[ Page 1933 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Urban Transit Authority Act (Bill 19) Hon. Mr. Curtis.

Introduction and first reading –– 1933

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Education estimates.

On vote 54. Mr. D'Arcy –– 1949

Hon. Mr. McGeer 1934 Hon. Mr. Me-Geer –– 1949

Mr. Cocke 1935 Mr. Kahl –– 1950

Mrs. Dailly 1939 Mrs. Dailly –– 1950

Mr. Cocke 1941 Hon. Mr. McGeer –– 1953

Hon. Mr. McGeer 1943 Mr. Rogers –– 1953

Mr. Strongman 1947 Hon. Mr. McGeer –– 1954

Hon. Mr. McGeer 1947 Mr. Cocke –– 1954

Mr. Cocke –– 1948

The House met at 10 a.m.

Prayers.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, while it is traditional for individual MLAs to introduce mayors and other civic officials from their particular constituencies, with your permission, sir, I would today like to introduce a large number of local government representatives who are in the gallery for what we think might be an interesting morning.

I ask the House to welcome Mayor Allan K. McAdams of Nelson; Mayor Charles Lakes of Trail; Mayor J.A. Norman Jacobsen of Maple Ridge; Mayor James Court and deputy mayor Alderman Murray Woodward, of Powell River; Mayor Cyril Jones of West Vancouver; Mayor Harold Moffat of Prince George; Mayor Peter Lester of Prince Rupert; Mayor George Thom of Kitimat; Mayor Ken Kenyon of Penticton; Mayor J.D. Hindle of Kelowna; deputy mayor Alderman Bobbie Barry and Mr. Graydon Hayward, administrator, of Kamloops; Mayor Ney of Nanaimo; Mayor James A. Robertson of Port Alberni; Mayor Michael Young of the city of Victoria; Mayor Mel Couvelier of Saanich; tile chairman of the Capital Regional District, Mr. Jim Campbell; the chairman of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, Mayor Jack Campbell of Port Coquitlam; Mayor Don MacDonald of White Rock; Alderman Alan Emmott of Burnaby; and Mr. Gerrard Ferry, director of planning for the Greater Vancouver Regional District.

I might say through you, sir, to the Attorney-General, Mayor LaGuardia is not here. But we are very delighted to have these outstanding civic leaders present with us today.

MR. MUSSALLEM: I would not let the opportunity pass. I do not think the minister has put proper accent on the illustrious mayor from Maple Ridge, Mayor Jacobsen. He's illustrious for one particular reason; I notice he has his wife with him. I must say I congratulate him. He's very splendid and one of the outstanding mayors. But I wouldn't stand up just to say that, because we know that.

What I stand up to say is that in the gallery is also Mayor Frank Ney, whom you introduced. The hon. mayor has a special significance: he sat in the seat behind me for a good many years. So dedicated was he to his job that I recall he would travel all the way to Nanaimo at night and back in the morning. When I say "night, " in those days, as some hon. members will remember, it was night. It was sometimes 12 o'clock, sometimes I o'clock, 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock, but he never failed to be here on time and he never failed to leave when the House rose. I can tell you that is a record which has never been equalled in this House. Congratulations to him and all the mayors.

MR. LLOYD: I would like to add my greetings to those of the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing to Mayor Moffat, who has travelled so far, our very active mayor of Prince George.

I would also like the House' to extend greetings to a grade 7 class and their teacher from Lakewood Elementary School in Prince George. It's not too often that they can travel this far. They are touring the House at this time, and I hope to be able to have them in later. I ask the House to join me in making them welcome.

MR. VEITCH: Seated in the gallery this morning is my good wife, Sheila; an ex-politician from Sudbury, Ontario, my father-in-law, Andy Boyce; and my aunt, lelabel Woodcock, from

I'd like to add my greetings as well to Alderman Emmott, my very good friend from Burnaby. I would ask the House to bid them welcome.

MS. SANFORD: On behalf of the member for Cowichan-Malahat (Mrs. Wallace) , I would like to introduce and ask the House to welcome a group of students who will be Visiting us in the chamber later this morning. The students are from Lake Cowichan Senior Secondary School and they will be accompanied by their teacher Murray Thompson.

HON. MR. GARDOM: Seated in the gallery today is a good friend of mine, Mr. Carl Tarkicker from South Rutland. I would like to bid him welcome.

Introduction of bills.

URBAN TRANSIT

AUTHORITY ACT

Hon. Mr. Curtis presents a message from His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor: a bill intituled Urban Transit Authority Act.

Bill 19 introduced, read a first time and ordered to be placed on orders of the day for second reading at the next sitting of the House after today.

HON. MR. MAIR: I wonder if it would be

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appropriate at this point to ask leave of the House to respond to a question asked of me in question period.

MR. SPEAKER: It's always appropriate to ask leave.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. MAIR: Actually, Mr. Speaker, I would ask leave to answer this question by tabling my answer in form of a return, because the answer is a lengthy one. It is in answer to the question raised by the hon. member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) during oral question period on May 3 last. I ask leave to do that.

Leave granted.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: I ask leave to move that leave be granted to increase the number of members on the Committee on Crown Corporations to 16 by adding thereto Messrs. Bawtree, Smith and Stephens.

Leave granted.

MR. SPEAKER: The motion is before us.

Motion approved.

MR. BARRETT: I rise on a point of order. It has been brought to my attention that certain unfounded allegations were yesterday made against me personally by the hon. Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) - allegations that I have counselled the breaking of secrecy and confidentiality in terms of documents that are in the hands of the government. It came to my attention and I'm raising this matter now, at the earliest possible opportunity. I ask that the member withdraw those statements - as is required by the rules of this House -because they are totally unfounded and unwarranted.

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. member, usually if exception is taken to statements made by hon. members, that exception should be taken immediately and the Speaker would be happy to ask for a withdrawal, particularly when any imputation of wrongdoing is made. However, I understand that the hon. member was not in the House at the time.

MR. BARRETT: Not only was I not in the House, Mr. Speaker, but unfortunately I could not bring it to your attention earlier because the Hansard has broken down, and I have had to make a choice without Hansard. But

June 2,1978 going by reports - and I have verified those reports - that the member did indeed name me and make allegations, I am asking the member to withdraw at this time.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: Say, pious one, when are you going to apologize to me for all the slanderous things you said against me last year? So bloody pious! I've got thick skin, I know, but I do have a family.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please! Hon. members perhaps it would be acceptable to all hon. members to have the Speaker review the record which is available through Hansard and which I do not have the opportunity to do, and report to the House perhaps on closing today, without prejudice to the hon. member, certainly, and not diluting at all the responsibility of all members to withdraw remarks that impute any improper motive to any other hon. member in this House. Would that be acceptable?

MR. BARRETT: Well, Mr. Speaker, the definition, of course, is mine to make as to whether or not I feel that the allegations are imputing motives. However, I accept your suggestion. I too will wait for the Blues.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: I've been waiting a year for your apology.

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

Orders of the day.

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr.

Rogers in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

(continued)

On vote 54: minister's office, $119,793 -continued.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, yesterday, in deference to the member for Burnaby North (Mrs. Dailly) , I made a statement regarding some of the initiatives and programmes of the Ministry of Education with respect to the K-to-12 programme in British Columbia. This morning I would like to make a brief statement about one of the initiatives in the postsecondary field, keeping in mind, of course, that today, as yesterday, I hope will be a day of peace, good order, brotherly love and tranquillity.

In that spirit, Mr. Chairman, I would like to announce that today the provincial govern-ment has designated the Open Learning Insti-

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tute for British Columbia. The following is the mission statement for that Open Learning Institute. It is to provide programmes of study leading to a first degree in arts and science; it is to provide programmes of study in career, technical and vocational areas; and it is to provide programmes of study in adult basic education.

To achieve this end, the institute will manage needed support services. It will develop and acquire courses. It will develop and acquire programmes of study and learning materials, and it will distribute them by distance-education methods. To achieve this, it is Empowered to enter into relationships with institutions, organizations and agencies in British Columbia and elsewhere and, under section 13 of the Colleges and Provincial Institutes Act, it shall establish an academic programme committee, a career and technical programme committee and an adult basic education committee.

Mr. Chairman, the Open Learning Institute will guarantee to all adults in British Columbia, for the first time in our history, access to the full range of educational opportunities regardless of the financial circumstances, the place of residence or the past educational opportunities and achievements of the individual. It is educational democracy in the fullest sense of the word.

We have appointed a board of governors to the Open Learning Institute. That board will include four members of the interior universities programmes board: Lloyd Hoole of Cranbrook, who is general manager of EK Radio and former chairman of the Notre Dame University board of governors; Dr. Dugal MacGregor of Summerland, a researcher with the federal agricultural research station and a former member of the Okanagan College council; James Pritchard of Prince George, a partner in the firm of Kellett, Pritchard and Sabiston, chartered accountants, and a member and former chairman of the College of New Caledonia council; and Mr. Fred Weber of Terrace, who is the managing director of Skeena Broadcasters.

Other members who are to be appointed are: Terry Ryan, the Courtenay Crown prosecutor, a school trustee and a former chairman of the North Island Council; Dr. Brian Blaine, professor of biological sciences at Simon Fraser University; Dr. Sam Macey, professor of English at the University of Victoria; Betsy MacDonald of Vancouver, formerly a Vancouver Community College instructor, past president of the B.C. Educational Television Association, former chairman of the Vancouver School Board and a member of the Goard commission, which last year reported on vocational, technical and trades training in the province; and, finally, Basil Stuart-Stubbs, librarian at the University of British Columbia.

Mr. Chairman, that gives the mission statement and the initial board of governors of the Open Learning Institute. We have had consultations with the chairmen of the college councils in British Columbia, with the principals of all the colleges and institutes in our province, with representatives of the Universities Council, with presidents of our universities, the Academic Council, the Occupational Training Council and the Management Advisory Council. We have asked all of these groups to co-operate with us in bringing the Open Learning Institute into being and to achieve the high hopes that the people of British Columbia have for this new educational venture.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Just prior to recognizing the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) , I wonder if the members of the committee would join me in wishing him many happy returns of the day.

MR. COCKE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

AN HON. MEMBER: He is 39 and blooming.

MR. COCKE: Thank you, Mr. Member. I think I can announce my age. I'm 54 and proud of it -getting younger every day.

Mr. Chairman, I'm pleased to follow the Minister of Education with respect to this Open Learning Institute. As a matter of fact, I was anticipating possibly some legislation, but obviously he has decided not to put it forward. He is making an announcement as opposed to legislation. The Attorney-General

(Hon. Mr. Gardom) wants to get me out in the hall and have a discussion, I gather. No, I anticipated some legislation rather than an announcement; however, it did not come this morning.

