud, " "welfare bum" - and that's the essence of your social policy. That's the essence of it.

When I traveled back east, the laughing stock of the whole country in terms of social services is typified by that minister over there - absolutely typified by it. He had a similar twin in Ontario but they had to get rid of him. He lasted about eight months.

We hear talk in this House from that government about a feeling about the province, about some kind of feeling of faith and respect for the province, and we have a regressive, fascist-type minister like that who tells us that he's doing things for people in a way that never happened before. Nobody believes that. Nobody at all believes that in any way that minister or that government has made any contribution whatsoever in terms of the social service system in this province. None whatsoever.

The reason that you have the buildup of the massive support against this kind of legislation is because people have started to understand exactly what it is and how you deal with people, but rather in the way of getting the citizens, the taxpayers involved in the decision-making. That's the great pity.

For me, in the past three months since this bill was tabled, it's been a very difficult time because we spent the best part of 16 months before we brought the legislation into the House going around this province and telling people what we were attempting to do. No midnight legislation, no sudden surprises. We talked and talked for 16 months on what it was we were attempting to do. There was an involvement of literally thousands of people in this province in terms of the development of the resources board.

In Cranbrook, in Kamloops, in Campbell River -the first town where people met together and talked, In Kamloops they met several times to talk about it. In Surrey they met. All over this province. In 60 centres there were discussions about the involvement

[ Page 5842 ]

of people around this very serious and thorny question of the delivery of social services. We knew that it was a thorny question.

He knows as well as I do that, politically, the ministry is a loser. But you've got to be able to interpret to people that if you're meaning what you say, that you're going to do things for them, then you involve them. You don't send out administrative memos - which is like midnight legislation - saying to them: "It's going to be this way and that way without consultation." We had the window here where people looked in from around the world on the most progressive piece of legislation there ever was in North America. You've blacked that window out and that's going to be to the everlasting shame of that government.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, before I ask for the House's permission to adjourn this debate, I just want to say a few words. If we don't look upward, I'll be through in a moment.

I just want to say that the member who has just spoken did so without notes, while the minister delivered his reasons from a printed speech.

HON. R.H. McCLELLAND (Minister of Health): You can tell he spoke without notes.

MR. BARRETT: All right, if you want to make a joke about it it's okay, but you just sit still for a minute. The whole point is that even during the member's comments, you didn't even remember what you had said in the written speech.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: I don't remember what he said.

MR. BARRETT: And you know, that's the whole point. The question that we're dealing with is a question of philosophy and commitment and service to people. And what you have done, Mr. Minister, is you have decided to take this issue and destroy all the work that went into correcting the situation that we found when we came into office, purely for political purposes. You have not shown one bit of understanding, either in your comments across the floor or in the media. Before I sit down I want to add this.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Wrong again, Dave.

MR. BARRETT: "Wrong again." I have watched very closely and I've seen a lot of ministers come and go - some good and some bad. You figure out yourself what category you're in. If you want to use human misery to exploit a situation politically, that's on your head.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Your judgment is not too good; I wouldn't ask you.

MR. BARRETT: Just sit calm, you'll get your chance. Don't get so jumpy. I know you're feeling a little guilty. That's the one saving thing you have. There is a possibility you might have some guilt feelings. But the comments about that member after she had finished her part in the debate really revealed exactly what you wanted - nothing more than politics.

I'll have more to say tomorrow, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Barrett moves adjournment of the debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. Gardom moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:01 p. m.

[ Page 5843 ]

September 26,1977 Appendix 5843

Mr. Bawtree presented the First Report of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture as follows:

REPORT No. I

LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE Room,

September 26,1977 MR. SPEAKER:

Your Select Standing Committee on Agriculture begs leave to report as follows: We present this report in relation to our terms of reference.

PHASE IV (2)

That the Committee shall consider any changes in the present food marketing system which may be beneficial to consumers, producers, and merchandisers and shall recommend methods whereby government may influence the adoption of such changes.

I enclose the report and recommendation of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture with respect to the participation of the Province of British Columbia in the National Broiler Agency. As background to this report, I am enclosing the following documents:

1. A report titled Background for Committee Members-National Chicken Agency, presented to the members of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture prior to their meeting in Fort St. John, Monday, August 29,1977.
2. Research staff report on British Columbia Participation in a Proposed National Chicken Marketing Agency, presented to the Committee, Friday, September 2,1977, at a meeting of the Committee in Kamloops.
3. A brief report to the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture following the presentation of the Consumers Association of Canada brief. Presented at a meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture in Vancouver, Friday, September 13,1977.

1 summarize, below, information with respect to the background, approach, the staff recommendation, and the Committee recommendation to this Legislature. For further information, please refer to the attached reports.

Background

In early August 1977, the. Cabinet of the Province of British Columbia temporarily rejected a proposal that the B.C. Broiler Marketing Board and the Province of British Columbia participate in the proposed National Chicken Marketing Agency. The Cabinet decision was relayed to the B.C. Broiler Marketing Board who contacted the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture currently holding hearings into the B.C. food industry:

Following the request of the B.C. Broiler Board for an urgent study of this problem, S.S.C.A. staff accelerated their study to produce this report. Steps involved in the study included meetings with the following bodies-

• Federal Department of Agriculture.
• National Farm Products Marketing Council.
• Ontario Department of Agriculture.
• Canadian Poultry Processors Association.
• Manitoba Turkey Board.
• Manitoba Broiler Board.
• Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency.
• Manitoba Department of Agriculture.
• Alberta Turkey and Broiler Marketing Boards.

