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CONTENTS

Routine proceedings

Heroin Treatment Act (Bill 18) Second reading.

Mr. Levi –– 2281

Mr. Davidson –– 2285

Mrs. Dailly –– 2286

Mr. Stupich –– 2289

Mrs. Wallace –– 2291

Mr. Ying ... –– 2292

Mr. Skelly –– 2295

Ms. Brown –– 2299

The House met at 8:30 p.m.

Orders of the day.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I move the House proceed by leave to public bills and orders.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Adjourned debate on second reading of Bill 18, Mr. Speaker.

HEROIN TREATMENT ACT

(continued)

MR. SPEAKER: The second member for Vancouver-Burrard adjourned the debate. The clock shows 23 minutes. Please proceed.

MR. LEVI: Very good, Mr. Speaker.

MR. DAVIDSON: Are you going to use it all?

MR. LEVI: Why? Who wants some of it? Do you, Walter?

Just before the supper hour I dealt with the project as it is envisioned in Brannan Lake. It would involve some 150 addicts, presumably as a first step, which is an extremely small number of the over 10,000 that we have in the province. I also made the suggestion to the minister that with all of the priorities that we have in this province, a much more urgent priority to spend $14 million would be to give it to cancer research.

Now I want to deal with the figure of 10,000 addicts in an entirely different context. On May 4,1978, the Alcohol and Drug Commission put out a press release which dealt with the British experience with narcotic dependency. This was a report that was done by the commission; it was prepared by John Russell and Andre McNicoll, both of whom are with the Alcohol and Drug Commission. I believe Mr. Russell is one of the two commissioners on the Alcohol and Drug Commission itself.

The report purports to deal with situation in Great Britain. One of the things that concerns me in the press release - and I'll make reference to the report in a moment - is that the press release goes on to say:

"The report entitled 'The British Experience with Narcotic Dependency' was prepared by the Alcohol and Drug Commission. It points out that while some success could be claimed in having reduced the incidence of young heroin users, since 1960 there has been a dramatic increase in the English addict population. In 1960 Britain had only 94 heroin users known to the Home Office, but by 1968 they had 2,240. At the same time the proportion of the users under the age of 20 went from 7 per cent to 35 per cent. Today it is estimated that there may be as many as 10,000 heroin addicts in Britain."

That's what I just want to deal with for a moment, Mr. Speaker.

I don't know where these alleged researchers that did this report got that information but they certainly didn't substantiate it in the report. I reminded the House earlier that the minister when he was an opposition member was very concerned about scientific research. Frankly if this is what he characterizes as scientific research, I would say to you with all seriousness that this is a load of junk. This is not based on scientific research.

Now in the journal which is published by the Addiction Research Foundation in Toronto -this is the December 1,1977, issue - they have an article. It's headed: "U.K. Drug Patterns May Be Changing." It is an article by Alan Massam. It's datelined London. I just want to read this and then I would like to pose some questions for the minister to answer when he is summing up, or we will probably get at him in committee. The article reads as follows:

"The number of known narcotic addicts in the United Kingdom at the end of last year was 1,881."

Presumably they are talking about 1976.

"These figures just issued by the Home Office here may only reflect changing patterns of drug misuse, as recent drug advisory committee reports have emphasized. The Home Office figures for the examples show that the 20.7 kilograms of heroin seized by the law enforcement agencies during 1976 was much greater than the seizures in the previous year."

That is acknowledged because in Great Britain they have started to have involvement with a phenomenon which is known as the Triads. This is a connection that goes back to Hong Kong. Not only have they got problems from the Golden Triangle but they also have problem with the Triads.

The Home Office statistics also show that the most common age group for U.K. registered narcotic addicts is now 25 to 28, whereas in the year ending December, 1975, it was 24 to 26. The change continues a trend of recent years. In 1972 the most common age group for narcotic addicts was 22 to 24. The British are observing, based on this report which I am reading from the journal, that the age of

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addicts in the significant group appears to be getting older. Of the total number of addicts recorded on December 31,1976, 69 per cent were being prescribed methadone alone and a further 9 per cent were being prescribed methadone and heroin.

Now I asked before: where did the minister get the figure or where did the researchers get the figure of 10,000?

This report goes on to say:

"The Home Office further records that there were 11,800 seizures of controlled drugs during 1976, which is 11 per cent more than 1975. But 83 per cent of these involved cannabis. The quantity of cocaine seized remains high at 11.7 kilograms, but the amount of opium seized was relatively low - 3.1 kilograms.

"The number of people found guilty of offences involving controlled drugs in 1976 was 12,482, an increase of 8 per cent over 1975, but most of this was attributed to an increase in cannabis offences and amphetamine offences."