Regarding this whole question, however, I would just like to get back to what the minis-

ter said in terms of consultation. That brave minister of consultation said that he has consulted the Universities Council, he's consulted the universities' presidents, he's consulted ... yes, he has now; but when he first made his announcement about the direction of the Open Learning Institute, he had consulted virtually no one. He had likely had a discussion with his tape recorder and heard what it had to say back and he was in total agreement and at that point made a decision. After having made a decision, then he began to do some consulting. I'm not sure what good that

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consulting has done, by virtue of the fact that there have been many alienated - not the least of whom was Pat Carney.

This is an article by Pat Carney. And what did she say? She, don't forget, was appointed by the government to do a search and a study on the whole question of university councils, and it cost, in her words, about $200,000 to do the study. Was she ignored? I believe she must have been ignored, because this is the report from her. She says:

"The report on distant learning, commissioned by the B.C. Ministry of Education, has been lost in the debate over Education Minister Pat McGeer's plans to import material from Britain's Open University. The report was prepared by the distance education planning group, whose members were mainly seconded from the ministry. No minister is ever bound by the recommendations of a planning group, nor should he be. But the report cost taxpayers an estimated $200,000 in manpower and overhead, took about three man-years to complete -to produce - and was tailored to meet B.C.'s specific needs. For these reasons it merits some debate."

I won't read a couple of intervening paragraphs; but let me go on with what she says further on:

"But members of the planning group now disbanded were not aware of the minister's specific interest in the Open University until the report was nearly completed."

Why would he waste the taxpayers' money if, in fact, he was prepared to go on his own arbitrary course?

Now he's been charged by some of being somewhat elitist. I know most of us would not share that opinion of this Minister of Education. We do think, however, that he's rather fond of his own opinion, and certainly his own opinion seems to prevail. Not only does it prevail in his ministry, it prevails in other government ministries. We particularly notice it in Health, and I wouldn't be surprised, if we were ferreting out this type of information, that it would probably be similar elsewhere.

There has been a lot of talk about the Open Learning Institute. I for one am very much in favour of us carefully and thoughtfully providing education for those who are now regionally and geographically beyond the kind of assistance that is suggested here. But it strikes me that when you are in the process of developing this kind of programme, you take into account particularly the opinions of those in the areas you wish to serve. Today friends of the minister have been appointed to a board. I hope there will be some input from hem, and I hope that we will be able to see something come of this plan.

I for one am very glad that he did not bring in the legislation, as I fear the legislation once again will be arbitrary. I hope by the time he does, it will be improved and modified to a point that it will be a service to the province. I worry very much about the whole question of decisions made in closets, decisions made behind closed doors without sufficient consultation. I believe if Pat Carney had anything to say about it, she certainly would agree with that. Certainly many, many people in the academic community would, and many people who wish to be served.

I would like to depart from that subject for a moment or two. I'd like to talk about what I consider to be a very serious proposition, when all the mayors were up there.... I will be talking about something in their area a little later on. I would have been tempted to speak about that particular thing right now -the area of dumping on the local taxpayer. I also want to talk about centralization later on; I want to talk in terms of other areas of concern with respect to both public education and higher education.

But this year we have something brand new in the whole education system. There's an old teacher over there who has given great benefit to his profession by coming into the House and giving us wisdom from his seat. I hope that he'll stand in these estimates and give it to us directly and record it in Hansard. You'll get your turn when they get around to you.

I want to talk about one aspect of a brand new vote. For the first time in the history of our province we have a vote on independent schools. I'm not going to be terribly critical about that vote. It's been taken and that's where it's at as far as I'm concerned. But I am very concerned about some abuses that appear to be developing in this particular area. I want to read into the record excerpts from a letter from the chairman of the board and the headmaster of St. George's School to the parents of the children they serve. This is one of the areas that we were terribly worried about. St. George's School is what people call a high-class school with tuition beyond the realm that most people would be able to pay.

First and foremost, I'll read the preamble that was written, incidentally, on October 14,1977:

" We have been asked to write to you by the board of directors. The board believes that it is time to acquaint you with the provisions of Bill 33, the Independent Schools Support Act, and to discuss with

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you the opportunities and dangers that may confront us in our response to this most well-meant, generous and supportive gesture on the part of our provincial government.

"If having considered this issue you feel inclined to express yourself in writing, we would be pleased and grateful to receive your opinions as to the various options before us. You the parent have not only an interest but some rights in the matter, as it is tax moneys paid by you that will or will not be accepted by the school to be used in ways that may or may not please you."

Then they go through an explanation of the bill. It just gives a general overview, and I can read that:

"It is to be offered on a per capita basis for boys whose parents are B.C. residents and Canadian citizens or landed immigrants, who are in attendance for 135 days in a school year. The amount of such aid is dependent upon the level sought by the school."

So far, so good.

Then it talks about level 1 and it talks about level 2, and I might suggest that I deal just for a moment here with these two areas. In level 1, it talks about the application of level 1 funding and then it goes on to say:

"It has been hinted, and only hinted, that level I aid might eventually amount to about $350 annually per student, although in its first years the figures might amount to substantially less."

Then it goes on in level 2. It discusses the whole question of level 2 funding and goes on to indicate that level 2 might be something in terms of $750, or a total of $1,100 for the two - that's level 1 and level 2, $750 plus the level 1 $350 funding.

It talks also about other restrictions:

"There are no other significant restrictions in this Act. Our admission policies, education procedures and social customs are not mentioned as a criterion" - listen carefully to this, Mr. Minister; I think it is very important - "for the granting of aid, and it has been stated to be of no concern to the inspector of independent schools, Mr. J. Phillipson. Possible use to which the grants might be applied."

Now I want everybody to remember very clearly the debate that we had in this House and the direction that was determined for the utilization of these grants. Operating only, right?

"The inspector is on record as saying that his department will be disinterested as to the mariner in which the money is spent, although the Act specifies it is to be used for non-instructional operating" -level 1 grant - "and instructional expenses" - teachers' salaries, level 2 grant. "The use of such grants for such purposes would free money already so allocated for whatever purposes the school deemed wise and proper. It is this secondary use of funds in which the inspector declares disinterest, providing only that malfeasance is not involved. (Cadillacs for every teacher and conventions in the Bahamas are currently not on.)

"We take it, then, that we are not required to rebate this money to the parents in the way of fee relief, but might instead or in part:

" (a) Deposit the funds with the St. George's School Foundation as protected capital, the interest from which could be used to defray the expenses of the school. If the school were to receive $500,000 annually for 20 years, used in this way up to $1 million would be generated annually and such income would be entirely free from governmental influence and interference.

" (b) Create a significant number of bursaries so that we might be able to say, in truth, that any boy wishing to come to the school and who has sufficient merit to be selected, may do so regardless of his parents' ability to pay. If we had up to 80 or 100 such bursaries, and if aid were at some future time to be withdrawn, we might expect confidently that funds would become available to keep 30 or 40 bursary holders, and those who left could fairly easily be replaced.

" (c) Improve the educational offering without reducing the fees:

(i) offering a broader programme such as Russian, Spanish, more shop courses, additional tutorials and remedials, et cetera; (ii) reducing class size substantially."

We're talking about educational institutes that have a reduced class size, and I'm talking to a minister right now who is forcing public, schools into larger class sizes per teacher.

" (d) Pay off the present capital debt and fund future capital expansion. The school has traditionally acquired its capital funds through gifts of parents and friends. Whether or not such generosity

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will still be forthcoming when we are in regular receipt of substantial government aid is very uncertain. If not, we would be forced to use excess revenues for our very necessary capital expansion needs."

Mr. Chairman, he goes on in this letter to talk about the danger inherent in significant fee reduction. He points out (a) to (d) above are alternatives to substantial fee reduction. Why should such alternatives be considered? Why not Reduce fees? Then he goes on to tell you why not reduce fees:

"At present the school is fiscally viable and totally independent. We seem to be offering something that is very much wanted by more clients than we can handle. The only real threat to our existence could come with a sudden crippling change in our parents' general ability to pay fees.

"If our constituency slowly altered from one whose members are willing and able to pay present fees to one acclimatized to paying only $1,000 annually, a sudden subsequent withdrawal of support or even a short-term phasing out would face us with economic disaster. That prospect would be sufficiently unpalatable as to force us inevitably to bow to improper pressure on the part of the funding authority.

"While the present Act admits the application of no such improper pressures, all Acts may be amended or voided, and the party currently in the opposition, while not having declared its absolute intentions, is on record as being strongly opposed to our type of school and to this Art."

As an aside from me, Mr. Chairman, is it any damn wonder? Have you ever heard such elitist talk.in your life as is included in this?

Anyway, they go on to the advantages of a fee reduction, which doesn't really mean a lot because they feel that there aren't very many advantages at all. Then they conclude that a decision has to be made with respect to how they're going to utilize their funds. I'm sure I would have liked to have seen how the parents responded, but I'm sure that most of them are quite able to pay the present fee. So therefore the board of directors has very likely taken one of the alternatives that they have here. That's the kind of a problem that we've questioned right from the outset and this is the proof of the pudding in terms of the direction of some of the funding of independent schools.

One of the things that permeates this letter is that question of independence. Just for the sake of those who feel that , they have some

June 2,1978 kind of independence, I would like to read what the minister said to a group of college people that were visiting some time ago. I'm going to read other excerpts from this when I get around to colleges. The minister said as follows: "Education institutions in financial difficulty turn to government. Governments may deem it worthwhile to offer support or to increase the support that is already being given." This is our Minister of Education talking. He goes on to say: "But no institution should ever ask for help from government and expect anything other than to give up independence."

Mr. Chairman, St. George's School has discovered that there are ways of maybe getting around what were supposed to be safeguards in the bill that we discussed last year. I hope that the warning that I have given this morning in terms of what they appear to be doing has been heeded by the Minister of Education, because this is, without doubt, incorrect utilization of the funding that was to be provided for instructional use. If you take the money that you're now using for instructional purposes and place that in capital development, then it strikes me that you really beg the question in terms of the whole direction, because it's such an easy thing to get around.

I certainly want an answer from the minister as to what he's going to do and what his department's going to do about what I consider to be a very important question surrounding the elite schools. I know there have been some problems in the Catholic school system. I'm not going to comment on them because there are too many conflicting bits of evidence so far. But I certainly have to comment on this because it strikes me as being so blatant.

Mr. Chairman, I think that I would like to deal for a moment or two with other areas, but I think that maybe the minister would like to have something to say in answer to this particular question regarding independent schools. If lie wishes to, he can comment now. If he doesn't, then I can go on with some other areas and I'll just test him out. He wants me to go on.

Mr. Chairman, I think that an answer is required in this particular area, and I believe that the minister could very quickly clear the air. I'm not sure that he has got the significance of what I read to him, but if he hasn't. maybe he should do some very fast consulting.