[ Page 5844 ]

Appendix

• Lilydale Poultry Co-op.
• B.C. Broiler Marketing Board.
• B.C. Department of Agriculture staff.

Summary of Conclusions

I outline major conclusions below. Other conclusions are contained in the attached document number two.

1. B.C. broiler producers have an expanding market over the last ten years, a level of efficiency comparable to the rest of Canada, and a slightly larger size of broiler farm compared to the rest of Canada.
2. The major discrepancy in price at the retail level between B.C. and Eastern. Canada is accounted for by higher wholesaler-retailer spreads in the B.C. market. Wholesaler-retailer spreads are also higher than producer spreads, comparing B.C. and Pacific Northwest markets.
3. Price spread differences at the retail level between Vancouver, Toronto, and Washington State imply that B.C. retailers have either relatively higher costs of operation and (or) receive higher net returns.
4. B.C. broiler producers are pressuring for a national chicken marketing agency as a result of indirect threats of imports of U.S. chicken causing displacement of Eastern Canadian broilers to the B.C. market.
5. U.S. chicken imports into Canada are rapidly increasing, at least partly the result of a desire by importing firms to establish financially lucrative import quotas. A continuation of this pressure will undoubtedly undermine the B.C. broiler industry.
6. The prime alternative to a national chicken agency is to allow and encourage a high degree of vertical integration in the B.C. broiler industry. This would also undoubtedly result in a drop in the total amount of chicken supplied by B.C. producers, and would result in a serious undermining of the concept of the family farm in the broiler industry.
7. There is no evidence that a national chicken marketing agency will directly cause any rise in prices to the B.C. consumer.

Stay Recommendations

The research staff recommended to the B.C. Select Standing Committee on Agriculture on September 2 that "B.C. move quickly and judiciously to become a signatory to a modified National Chicken Marketing Agency." (The modifications are spelled out in section VI-1 of report number two attached to this summary letter.) The major modification which would be required is the recognition of the agency as the applicant and first receiver of all imports. Staff recommended that B.C.'s participation in the national agency would be contingent on, and subsequent to, appointment of a national agency as first receiver of imports.

Consumers Association of Canada Input

The Consumers Association of Canada, by telegram on Wednesday, September 7, asked for and received a delay in the decision of the Committee in order to allow them to prepare and present a brief on this matter at the Vancouver hearings. Their recommendation was "we urge the Committee and the Government, in the strongest terms, to keep British Columbia out of the National Chicken Marketing Plan." Their recommendation was based almost entirely on their belief that the existence of the B.C. Broiler Marketing Board had resulted in an overcharge to B.C. consumers by broiler producers amounting to "from $4.1 to 5.5" million per year.

[ Page 5845 ]

Appendix

Research Staff Comments

Report number three attached to this report summarizes Select Standing Committee on Agriculture staff analysis of the Consumers Association contention.

On page four it states, "Therefore an analysis of the new data presented to us does not lead to the conclusion that our earlier data on cost of production is incorrect. It is premature in our analysis to be able to state unequivocally that no overcharge exists. We can, however, say that Consumers Association of Canada data does not support their conclusion that there is a $4.1 to 5.5 million overcharge based on the cost of production discrepancies."

In the same report, staff commented further on page six. "Having reviewed the more recently presented information in depth, the research staff can find no justification to alter our original recommendation in any way. We strongly urge the Committee to recommend to the Legislature that the Province of B.C. become a signatory to the Canadian Chicken Marketing Agency, subject to prior agreement that the agency be the applicant and first receiver of imports of all global quota established through negotiation with countries exporting chicken to Canada."

Committee Recommendation

It was moved, seconded, and the Committee approved that "the Province of British Columbia become an immediate signatory to the Canadian Chicken Marketing Agency with the provision that the agency become the applicant and first receiver of imports, prior to December 31,1978. Further, that we give notice at this time that if the first receiver provision is not accomplished by that date, B.C. immediately withdraw from the National plan."

As chairman of the Select Standing Committee on Agriculture, I hereby refer the Committee's recommendation to the Legislature for their consideration.

All. of which is respectfully submitted.

LEONARD BAWTREE, Chairman

AMENDMENTS TO BILLS

89 The Hon. L. A. Williams to move, in Committee of the Whole on Bin (No. 89) intituled Labour Code of British Columbia Amendment Act, 1977, to amend as follows:

Section 9: By deleting section 9 and substituting the following: "S. 45.

"9. Section 45 is amended

(a) in subsection (1) , by striking out 'a majority' in the second line and substituting 'more than 55%', and

(b) by adding the following after subsection (3):

" (4) Notwithstanding subsection (3) , where

(a) a representation vote is taken, and

(b) less than 55% of eligible employees cast ballots, the board may direct that another representation vote be taken, and in that event subsection (3) applies."

Section 12 (dealing with the proposed section 82A (2) (b) ): By deleting paragraph (b) and substituting the following:

" (b) other property or, persons affected by perishable property, ".