[ Page 2223 ]

CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Urban Transit Authority Act (Bill 19) Second reading.

Mr. Lea –– 2223

Mr. Gibson –– 2224

Mr. Nicolson –– 2226

Mr. Cocke –– 2229

Mr. Mussallem –– 2231

Mr. Loewen –– 2232

Mr. D'Arcy –– 2234

Mr. Rogers –– 2236

Mr. Levi –– 2239

Mr. King –– 2242

Hon. Mr. Curtis –– 2242

Division on second reading –– 2243

The House met at 8:30 p.m.

Orders of the day.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I ask leave to move to public bills and orders.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 19.

URBAN TRANSIT AUTHORITY ACT

(continued)

MR. LEA: I only have one or two questions left for the minister. The first question I have is: What do I tell people in my community who are going to be paying more for their transit? Further to that, what am I going to tell people in my community who are now going to have their property taxes raised to pay for a service that is already in place under a formula, I should mention, that the people of Prince Rupert accepted in the first place? Now the rules are being changed. Different rules are going to cost the people of Prince Rupert more. There will be property tax increases, possibly tax increases on their gasoline, when people in Prince Rupert already pay more for their gasoline than people in Victoria and Vancouver. Already they are paying a higher cost of living there.

The only thing that this government or any other government has probably done to bring any equalization in is the price of liquor. For some reason, you can sell a bottle of liquor in Fernie for the same price you can in Victoria, or in Dawson Creek, or in Omineca, or in Prince Rupert. But when it comes to other services of government, we find

Interjection.

MR. LEA: Who knows? This government may do something to us in the north on the price of liquor too.

It seems incredible to me that the minister could bring in a piece of legislation saying that it's going to be good for communities such as Prince Rupert, when in fact the people in Prince Rupert are now going to have to start paying more money for the service that they already enjoy. Since this government has been in office we have seen the ordinary people of this province pay increasingly for those services that have been supplied to them traditionally through the provincial government. We pay more for our hydro; we pay more for our .as, increases having been allowed by the provincial government agencies; we pay more for our transportation.

Interjection.

MR. LEA: "Rubbish, " the Minister of Mines (Hon. Mr. Chabot) says.

We pay more for our car insurance. I'd like to Mention that when we were in government we were bringing in, in a gradual way, postage stamp insurance rates in this province. This government gets in and they take it right back to where it was before the New Democratic Party was in government, and they bring in the disparity

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Perhaps that is not to be debated under this bill.

MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, I'm only using it as an analogy to show how the cost of every one of the services that the people in Prince Rupert get through their provincial government has been increased many, many times by this government. Each average family in Prince Rupert pays approximately $1,200 a year more in taxation than they paid before this government came into office. Now there's another increase. There's more property tax. There's more gasoline tax. More money for the same service.

What does this minister say in his opening remarks? He talks about transportation being one of those socio-economic instruments that can be used for the good of society. He talks about transportation in terms from which one would have to conclude that he thought transportation should be a public utility. That's the only conclusion I can come to from the minister's opening remarks - that transportation should be a public utility. Now he comes in with an even larger user share going to the local taxpayers.

We are being overtaxed in this province. We are being taxed to the point where people can not even afford some of the necessities of life, never mind the luxuries. When you have a cabinet and a caucus made up of a great many millionaires, I suppose what they say is: "Give us the luxuries and you can have the necessities."

Interjections.

MR. LEA: You can have the luxuries. But through the taxation of this new government, most people cannot even afford many necessities.

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AN HUN. MEMBER: Get back to the bill.

MR. LEA: We are talking about the bill. The bill that that minister is bringing in is going to add an ever-increasing charge to property tax in any community that wants transit. I'm afraid that this bill will do away with the transit system we already have in Prince Rupert.

How much more can the people in this province afford? Can they afford this government any longer? They cannot afford this government, because this government, through taxation, is taking food out of the mouths of their families. It's taking clothing off the backs of families. It's taking money into the coffers of this government more and more from people and less from the resources and less from the corporations.

We've been talking over the past few days, in and out of this Legislature, about the kind of action that was taken in California. This bill calls for more taxes to the householder. In California what they don't seem to understand is that the reason that property tax is so high in California is the fact that they have a philosophy in the United States, shown through their governments, that resources and corporations should be taxed, if anything, next to nothing. But it costs money to run a state or a province or a country. You need so many dollars to run it. If you don't take a fair share of tax revenue from corporations and from the resources, then the load always falls back on the ordinary people who own ordinary houses and make ordinary wages and try to live an ordinary life.

What we're seeing in this province is a shift through this government to that kind of philosophy that we've seen so much in the United States, where they really believe that the best way to have a society is to have the corporations pay less and less, with less and less revenue from the resources that belong to the people and an ever-increasing load put onto the shoulders of ordinary people doing ordinary work.

Mr. Speaker, we saw, when this government came to office, 70 per cent of the tax load on ordinary people. The first budget they brought in shifted that tax load to 75 per cent coming from ordinary people. Now we're up to approximately 80 per cent. Mr. Speaker, it's those kinds of inequitable taxation policies that lead to the kind of revolt that we saw in California.

MR. KEMPF: Revolt?

MR. LEA: A revolt! Those people down there revolted against harsh taxation, unfair taxation. What we are seeing in this province is that shift, with the heavy tax load being carried more by property owners and by ordinary people and less by the corporations, with less and less revenue coming from the resources of the province.

Now we're seeing the effects. We're seeing people not quite able to make it, who could before. We're seeing people not being able to go out for dinner on a Saturday night, not being able to buy that extra bit of clothing, not being able to send their children to summer camp, not being able to do all of those things that make society worth living in, not just existing in. It's because this government its philosophy demands that the corporations pay less and ordinary people pay more. They've shifted it that way with each budget they've brought in and with each piece of legislation they've brought in. Where does it end?

MR. SPEAKER: Back to the bill, please.

MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, we're talking about the bill, because what we're talking about is an ever-increasing load of taxation on the homeowners and on the ordinary people who have to drive to work. That's what we're saying. ,

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, I find it absolutely incredible that a person who's spent literally a lifetime in municipal politics could bring this kind of bill into this House, which is nothing more or nothing less than punitive legislation against ordinary people in every community of this province.

MR. GIBSON: Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of questions about this bill that I want to ask. I think I'll ask most of them in committee. I'll just speak on the broad principles at this point. I think the bill has some good features, particularly on the organizational side as described by the minister this afternoon. He went into two main phases, the organizational and the financial.

On the organizational side, the responsibility for transit is finally being fixed. The responsibility for financing, as I understand it, is by no means as yet fixed. We'll have to wait and see what the regulations say. But the organization, at least, will be fixed by this bill. That is a definite step ahead. Moreover, that organizational scheme has some degree of local participation. Those things are good.

The bill, I believe, has some unfortunate features. I agree with many of the points detailed by the hon. second member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) . I think it is wrong that the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council should appoint

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all of the directors and all of the members of the commission, particularly when local governments will be paying a goodly share of the expenses. It seems to me that, if the precept of "Who pays the piper calls the tune" is one that's followed in cases like this, then the municipalities should be able, on their own volition, to appoint commission members, rather than having them appointed by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

I fear, in addition, that this kind of procedure will tend in the long run to politicize local councils. We may see a day when a government changes in Victoria, and as a result of that change in Victoria makes use of this power and changes for political party reasons the municipal representatives on the transportation authority. There will be a temptation to do that, and I think that would be an unfortunate thing.

I don't necessarily come out against political parties at the local level, but I do come out against the importation of provincial political questions into the local political arena. I think the minister would be well advised to consider the possibility of allowing the councils to make their own choice as to the appointments to the commission, rather than making those choices himself.

When it goes past the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council appointing the commissioners and they give themselves power as well to appoint the chairman, the vice-chairman and the general manager of the transportation authority, I think....

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. members, it is unparliamentary to interrupt the speaker, even from your own chair, but when members are not in their own places, it is doubly unacceptable. I would ask the hon. member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Loewen) to return to his seat and the hon. member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) to return to his seat.

MR. GIBSON: Mr. Speaker, I think they should be asked to stand in the corner for five minutes. It's very bad behaviour. I've seldom seen such a thing.

I do think it is wrong for the cabinet to have the power to appoint the chairman, the vice-chairman and the general manager of this transportation authority.

MR. SPEAKER: I hate to interrupt you again, hon. member, but Omineca is not moving.

MR. GIBSON: He did give a graceful bow as he crossed the floor there.

I think that's too much power over this transportation authority in the hands of the cabinet. Naturally any person, any chief executive officer such as the general manager who is appointed by the cabinet, will feel some kind of a loyalty to the cabinet. That will be his or her first master.

For example, one might think that if the senior officers of the GVRD were appointed by the cabinet they would feel less responsibility to the regional district and more responsibility to the provincial government. I think that the chief officers of this Transit Authority should have their loyalties strictly to the Authority and not to the provincial government. Therefore I believe the general manager should be appointed by the board and not by the Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council.

When we go beyond organization questions and into the financial questions, the area becomes a good deal fuzzier because we don't have the facts to work with. I think it is fair to say that for years there has been a cross subsidization in this province. The lower mainland, and to some extent Victoria, has subsidized some of the rural parts of the province in terms of highways, and some of the rural parts of the province have subsidized places like the lower mainland and Victoria in terms of deficit in transit operations. There has been some kind of saw-off there. While there have been vocal objections from time to time from both areas, there seems to be a concept that a reasonable balance of equity has been reached for the good of the province.