It strikes me, Mr. Chairman, that when I see one of the alternatives for utilization of fresh money that is going into a system is to take the place of present money that is going

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for education, the new money therefore is indirectly going to pay off present capital debt and to fund future capital expansion. I think that is something the minister should be answering very quickly in terms of the piece of legislation passed last year in this House ' and in terms of his treatment of this particular principle. So I would ask the minister what he is going to do about it.

MRS. DAILLY: I would like to go back to one of the questions asked by the member for New Westminster re this whole matter of the manner in which Bill 33 has been used by certain groups in this province. I think the minister should be ready to give us some answers. If he is not prepared to, I would like to pose more questions to him. Mr. Chairman, I think the big problem is that he has no answers. He has no answers to the questions posed by the member for New Westminster.

When debating Bill 33 last year in this House, I made quite clear my personal opposition to this bill, and so did most of the members. The members of this caucus warned this minister that he was going to be heading this province into chaos with that bill. It has come true - exactly the points we made when he presented that bill to the House. He has opened a Pandora's box here using the taxpayers' money - your money, my money, other people's money - in a way in which we have no accountability for the expenditure of these moneys. That was one of the basic points that we were trying to bring to this minister's attention when he and his government insisted on ramming this bill through the House.

What has happened in the intervening time? Exactly what we had predicted. In Canada there is no bill aiding private schools quite like Bill 33. One of its biggest problems is that there is no accountability for the expenditure of the funds to the private schools of this province. The member for New Westminster has already read a letter showing what has happened in one private school in this province. They have no intention of spending those grants given by this government - our money, the people's money - for the primary purpose that was laid out in the act. I quarreled with the Act, anyway, but now we have to deal with the situation in which this minister has placed the taxpayers of British Columbia. They are more or less saying in that letter, Mr. Chairman, that they will do what they want with that grant money. It is specifically stated in the Act that the funds are to go to operating costs for specific purposes. The argument I made at the time was that it was so vague that we knew that it was going to be misused.

The member for New Westminster said he did not want to get into the area of some parochial schools in this province, but I intend to, Mr. Chairman. I am very concerned that the same problem is arising here. We have no accountability for how those funds are being spent in the private schools of this province, including the parochial schools. We are all aware of the recent statements and concerns expressed by Catholic school teachers in this province.

There had been a hope by the parents and teachers of private schools. Many of them supported this, as you can naturally understand, Mr. Chairman, because they had expected tuition fees to drop considerably and they had expected their salaries to be increased. But there is no guarantee this is going to happen - no guarantee whatsoever.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Can I interrupt you for a moment, hon. member? I'm sure you are aware that in Committee of Supply we cannot discuss the legislation but only the administrative responsibility of the minister.

MRS. DAILLY: Quite correct.

MR. CHAIRMAN: You occasionally slip into areas of legislation, and I have been reluctant to bring you to order. But perhaps you could take it under consideration.

MRS. DAILLY: I quite agree. I will get right on to the administrative responsibilities of this minister. That is where we run into problems. Because this minister pigheadedly and obstinately persisted in ramming this Act through the House, he is now faced with an administrative nightmare. The bill itself was a nightmare and now he is faced with trying to administer a bill which is going to allow for these excesses I'm trying to bring out. There are fundamental questions here that the minister must answer.

Does he believe in the separation of church and state? If he does, what is he going to do administratively about the handling and use of Bill 33 in this province to ensure that we maintain the separation of church and state?

Until we get some specific answers from this minister I don't intend to let this topic go. Do you believe in the separation of church and state, and if you do, what are you going to do about the administration of Bill 33 to ensure that?

Do you believe in having accountability for tax moneys that are spent?

My third question to the minister is: why

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should the public school boards of this province have to account for every cent of taxpayers' money they spend through elections and through open public meetings? Yet the private schools of this province do not have to account to the general taxpayer for the spending of their money.

This minister has opened this Pandora's box. He pushed it through this House. We warned him of the problems. The problems are staying right there in front of us today because of this minister's philosophical commitment to aid to private schools.

There are many people in this province who are receiving their tax notices right now, and they are beginning to ask questions. Their educational taxes have gone up unnecessarily, and at the same time they see $9 million going to the private schools of this province, with no accountability whatsoever for the expenditure.

This minister has much to answer for. I want to ask him if he is prepared to answer some of those basic questions now. If he is not, I have many more on the same topic.

HON. MR. McGEER: I'll answer. Just give me a list of them.

MRS. DAILLY: You want some more.

Recently in the Vancouver Province there was an editorial which I hope the Minister of Education has read very carefully. The whole topic is church and state in the schools. I brought this up before, and I am not going to go over it and read the whole editorial.

One of the biggest problems we have is that since the minister brought this bill in we now have a circular emanating from his department - this is dealing with the administration of his department, Mr. Chairman - called the Independent School Circular. 1 notice with great interest some of the things that are stated there. If I can recall from memory - I don't have it here but I have just sent out for it - after his first visitation to the private schools of this province to decide which ones would receive grants or not, Mr. Phillipson, the inspector for private schools, states quite openly that the private schools of this province are certainly different from the other schools in the public school system, and he elaborates their difference. Of course, one difference is that they have a smaller pupil-teacher ratio. Now isn't that marvellous! At the same time, this Minister of Education is expressing - and I have some statements from him - his concern over public school boards' budgets perhaps going too high, and I think he is questioning the pupil-teacher ratio. But at- the same time he is willing to provide public money to schools which are able, because of their elitist position, to have a very low pupil-teacher ratio. I'm not referring here to the parochial schools, because I know that in all cases the parochial schools are not in the same situation.

The other question I want to specifically ask the minister is: when his inspector for independent schools was questioned by the press on the whole matter of how the grants for private schools were being spent and whether they were perhaps an indirect subsidy to churches, the only answer from Mr. Phillipson at that time was: "We are not concerned with how that money is spent, except that when we look at the budgets for independent schools and private schools, their operating budgets are not less than the grants we give them." Is the minister satisfied with that statement? Did he endorse it? If he does, where is the accountability for the expenditure of that money? It's loose, Mr. Chairman. We knew it was going to be loose when this minister rushed the bill through the House, and all of our predictions sadly and tragically are true.

In the United States of America today there is a major debate going on on this matter. We didn't even have the opportunity within this province to get into that situation. But the facts are here now. What I am trying to do is to get this minister to show the House and the people of British Columbia that he will have proper accountability for those moneys that are spent.

I would also like him to explain to us: are these schools going to be open to every student in the province? If my tax money is going for private schools, I want the right to send my children and my grandchildren to any schools that I help pay for. If I have a daughter, can 1 send her to a boys' school that is paid with my tax money?

If 1 don't happen to be working a few years, which can happen to any politician, of course, and I don't have the money, am I going to be able to assist my grandchildren's parents to send them to a school that happens to have fees of $2,000 a year? Am I going to be able to get my child in?

Mr. Chairman, I know we went through this debate last year. The reason I feel I have a right to bring it up now is that the bill is passed, the first grants have been passed out and these are the facts that we are now faced with in this province.

And before I sit down to give someone else an opportunity and hope the minister will reply, I do hope that the minister will also

[ Page 1941 ]

do some explaining to us, as we move along in this debate, about his statements to school boards of this province. When there are complaints about increased taxes he's inclined to put the blame on the school boards. I want to go into that in further detail with the minister. Let's discuss with the minister where he thinks the school boards of this province have been extravagant, because I think that the school boards of this province have been exceptionally careful in their spending, Mr. Chairman.

The group in the area where we have not had very careful spending is in that minister's own ministry. He has a proliferation of commissions, and boards - he's just announced another one. If we want to know where the money is going in Education, it's in that minister's own bureaucracy. That's where it's going. But I have many more questions to that minister. However, I know that other people want to speak, but I would like to hear from you.

HON. MR. McGEER: Go ahead; ask them now. There will be no better chance to speak than now.

MRS. DAILLY: Yes, but I think it would help us, Mr. Chairman, to get a bit of response from that minister. If he can't respond now, he has no answers and he doesn't want to get into this debate.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I expected exactly what we've seen. The minister got up and made a speech yesterday on public school education which, incidentally, was mostly flimflam. Today he got up and made a speech on his open university situation and hasn't even answered the first couple of questions that have been put to him. I'm not going to put any questions to him now, because I'm going to make some statements.

As far as I'm concerned, he's been a disaster; his government has been a disaster. All those mayors around this chamber and around these precincts right now should be doing a lot of talking to this government in terms of what the government has been doing to the municipalities. They've been dumping on them like no other government has ever done in history. Education finance now is one where the local population - that is, the local municipalities and the local property taxpayers -are paying 60 per cent of our public school education bill.

I want to read to you what this government said. No, I'm not going to yet. I'm going to get around to it; I want to contrast first. They indicated, of course, at election time that they wanted to keep the government right in there on a 50-50 basis. But, Mr. Chairman, they're not doing that. The increases in property taxes on the local property owners are in real contrast to the government's other directions. What are the other directions? They reduced mining taxes; they abolished succession duties. Then they turned around and said to the local taxpayer: "You pick up more than your fair share of basic education costs." That's precisely what they said.

That minister has stood in this House, he stood on public. platforms and made the statement that the local school boards set the budgets. Local school boards set the budgets all right, and they set a budget that they can only set by virtue of a standard education programme. They could fire half their teachers and they wouldn't be able to produce an education system that would be up to the standards on which that minister - says he insists upon core curriculum and all. He talks out of both sides of his mouth. He actually has produced a chaotic situation for local taxpayers, and people are being duped into blaming local school boards for his decisions.

Mr. Chairman, the school boards have very little power in terms of setting budgets. The Cariboo, for example, has a $9 million or $10 million budget and a $200,000 flexibility. What are we talking about - school boards setting budgets? The minister sets the mill rate. The minister makes sure that the budgets leave very little flexibility. The only thing that school boards could insist upon to change the direction in ten-us of budgets would be to increase the pupil-teacher ratio from what it is now - and it's increasing gradually, I would think - to a larger pupil-teacher ratio. I don't think there are very many people in the system who would indicate that that's desirable. As a matter of fact most people in the system indicate that it is very desirable to have a low enough pupil-teacher ratio so that children can have, from time to time, some attention from the teacher.

That's the only thing he can do, and that's the only thing school boards could do. So in real terms this minister has indicated one of two things: you either do that, or you lower teachers'salaries. And how are you going to get around to that? They are the one group in society that has accepted compulsory arbitration. Most groups do not accept that, and negotiate without that end of the negotiations at the end of the tunnel.

I suggest we should review what has happened in our province. Think about this year alone -the general assessment in British Columbia

[ Page 1942 ]

went up 10 per cent. That means that across the province people are generally paying 10 per cent more. What would that do in terms of our school budget? Our school budgets only went up 9 per cent, and yet that minister imposed an increased mill rate of 2.25 mills -remember? At the beginning he announced 5 mills, and then backed off, which is, incidentally, a great ploy. He backed off and went down to 2.25 mills. But what that really said was that the local people picked up an even greater share, and that the provincial government is picking up very little in terms of their share of this year's budget.