Mr. Speaker, in respect to this report that the Alcohol and Drug Commission has brought out, I might add that an addendum to the report was prepared by the chief constable of Vancouver, Mr. Winterton. I wrote to Mr. Winterton and asked him if he would send me a copy of his report. He did send me a letter on Nay 26. He says:

"Further to our previous correspondence, I'm enclosing a copy of 'The British Experience with Narcotic Dependency, ' prepared by the Alcohol and Drug Commission. This report contains an update, page 13, which reflects my findings during my visit to the United Kingdom earlier this year."

Page 13 is an update from chief constable D.L. Winterton, Vancouver police department. He says:

" On January 13,1978, the Minister of Health of British Columbia, the Hon. Robert McClelland, commissioned Chief Winterton of the Vancouver police department to travel to Great Britain to update the data of the B.C. Alcohol and Drug Commission on the British approach to the treatment of narcotic addicts."

The report contains a brief history of the situation in England, because there is mention of the Brain committee, which was a committee that was set up in 1968. He talks about the number of addicts.

"I am satisfied that the estimate of 10,000 addicts in Britain is probably accurate. However, there is no positive means of making this determination. With 2,000 addicts in treatment, this would mean 20 per cent are registered."

Mr. Speaker, you can start out by saying that there are 20,000 addicts in Britain and if 2,000 are registered, then you can presume that only 10 per cent are registered. But you have absolutely nothing to base those figures on at all. The reason I'm raising this is one of the red herrings - if I might put it that way - that's been brought into this whole debate about the compulsory heroin treatment programme. It is decided to bring in the British system, to say that it's not working and then to say that it's inappropriate to have it in British Columbia.

Nobody has ever argued, that I can think of, in the years I was in the field that it would really work here in any case. I certainly never argued for the British system. The British system is appropriate to Britain for one basic reason. The British system works in Britain because the medical people are prepared to have it work. That is not the case in Canada. Doctors are not prepared to get into the administration of heroin or morphine to addicts. So obviously it wouldn't work. If you can't take the medical profession with you, it's not going to work.

Nevertheless, the commission has gone to some trouble - and, I'd say, uninformed trouble - to put out to the people of British Columbia that somehow this document represents a piece of research. It's not even reasonable research. Not only that, they have roped in the chief of police of Vancouver, who in his own report says: "I'm satisfied that the estimate of 10,000 addicts in Britain is probably accurate. However, there is no positive means of making this determination." Well, we've got to have a heck of a lot more basic information. If that is going to be the basis of research in respect to that minister looking at an evaluation of the programme he is planning to introduce, then we're in a lot of trouble. That money will be spent and wasted in a far quicker fashion than even we can think about.

Why is it that when you want to bring a programme in you have to do it in a rush? You have to refuse to inform people and take them along with you pace by pace, simply so that they know what you are talking about; you get out of the way the issues of the judicial process - not fighting uphill against the judicial process, but simply admitting that that's the way it has to be and then doing it.

I wrote to Great Britain in April. As a matter of fact, I wrote to a Member of Parliament whom I met when I was on a parliamentary conference with you, Mr. Speaker, last year. I

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wrote him and I asked him if he could give me the most up-to-date information that they have in Great Britain. He wrote me back on April 14. His name is Jack Dunnett, and he said:

"I'm sorry for the delay in following up your letter. I had a little difficulty in obtaining all the relevant information.

"Nevertheless, 1 enclose now a letter dated March 13 from the Police Federation, a letter from the British Medical Association with two accompanying documents, a letter from the Department of Health and Social Security dated April 7,1978" - the matter drifted between the Home Office and this department for some time - "a print of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, a report of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and a copy of Hansard both for the House of Lords and the standing committee referred to in the department letter of April 7.

"This as much as I have been able to get together, and I offer further help."

Now we have the Vancouver chief of police going to England. He is seeking information, so he goes to the authorities. I want to read a letter that Mr. Dunnett got from the Department of Health and Social Security dated April 7,1978. It's from a Mr. Eric Deakins:

"As you know, the Home Office has forwarded me your letter of February 28. There have been no recent debates in the House on the treatment of heroin addicts in U.K. There was a debate in the Lords on March 26,1969, on drug dependence and misuse. You may also find some relevant information to debate during the passage of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, although the Act and therefore the debate is mostly concerned with legal aspects of heroin misuse. There was some discussion of treatment. The most useful passages are in the report of the sessions of May 5 and May 7,1970.