By this Act - depending, again, on the financial arrangements that the cabinet arrives at - we may be changing that balance substantially. We are talking here about a lot of dollars. We are talking about an urban transit deficit of something like $55 million in the current fiscal year in the Vancouver and Victoria operations of B.C. Hydro, and perhaps $40 million to $45 million attributable to the GVRD operations of B.C. Hydro.

MR. BARBER: Seventy-seven per cent.

MR. GIBSON: We're talking about something getting close to $100 per household. How is this burden going to be shifted around?

At the moment, as we know, it is paid for by a small provincial subsidy. Over the years, I think, it has historically been paid about *2 million and, in recent years, a couple of exceptional grants of much larger amounts. But there was no grant in the last fiscal year because of the exceptional electricity profit of B.C. Hydro from sales to the United States.

[ Page 2226 ]

So where is this new money going to come from? Obviously there is going to be juggling around in terms of transit fares and new gasoline taxes, and there may be changes in the electricity rates. I would suggest that if Vancouverites are going to have to pay higher property taxes or if they are going to have to pay higher gasoline taxes as a result of this shifting in the transit cost, then it is very important that that should be reflected in lower hydro, rates. Because on balance, Mr. Speaker, these bills are currently being paid, and the government is fond of saying: "Well, it's the same taxpayer that pays them."

I am most concerned - and I'd like the minister to give some assurance when he closes debate on second reading - that, when all of this moving around of pieces on the table is finished, the lower mainland taxpayer - which is the area I represent and I'm speaking for them for the moment - will be no worse off at the end of this exercise than they were when it started, which means at the same time that the rest of the province is no worse off either - in other words, that the rough kind of equity which exists now is preserved. As I say, we are talking about very large sum of money - $45 million or so - which, even spread over a population of a million in the lower mainland, is a lot of money.

The revenue target scheme of the minister, I have to confess, is an ingenious one - ingenious, that is, for the provincial government. It leaves for the local governments the choice of raising fares to meet deficits or raising taxes to meet deficits, and it is for the provincial government to set the target wherever they find it convenient. If the taxpayer then complains to the provincial government, the provincial government can respond by saying: "Well, you know, they shouldn't have raised fares because they can raise taxes"; or, if they raise taxes, they can say: "They shouldn't have raised taxes because they can raise fares." It would be a wonderful way of moving the shells around the table and I compliment the government for its ingenuity. I fear that it's going to be a little bit like the basic mill rate in the school tax system, which is in effect going to concentrate control in Victoria and responsibility in the cities, and I don't like that.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is very, very essential - and I would like the minister to give this assurance on closing debate in second reading - that this bill and this new organization not be used as an excuse to drag anyone's feet on the subject of rapid transit for the city of Vancouver. That is a chestnut that has been around for so long that it must finally be dealt with. Costs are going higher and higher; pressures for building new road networks are increasing all of the time, and the lower mainland deserves an answer some time within the next few months - based on all the work that's been done to date as to what is going to be the pattern and what is going to be the timetable on the development of rapid transit in this major metropolitan area.

In summary, Mr. Speaker, this seems to me to be in many ways enabling legislation; it can be good or it can be bad, particularly in financial terms and that will depend on the regulations, which the cabinet has very broad discretion to pass. This House will have to watch how that discretion is used and the public will have to hold the government to account for that discretion. I have a good deal of concern about this Act, but I do feel it has a potential for good; I do feel it's at least better than the present, totally unsatisfactory situation. So, perhaps in skepticism, but also in hope - with fingers crossed - I will support this legislation on second reading.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Speaker, we have before us a piece of legislation which supposedly has justified delay of transit services to many of the outlying rural areas for about three years in its preparation. The minister has responded to some 20-odd regional districts that have requested rural transit services by saying that the cost of implementing all such requests would require in subsidies - I don't have the letter in front of me - something like $5.6 million. But for that supposedly prohibitive sum - which is less than one-sixth of what the government gave up in annual revenues in terms of doing away with succession duties - many, many areas have been denied proper transit services and tremendous delays have resulted.

I suppose that when this bill is passed -and I suppose it will pass - we will see that there will be some further delays in terms of planning, particularly in the greater Vancouver area. There will be further delays in the planning of LRT. You know, it's just a little bit ridiculous that when we look at so many other areas...1 believe it was Edmonton the other day that opened up its own system. It seems to me that they had been hoping for traffic of 12,000 - I don't remember whether it was per day - and they had exceeded that expectation. The traffic was already up over 14,000.

So they had exceeded their hopes and their expectations. That's in an area like Edmonton, an area that can expand in so many different

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directions. The major constriction, I suppose, is a river that runs through the city, but it is an area that is really free-to grow in a radial way. It doesn't have the special problems of Vancouver or even the special problems of Victoria in terms of providing proper public transit services. It doesn't have to go over several islands. It isn't limited in its expansion to the north by severe mountainous terrain or to the south by the United States border, and therefore forced to stretch itself out in terms of urban growth. So Vancouver has been very long delayed.

I think in terms of the preparation of legislation what we see is that there has been a compromise reached in cabinet and, in fact, it would appear - it may even be hoped - that by presenting this piece of legislation we will be able to cause even further delays, because there is going to be a very prohibitive cost attached to the creation of proper public transit services in Vancouver. I can see that by this Act there will be an even greater deterrent to the expansion of public transit services in the interior and the linking up of small communities which are served by public transit in the Kootenays, such as Nelson and Trail and the various linkages which would be required in order to replace what we lost so many years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I was trying to deter-mine the circumstances under which a public transit service in the Kootenays - the Kootenay Lake free ferry - came to be designated as a free ferry, and just particularly when. When I was searching for this I learned that the removal of the tolls was announced at the same time as the then Premier, the member for that area and Provincial Secretary of the day were attending the opening of the Kootenay Skyway - that is the high mountain pass of over 6,000 feet elevation between Salmo and Creston. In looking through the newspapers of the day it was rather interesting to note that another piece of cause and effect which took place at that time was also the announcement that Greyhound had applied for the abandonment of bus service up the east arm of Kootenay Lake, which went from Creston up toward Kootenay Bay, across to Balfour and down into Nelson.

Sure enough, with the opening of that highway linkage, an area along which there is limited access and where for several miles there are no residences.... It was served by Greyhound, which abandoned many small towns and small communities such as Sirdar and Sanca, Boswell, Crawford Bay, Gray Greek, Riondel. These small communities were abandoned, and since that day in 1963 people have been seeking a restoration of that type of service so that the many people who live there and are pensioners could once again be served by the bus service that once was a part of the communication linkages in the West Kootenay area.

When the former government created a transit service capability within the Department of Municipal Affairs, it did create an entity which was doing something. They were buying buses and they were trying to buy buses at a time when there was a North America-wide demand. Now T read in the Calgary Herald.... One almost has to read the Calgary Herald if one wants to find out anything that is going on in Canada these days, because in my opinion it's the finest newspaper in western Canada. That is perhaps, en passant, Mr. Speaker, the reason why Calgary is passing Vancouver by as a centre in western Canada; possibly it's getting some leadership from its local paper.

I was reading in the Calgary Herald where Western Flyer Industries had been saved from a plant shutdown by an order for public transit from one of the Maritime provinces. This is the time when we should be ordering public transit - now and certainly for the last year or year and a half. The demand has slowed down. This is a time when we can get the most competitive bids. This is the time when orders can be filled. Yet there has been an inordinate delay in waiting for this piece of legislation. When we look at it we have to stop and think and ask why we had to wait two and a half years for this piece of legislation.

Thank goodness it is finally here. The only procrastination which can follow will be the inevitable fights which will now take place at the municipal level: the division again between property owners who have already been overburdened with tax, due to the manipulations of tax assessment and the education finance authority. They are now going to have to make decisions about public transit as it follows all of the other taxes levelled on local property.

I would agree that there has to be some kind of a caution fee. If the provincial government said they were going to provide public transit and they were going to provide all of the operating expenses, if there was nothing to really test the resolve of local areas or some kind of caution fee, I'm sure every area would opt for public transit whether they needed it or not.

When we ask what is in this for the city of Nelson, we see that within this piece of legislation there is less for the city of Nelson than they were getting before. Back in 1975 the city of Nelson suffered a fantastic tragedy when its entire bus fleet was burned

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up in the city garage. within a couple of days the transit authority was able to respond by replacing those buses at no burden to the local community, and, in fact, they were eventually replaced with even better and more suitable buses than had existed in the past. If you look at the logo on the side of the buses, it says "Kootenay Transit Service." The concept was to expand in communities like Nelson and to start once again to provide the rural transit service which had been removed when Greyhound applied for abandonment of service.

In this piece of legislation we have a situation where capital investments are also going to be placed as a burden on the local taxpayer. The decision to get involved in a greater degree of public transit is going to be affected by the fact that had this piece of legislation come in on its own, people might have accepted the local responsibility of some extra tax levies. But when one looks at what has happened to the school tax and to the assessment equalization formula, " I really can't see people voluntarily submitting to another big chunk of taxation at the local property level, particularly when this is clearly going to cost them even more than it would have had we left the transit Act alone. There were formulas; let there be no mistake about that. Transit assistance has been given to these transit authorities throughout the province, such as the one owned by the city of Nelson.

The city of Nelson has been in the transportation business - I'm sure the Minister of Recreation and Conservation could probably tell the date it started with its first streetcar.

HON. MR. BAWLF: It was 1904.

MR. NICOLSON: We've been in the transit business a long time. I have no doubt that Nelson will continue to be in the transit business. The rural areas are not going to be served by this. With the type of debate that is going to go on before people get into investing in transit and pursuing the concept of public transit with any sort of enthusiasm, we will probably lose the very good competitive position that we have if we were to get into these investments right at the present time. As I say, the climate is good. A lot of the bus manufacturers are very hungry for business.