He got used to robbing the people in ICBC. He got used to dipping his hands into their pockets with those exorbitant rates of ICBC, and he thought he could get away with it in the school system. It seems he does it everywhere he goes. One question I want to ask him, however, is: what is going to happen to the mill rate in the future? He has raised it every time he has had an opportunity - three times. He's raised the mill rate 50 per cent since he has been Minister of Education. It means that the local taxpayers are paying 78 per cent more, when you add the increase in mill rate coupled with a 20 per cent increase in the assessment. I just want to ask that question: what's the future?

The local taxpayers are really getting rooked by this minister and this government. We notice that they're dumping other services onto local school boards. Think in terms of the Jericho school thing alone. School boards are asked to pick up their share, and children are being decentralized in the hearing programme. I'm going to deal with that to a greater extent later. That is being picked up now, 60 per cent on an average across the province by the local taxpayers and 40 per cent by the provincial government. That is a shocking situation - shocking to the extent that one can hardly believe.

Let me give you a couple of examples of what occurs in terms of the assessment increases. In North Vancouver, one of the really lucky ones, I'm giving you the effect to the homeowner of the assessment increase coupled with the 2.25 mills, a home with an actual market value of $107,000: the 1977 assessment was $16,766; in 1978 it was down to $16,019 - an anomaly in the province. A decrease in assessment of $747 would have decreased the taxes by $2,801. However, the 2.25 mills would have added $3,772, so the decrease in assessment offset this by $1.68. But the substantial effect is, in this case, that there would be a net increase of $803 for 1978. In short, the basic levy would have cost $3,772 but the decrease in assessment reduced it by $2,969 to $803. Now this example shows that the new assessment base prompted decreases for those properties in excess of 15 per cent of that actual market value.

But what about Langley? In Langley, a small acreage which recently sold for $69,000 had an assessment in 1977 of $7,050. In 1978 it was $8,144, an additional $1,094 in assessment. The 1977 basic levy would generate an added $4,103. The 2.25 mills in 1977 assessment cost $1,586, and the 2.25 mills on the $1,094 added assessment cost $246. In short, the effect for 1978 would be the requiring of an additional $5,935 for the basic levy, of which $4,349 is related to the increased assessment value.

They're listed for the whole province, Mr. Chairman. It's a real disappointment when you think in terms of what that minister did in increasing the mill rate for the whole province up 50 per cent in less than three years, and at the say time with an assessment rate that is going up so quickly that it can take care of all the needs. But doing what he's doing in tandem just means that the provincial government is dumping on the local taxpayer. Nothing that's occurring in the local school district is to the benefit of the local taxpayer because every nickel that they could have saved is being put back into the system by that minister by reducing his awn obligations to pay for his share of the school budget. Nothing more, nothing less. And for him to go around the province flim-flamming about the fact that they set their budgets is so much nonsense from an otherwise thought of bright minister.

HON. MR. McGEER: You made a mistake there; you didn't want to say it, but you got started.

MR. COCKE: That's right. I have to stutter. I can't believe it. How did you get all those degrees?

Mr. Chairman, some of the things that that minister does others would feel are totally repulsive. They just couldn't possibly get around to doing the kinds of things that he does. Then to stand up and say to the local school boards.... How insulting can you be? How insulting can that minister be? They have very little flexibility at all. I'd like the minister to stand up and tell me how the school boards are going to save that money that he's talking about. Tell them; they don't know how. They have little or no flexibility in that respect: 70 per cent of their budgets are teachers' salaries, 80 per cent are total salaries, and very little flexibility is left.

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AN HON. MEMBER: He's vandalized the school system.

MR. COCKE: That's right. He's vandalized the school system, every school in the province and every school board in the province.

Mr. Chairman, in the talking that I've done with people from local school boards, they're not happy at all with his attitude; they're not happy at all with his governments attitude.

He also implies that school budgets are going up at a great rate. Let me tell you this: his own governments budget this year went up 9.8 per cent. School budgets went up 9 per cent. What's his excuse? lie talks about restraint. Incidentally, that's after dumping all those obligations on these other agencies, and not only in the school system. Think in terms of what they've taken off Public Works by setting up a Crown corporation to expend money and reduce the total overall budget of the government in so doing. But still it went up 9.8 per cent. The school budgets went up 9 per cent, almost I per cent less, and the minister is talking about them doing a better job. Well, let me tell you, they're doing a better job than the Minister of Education and his colleagues right now in terms of restraint. But he still dumps on the local taxpayers. The local taxpayers should be sick to death of this government.

Mr. Chairman, I wonder if the minister would like to answer. I wonder if the minister has any answers to this situation. I brought to his attention some time ago that mayors in different areas were very upset. I talked about Vernon, I talked about Coldstream, about Kelowna and other areas. What has his answer been to them? He has had no answers, Mr. Chairman, and I think it is a shame.

I just want to deal with a particular area in terms of what he's done to increase the load, just for a moment. The Ministry of Human Resources has set aside some of their obligations to people.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: Yes, they have. Handicapped children are now in the school system, being cared for and budgeted by the local school board. Jericho Hill School children - deaf children and other handicapped children - are being funded by the local school districts. These situations are ones that require a very heavy concentration of care.

So the local school districts get it from both sides from this minister. And he has the audacity to stand up and say: "You set your own budgets." They set their own budgets based on the minister's and his government's determination to first, set basic mill rates, and secondly, insist upon programmes - nothing more and nothing less.

Mr. Chairman, i would like for just a second to think in terms of the increase in the budget of the school districts compared to the budget of the provincial government. Over the years the minister has been boasting about the increase in the provincial budget, but it is the Ministry of Health which has been jumping up at a phenomenal rate. This minister is sure holding the line in terms of his area of obligation, but at the taxpayers' expense. Yet this government was elected as a government that would pay their fair share of education expenses.

I know that as long as we have the present Minister of Economic Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) we are all in jeopardy. Nothing is happening in this province. He just sits there and mumbles. He does that in Japan and in Germany - in steambaths across the world.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. We are doing vote 54, the administrative responsibilities of the Minister of Education. If the Minister of Economic Development would restrain himself, perhaps we could stay on the vote.

MR. COCKE: We have been debating for something over an hour and a quarter, and it seems to me that by now the minister might have collected his wits - if he has any left - and could stand up and give us a couple of answers to the questions we've asked.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, I'd be delighted to respond to the two members who have asked some questions. I don't want to reiterate the debate about support for independent schools.

MRS. DAILLY: I'm sure you don't.

HON. MR. PHILLIPS: They walked out on it.

HON. MR. McGEER: There was one time when the views of the NDP should have been put on the record with regard to their attitude about independent schools, and that was in second reading. That was when this whole principle was discussed and that's when the NDP walked out of this chamber, abrogating totally their responsibility.

Ever since then, Mr. Chairman, they've come in again and again and said what they should have said at that time. I hope in the future that the NDP will take up their responsibili-

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ties for debate and have the courage to vote on the issues when their vote is demanded. This business of walking out because you're afraid to stand up against the bill and coming in niggling again and again, trying to undermine it, is irresponsibility of the opposition. I have pointed this out again and again in this House. We don't need to debate the principle of the bill.

But I will say this: contained in that bill is the answer to the questions that these members are now asking. Payments under the Independent Schools Act are given after the service has been rendered so that there is full accountability. They give the service first and they receive the payments afterwards. If the school wishes to take those payments and do things for which those payments were not intended, then the inspector of independent schools is there to see that their licence is revoked. That is right there in the legislation. If the people had read and understood that legislation, they would know that to be the fact.

I want to say just a word or two about what has gone on in an administrative way since this bill was passed a year ago. Some 100 schools have been inspected by a staff of one man, Mr. Joe Phillipson, and I wish to pay tribute now to the job that he has done. It shows that, when you have somebody with ability and efficiency, an enormous job can be done at almost negligible cost to the taxpayer. It is that kind of efficiency I would like to see throughout the whole of the educational system.

It is quite true that many of these independent schools operate for a fraction of the cost of the public school system. Now that they are being inspected, and we can begin to understand some of the reasons for this, it is time that we took a much closer look at the independent schools and why it is they are able to supply this education at so much less cost to themselves and to the taxpayers.

Mr. Chairman, it's up to the independent schools to decide upon who goes into those schools because the schools are of limited size, the capital is not put up from the public purse and therefore it's impossible that an independent school be able to accept every applicant. Perhaps an all-boys' school would be delighted to have the daughter of the former Minister of Education (Mrs. Dailly) . I don't know what the attitude of an independent school would be to having one daughter attend that school. I think it would be very interesting. But she'll be able to determine that for herself by making application and seeing what the result would be. But I'm certainly not going to take on the responsibility for having her daughter enrolled in an all-boys' school.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to say a word or two about mill rates and the budgets in the public school system. The member for New Westminster suggested that the school boards don't make up the budgets in British Columbia. Who does he think makes the budgets up? It's certainly not the member for New Westminster. It's nobody in this chamber, including myself. It's not the Deputy Minister of Education nor the Associate Deputy for Financial Services, Mr. Fleming. I don't think it's somebody who drops out of the sky. Those budgets are made up by the people who are elected to make those school board budgets up - namely, the school trustees.

Mr. Chairman, it is the intention of the government that these people who are elected to take on this responsibility will continue to be given that responsibility. But I an sure that many people in British Columbia, just as is the member for New Westminster - are asking some penetrating questions about the size of those school budgets. Let we tell you why. In the past five years, the total budget for the 75 school districts in British Columbia has gone up from $505 million to $1,079 million. That's an increase of 113 per cent in the past five years.

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: I'll get those figures for you in a moment, Mr. Member. But the leaps in the last two years, while substantial, were not nearly as high as the leaps during the years when the NDP were in office. The first year the NDP were in office, gross school board budgets went up by 20 per cent. The second year they were in office, they went up by 27.5 per cent. The third year they were in office, they went up by 18.5 per cent. Those were the increases during the three NDP years. During the past two years, they've gone up 9.5 per cent and 8.7 per cent.

In just the operating part for the K to 12 programme - and, remember, in this major group there has been a decline in the total population; other aspects of our school system are expanding in size, but the K to 12 programme is declining - the budgets have gone up this past year by 115 per cent. And, Mr. Chairman, naturally the taxpayer has to start asking some questions about it. The mill rates during this period of time - the past five years -have gone up. The overall mill rate for education has gone from 32.7 mills to 50.5 mills -that's an increase of 54 per cent, but not 113 per cent. The mill rate for the basic education programme has gone up to 39.7 mills from

[ Page 1945 ]

24.7 mills - that's a 61 per cent increase. It's very healthy, but it's not a 115 per cent increase, and that's what the gross budgets went up by.