I might just say that it's my personal feeling, as one who grew up in Vancouver, that there was no doubt of the fact that when they removed the old No. 14 Hastings-East line and replaced it with trolley buses, the operating time for a trip to get downtown went up about 10 minutes. I think that that tells us the role that could be played by light-rail transit. It is ironic that we removed that type of service from the very areas that we need it in today.

I simply can't see this piece of legislation providing the type of incentive that we will require to make the decisions as quickly as they should be made when there's been so much procrastination. In fact I would say that the intent behind this legislation is to bring it in and say that we have a new Act and it's up to the people. What they will be saying is that the people have decided that they don't want public transit because they turned down the referendum. "Municipal governments have been sneaky and they haven't tried to sell the programme." This is what will be said by that government. They will blame everybody but themselves. If they should be voted out of office and if they never solve the problem of public transit, it will be because they procrastinated. They waited too long and they missed the opportunity to do one of the most responsible things that they could have done in their term or terms of office.

The Minister of Recreation and Conservation (Hon. Mr. Bawlf) in his interest for heritage has informed me that the city of Nelson had electrical streetcars - and they weren't horsedrawn - in the year 1898. That's a very long tradition. When the minister opened debate and was giving his history of some of the efforts toward public transit in the province of British Columbia, I had felt that the city of Nelson had electric streetcars before the turn of the century, and that that was one very important chapter in the history of public transit in this province.

Mr. Speaker, if we don't provide the proper incentives in this piece of legislation, then what we are going to see will be an even greater emphasis an the automobile. There will be greater pressures to build third crossings and extra crossings of the Fraser for automobiles, and extra crossings at Burrard Inlet for the automobile. These things will come about. In fact, the whole time in which the public's frame of mind is sympathetic to the concept of public transit might itself have been passed. People's attitudes change. The most optimum time for development in terms .... You know, Mr. Speaker, if you cover up little baby chicks and you keep them in the dark they don't learn how to peck. But if you let them out in the light after a little while, they learn how to peck. If you keep them in the dark too long, they never will be able to

[ Page 2229 ]

learn how to peck and they'll die. It's the same thing. There are times which are optimum, and if we pass those times by, we never will see the proper type of transit in this area.

I wonder just how many cities have gone from the position of Vancouver, which has traditionally been well served by public transit, and then have gone very far in arrears.

MR. BARBER: Los Angeles.

MR. NICOLSON: There is one city, I guess -Los Angeles - that is further behind, but are we to be the Los Angeles of Canada? You know, really, when you start going around and you see smaller cities with LRT, cities that don't have nearly the problem of a Vancouver or a Victoria in terms of their geographical constraints and limitations going to peoplemovers, which are more in keeping with the times, it's really incredible.

All that we've waited two and a half years for is to see a piece of legislation that means nothing but more property taxation, when we've been property taxed to death by this government. It's a further shift of the burden of services for people to average wage earners, to retired people and to average, ordinary people through gasoline taxes.

One would wonder, if this was the direction in which they wanted to go, why they could not have come up with this two and a half years ago. It could have been done, and at least then people would not have been exposed to these very discouraging trends in school property taxation and tax assessments. Maybe then the climate would have been better. We could at least have been well underway with building some of the programmes. So this piece of legislation is not the end of the story. There is a very long fight ahead for public transit in this province, and this is more of a discouragement than an encouragement.

MR. COCKE: I must confess that I'm very much aware of the need for urban transit. I must say that the need to inspire people in our province to utilize urban transit is long overdue. lie are living in congestion in the urban areas of this province in a way one would never have suspected just a few years ago. I can remember driving, as I once did, from New Westminster to Vancouver - I must confess I drove. In those days one could drive from New Westminster to Vancouver in a reasonable length of time. I've been in this House for some nine years, and once in a while I go back to my old haunts, and to make that trip from New Westminster to Vancouver in rush hour is now a major project, mainly because of the fact that we haven't solved what we had at one time, and that was a transit system that people not only trusted, not only enjoyed, but felt motivated to use.

It seems to me we are a long way away from that now, having been sucked in by Detroit, having been pushed by the oil companies to use 4,000 pounds of car for a 150 lb. to 200 lb. person to get from one point to another in an urban area. It is a very sad state of affairs, and we've all been going for it - all but the poor; all but the people who probably have a little more perception about the needs of humanity than many of the rest of us -

I am worried about this transit bill. I happen to be a member of the Crown corporations reporting committee, and I saw us do a very great in-depth look at transit. As a matter of fact B.C. Hydro, that huge empire that we have in our province, agreed to meet with us on one occasion for one day. Out of that we managed, with our tremendous perception and our great understanding within that committee, to put forward a report - really the report that to some extent this bill is based on. I know it now and I wish I had known it then. I noticed in the Province paper that I endorsed that report. I just want to say for the record that I was not at the meeting and I'm quite assured by my colleagues that we did not endorse the report. What we endorsed was the idea that that report should be presented. That's an awful long way between those two positions.

[MT. Rogers in the chair.)

Now when I go home to that little hamlet that was once the capital of this province, when I go back to New Westminster, that majestic community, every weekend except those weekends that I'm involved in trying to beat you terrorists on the hustings, and I read our local tribune, The Columbian, and note that the Chairman of the crown corporations reporting committee is endorsing an increase in transit fare and I notice that he's making grave pronouncements on behalf of those thoughtful people an that committee about how we have Hydro an the run, it scares the blazes right out of me.

Then, Mr. Speaker, with bated breath I waited for the transit bill, and what do we have before us? A bill that we could have anticipated just by some of the discussion that we've had around us.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make a couple of things clear as an urban member that seem to me to at least be clear. I want to suggest

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that the whole question of this transit business is one that leaves me cold when I think in terms of what the rural members and the urban members are doing to one another around this "subsidy." 1 hear rural members saying: "No longer are we going to pay that excess rate to subsidize you folks down in the lower mainland." And the member applauds.

Mr. Speaker, how long have the urban people in this province subsidized rural electrification in this province for hundreds of millions of dollars? I say that to you, urban member. Mr. Speaker, none of us are right; none of us are particularly wrong. But we've divided among ourselves on this whole question.

1 don't really know whether it is a good idea to have Hydro in charge or the minister in charge. I think probably on balance it's not a bad idea to have the minister in charge. But let me tell you, Hydro's $60 million deficit is not a true deficit, in my opinion. I think Hydro has been dumping on transit. They have been dumping on transit just exactly the same way as the Minister of Education has been dumping on the local school boards.

He nodded, but then he ceased to nod when I made a charge about one of his colleagues. Fair enough, but I believe truly. For instance, I priced out a few of the charges. Can you imagine this? Making a block, a simple little block, for the wheels of a bus cost $2. Do you know what they charge out? They charge 60 for that simple little wooden block to block the wheels of a Hydro bus.

11r. Speaker, it cost $25 to wash a bus. Those are the kinds of little tidbits one gets fed over the years and over the months. Mr. Speaker, I suggest that Hydro has really done a job on us. It's unfortunate that our committee did not sit long enough on this proposition. I think we should have done a lot more work.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Mines doesn't even know that he shouldn't be speaking from someone else's chair.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I appreciate the fact that the Minister of Mines is in someone else's chair and should not be speaking. Matters that take place in committee are something else that we should not discuss at this time.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I missed that.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Matters taking place before the Crown corporations committee are not really appropriate during second reading of this bill.

MR. COCKE: Well, Mr. Speaker, whether or not the House has knowledge of what happens in committee, the Crown corporations committee met specifically on Hydro and Hydro's transit.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The House is aware of that, therefore it's....

MR. COCKE: Okay, yes, and we have before us a bill dealing specifically with transit. That's why I'm to some extent castigating myself along with the remainder of the committee about the fact that we dealt so superficially with this particular item which should have been dealt with in depth under the circumstance because of the fact that we have now before us a bill putting transit into a different kind of an authority.

Mr. Speaker, real transit will enrich the people in this province, real transit will particularly enrich the people in the urban areas. But, Mr. Speaker, having called for real transit, why do we find in calling for real transit and calling for a separate authority - and I don't think I can really condemn that - that we are having to go after the same old folks for a subsidy?

One of the things this government has been rather famous for is their talk of no subsidy for ferries or just a little subsidy for ferries, no subsidy for this and no subsidy for that. Here they are calling for a subsidy, but not from themselves. If you want to call for a subsidy - and I agree you should - you should call for that subsidy from the greatest cross-section of people in this province, not from the property owners. The Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. McGeer) has already creamed everything he can get out of there. He's changed the position from 48 per cent from the provincial government and 52 per cent from the local taxpayers to a situation where now it's 60-40 and we're asking them for more to subsidize our transit.

We are also telling people who drive cars that they also will subsidize transit. Mind you, there is a lot more validity in that, I think, than there is in the property tax. Beyond that, we are also calling for revenues from energy to pay for transit.

I think this whole question should be re-thought. I think the government should be talking in terms of a broader authority and a broader obligation in this area of transit. If we are to really do a job in transit we have to get everybody involved. It's not only important that we get them involved, it's important that we provide transit in every

[ Page 2231 ]

area of this province that we can.

The sooner we get on with it the better. We've got energy sources that are depleting. I know that right now we have a bit of a glut in oil. Over the next year or two we might even find it will become more of a glut. But ultimately it isn't going to be a glut; we are going to be out of it.

Even in the smaller locales.... I'm thinking in terms of Victoria at the present time. I remember when you could drive from any one place in Victoria to another place in Victoria within a 5- or 10-minute period. You can't do that any longer. You even get in traffic jams here. Congestion is a major problem.

Having said all that, why is it that the government has decided to arbitrarily dump everything on the same old folks who carry so much of the load? Incidentally, that means renters too, because they have to pay for it. Why is it that this particular area seems to be the most popular? Let me tell you why it is. One of the reasons it's so popular is that you don't have to carry the can. The provincial government does not have to carry the can. It's the municipal government that has to carry the can in this situation.

I suggest that a lot more thought should have gone into this particular situation before we went the route that we went. I'm very sorry that the Crown corporation reporting committee, which could have carried a lot of the load, was never permitted by the government or by Hydro to do a lot more homework than it did. Had they been able to, I think they could have cow up with some superb options that would have been much, much better than those we see before us.

I feel there are so many aspects to this which are so important to us when I think in terms of what Hydro has been doing with us over the years. I recall vividly that when I was a kid practically everybody rode transit. We grew older and the rates went up and the utilization went down, and then suddenly that major change took place in 1973.

1 remember the sense of pride I had when I went by the Lougheed Mall, which became a transit centre for Coquitlam. And the whole of Coquitlam was jubilant by virtue of the fact that we finally had a bus service in there. I thought: my heavenly days, we're back on track again. But I do fear, Mr. Speaker, that what we're doing here is going to untrack us. At the same time, we've taken a lot of the onus off Hydro that should still be there.

But in any event, as far as the basic concept is concerned, 1 hope we can enlarge and expand transit. But I cannot support some of the aspects of this bill that, I think, are absolutely the downfall of the whole system in terms of the future.

MR. MUSSALLEM: Mr. Speaker, I'm surprised to hear the hon. member for New Westminster use the B.C. Hydro postage stamp rate for British Columbia as an analogy for the transit system; I don't think I could think of a worse one. It certainly is the shining star in the crown of the Social Credit government when they brought in this postage stamp rate for electric power throughout this province. It was indeed one of the great things that happened.

As a matter of fact, the demise of the old B.C. Electric, looking back in retrospect, was caused because they failed to go into the hinterland and develop cheap power, to build industry and build factories and open the interior of British Columbia and open the great resources of our province. That was the downfall of that company. Would they have done that, they would still be in office as a private company today. This government, in other words, never had any intention of taking over any power company or any company, but it was forced upon them by the failure of that company at that time. A very poor analogy indeed. But the wisdom of that move has been shown in the greatness of the north and the profits that have been received by the province of British Columbia.

And how wrong can this hon. 'member be when he says we do not subsidize the ferries in British Columbia? What's he talking about? It's $46 million of subsidy; I think that's a lovely subsidy. But what this bill is really saying is that the minister is recognizing, in my opinion, one important fact. fie is recognizing the fact that the public is standing up and they're rebelling at horrendous losses and they're saying to this ministry and to this government that the time of losses and of grand and reckless spending has come to an end. I want people responsible for what they do; we want you to be responsible for what you buy. And the minister is trying to reflect this attitude, and I think it's a wise one.

There are operations in British Columbia that have been run at minimal losses. There is one in my town of Mission in the constituency of Dewdney where a small system is operating at very little subsidy, giving good service to that community. What we are saying - and I think what I translate it to say - is for the communities to get off the gold-plated kick and get on with sensible transit.

Now in our municipality of Maple Ridge we went on with a government plan, paying a certain subsidy to the system. Well, what did we have to do? To my surprise, we had to

[ Page 2232 ]

accept two beautiful, costly buses - $40,000 buses - when we could have done as well with 20-passenger low-cost buses and given better service to our people. I'm not finding fault with some fine buses; I do not see any fault in this. But I say to you very clearly that the public is fed up with losses and with careless spending. Today we've got to recognize the fact that the time has come for fiscal responsibility.

And this minister, in my estimation, is merely saying to the public: "Be responsible." And I think that is a fair thing to say. The time has come for me and for all of us to recognize the fact that there is a bottom to the amount of money we've got. And when you say the government should subsidize, what's the government doing? You're merely saying: put your hands into the pocket of your neighbour and pull out more money and throw it recklessly around. We're not going to stand any more of that stuff. We've got to be responsible; we've got to understand that if we buy something it has to be paid for.

Strangely enough - and you may not agree -the city of Vancouver and the city of Victoria, those two beautiful metropolitan areas, are not yet large enough to support an elegant system; they have to make that system work on an economical and proper basis. You cannot have a gold-plated system in these cities. I'd like to have it, but the public is saying to us clearly that we should read them. The state of California is reading it today: we're fed up with losses.

The public is prepared to accept reasonable transit; they're prepared to accept and understand reasonable losses. What is light rail transit? I don't even yet know what it means. Some people have tried to explain it. It means a rail vehicle, that's all. There is nothing magic about it, but it's mighty costly, mighty difficult to run and a great cost to whoever uses it.

The time has come when we must stop paying dollar for dollar with the user of the transit service. The time has come when the municipalities and the taxpayers must pay and they can do it this way: they can do it as it's done in the municipality of Mission. They can do it on a reasonable basis; they can do it with less costly transit; they can do it and be economical. That's what I translate from the minister's bill.

He's not saying to you: "Go on with unending costs and raise the mill rate." He's not saying that at all. In my opinion, he is merely saying to you, to the people of British Columbia: "Put on a system that you can afford, and that's the system we want you to do."

MR. LOEWEN: Mr. Speaker, I'd like to share just some thoughts on this particular bill and on the Urban Transit Authority. Tonight we have very clearly once more seen the philosophical difference between the Social Credit government and the opposition. One after another of the opposition members has risen to their feet and have suggested and expounded on their policy and their philosophy of centralization, of power and decision making, whereas this bill very clearly suggests that it is time that more of the decision making be made on the municipal level.

Burnaby-Edmonds is in the municipality of Burnaby. There is possibly no other municipality where the transportation problems are more evident than in the municipality of Burnaby. The people of Burnaby, frankly, are fed up with the problems that we have. We recognize that less has been spent on transportation in the municipality of Burnaby than possibly in any other municipality in the province of British Columbia. And in meeting after meeting that I go to, the main subject is transportation. The public ask me again and again at these meetings and privately: what will be done about rapid transit? What will be done about the Newcombe extension? What will be done about Marine Way? What will be done about the Stormont interchange and about the Edmonds extension?

Mr. Speaker, all of our friends, all of the people from Langley, from Chilliwack, from Surrey - travel across the Pattullo Bridge -about 70,000 vehicles per day. And most of then travel very quickly through New Westminster. Then they all arrive in the municipality of Burnaby. Now we have so many problems in respect to transportation in Burnaby, we frankly don't even know where to start. And half the people are saying that we must improve the road transportation system because it's archaic, and the other half insists that rapid transit is the answer to all.

I am encouraged by this Urban Transit Authority because it is a big step in solving the needs that we have in Burnaby. Firstly, we recognize that it is not the answer to all. Firstly, it agrees with my philosophy that the people on the local level must be more responsible in the decision making, in their own destiny. And this bill will enable the local elected people to do so.

However, there are several observations that I want to pass on. Because there is such a tremendous polarization in the public mind today - and I trust that this polarization is not politically motivated - I'm concerned that

[ Page 2233 ]

this polarization is also taking place in some of our own ministries. I'm thinking specifically of the Ministry of Highways and I'm also thinking of GVRD. And let me speak specifically because this is one or maybe the major problem in Burnaby. I have done considerable studies in respect to this concern.

Now I'm amazed at the traditional position of the Ministry of Highways, where they have been totally against any form of light rapid transit. I've been amazed at their dogmatic position. Now I'm not talking about the minister, I'm talking about some of the people within the ministry. And I frankly can't understand at all why they have taken this dogmatic position unless, possibly in a very narrow sense it is being protective of their own position or of their own ministry.

I've similarly been amazed at GVRD's position that literally the only answer is light rapid transit. I can't understand that position. For instance, there are several very simple alternatives that it appears have not even been considered.

Now I'm aghast, Mr. Speaker, when I look at some very simple possibilities. I suggest that the former government, now the present opposition, must assume responsibility for this. In their greed, as they were chasing their rainbows, they went across the country and bought old, used buses, which are now parked in Burnaby and are not fit for use. But I suppose, in some way, they had an idea that maybe buses could at least help - an interim measure.

Now I'm amazed that, even at this point, we do not have, with all the verbalization that we've had from the opposition, a proper, logical, simple park-and-ride system from Surrey into downtown Vancouver. The answer to a very simple question of mine to both the Ministry of Highways and GVRD people was that it still takes an hour and a half on the present bus system - which is, I suppose, in some ways a modified setup of a park-and-ride - to travel from Whalley to downtown Vancouver.

Now it is time that some of these facts became known to the public, and that the public realize that it is not a simple question of either highways or rapid transit. We don't even have the simple things in place that we could put in place. There is no reason why we couldn't take some of the transportation off Pattullo Bridge, some of the vehicle traffic out of Burnaby streets, by simply putting a simple, sophisticated park-and-ride - not simple but effective; maybe that's a better choice of words - an effective park and-ride system from Whalley. There is no reason, for instance, that the buses cannot take a whole load of people from Whalley to downtown Vancouver in exactly the same amount of time that it takes for an automobile to travel from Whalley to downtown Vancouver. During the congested traffic periods a bus can certainly travel just as fast as an automobile. Now it's a simple system that GVRD and the Ministry of Highways because of their prejudiced positions, I believe, haven't been willing to encourage.