Now I tell you, Mr. Chairman, when you undertake expenditures with public money, eventually some pigeons come home to roost. But it's sometimes two or three or four years before the consequences of foolish moves and foolish policies begin to be felt. When the NDP wasted $187 million on the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, the hurt from that didn't come to be felt until they were out of office, but that direction had to be taken.

When the NDP were in office and they decided that it was time to hire 2,500 more school teachers in British Columbia despite the fact that the school population was declining, it was inevitable that somebody had to pay for that. That's the equivalent of between 5 and 10 mills on property taxes. The consequences of that are beginning to be felt now. We didn't insist on 2,500 extra teachers for a declining school population. The member for Burnaby North and the member for New Westminster, who are complaining about the consequences now, were the ones who instituted that policy. It's their pigeons that are coming home to roost.

It's very nice if somehow you can disguise the true cost of education and somehow bury it in some other tax so that it won't be noticed or be felt. But let's not delude ourselves. It's the taxpayer that has to pay, whether it comes out of provincial taxes or mill rates. Yes, we can eliminate all property taxes and add 10 per cent to the sales tax. Would that be any more welcome? No, Mr. Chairman, it wouldn't. The costs of education are costs that have to be borne by the taxpayer because there is nobody else to pay. That's why it's necessary to try to get effectiveness for the money we are spending.

We are taking initiatives in the Ministry of Education to upgrade the quality and the performance of our schools, and I think we are succeeding in doing that. But to think that excellence goes with spending more and more money is simply to ignore all the lessons of education that have come down through history. The NDP should know that. They should have been careful with the taxpayer's dollar when they were in office. They shouldn't have left so many pigeons to come home to roost.

The NDP were only in office for three years. The first two years they were in office they could coast along in a financial way on the fine performance of the government that preceded them. The consequences of that didn't begin to be felt until the third year they were in office. That's when British Columbia was on a downhill slide and accelerating. That's when the public of British Columbia woke up to the fact that we were on a toboggan ride to hell and they had to change the government.

It takes just a couple of years to turn things around and get British Columbia back on the road to recovery. It's going to happen in all of the policies that we set forward. It's happening in Education despite those people who are now opposition critics. They do not realize that they are criticizing the consequences of their own policy.

Mr. Chairman, I apologize, because I made a resolve today to try and be friendly and helpful. But really, I get exasperated when we are accused over here of setting school budgets and doing anything but what the government is attempting to do, which is to preach some fiscal restraint and some accountability for the good of the province. If we are to have a future, it cannot be on the basis of those of us in government being careless with the public's money. Certainly that is not a policy of this government.

love said many times that I will do the best I can to get finances for the educational enterprise. At the same time, in fairness I think the ministry is entitled to demand performance for the taxpayer's dollar.

MRS. DAILLY: That's right - and accountability.

HON. MR. McGEER: I'm glad the member for Burnaby North agrees with me on that. It's just a pity that that philosophy couldn't have been translated into better performance in the years when she was in office.

The member for New Westminster asks what's going to happen to the mill rate in British Columbia. We don't want it escalating 61 per cent. I don't think we want the school budgets to go up another 115 per cent in the next five years. It's beyond the ability of the British Columbia taxpayer to support increases of that kind.

Accordingly, and I state this now as policy of the provincial government, we are going to be asking in the next few weeks all school boards in British Columbia to present to Lis five-year budget forecasts. It's my hope that the Minister of Finance of our provincial government will be able to do likewise.

And then what we'll be able to do is to look five years ahead and to tell the taxpayers of British Columbia what they're going to be facing in the way of mill rates and general

[ Page 1946 ]

taxes. I personally believe that all governments in Canada and all those involved in the public sector should be able to look five years ahead in the matter of their expenditures. That gives an indication of what kind of taxes are going to be needed and it gives the private sector an opportunity to plan ahead in a way that the private sector in this country has never been able to plan ahead before. I wish the federal government in all its agencies would do five-year planning.

I wish all of the provincial governments would do so. That's beyond my jurisdiction, but I can ask and I will ask that all the school boards of British Columbia, all the colleges and all the universities present to us five-year forecasts of what their expenditures are going to be. We can give them figures as to what to anticipate in the way of pupil loads. The ones who will be entering the elementary system are in diapers now; the ones who will be going to universities are in our high schools; the ones who are going to secondary school are in our public school system. So we know the numbers, we know they're there and it's a question of forecasting our finances so that we can plan well for them and, at the same time, be thinking in terms of what the taxpayers of this province can afford to pay in the future.

MR. COCKE: Well, Mr. Chairman, he hasn't disappointed me a bit. I didn't expect him to answer a question and he hasn't. He got up and flim-flammed us again, giving us the five-year forecast and all that rhetoric which doesn't mean a thing, because all he's trying to do is circumvent a question.

I made a charge that you're dumping the tax load onto local taxpayers and that you're not picking up the burden. All the minister does is stand up and say that the school boards set their own budgets. What a bunch of rubbish. How much flexibility have they got? And, incidentally, do they set those budgets by themselves? Is there no inspector coming around? Is there no member of the budget committee coming around to see them? What nonsense.

I say if his argument has any validity at all in terms of the NDP getting this thing going the way it. was, then why didn't he reverse it? He didn't, because he can't. There is no flexibility for him, as there wasn't for us. He had to answer the question.

AN HON. MEMBER: What question?

MR. COCKE: He had to answer the question, Mr. Mouth. And he didn't answer the question and I'll tell you why: because he can't answer the question. All we asked him was why he isn't participating in the sharing of the load. And he didn't. He just did a thing about ICBC, he did a thing about the previous government which, incidentally, kept this province moving. We've got a government that's brought us to a grinding halt in the last two years, and every statistic will prove it. What nonsense, what utter flim-flam from that minister. We've been brought to a grinding halt by a government that has no idea at all; they're still in the 19th century in terms of budgeting, in terms of doing everything that a government should be doing.

Mr. Chairman, of course we made mistakes, and we admitted our mistakes. But I'll tell you something: I just hope we never commit the kinds of sins of omission and the kinds of sins of commission. that this government has made since they've been government.

MR. LOEWEN: You never admitted anything.

MR. COCKE: There is old Digger at it again. Get your tape measure going; the Minister of Education may need you.

Mr. Chairman, I suggest very strongly that there are other areas, but I sure wish the minister had answered the question about dumping that he should have answered and didn't. He talked about that five-year increase. Has he checked the five-year increase in budgeting in every ministry? Has he checked the five-year increase in his own budget at home? What's he talking about? There has been inflation in the last five or 10 years, and no one group has any particular power over that inflation at the provincial level. No one can prophesy where it will go. And that's why I said a while ago, when the minister got up and very seriously said, "Now we're going to the school boards and we're going to ask them to give us a five-year forecast, " that as valid, I'm sure, as it might be, it will be luck. In years of inflation like this, how can you forecast reliably?

I would like to deal with centralization for a moment. The government that is now in power came into power in 1975. One of the things they promised was: "The trend towards centralized control of education will be reversed." Did you hear that? Wasn't that the joke of the century? It is part of their policy. This is one of Bill Bennett's leaflets: "The trend towards centralized control of education will be reversed. Local school boards will be granted greater autonomy. Individual teachers will be given the freedom and security to develop a positive learning atmosphere in the class-

[ Page 1947 ]

room." Mr. Chairman, we have sure seen signs of that, haven't we? This is from Cliff Adkins, BCSTA president, last year at the annual meeting of the Union of B.C. Municipalities: "In his comments Adkins referred to what he sees as a move towards increased centralization in Victoria that affects local government. Only one of the examples he cited was certain features of the new property assessment Act." I'll tell you, Mr. Chairman, that centralization is certainly creeping into the school system. The minister admits that he is interested by his very direction he provides to schools.

A controversial provincial government regulation stating that parents have no right to see school records of their children has been ignored by the Burnaby school board. Mr. Chairman, this was a question of open government, but not this government. The school board had to go against the government on things such as this. I suggest that there is centralization popping in. I have heard the minister talk and I've heard the questions that have been raised by him and some of his staff indicating that school boards are really to do the bidding of the provincial government and the Ministry of Education. They can set the budgets all they like, but I suggest to you that the minister is a minister of centralization. He is calling the shots all around. lie has centralized the college system. To some extent he is centralizing the university system, and he has certainly got his hands on the reins of the public school system.

We are now in a position where we have gone right back on everything that that party said when they were in opposition - right against it. One of the areas was centralization.

I certainly want to leave one or two questions for some of my colleagues. 1 do not want to deal in any great terms with some of the other areas I want to talk about, so I am going to leave it to my colleague.

MR. STRONGMAN: I just have one particular point I would like to question the minister on. School populations in many school districts over the last five to 10 years have been on a decline. Yet costs of education in those same school districts have kept up with inflation, so to speak, and have, in fact, outstripped inflation in many cases.

It would appear that in some of these districts where there has been a decline in school population, in fact, there are fewer teachers in the classroom but there are an increasing number of school teachers that have been moved into the administrative ranks. My question is: is there a mechanism - and if not, will there be a mechanism - to take nonproductive administrative people and put them back into the classroom where the education is really done? Secondly, where you have a declining enrollment in school districts and where you have teachers on staff that have tenure, is there going to be a mechanism to allow school districts to phase out teachers, either by early retirement or other means, that is satisfactory not only to the school district but also to the BCTF? This is a fact that we are going to have to face. Where you have areas where there is going to be a continuing decline not only on a five-year plan, but on a 10-year or a 20-year plan, we have to face the fact that some of these districts are going to have a surplus of teachers.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

I have those two questions: is there going to be a mechanism to move administrators back into the classroom, and what about teachers that are really going to be surplus to the needs of various school districts?

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, we have made provision in the Public Schools Act so that people who are in educational administration can be returned to the classroom. Furthermore, we have announced a new policy in the Ministry of Education that superintendents will in future be hired on a contract basis for a tour of duty.

It's our belief that a teacher is primarily a teacher and not an educational administrator. If part of his career is spent in administration, there should be every opportunity for that teacher to return to his primary and most important function, without anything but pride in his professionalism as a teacher and whatever term he may have served as an administrator. But it is our position that the higher calling is that of the professional teacher, and the administrator is merely someone who serves a term to keep the system going.

I might add, Mr. Chairman, that the matter of the numbers and the remuneration of educational administrators is a cause of concern. I think we've identified close to 200 educational administrators in British Columbia who receive higher salaries than the associate deputy minister in charge of the K-to-12 programme, or the finances, or the postsecondary system. We've identified a number who receive higher wages than the Premier or any civil servant in Victoria, including, I might add, the superintendent and two assis-

[ Page 1948 ]

tant superintendents from the school district of North Vancouver that the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) was complaining about.