Now let me take, on the other hand, another perspective on light rapid transit 7 and let me first of all qualify that we desperately need light rapid transit. There is nobody more in favour of light rapid transit than I am. However, for those who naively suggest that it is the overall answer, let me point out to you that there is a system in place in one of the biggest cities in the world, and 1 think it very well illustrates a potential problem.

In a city such as Peking, with 10 million to 12 million people, is that rapid transit system working? It is not; it is as much as closed down. The only reason that system is used today is because of tourists. The system doesn't work and the people prefer to use their bicycles because they can go from their homes to their place of work and they enjoy the ride. Now there is an element there of freedom, which we all believe in. There is an element of manoeuvrability that the people there enjoy, because they can take their bicycles from point A to point B, and which we enjoy and have learned to enjoy in America and in Canada and in the city of Vancouver, where many people enjoy taking their own vehicle because of the manoeuvrability.

So there are answers, and some of the polarization that has taken place with the people who support highways and those that think that light rapid transit is the answer, must be dispelled if we're going to find a better answer and if, in fact, the busing system.... Let's put it this way: for busing not to have been in place a long time ago, when you people were in government, is to my mind irresponsible and frankly naive.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for us to forget our polarization and Lo think in terms of the best overall system for the lower mainland. Because this is possibly the biggest problem in Burnaby, the people of Burnaby are not asking for the simplistic answers. They want an overall plan as to what we intend to do for transportation in the municipality of Burnaby.

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased that this bill, this Urban Transit Authority, goes an extremely long way in resolving this particular question. It will enable the politicians,

[ Page 2234 ]

the elected people at the municipal level, to move responsibly in making the decisions that are important in the lower mainland, particularly for the municipality of Burnaby. 1 can hardly wait to go to my people in Burnaby and tell them about this authority and tell them that in fact many of the problems they have are close to being resolved.

MR. DARCY: I'm happy to speak on this bill. I think its one of the more important ones that has been introduced in this session.

Mr. Speaker, the principal concern I have about the financing of this bill is that while it makes a commendable attempt at moving towards an equalization of the tax load for transit on a province-wide basis, there is no provision for redress for the change in the method of financing transit in the lower mainland and Victoria today. We have recently seen the annual report of the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority which has indicated that that Crown corporation has had a transit deficit in their last reporting fiscal year of some $60 million. That represents roughly 8 per cent of that corporations revenue. It represents about 0.24 per cent of the entire gross provincial product. We note that B.C. Hydro's return without that deficit, as a percentage of its total revenue, would have been around 11 per cent instead of the 3 per cent that it was.

My principal concern, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that this bill transfers that $60 million from B.C. Hydro users to the taxpayers of the lower mainland and greater Victoria. That would be fair enough, providing there was a provision for a corresponding reduction in B.C. Hydro bills - the 8 per cent that I've just mentioned. But I can assure you that no mention has been made either in the Crown corporation committee or in public discussion or in any statement from B.C. Hydro that there was indeed going to be any reduction. So what we see is the government moving to increase taxes by 0.24 per cent of the entire gross provincial product.

The Premier is very fond of stating continuously how this government, he claims, is reducing taxation and rates as a share of the total gross provincial product. Here we see a bill introduced on the floor of the House which is going to, in order to just make up that deficit last year, increase the taxation sector of this province by 0.24 per cent of the gross provincial product - no provision for return whatsoever of that $60 million.

I might point out that it's an indexed $60 million. The B.C. Electric transit deficit when B.C. Hydro was formed was around 5 or 6 per cent of that company's gross. We now see, some 16 years later, Mr. Speaker, that we're looking at around 8 per cent of that company's gross in transit deficit. So its indexed. This is a windfall of $60 million this year for British Columbia Hydro and it's going to be a windfall of perhaps $72 million next year, $80-some-odd million the year after and so forth - millions of dollars which are having to be taken from the pockets of the people of the lower mainland and greater Victoria.

Mr. Speaker, I'm going to move on from that to another question involving jurisdiction, the current jurisdiction of British Columbia Hydro in that there's absolutely no provision in this bill for acquisition or operation of the rail rights-of-way controlled by British Columbia Hydro. I think it's rather significant that the member on his feet just before myself, the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Mr. Loewen) , had indicated the long periods of time that it takes, as did the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) , to get between New Westminster and Vancouver or between the lower Fraser Valley and Vancouver. One needs not be a transit heritage freak to know that only about 25 years ago you could make that same trip on an interurban on an existing right-of-way from New Westminster to Vancouver on an express car in less than 30 minutes.

Up until 1949 one could make a trip from the lower Fraser Valley into downtown Vancouver in one hour or less on the same interurban. We're dealing with technology not of 20 or 25 years ago, but of 70 or 80 years ago, and that's one of the problems, I think, in dealing with all of our concepts of rail transit. We tend to think in terms of that little four-wheel car sitting over there by the Provincial Museum -a rig that did probably 20 or 25 mph flat out, providing the speed limit was allowed. We tend to think in terms of that kind of technology. Even so, that kind of technology could move people around considerably faster and more efficiently than the buses of today.

One report in the Burnaby area indicated that during rush hours, which after all is the most important part of the transit day, they clocked a series of buses operating on Kingsway at an average speed of six to seven miles an hour. I'm sure that even before interurbans came along in the 1890s and early 1900s you could probably move faster by horse-drawn carriage than six or seven miles an hour. That's the situation you've got into in 1978, and this bill leaves, as I've mentioned, absolutely no provision for the acquisition of the rights-of-way of British Columbia Hydro.

I use the term "rights-of-way" because just

[ Page 2235 ]

as the technology of the vehicles using railways has certainly changed from those that we knew of 20 or 25 years ago, which were in fact holdovers from 70 or 80 years ago, so has the technology of trackage and the potential speed and the potential track conditions that are available to us today changed. Therefore I think that probably the railways, as they exist, are not in a condition which can be readily used.

What is important, however, is that we have the rights-of-way. As I think any MIA who has dealt with Ministry of Highways problems and with the need for newer and widened highways will know, the problem for highway improvement very often lies not with the capital cost, and not with the difficulty in getting contracts, but in engineering. The problem that takes years and years to get a project underway is that of property acquisition. Indeed, that has been one of the major holdups with improvements to the Island Highway right in and out of greater Victoria. Property acquisition has taken years to settle; the actual widening of the highway will be done in less than a year.

Similarly, the rights-of-way for railways in the lower mainland and even in greater Victoria by and large are intact. I think the only significant loss that we have seen out of the Burnaby Lake interurban line, and that is essentially followed by the freeway. Presumably there's plenty of room alongside the freeway as a transportation corridor for other modes of transport.

(Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

To give some example of the potential here, it just happened that in Saturday's Vancouver Sun there is an article on the success of Edmonton's new light rapid transit system which is scarcely two months old. That particular light rapid transit is only 7.2 kilometers long. It is now averaging 16,000 passengers a day. Greater Edmonton, we note, is scarcely half the size of the greater Vancouver lower mainland area. I'm not great at converting kilometers into miles, and in return, but we do know that there are slightly over 90 miles of B.C. Hydro-operated railways right in the lower mainland: over 60 miles in the Fraser Valley; 12.5 miles between Vancouver and New Westminster; 10 miles along the Fraser River between New Westminster and Marpole; roughly 5.5 miles between Marpole and False Creek; and around 10 miles of other bits and scraps here and there, including the line to Steveston.

Not only that, but there are substantial rights-of-way and trackages owned or controlled by British Columbia Railway, by the Canadian Pacific Railway, Canadian National Railway, Burlington Northern and the B.C. Harbours and the line to Roberts Bank. So rather than looking at one line in isolation, I think that there's a tremendous potential for the development of light rail transit in the lower mainland, based on 1978 technology of vehicles and of lines. Perhaps one of the best analogies one can think of is the SeaBus ferry. When it was first visualized many people said: "My God, those things were superannuated and out of business and impractical 20 years ago. Why does anybody want to set the clock back and try a mode of transportation that was proved wanting years ago?" What, of course, they were thinking of was harbour ferries based on the concept of harbour ferries that were built in the 1920s and 1930s and operated on into the 1950s.

So we have to remember that the kind of technology that would be used with any transportation improvement would be up-to-date modern technology, as has been shown by the city of Edmonton. Evidently they and their provincial government, which is also located in that city, think in a bit more modern terms than our government in British Columbia. Certainly we still have one similar vehicle to those which are being used there - or a prototype example - in storage in the province of British Columbia which has been there since 1975.

Mr. Speaker, it's most unfortunate that this bill makes absolutely no provision for the acquisition, use or control of these rights-of-way or even, as I can see, for negotiation with the Crown corporations or private firms which have the ownership or leases on these rights-of-way.

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about local needs in my own area. I know the minister is familiar with this. He has indicated to me in the past he is prepared to discuss this in greater detail with me at some point. Either he or I haven't got around to exactly doing that, even though we had an exchange of correspondence earlier on this year. We would note that the area of the southwest Kootenays is an area which is rather difficult to travel around in winter due to precipitous grades on the highway. It's an area which has a very high concentration of senior citizens population, many of whom do not have vehicles or don't choose to use those vehicles in the winter. It's an area which has shown itself at the municipal government level ready, willing and able to pay its share of operating deficits. I gather under this bill they are now going to have to pay some share of capital

[ Page 2236 ]

costs as well. The minister has indicated that whatever it is, it's going to be fair. We assume that's fair in his terms. I hope its as fair as the old formula because, as the member for Prince Rupert has indicated, those cities which have opted into the Municipal Affairs-sponsored transit programmes have done so under the old formula. To have that changed now would impose a hardship which was not envisaged at the time that those services were set up.

We also, of course, note that in certain parts of my area there is absolutely no public transportation at all. Sometimes it is rather difficult even to get a taxi. In most parts of the province most major highways are served by Greyhound bus. It happens that my particular area, because it's not on the major east-west highway route, even though there is a substantial amount of highway traffic, does not even have a few Greyhound buses a day which can be used in a pinch by individuals who wish to travel even only a few miles on a localized basis.

Mr. Speaker, I can't help but remember back in 1974-75 when the then Minister of Municipal Affairs made an offer of a light rapid transit system to the Greater Vancouver Regional District, which was rejected at that time by the municipal leaders over there. I was not party to the details of it, but from reading the news reports of the day, I seem to get the feeling that the municipal politicians in the lower mainland wanted the money and the control, and the provincial government said: "We're prepared to give you most of the money but we also want a fair influence in planning and projection." It seems to me that that problem is likely to have lived on with this minister and that one of the things that he is attempting to do with this bill is perhaps to sidestep the question of regional district control of provincial money and say: "Here, you take the responsibility. You do your own planning. We will appoint a few people and we will provide some of the money, but you take it over and you provide the new taxes, if that's what you want to do."

Mr. Speaker, while there may be some merit in this approach in some ways, I must go back to my earlier statement that the fundamental thing wrong with it, in my view, is that the deficits and the capital costs which have been borne by all of the Hydro users in this province, a great many of whom live in the lower mainland and greater Victoria, are now going to be borne entirely by the taxpayers of those communities, but B.C. Hydro has given absolutely no indication that its going to be lowering its rates by the 8 per cent of this windfall that they are going to be receiving -a windfall which I might repeat, Mr. Speaker, is indexed for inflation. Not only that, but there has been some question as to whether or not their existing facilities - buses owned by B.C. Hydro, their yards, their trolleys, their repair shops - may, in fact, have to be purchased at an agreed purchase price by the transit authority, which means the municipal taxpayer. That concerns me as well.

So there's a one-shot capital windfall and there's an ongoing operating windfall to the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority. I would like to see that returned to the consumers of this province.

Mr. Speaker, I realize there is no free lunch in transit, and that the funds must come from somewhere, but what we see with this bill.... While there have been some commendable moves towards planning, in fact its net result in a taxation way is to increase the government take at the provincial and local level by at least $60 million a year indexed, which, as I noted earlier, is almost a quarter of I per cent of the entire gross provincial product. This is at a time when the government has been boasting that it is doing everything it can to lower provincial spending as a share of the gross provincial product. This is hardly a step in that direction.

MR. ROGERS: Like so many other members who have spoken in this debate, I support the principle of the bill. However, there are several points that I think need repetition and need to be brought to the minister's attention.

In times past, we in the cities rationalized our prohibitive Hydro bills, which were equalized throughout the province, by the fact that those people who lived in the outer fringes helped -to subsidize, just in a minor way, our transit costs. Although the majority of the people in the city of Vancouver used the transit service and the people in the wilderness didn't, they did have the benefits of the fact that their Hydro infrastructure was subsidized to a small extent by the big consumers who are in the city. That particular cross-subsidization has been dwelled upon by other members in this debate on both sides of the House, but that's not the only place that this cross-subsidization takes place.

I'm particularly disturbed - and the minister knows this - from the point of view of the city of Vancouver. The number of gallons of gasoline that are consumed by automobiles in the city of Vancouver and that are burned in automobiles traveling on the roads of the city of Vancouver are, to say the least, very,

[ Page 2237 ]

very substantial. We pay approximately 17 cents a gallon gasoline tax, not one cent of which comes to pay for the streets in the city of Vancouver.

Now in the municipality of Richmond and in others, those main arterials known as provincial highways - for example, in Richmond let's call it the New Westminster Highway - get help from the provincial government. But Highway 99, which is Oak Street, Granville Street, or however you find it, gets nothing.

MR. LEA: Sure it does.

MR. ROGERS: No, I'm afraid it doesn't. It's nice of you to think it does, Mr. Former Minister of Highways, but in fact it doesn't. The bridge gets something, and they pay for tile grass cutting at the north end of the bridge, and from there on in we're on our own.

Now if Vancouver were to have the intestinal fortitude to revert to a municipality from being a city, then they could feed at the trough. Now that's just a minor point, but the number of gallons of gas consumed in Vancouver is incredible. The people from the wilderness tell us: "After all, it costs us $1.40 a gallon or $1.60 a gallon." I don't know. I've heard the story 100 times, but last weekend I had to listen to their cars drive by me with the studded snow tires and they're tearing up our roads. Maybe the snow hasn't left then, but it's left Vancouver.

AN HON MEMBER: Withdraw!

MR. ROGERS: No, I won't withdraw. You just take your car back to wherever you came from.

Now there's another little area that would be apropos to discuss, Mr. Speaker, but it's not quite true. I was thinking of a case of beer, you know, because a case of beer costs the same in Burrard right across from the brewery and the liquor store there where they make it, as it does in Kleena Kleene, or Anahim. Lake, or Upper Moose Pasture in the mountains, or Bella Coola, or Bella Bella, or Skidegate, or anyplace else. I want to tell you that beer drinkers in the city of Vancouver are subsidizing the people in the wilderness, and that just happens to be a point of fact. We don't object to doing it, but you're taking away our little subsidy which we were getting from everybody else and you're saying: "You guys have had it too good for too long." But we're going to keep subsidizing your booze, we're going to keep subsidizing your roads, we're going to keep subsidizing your Hydro rates and every other darn thing that happens, and the citizens of the city of Vancouver are getting shortchanged.

The minister is very proud of this adopted system called the SeaBus, but I wonder, quite frankly, if the city of Vancouver, in their infinite wisdom, got together with their partners in the GVRD.... Had this bill which we are now examining been passed five years ago, I wonder very seriously whether those people planning it would have gone for a system quite as elaborate and quite as expensive as the SeaBus. Now we're going to get the SeaBus. We don't have any choice; that's part of the package deal. But I can assure you that if somebody looked at it from an actuarial point of view, we wouldn't be buying a system that is quite as expensive and quite as elaborate and quite as deluxe as the SeaBus.

It's a fine thing, and people from all over the world have come to see it. We should have a little sign up reminding each one of them how much money we lose every time they slide through the door, just so that they know it's a Cadillac system when really we wanted something a little bit more modest. That happens to be a point of fact that people deny.

Mr. Speaker, I've had the opportunity to travel probably as much as any member of this House. I think I've ridden on more rapid transit systems than almost anybody, from Moscow to Peking, Paris and London.

MRS. JORDAN: Keep your feet on the ground.

MR. ROGERS: I think the member for North Okanagan would like to get into the debate. Having looked at the list, perhaps I recall that she hasn't had an opportunity to speak, so maybe you could allow her to do that after I am finished.

I've had a chance to ride on a lot of them, and the member for North Vancouver-Capilano, the Liberal leader (Mr. Gibson) , and myself were guests last year at Washington, D.C., with the United States State Department. We rode on the new Washington, D.C., rapid transit system which was designed by bureaucrats and is an incredibly ornate system of computerized tickets. In fact, the subway cars were designed by an aerospace manufacturer who went bankrupt just as they were completing the contracts, so none of the guarantees were worth anything. They designed a system that was so elaborate and so expensive that nobody can afford it. So from that point of view, the bill is good because it lets the shoe fit.

In Washington, D.C., they have an interesting problem. The senators who are voting on whether rapid transit should become a national policy have a difficult time getting office staff because the system that brings their

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office staff to work every morning is rapid transit. It fails so regularly that there is no end of consternation about it. In fact, the worst thing that the rapid transit proponents could have done was to put the system in Washington, D.C. The all-powerful senators, who always have a Cadillac at their disposal to get them to work in the morning, are sometimes short of staff because they are stuck in a computerized transit system that has broken down.

I'll tell you one thing about computers, Mr. Speaker. Little boys with bubble gum can fix them in no time at all if they are allowed access to them. The cars that were made for Washington, D.C., were air conditioned and were designed with monotop construction; it was absolutely wonderful. If there are 10 people more than the maximum load, the car stretches in the middle. It automatically trips out, shutting down the whole system. We missed our flight out of Washington national airport and many other people did too.

I want to tell you something else about that marvellous system. They put the rapid transit system all the way into the airport, and it cost them millions of dollars to do it. When you get there, you are only a third of a mile from the terminal, and you've got a suitcase. You'll never guess what. They've got a shuttlebus to take you from the end of the busline to the terminal which they are trying to shut down.

The only way you can justify any kind of light rapid transit or heavy rapid transit.... Let's remember back to 1946 when they did away with the interurban because every man could afford a car. General Motors had learned how to spit them out.

When we look at modern rapid transit, you've got to go with density because density is the only way you can justify it. The only place in this province that has a significant density of population is the West End of the city of Vancouver and parts of the constituency of Burrard. The trouble with those areas is that they are so close to the places where the people work that the majority of people who live in those areas tend to walk to work, bicycle to work or take the local bus. If its a five-minute wait for the bus, and it's an old 1902 trolley car, which is what they are using now, that's fine. The West End could use a streetcar or an underground if everybody who lived in the West End worked in Burnaby. But they do not; they work in downtown Vancouver.