Mr. Chairman, we will be issuing guidelines from the ministry to all of our educational institutions in British Columbia suggesting what we believe, on the basis of the responsibility that they must accept, the numbers and the salary range should be for those individuals. There are great anomalies in the system. It's all public money, it's all funded from the public purse, and it is only fair that we have some kind of reasonable scale that reflects, as I say, the responsibility that these people accept. We don't want to develop a surplus of administrators in British Columbia any more than we want to have a surplus of teachers.

The member for Vancouver South (Mr. Strongman) asked what we might do about the teachers in the system in areas where the population is declining. Our figures indicate, Mr. Chairman, that attrition more than compensates for the decline in enrolment of the individual districts. Overall attrition is about 10 per cent a year and the decline in the school population is of the order of 2 per cent or 3 per cent a year.

What that means, Mr. Chairman, is that those who are currently working in the system can be reassured that they will be needed and that there will be jobs for them. But what we must guard against doing is keeping large numbers of students coming into teacher training in the system when they are not needed. We don't want to be supporting a plan to educate teachers who are not needed. We don't want to keep people coming in the front door of our educational training institutions just in order to keep the faculty of those institutions busy. That would be the worst thing that we could do.

So the key to all of this, Mr. Chairman, the future of the teaching profession, is to make the supply equal to the demand. That's the goal that we will be working towards. It will mean limiting the number of people who enter into the system, because if we don't do that there won't be jobs for them at the other end. But every bit of information we have at the present time should be totally reassuring to the teachers who are already in the system, and I would like, Mr. Chairman, to emphasize that to you, lest any of the fine professionals we have out there might be worried that some kind of axe is going to fall on them in the future. It simply isn't going to happen, Mr. Chairman.

We're going to have to be a little bit more efficient in the matter of educational administration in British Columbia. I think we have been unable to identify anywhere a shortage of educational administrators. We have, in some areas, been able to identify a surplus, and we will be working with the school districts to address that particular problem.

MR. STRONGMAN: I'll just be very brief. I was very pleased to hear the minister indicate that there wouldn't be a necessity to dismiss teachers, that in fact attrition would take over where there was a decline in the school population. However, attrition isn't necessarily made up of people who retire at age 60 or 65. Attrition takes place by people just leaving the system itself.

One thing that we must guard against -especially if you're going to decrease the number of students that are going through university and wishing to become teachers, and if you're going through a normal attrition rate - is ending up, as we did in the 1930s, with teachers who are, for the most part, older. We have to have a mix of ages within the system, within the teaching ranks, or we're going to end up at some point in time with people that are totally of one age group. I would urge you to have your people have a look at that because it's important that that not happen.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I want to just take the minister to task a little bit before I step outside the chamber. The minister was talking about the increase in the education budget for the last five years. I remember I talked about his flim-flam. He said that the education budget has gone up 113 per cent. Imagine, it's doubled over the last five years - from $505 million to $1,079 million.

Mr. Chairman, do you know what the provincial government budget has gone up in that same five-year period? Three hundred per cent - from $1,700, 000,000 to $4,280, 000,000. That's the kind of really rational argument we get from that minister. He's slamming the blazes out of his own area, slamming education, slamming school boards, slamming everybody he can get his hands on and not really looking at the relevancy of his argument -because there's no relevancy in an argument like that. The provincial government budget has gone up to the tune of 300 per cent and, at the same time, school budgets have gone up to the tune of 113 per cent. I think it's a shocking argument for him to be using, a shocking argument that he's been using all over the province. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to the 1974 budget so that I could check out the figures. I should have anticipa-

[ Page 1949 ]

ted this; as a matter of fact, I did yesterday and I forgot it. But, anyway, there it is for the minister to kind of chew on.

MR. D'ARCY: Pursuing the questioning by the member for Vancouver South (Mr. Strongman) -perhaps a slight variation on it - I was rather interested in the minister's remarks on it. I've also been following the statements made in the press and on the radio by trustees - in particular, Mr. Westlake from Vancouver, who has made the point on numerous occasions that the major problem of escalating costs that he sees and is concerned about is what he refers to as administrative overload. He has consistently pointed out that he feels - and I would tend to agree - that education begins and ends in the classroom, and that there are not too many teachers. He does not feel that we're not getting good value for our teaching dollar.

In fact, as he has pointed out and as the minister has confirmed, as school populations decline - even in the most rapidly declining areas - attrition more than takes up the fewer numbers of teachers who are needed. In fact, if anything, what we really need are more teachers who are actually teaching. The points he has made - and I agree with, because I have observed this as well - are that, as school populations decline, what does not decline are the numbers of administrators, superintendents, deputy superintendents, principals and viceprincipals, and that the expenditures for these kinds of non-teaching, administrative personnel have g-one steadily up. The numbers of personnel have essentially stayed the same, while the number of actual students and the number of classrooms have declined.

I would like to talk to the minister about this to find out his feelings, and if he is considering any measures or if, indeed, there are any measures that can be taken to perhaps establish a formula for the numbers of students which would be required for each superintendent, deputy superintendent, principal or vice-principal in any given school district in order to control the fact that it would appear - at least in the Vancouver school district - that attrition, while it works very well to reduce the number of teachers when that is necessary, does not seem to be working very well internally to reduce the number of administrative staff. That sector is becoming an ever-increasing percentage of the total school district budget in districts of this nature. I think it's something to which the ministry perhaps is addressing itself; but if it is not, I think it should. I would like to hear the minister's feelings in this area.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, I want to completely concur with the member for Rossland Trail. He's absolutely correct. He's about two weeks ahead of the ministry. We commenced studying this question in 1976. We've been assembling information - with, I might say, the cooperation of a number of school districts in British Columbia. Some were reluctant to co-operate, but others did.

As a result of that, we were able to assemble the kind of detailed information that would make it possible for us to develop reasonable and appropriate guidelines. The information is all in and we are collating it now. I hope within two weeks we'll be able to release precisely the information you asked for. I hope it will be well received. I know some districts will receive it well, but it's going to be a little bit painful, perhaps, for some of the others. In any case, we're trying and we'll just have to see what the result is.

MR. D'ARCY: Are these going to be guidelines in the sense of jaw-boning to hopefully influence school districts or is there going to be some element of muscle in them?

HON. MR. McGEER: Well, we've got persuasive powers, but there's a limit to our legislative powers, as perhaps your colleague will breathe a sigh of relief to know. Some of the positions actually are negotiated with the B.C. Teachers Federation, and it's not going to be easy to eliminate some of the surplus positions except by attrition. But nevertheless we'll do our best within our authority.

Certainly we've got authority to release the results of our study. That will be public knowledge. And to the extent that we currently have authority to bring people more into line in the interests of the public purse, we will do so. But I'm not suggesting that I think we need more legislative power than we now have for that kind of purpose. I'd be very reluctant to ask the Legislature for such power. I think the important thing to do is to appeal to the public responsibility and common sense of those who are in the system to bring the spending more into line with what's reasonable.

MR. D'ARCY: I want to make it quite clear that I am not advocating there be a layoff or firing in this area. What I am suggesting is that the same attrition controls which do now and have long applied with classroom teaching staff also be applied to administrative staff.

[ Page 1950 ]

HON. MR. McGEER: I think that I agree.

MR. KAHL: I have a few comments I would like to make to the minister, several of them concerning situations in my constituency. I take this opportunity to publicly thank the minister and officials in his ministry for the work on some of the problems that have been long outstanding and have finally been corrected.

At the same time, I want to indicate that I was pleased to see in a number of schools in my constituency a major emphasis and expenditure of finances on libraries. I think it's probably, second to the classroom teacher, a key area where we should be spending money, particularly in the early, formative years of education, in the primary grades and the early elementary grades, as well as kindergarten. It's on the primary grades and kindergarten that I want to spend a few moments of discussion.

I would like to know the plans that the Ministry of Education has in regard to expenditures as far as kindergarten and, say, grade 3 of the primary grades on a per student basis, if those figures are available, in comparison to those in the higher grades and university education. I realize there is going to be some discrepancy here, because the higher education - university, post-university education - is probably more expensive in terms of facilities and instruction. However, I think that if it's properly done in the very early years of education, that expense at the far end can be greatly reduced.

Although it's wise to try to keep costs down in the early, formative years of children's education, you have to be very careful that you do not substitute that for the quality of education that very young people deserve and are entitled to. I think you should take a very serious look at the class sizes of kindergartens and primary children. I don't think, quite frankly, it's in fairness to compare those to the ones of higher grades of 4 to 12. 1 think they deserve, because of the very nature of small children and the difficulty in working with them, the right to be considerably lower than the others.

I think the formula used in deciding the number of students per teacher is completely erroneous in that it indicates that for the number of teachers there are X number of students, and in that number of teachers are included vice-principals, principals, supervisors and so on, who never get into the classroom. I think that When you are looking at those figures, you have to indicate those teachers who spend the teaching day teaching children in the classroom. Don't include the supervisors in that.

I believe also that there is a need for a very close look at curriculum revision and the content therein, as it would apply to British Columbia. Do the students know %tat the province is all about - and Canada - particularly in the trying times of the down-east situation? I think if you don't already have someone in your ministry taking a very close look at curriculum revision, you should have.

In particular, if the information is available, I would like a response on the dollar investment on kindergarten as compared to grade 12 students.

MRS. DAILLY: I was listening very carefully to the minister when he got up to reply to the questions from the member for New Westminster and my own questions and comments.

Frankly, I think the minister should resign his post as Minister of Education right now. He is not concerned about the school boards, the teachers, the parents and the students of this province. He has shown that. He is only concerned with flying political kites, which he thinks is what the public out there are looking towards him for. He is catering to a vocal minority out there who always suggest that school boards costs are out of line.

They suggest that the teachers are permissive and that they aren't teaching adequately.

What kind of a Minister of Education do we have who doesn't stand up, as most other government ministers do, and speak positively of his ministry? Not this minister. From the time he assumed office, he has taken a negative stance purely for political purposes. When a minister in charge of a portfolio will stand up and accuse major groups in the province the school boards in charge of education of mishandling their finances, of not being able to budget properly, of budgeting irresponsibly.... Then, as proven by the member for New Westminster, even the facts he is using to back that up are absolutely erroneous. This minister is trying to suggest to the public of B.C. that school boards have been prolific in their spending and have been irresponsible. What does he use as a basis for it? He points out an increase of about 115 per cent in their budget over a period of years. He fails to mention, as the member for New Westminster pointed out, that the overall provincial government expenditures in that same time have been well over 300 per cent. He fails to point out the history of salaries in the private sector in those same years. All areas in this province - in the private sector, public and otherwise - we know have experienced enormous increases, primarily

[ Page 1951 ]

because of the inflationary spiral we have been in. And yet that minister wants to use the school boards of this province as a scapegoat, backing it up with erroneous statements.

Why? I'll tell you why he wants to use the school boards as his scapegoat. It's because this government has reneged on its promise to reduce property taxation for school purposes. Not only have they failed to reduce it, but they have increased it so that now the taxpayers of British Columbia are paying 60 per cent for the cost of school taxation in this province compared to a 40 per cent increase by that government.

He knows what he's done. He know's that when he sat over here as an opposition member he criticized the former Socred government, which he is now a member of, for the very same flim-flammery and political kite-flying. He marched over there, and he's a disgrace because he's doing exactly the things he condemned the Social Credit government for doing before.

This Social Credit government has gone back on their promise to the people of B. C. that they were to reduce school taxes. Instead, they have done the opposite. At a t time when assessments were increased there was no reason whatsoever for that government to impose an unnecessary, arbitrary increase in the basic mill rate on top of the assessment increase, particularly when we know that the school boards of this province kept their budget increases down to a very responsible degree. Again I say that minister shouldn't be in his portfolio. He is using erroneous statements; he is accusing and insulting the school boards of this province of being irresponsible with no basis to it whatsoever, no basis at all. And again, I repeat, Mr. Chairman, he's doing it strictly to cover up the Social Credit government's lack of commitment to the taxpayers of British Columbia.

Now this minister can get up and wave his hands and accuse the NDP of being the spenders during our years. The point is that the NDP also took very seriously their commitment to the local taxpayer of this province and brought about a major attempt to keep the school taxation burden on the local taxpayer down at a time when many major improvements were being made in education. But here we have this government, under this minister, not providing any incentive for increased educational improvements in the province. Yet at the same time he's dumping the load on the taxpayer and trying to tell the public of B.C. that the school boards of this province are irresponsible, and then suggesting they start a five year plan.

It won't wash, Mr. Chairman. I can assure you that the taxpayers of British Columbia, when they receive their notices, are now going to have serious questions. This minister may not wish to answer us in this Legislature. Very shortly, I'm sure, he - or maybe he won't be there, we don't know - and the members of his government are going to have to answer to the taxpayers of British Columbia.

But actually I'm absolutely.... Well, I shouldn't be shocked. When the minister moved across the floor from one party to the other, I guess I should have been prepared to accept the fact that all the fine speeches he made over here on quality education and the need for more increased government support for taxation for schools would all be forgotten, and they have been.

Mr. Chairman, the other area in which the minister, of course, failed to answer by covering up and saying that we've already debated the bill was my questions to him on the effects of the implementation of Bill 33 in this province. Now to go back into the style and the manner of the debate that was held in this House when that was brought in is just creating a smokescreen. This minister, as I said earlier, has opened a Pandora's box for the public of British Columbia with this bill, and he has not answered the questions.

I want to ask the minister once again. When he states that the money given will only be given for services rendered by the private schools of this province, would he stand up now and tell us just how and what mechanisms are going to be used in his ministry to assure the public of B.C. that the moneys are spent for services rendered? Also, would the minister tell us what he considers valid services to be rendered in a private school in British Columbia, parochial and non-parochial?

Those generalized answers are not satisfactory, Mr. Chairman. They are not satisfactory at all. That minister has a responsibility to be accountable for every bit of money that that government hands out to the taxpayers of British Columbia. It's very, very amusing - if it weren't so tragic, Mr. Chairman - that he prattles incessantly about accountability for the public school boards of this province, and yet he entirely evades the issue of accountability by the private schools of this province. He completely evades that issue. Why does he evade that issue? It's tax money. Why should the private schools not be accountable when... ? The leader of our party has just come in, and I'm sure that he, too, will be very concerned to know that we have a Minister of Education who has decided to cover up his own inadequacies and his own government's inadequacies in reducing the school taxpayers' bur-

[ Page 1952 ]

den by placing the whole blame on the school boards of this province. That was his defence.

The school . boards of this province are to be blamed for this government's policy of increasing the tax burden.

Following that, I want to ask the minister specifically what he's intending to do in the area of operating budgets for school boards. There was a recent quote from the minister, I believe I where he said, I think, he was considering the return to the operating referendum. I recall, if we go back to some old speeches from that minister, what he said at the time the former Social Credit government brought in operating referendums, Mr. Chairman.

It's an interesting point he makes when he flies this kite again which he thinks is going to keep the Social Credit, in the public's mind, very, very careful about taxpayers' money. It's interesting what he says. lie says: "School trustees are in the most sheltered position of anyone who holds public office in terms of accountability."

Mr. Chairman, I think that minister should get on his feet and either apologize to the school trustees for making that statement, or validate it. I want to read it again: "School trustees are in the most sheltered position of anyone who holds public office in this province." I ask again: Who has a more sheltered position than the private schools of this province?

MR. SKELLY: The Minister of Education.

MRS. DAILLY: The Minister of Education?

MR. SKELLY: He can always go back to the position he works at.

MRS. DAILLY: He can always go back, right.

The minister then goes on to say: "The only method local taxpayers have now of expressing their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with a budget is in the election of school trustees." He is suggesting there must be something wrong with that, Mr. Chairman. If that is so, may I ask the minister what manner the general public has in expressing its dissatisfaction with you? Is it not, unfortunately, only that we will have to wait for the next election? I want to ask the minister why the school trustees are any different than you are as a Minister of Education.

MR. SKELLY: They are more responsible.

MRS. DAILLY: Yes. Perhaps he is suggesting some sort of recall for himself and the government. Maybe that is what he is suggesting.

I think he must explain to the school boards of this province why he is putting them in a special category, different from anyone else. Why are they not accountable? What is wrong with the fact that trustees have to go to election to be accountable?

He went on to say: "The government has made it clear that it will not increase taxes in order to expand the school system; it would be counterproductive to the economy. If school boards insist on increasing their budgets we can't continue to match them." Here the school boards were compared with former years, decreasing their budgets on the whole. Yet, at the same time, he increases the burden that they must take upon themselves through increasing the basic mill rate.

MR. SKELLY: I think that's known as politics.

MRS. DAILLY: I think it's known as politics. But the tragedy of it, Mr. Chairman, is that in doing this he is really playing politics with the children of this province. Because when he creates demoralization in the public school and post-secondary systems, all those who attend - the consumers - are being demoralized. The teachers are being demoralized and the whole system suffers. That minister doesn't seem to care. He is out on a political kick. I really don't know what he is in the job for, Mr. Chairman. I've been trying to weigh this in my mind for the last two years. It seems to be to kick the teachers, kick the school boards, kick the universities. I would say it's a pretty negative outlook an your ministry.

I would specifically like the minister to tell us if he is considering operating referenda being brought back to school boards. Why does he consider school boards less accountable than any other duly elected bodies in this province? Also, what mechanism is he going to present to this House to ensure us that there is accountability for the spending of moneys to private schools?

When the minister brought in the Act, I recall posing these questions about Bill 33, and he said: "Oh, there may be amendments." He tried to appease our questions with that. "There may be amendments and there may be regulations." There has been nothing except the unfortunate fact that has arisen that all our concerns posed at that time have tragically come true. Mr. Chairman, I hope we can get some answers.

MR. SKELLY: Just before the minister does

[ Page 1953 ]

his flyer, I would like to have the members of the House welcome 30 students who are here from Alberni District Secondary School. They are here under the direction of their teacher, Mr. David Hooper. I hope that all 55 members in the House will make them welcome.

HON. MR. McGEER: The member for Esquimalt asked about the costs of kindergarten in British Columbia. We can't break that up. Perhaps if the member would put the question on the order paper it may be possible for us to provide the data. In any event, I will undertake to see if we can't produce some statistics for him. I can say that the total cost on the average per pupil in the public school system of British Columbia, for the calendar year 1978, is $2,116.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the member for Burnaby North (Mrs. Dailly) stated that, because of the policies of the provincial government, the taxpayers of British Columbia were forced to increase their share of education costs to 60 per cent. Now that's the kind of ridiculous nonsense that we have got from the NDP year after year after year. Where do you think the money comes from to operate the public school system, except from the taxpayers?

MRS. DAILLY: Oh, we've heard that before, Pat.

HON. MR. McGEER: The taxpayer, Mr. Chairman, pays 100 per cent of the cost of the public school system, and about 97 per cent of the cost overall. The remaining 3 per cent is paid for by the unlucky taxpayers who are paying twice, because they send their children to independent schools - and we're going to do something to redress that injustice, starting this summer.

Mr. Chairman, the member asked about the question of a referendum. I did not propose a referendum on school costs. I did not say that we were going to go back to the operating referendum system. But I would be remiss if I did not draw to the attention of the members opposite - and all the members of the House -that, as Minister of Education, I receive continuing and intense pressure from individual taxpayers, as well as from municipal leaders, about the cost of operating the educational system. I suppose it is only natural that the Minister of Education should be the target for the taxpayer revolt.

[Mr. Kerster in the chair.]

Mr. Chairman, I want to assure the members opposite that I don't set the educational budgets; they are set by individual school boards. If it's the policy of the NDP to say that you're going to set the budgets for individual school boards, stand up now and say so. If it's your policy that they should continue to set their own budgets, then state that. What the members opposite have done -the NDP that can't analyse the issues, can't come up with reasonable policies, can't manage power when they have it - is confuse the public. Now either you're for the individual school boards setting their budgets and taking responsibility for them, or you're not. The laws of British Columbia at the present time say that the school boards set the budgets. If you want to see the laws changed, get up and define that as your party policy. If you don't want to see the laws changed, say that that's your policy as well, so that the public of British Columbia for once can understand what your policy is.

They asked when the Minister of Education and the Social Credit government would be accountable to the people. I'll tell you when they'll be accountable, Mr. Chairman: the next time there is an election in British Columbia - and that's when they'll say what they think of the OP once more. You deserve to be wiped out, because not only were you irresponsible in government, but you're irresponsible in opposition. As I've said so many times before, there simply aren't enough Liberals and Conservatives in this House to prop you up in debate, to analyse the issues for you and to provide you with the opportunities; you're on your own and you show it. No, you're not quite on your own, but you're so near to being on your own that your performance in opposition continually displays your inability to analyse the issues and come up with constructive debate.

Mr. Chairman, I can't do anything about that family fixation over there of the member for Burnaby North with regard to the independent schools. When she was really needed in debate on second reading, she and her colleagues walked out of the House. Now I can't go on reiterating that debate. I can only point out to you that w have set up an administrative system in British Columbia to bring accountability for the public funds that are spent on the independent schools, and that administration is not only operating with great efficiency and at minimum cost, but it's going to bring full accountability for the public moneys that are spent.

Mr. Chairman, the most ridiculous statement of all was the one of the member for Burnaby North that the school system in British Columbia is demoralized. The morale has never been

[ Page 1954 ]

higher. We're beginning to build back the confidence of the public in the school system and the confidence of the professionals themselves that the system is being respected not only by the students who are going there, but by the public as a whole. That's what we're building back in British Columbia after the years of disaster of the NDP. Demoralization, Mr. Chairman, my foot! The morale has never been better in the educational system in British Columbia, and the fine professionals who are out there in the system are now having their efforts recognized by the government and by the public - and it's just beginning.