It requires a good look at the problem before you decide whether you really want to go for it. There are elaborate systems. It makes a lot of sense in a place like Madrid, where not everybody can afford a car, where traffic is the real problem and there's an extreme density of population. But it does not make sense to run a rapid transit line through an area where everyone is living on a 66-by-120-foot lot with a lane, two cars, a camper and a Winnebagos at the back. You can't afford to do it. No system can afford to do it.

Quite frankly, nobody wants to do it. People refuse to take the bus if they can possibly take their car. We can all stand up and say it's a great idea to take the bus to work. Lord knows, one time I took the bus down to AirWest. Forgive me, but I came over here on that. I guess I rode the rapid transit system in the city of Vancouver, and occasionally I do because 1 live quite close to the bus lines.

It just doesn't make sense. If you fly over the cities of the world that have rapid transit systems, you can see the underground system from the air. The highrises shoot up all around the station stops. If you don't have that, it doesn't make sense.

All rapid transit systems could be paid for if, when you put the system in, you could recapture the land appreciation around the station. If you could find a way to do that, you could put in a system for nothing. Wherever that hole pops up through the ground and those people come out, that land just soars in value, regardless of land freeze or whatever. The pressure is too great. Whether the municipal council has 99 per cent of the members away with the flu or not, you know they are going to pass the rule that says that goes highrise. You talk about winning the lottery. The guy who owns the lot near that tube station, underground station or bus station is the real winner. If we could find a way to capture or somehow tax that land.... I don't know how you can do it fairly. Somebody has been living in that house for a long time and their neighbourhood has been shot. It's going to change.

Don't let anybody fool you. The minute you put in a rapid transit system, you entirely change the type of neighbourhood and the style of living. You've got to seriously ask yourself whether you really want to do that. The old Marpole interurban goes from Kitsilano out through Shaughnessy, through Kerrisdale, through South Vancouver, all the way out to New Westminster, and a branchline goes out to Richmond. You could save the tracks, and all you'd have to do is string the wires and bring in the streetcars. The people who would love to have the service wouldn't use it, but maybe their friends and the kids would. "I've got a parking stall downtown, so why would I take

[ Page 2239 ]

it?" Those people are going to say: "Yes, we'd like to have the service. We think it's great. We remember when Dal Grauer ran it back in 19-whatever. But we don't really want to change the neighbourhood at all. When you have a stop here in Kerrisdale, do not expect to go highrise because, after all, its the neighbourhood. We've got McDonalds; we do not want everything ruined."

So you've got to try and consider it in that light. Putting the shoe on the Vancouver foot is going to make a substantial difference. Everybody talks about rapid transit and how its such a great thing; but it's always for the other guy. "I'm going to take my car to work; you ride the bus."

People complain about the bus fares and say that the ridership goes down if the bus fare goes up. I have a hard time agreeing with that argument because, if you ask somebody how much it costs them to take their car to work in the morning, they do not even want to think about it, thank you very much, they do not even want to discuss it. It is so prohibitively expensive compared to taking the bus service, it doesn't even make sense at all. But they'll still take the car to work. Well, they've always got an excuse - they've got to see the doctor on the way home or return a library book or something else. It's great for the other guy, but its not great for us - so a little serious thought before we indulge in it. We're living in a reasonably affluent society and it's nice, the idea of having the system go everywhere. But if it's the other guy that's going to ride it, maybe we should ask the other guy that's going to ride it if he really wants to pay for it.

MR. LEVI: That member is on the right side of the House, but he's a bit too far down. I think that the member for Skeena (Mr. Shelford) should relax - his mantle will be taken over very adequately by the member for Vancouver South. At least they've got one radical over there.

MR. ROGERS: Not me!

MR. LEVI: Now I would imagine, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) thinks he's the radical, but we won't talk about that.

One of the things that the people in Vancouver have been trying to do for the past 20 years.... Nineteen reports later and they still don't have a rapid transit system, and they're not going to have a rapid transit system because there certainly is not any provision in this legislation that's going to leave them any money to do anything like that. I tend to agree with the member down there that if you're prepared to develop a bus system the way it has been developed over the past three or four years, that could very adequately meet the needs.

In the riding of Vancouver-Burrard, just about every bus line in the city crosses the riding, crosses Broadway - there is an incredible amount of traffic going on there. Particularly in Burrard you see an enormous number of senior citizens riding the bus, because there's a very heavy concentration of senior citizens in that area. What they can expect is to have less service, and pay more for it. They haven't said that they're going to fiddle around with the bus pass; we'll have to wait and see what goes on there. If there's money to be made there, they might just do that.

But I'd like to ask the minister: how are you going to meet some of the problems that the GVRD outlined? In one of their reports, they pointed out - and this was in 1976, so we're talking about 1972 - that four years ago cars and trucks moved throughout greater Vancouver at an average speed of about 24 miles per hour during the rush hours. Today it's down to less than 20 and within three years it will drop to 17. We're probably now within the 17 miles an hour range. The only thing that that augurs well for in terms of the minister's bill is that people are going to burn one heck of a lot of gas, and if the city of Vancouver is going to take advantage of the gas tax, then they'll be able to make quite a bit of money.

But in another report that the GVRD has done - and that was when they were making the argument for light rapid transit - they said: "In 1986 light rapid transit must carry over 15,000 to 20,000 people in Vancouver, 10,000 in Burnaby and 7,000 to 15,000 in New Westminster during the rush hour." They pointed out that a regional transportation plan based on more highways and more buses would cost over $1 million more by 1986 than a plan based on LRT.

LRT has now moved to the side. Presumably we are going to go with that particular plan; we will have more roads and, if we can afford them, more buses. We are going to be looking at a $1 billion expenditure and at the moment we don't know what percentage of that will come from the provincial government.

I would like to ask, Mr. Speaker, if the minister is going to tell us in closing the debate just what tie has in mind in terms of the formula. That is the big secret that is now going on. We don't quite know what the government participation is going to be in all

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of the financing that is taking place.

Mr. White of B.C. Hydro submitted a document: "Notes on the Passenger Transportation Service of B.C. Hydro." It is available to all members from B.C. Hydro. What he did was a little historical study, a brief history of the transportation group. The minister made some reference to that: he talked about street railway systems in 1890; the interurban in 1891; B.C. Electric was formed in 1897; in 1905 the interurban to Lulu Island; 1905, streetcars in North Vancouver; 1910, interurban to Chilliwack; 1918, streetcar fares in both Vancouver and Victoria were raised to 6 cents, and that lasted for 18 years; in 1924, motorbuses were introduced from Vancouver to New Westminster. Then he jumped to 1962, when B.C. Electric was taken over, then to 1977 when SeaBus began operation. He left out 1972 to 1975, when there was a considerable expansion in the Hydro system, particularly in the bus system.

I don't recall that there were any complaints about the bus system. Many members have got up and said that they somehow constantly hear complaints about transportation. The only transportation complaints that we hear about are the noise and the lack of transportation - the closing down of lines. Those are the kinds of things that we hear about.

So the minister comes in and brings in a bill which is going to benefit the province. In fact, when introducing the bill, he said: "The fundamental issue - and we have debated it in other times in this House - is accountability. It is a question of ensuring that the transit system is responsive to the need of local communities and their citizens. I suppose the basic problem with the present system is that it is not sufficiently responsive and accountable to the communities that it has to serve."

Now what does that mean? It's very nice. It's beautiful verbiage. That's the most famous little catch phrase that you use in every programme under every particular ministry: "It's got to be more responsive." The idea of it being more responsive is that you create an organization. You talk about how you are going to finance it. You're going to shift the burden to the municipalities. Then you're going to talk about the need for transportation.

The minister has not told us, if he dares to tell us, that the result of the plan that he is introducing is that we're going to have a more responsive system. What does that mean? Does it mean that we're going to have less transportation, we're going to have fewer buses, higher fares, and it's going to be more responsive? He can't just get away with making a statement like that because most of what people want is to know how it's all going to be paid for. All they know at the moment is that it's going to be paid for by the local taxpayers.

Part of Mr. White's paper dealt with trends and problems. He says towards the end of his paper:

"Rising costs are a problem over which we have little control other than to be diligent in controlling expenditures and maintaining the fleet. Controlling the levels of service - that is, making decisions about adding new runs or changing the frequency of service or the hours of service - has been difficult because the transportation group has no clear objective or yardstick related to levels of service." Now what is the theme of this bill which is supposed to deal with urban transit? Is the theme to keep getting people out of the cars and onto the buses? Is the theme really a financial theme: "Let's just move the responsibility for the cost of transportation to the local taxpayer."? Because that's what comes out of it for me; the local taxpayer is going to have to pick it up.

If he has to pick it up, then obviously the kind of thing that was found in a committee that was looking at this particular situation.... Even the authority itself had no particular plan about how to meet its financial problem when it was posed to them. Surely the only alternatives you have in terms of how you're going to meet your fiscal problems are to reduce service, increase the fares and cause unemployment by laying people off. They didn't disagree with that. The only thing %, us they were not in the position to enunciate a policy because they were waiting for the government. That's what we've been doing. We've been waiting now for the government for two and a half years.

What we did not get prior to the bill was an extensive, somewhat detailed study. We've got the study from GVRD which they did in December, 1976, and January, 1977, but what studies has the government done? On what is this particular plan based other than that he has taken some of the organizational intents of the bill from some of the things that the GVRD people have said? My colleague, the second member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) , has indicated that the basic facet of the organization of taking the transit out of Hydro and putting it into a Grown corporation, is a good move. There is some question about whether in fact,

[ Page 2241 ]

as has been characterized in one editorial in the paper, a bunch of amateurs can really ran a transportation system, and that's what has been suggested. I don't see any difference, if we are going to rely primarily on the regional district representatives ... that we're not going to get the same problems about decision making that we've had for 20-odd years in the Vancouver area about whether or not we're going to go into the light rapid transit system.

One would think that with an authority of the kind the minister has in mind, they would put to the people some very specific plans as to what they have in mind for transportation. All we have from the minister is that statement that I quoted before: it's a question of ensuring that the transit system is responsive to the needs of the people. We know what the needs of the people are; they need to be moved. That's the basic question: they need to be moved.

The question the minister has to answer is: how is it all going to be paid for? We have no indication whatsoever from the government just how they are going to deal with it. Now the Premier had some ideas about that during the election in 1975. Well, he did have a lot to say about it, that Leader of the Opposition, as he was then on December 9:

"The Leader of the Opposition indicated yesterday that if Social Credit were to form the next government, he would require the municipalities to finance 50 per cent of the operating costs and 25 per cent of the capital costs of the transit system in the greater Vancouver area."

Now I would ask the minister: does that sound familiar? Is that the formula that you're using?

"At present, under the NDP government the transit systems of the province are financed through the modest passenger fares and general revenues of the province." Now the Leader of the Opposition, as he was then, went on the hotline program with Jack Webster, and here's a slight extract of the rather perceptive shaft - complete answers that the then Leader of the Opposition gave to Webster.

Webster said to him: "Would you subsidize, as the NDP has done with its hundreds of new buses, the transit system?"

Bennett: "The transit system should be regionalized and this should be on a specific formula. They should not be part of Hydro."

Webster: "That's not the question. Would you subsidize it?"

Bennett: "And Hydro must have a formula both of the provincial share of capital costs and provincial share of subsidy. Yes, they will be with the local transit services. Ontario has a system of provincial sharing of 75-25 with the municipalities or regions on capital costs, and they share 50-50 on losses."

Is that the way we're going? Is that the indication? We don't know; we're still in the dark.

Webster; "Are you suggesting the municipalities here would share 50-50 on the losses?"

And then the Leader of the Opposition, as he was then, said: "On their transit services, if they set up a transit region, yes." That's what he said.

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: If he had a transit region, certainly it would be operated; they would have a proper transit regional service rather than a provincial authority and the GVRD. Very gradually, part of the policy that he presumably developed off the top of his head is now being seen, we presume, in terms of what the minister is going to tell us when he closes this debate.

Then Bennett said: "No, transit would be just transit." It would not be part of the public utility. Webster said it would not be subsidized directly by the provincial government out of general revenue and Hydro, as at the moment.

We never quite had it. He never quite said what he was going to do. He kept talking about 50 per cent sharing on the operating, 75-25 on the capital, but nothing really quite came out; and so after two and a half years we get the bill. What does the bill tell us in terms of the financing? It doesn't tell us anything other than letting the local governments know that there are four options for them to raise taxes. I know what kind of problems that's going to create in Vancouver. I can see the buses disappearing off the streets. I can see people waiting for half an hour - going back to the pre-1972 days - on some of those routes.

I speak as the member for Vancouver-Burrard. Because I'm a continual rider of the buses, I see the way people use them; I see the %lay people are prepared to go downtown.

The trouble is there is no theme in this bill - whether the government is prepared to tackle the overwhelming problem that the GVRD transportation committee has pointed out. We have got more cars and trucks on the road; we're going to have to build more highways, particularly in the Vancouver area, without any support from the provincial government; and the whole thing is going to become jammed up. There is no policy and no theme. Why isn't

[ Page 2242 ]

there? The lower mainland region is half the action in the province. They don't have the same kind of problems in Prince George and Dawson Creek in terms of the incredible number of cars that plug the roads - it is different.

I have waited all evening for those freedom fighters in the back bench to get up and talk about how happy or unhappy they are with this legislation. It starts out with a basic idea: taking it out of Hydro. That's good, because Hydro didn't want it in the first place. Presumably, once they get rid of it, they can go down and get an AAA rating and make some money on it. They will probably be able to save themselves millions of dollars on the basis of getting rid of the transit system. But I agree with my colleagues that it should be given over for $1; none of this business about what the book value is - they want to go and play that game. If that's what they want to do, they are lucky to get out of the subsidy.

Mr. Speaker, there are some basic ideas in here that have really just a kernel of an idea about transportation systems. But the minister has only gone as far as saying to the various municipalities: "You can have the kind of transportation system you want; you can have a responsive transportation system." I suggest to you that what that, in fact, says is: "You're not going to have any transportation system because you're simply not going to have the money to be able to afford it."

MR. KING: I'm going to be very brief, Mr. Speaker. I'm not sure whether to attack the minister and the bill, or my colleague for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) first.

But I can't allow to go unchallenged in this Legislature the proposition that the metropolitan areas of Vancouver and Victoria have been subsidizing the rural areas in transit, power or in any other respect. I would point out, Mr. Speaker, that for too many years now the rural natural resources have fed into that monolith, that gluttonous Hydro authority, to serve the densely populated lower mainland, with respect to power generation, energy and transportation.

We have some real problems in the interior with respect to transit, not in the terms that Vancouver or Victoria has; but one of the real problems in a sparsely populated area.... I think of small communities such as Kaslo and areas like that - not only in my area, but all through the province - where senior citizens are obliged to travel to the nearest area that provides the whole realm of social and health services. There's absolutely no public transportation and, in many cases, no private transportation available. That is certainly the case in many areas of my riding. With senior citizens and with handicapped people, unless they rely upon their good friends and neighbours in that particular area or relatives, they are simply without the means to travel to areas such as Nelson and gain the attention they need in the way of optical care, medical and dental care, and so on. It is discriminatory.

I see nothing in this bill that addresses itself to that kind of problem because certainly under the formula offered in this bill, there is absolutely no hope for areas such as that because they are certainly not going to be able to come up with the kind of basic capital costs necessary to acquire the facilities they need to serve the particular area I have outlined.

This is something I regret, and on that basis alone I certainly couldn't support the bill. I think my colleagues have done a very effective job of outlining the other shortcomings of this particular legislation.

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, it's been a lengthy and interesting debate. As the designated speaker for the official opposition indicated during his very lengthy response today, a number of these items will belong in committee debate. So I'm going to be very brief in my concluding remarks for second reading, knowing that we will all have an opportunity to proceed further.

I wondered for a few moments if indeed we might have a completely free vote on the basis of urban and rural members, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the Speaker get a vote under those arrangements?

HON. MR. CURTIS: Well, I would look to you for a ruling.

Mr. Speaker, there is on the part of the official opposition, however, a basic misunderstanding of the intent of this legislation. I identify it as a misunderstanding, not as a misinterpretation in terms of the debate.

The bill which we have been debating today provides for cost sharing to be prescribed by regulation. There is nothing sinister about that. We did it consciously; we did it deliberately, sir, in order to provide us with flexibility through this difficult, complicated implementation phase.

But more importantly, because of the confidentiality of a message bill such as this, we had no opportunity to discuss it with our partners, namely those in local and regional government. We will be able exchange ideas

[ Page 2243 ]

with them now since the bill is public. After it has been given royal assent, we'll be able to work with them in a genuine partnership to determine by regulation those things which are required for transit in the 1980s, 1990s and the century to come.

We will discuss phasing in of financial participation in the metropolitan area over a number of years, starting with the next fiscal year. I assure the members opposite that the formula, for both operating and capital in the small-city systems, and there's been extensive discussion of those today.... The member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) I'm afraid.... Well, I'm pleased he was wrong, and I hope that he'll be happy to hear that he was wrong. The formula for operating and capital in a city system such as Prince Rupert, I assure you and this House, will be at least as generous as that provided for under current existing agreements under the small communities programme.

I want to also point out, Mr. Speaker, that the formula will be at least comparable to that in place in other provinces throughout Canada. We have looked at all of them and we're satisfied that we're on the right course.

With respect to local share, there are as many possibilities as there are large urban centres raising some portion of the local share of transit: cigarette tax in Boston combined with property tax; property tax in San Francisco - some of it, I suppose, has been rolled back - an automobile excise tax in Seattle; in Chicago, a combination of I per cent sales tax, up to 5 per cent gasoline tax and a proposal for a parking tax; and in Detroit, a portion of the gasoline tax.

Mr. Speaker, this is major legislation. We have from 1972 to date, but particularly through the years when the members opposite were in power, repeated statements with respect to transit. I think perhaps I can conclude my participation in the second reading of debate with just a couple of quotes, if I can only find them. One was with respect to transit promised for 1974. That was a statement made by my predecessor in the NDP government in 1972. Throughout here, Mr. Speaker, statement after statement after statement: transit is going to be reformed; Lorimer promises this; the government - that is, the former government - promises something else; Barrett cabinet proposes something else; on and on and on. This government in this case, as in so many cases, has said: "Enough talking, let's get on with the job."

This is transit legislation. We are committed to transit. As British Columbians in the future we are going to need transit, whether in a small community or in metropolitan Vancouver. This is the route we've chosen. Even The Vancouver Sun gave the first kind editorial I've ever had from The Vancouver Sun on June 7. The Vancouver Sun likes the legislation.

I believe that the people in greater Vancouver and greater Victoria are generally appreciative and approving of the legislation. The legislation starts us on the path to transit logic and transit sense which is at least 20 years overdue in British Columbia."

I move second reading.

Motion approved on the following division:

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

Bill 17, Urban Transit Authority Act, read a second time and referred to Committee of the Whole House for consideration at the next sitting of the House after today.

Hon. Mr. McClelland moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11:01 p.m.