MR. ROGERS: The people in my constituency from time to time lobby me on various matters concerning education, and one of the ones they bring up most often and ask me to bring to the minister's attention, and the one I want to ask about today, is the subject of the so-called professional days. A lot of the people who live in my area are single parents with children going to school and a lot of the families are in situations where both parents work. The frequencies of professional days and, to a certain extent, sports days and their coincidence with long weekends or arrival of these professional days on Friday is something which they find curious, to say the least. I wonder if the minister would like to enunciate his thoughts on professional days, and why perhaps the professional days couldn't take place in the last 10 days of August rather than be spaced out throughout the school year.

The second thing I'd like to mention, and the last thing, is my usual appeal to the minister for the certain schools in my area where English-as-a-second-language classes are predominant. In some cases only 10 per cent of the students come from homes where English is the basic language. Despite the declining enrolment in other areas of the city and of the province, there are certain areas that require extra assistance. The reason these areas require assistance is because the policy that immigrant children move into a class with a bunch of children who already live here and already speak the language just doesn't apply there when they are moving in among their peers. The assimilation programme doesn't work well when you are assimilating with people who are also having trouble learning the language. I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

HON. MR. McGEER: The problem of professional days and the sudden dismissal of the school is one that has caused a great deal of distress among parent groups, as I'm sure the member who raised that question realizes.

The professional days this coming year by agreement will be one less than in previous years and we have asked all school districts to inform the parents by September 30 of what the professional days will be during the coming year. In other words, it won't just happen out of the blue. Those days will now be used strictly for professional purposes. The days will be declared in advance and I hope as a result of these changes there will be better acceptance of the system.

With regard to English as a second language, it is a particular problem for two or three cities in British Columbia where the immigrants tend to congregate. It's not only individual cities, it's individual areas within those cities. Vancouver is a hot spot for immigration. Certain areas of Vancouver are the areas where the immigrants congregate, and therefore the problem becomes a severe one. There are some 97 special approvals that have been given this current year to the Vancouver school board for the purposes of supplementing the educational programme to look after these immigrants.

In a broader context, Mr. Chairman, we've raised this subject with the Minister of Manpower and Immigration and with the federal government generally, because it's all very well for the federal government to engage in an open-door immigration policy, but they have to realize that when the immigrants come, they don't spread themselves evenly across the country and therefore the pressures, as your constituency has noted, are unevenly felt.

(Mr. Rogers in the chair.]

As a consequence of this, the provincial government is working now with several ministries on developing a position paper of the government with respect to immigration in the future, so that there will be co-ordination in the future between the provincial and federal governments with respect to immigrants coming into Canada. I would think that in the future we'll be much better prepared to handle the kind of problems that have cropped up than we have been in the past.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, the minister said that he made a commitment to himself that he would be easy, that he would try to answer questions and that he would be debating his ministry's estimates. What he's done to us this morning in all his insults and all his Flim-r-flam, refusing to answer questions, has been nothing but a disgrace to his office.

You know, he talks about the NDP; he talks

[ Page 1955 ]

about our time in office as though there were some great sins of omission or commission at that time. Believe me, if we were one-tenth as much at fault in the way we handled our administration as the new administration is, we would have something to hang our heads about. But we never have been and we never would be.

That part-time minister comes into this House and talks about school boards setting their own budgets, and he's ignoring the question that we've asked right from the outset. The question is: why does he continually dump on the local taxpayers? He said, for example, over the last five years that provincial education budgets have increased by 113 per cent. That was a very significant statement until we looked and found that the provincial government budget over the same period increased 300 per cent. But that doesn't seem to matter. That's not a fascinating issue as far as he's concerned. The only thing he worries about is trying to show just how much it has increased.

I did not say to him at the outset that school budgets didn't set their own budgets. Of course they set their budgets. But they set those budgets within constraints over which they have no control whatsoever. I used Cariboo as an example - $200,000 of flexibility in a $9 million budget. They don't have the kind of control that the minister would like us to understand. All I said to the minister - and he hasn't even justified anything to date in this debate - is: what was your justification for increasing the mill rate 2.25 mills when there was an increase in general assessment this year of 10 per cent, and the school budget went up only 9 per cent?

That's what I asked him to answer, and he starts talking about Liberals and Conservatives and what great and grand and glorious debaters they are. Hell, if he wants a debate we can all come in here and slam around with rhetoric to our heart's content. There's no Point in debating with that minister. He doesn't answer questions. Just answer one question. He gets up on his feet and jumps and hollers. No questions answered.

No, you sit down for a while. I'm going to paste you a little bit.

Mr. Chairman, this year the provincial government's participation, in taking their position in terms of the increase in the budget, has been 3.7 per cent. That's all they increased their participation by when the budget went up 9 per cent.

He says they're all taxpayers. So they are all taxpayers, but every party in this province at election time has always said their commitment is to make sure that the local taxpayers don't take up any more than their fair share of the load. As a matter of fact, We said we wanted to get it off residential property and for two years managed to get two fifths of it off on a five-year programme. But he's reversed it completely.

Then he gets up, as bombastic as ever, that smashing debater, and tells us we don't know what we're talking about. We can read figures and, you know, we're not alone in understanding the figures. What are the BCSTA saying? This is what Adkins said:

"The B.C. School Trustees Association is disappointed that the provincial government has decided to increase the basic mill rate, even though the increase is less than half the amount the government had predicted earlier. By raising the basic mill rate by 2.25 mills, the government has chosen to increase local property taxes for school purposes by almost 16 per cent, said the BCSTA president, Cliff Adkins."

The provincial government has seen fit to increase its share of school funding by only 3.7 per cent - 16 per cent on the local taxpayers and 3.7 per cent from the government, this benevolent, marvellous government that was going to get B.C. moving again. You got B.C. moving right into the biggest vortex that has ever hit this province. It's a tube.

Mr. Chairman, he goes on to say:

"It appears that the government is financing its 2 per cent reduction in the sales tax by reducing the amount of money it's willing to spend on education and by passing the burden onto local property taxpayers."

And this is a very conservative organization.

" Finally, the government is playing politics with their budget at the expense of education and the local taxpayers."

That's the kind of thing that I've never, ever heard from the B.C. School Trustees Association, a very conservative group. They think very carefully before they make charges like that, and they're justified in making that charge, I'm telling you.

Mr. Chairman, I would suggest to you that that minister go and study his own portfolio, and go and study that portfolio in relationship to the rest of the government. He certainly doesn't seem to know a lot about it at this point when all he can do is get up and criticize the former government instead of answering questions.

Let's take a good, in-depth look at this minister. I would like to quote from some of the things that he said to a group of college

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people who were meeting here some time ago. I already gave you one quote out of this marvellous speech, and I want everybody to remember that quote. That is that education institutions in financial difficulty turn to government. Then he went on to say: "But no institution should ever ask help from government and expect anything other than to give up their independence." I just want that message to go out to those people who are getting help from government.

Last year, when we were debating the colleges bill, we understood that he had very little regard for colleges. Now let me read to you out of the context of his speech some of the things that he said to this large group of educators:

"It seems to rue the greatest weakness of a community college is in attempting to become a mini-university. All too often the result is simply a parody of a university which serves no one well. In saying that, I do not wish in any way to underrate the important job that community colleges do in offering transfer credits to universities for students wishing to use these institutions as stepping stones to a later university career."

But then he goes on to say, Mr. Chairman, and listen very carefully to this:

"Universities, however, enjoy tremendous advantages in academic competition. They seek and obtain the more outstanding scholars. The greater the scholar, the more he gravitates toward prestigious universities. The best students wishing to pursue careers that derive from full university programmes seek those prestigious universities." This, as far as I can take it, really says that he has something just bordering on contempt for colleges.

lie goes on further and says: "If it requires equivalent resources, or anywhere near equivalent resources, to offer the same academic opportunities at a community college, society is obviously going to choose the better bargain, and put all of its resources behind universities."

You know, Mr. Chairman, that's a pretty frightening thing for a Minister of Education in this province to say. He really puts the colleges down with that statement, and it's frightening. He says: "If it requires equivalent resources, or anywhere near equivalent resources to offer the same academic opportunities at a community college, society is obviously going to choose the better bargain and put all its resources behind the universities."

It is these kinds of quotes that make me wonder about the minister and his inclination toward his chosen field at this time. He also said: "There's a major educational problem in our society today, a problem which community colleges are uniquely equipped to solve. There is a new phenomenon of the educated unemployed. Some have even extended this to suggest that the term should be the 'educated unemployable'."

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

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

MR. SPEAKER: Hon. members, before we proceed to the final motion, earlier today the hon. Leader of the Opposition rose on a point of order, which I undertook to rule on after reading the relevant passage in Hansard. On page 316/2 of the Blues it is recorded that the hon. Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) said: "Obviously the more responsible member for Mackenzie must have been overridden in caucus by the irresponsible team of Lea, Barrett, Macdonald and Skelly."

The hon. Leader of the Opposition claims that it is his prerogative to determine whether the allegations are, in his words, "imputing motive". I think it would be more correct to say that any hon. member may bring any such complaint to the attention of the Speaker, who then has the responsibility of seeing that order prevails. In so doing, the Speaker, of course, would attach considerable weight to the view of the offended member. In the present circumstances, I feel that the statement in question could, as the hon. Leader of the Opposition claims, impute an improper motive to him and I would invite the hon. Minister to conclude the matter by withdrawing the statement.

In so doing, I wish to say that the Chair may only deal with points of order when they are raised immediately, but not otherwise. The citation for that is May's 16th edition, page 470. However, there is a special circumstance existing in that the Blues indicate that the hon. first member for Vancouver East (Mr. Macdonald) immediately called for a withdrawal when the statement was made.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, thank you for your ruling. I will wait for the earliest possible opportunity for it to be implemented.

MR. SPEAKER: If necessary, the matter can be drawn to the hon. minister's attention when she returns to the House.

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Presenting reports.

On behalf of the Provincial Secretary (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) , Hon. Mr. McClelland presented Report No. 2 of the special committee appointed on March 30,1978, which was read as follows and received:

"Mr. Speaker, your special committee appointed March 30 last begs leave to report as follows:

"Pursuant to the Crown Corporations Reporting Act and pursuant to the leave of the House to increase the Committee on Crown Corporations to 16 members, Mr. Stephens and Mr . Bawtree have been appointed as members on the committee on Crown corporations and Mr. Smith has been appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the election of the Hon. H.W. Schroeder as Speaker of the House. Signed: Grace McCarthy."

Hon. Mr. McClelland moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 1 p.m.