"However, I would point out that although the treatment system remains the same - that is, with specialized drug clinics - treatment philosophies in the past decade have altered considerably. I am not aware of any reports which have discussed treatment philosophies but the treatment and rehabilitation working group of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs - the statutory advisory body established under the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971 - recently produced an interim report which considered the treatment services for drug misusers in England. This has been circulated to Health and Social Services authorities and professional and voluntary organizations for their comments. I have enclosed a copy of the report for your information."

Again, Mr. Speaker, I want to make the point that even in Britain, where they have had a system which has operated since about 1960, they have not done a considerable amount of updating or research. I am confounded how anybody from this part of the world can go over there and make some assumptions about a programme which has not been evaluated in some years. The role of it is part of the business of mystifying this whole business.

One of the things that Mr. Deacons mentions in his letter is the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. Let me ask the minister this and perhaps he will reply to it when he sums up. I have asked the minister before to tell us who the people are who are advising him, beyond the two people that I mentioned earlier - that is, Mr. Hoskin and the other member of the council, Hr. Russell. Who are the people who are giving him advice? Does he have a group of people who are prepared to assist him in advising him on the ongoing process of this programme, which presumably is going to go ahead anyway because they've got more votes over there than we have? Or is he simply going to rely on a couple of people, bearing in mind that the Alcohol and Drug Commission, which has seven positions, at the moment has only two people on it? There were three, but I understand that the third member resigned to go overseas. So what kind of advisory capability does the minister have, in terms of looking in a somewhat objective way about how the programme is doing? If he doesn't have this, then we are indeed going to have a super-bureaucratic operation which is going to exhibit some of the worst features of administrative boards.

Now I was interested to note that Judge Bewley of the Vancouver provincial court has taken a leave of absence to do some research and is giving the minister some, time to be an adviser. 1, frankly, am quite surprised that Judge Bewley would lend his name and his time to the kind of operation that the minister is talking about. I can remember very vividly in 1970 being on a panel with Judge Bewley when I had proposed on the panel that we do not have judges sentencing people any more but rather we have a sentencing board. Then Judge Bewley, in his statement, said: "If the day ever comes when an administrative panel displaces the judiciary in this country, that's when I am going to leave." That's about as accurate as I can remember. We had one heck of a ding-dong fight out at UBC on a panel about this very issue.

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Now who does the minister go out and get to advise him on the legal aspects of this operation? Judge Bewley. Judge Bewley is a very independent guy - very prickly, but extremely independent. Perhaps the minister would tell us whether Judge Bewley has suddenly changed his mind about administrative panels - that it is okay for three or four bureaucrats to sit around deciding the future of some individual outside of the judicial system. That's a big surprise to me. When I raised it in respect to sentencing boards, well, I guess if it had been in his power he would have charged me with treason. He was very upset and said in no way can we ever consider administrative boards.

I would like to hear from the minister about why it is that Judge Bewley is lending his name to this, and exactly what it is lie is going to be doing. Apparently he is going to be assisting the minister in what? Is he going to help him rewrite the Act? Is he going to advise him on particular cases? We should know about that. I must say, Mr. Speaker, that it is a great surprise to me that Judge Bewley is involved in an administrative committee which is outside of the judicial system.

Now I want to just cover one other thing in respect to tile problem that the minister is attempting to tackle. Understand this: I am opposed to the bill because I think it defeats itself before it starts. It is badly conceived. It could have been conceived in an entirely different way, particularly in relation to a small pilot project where not as much money would be wasted as he is going to do now - some $14 million. They would have had an opportunity to look at techniques.

I just want to say a word about drug trafficking. The situation, as the minister pointed out in his remarks, is that we have become the hub of the drug trafficking world, more so in the last five or six years since we've been getting direct shipments from the Far East. Previously we relied primarily on our drugs either coming in from Montreal or coming up from Mexico. But we've arrived. We're now standing on our own feet and we have our own area of importation. Apart from the others, we're getting it in from the Far East.

Interjection.

MR. LEVI: Yes, Mr. Minister of Mines (Hon. Mr. Chabot) , it comes in blocks called opium. It comes in that way. We should take you down to the corner and show you some of the operations.

But anyway, we have an operation called CLEU. CLUE's commitment was to take a look at what it could do in respect to drug trafficking and organized crime because it still is a major operation.

What I want to say to the minister is this: he is looking at a programme of compulsory treatment which, apart from being fraught with all sorts of judicial problems, is fraught with all sorts of treatment problems. It may be that before we get to the end of the committee stage of this bill, Mr. Speaker, he will let us in on some of the specifics of the programmes that he has in mind.

The member for North Vancouver-Capilano (Mr. Gibson) made some reference to the whole question of alternate treatment mechanisms. New York spent over a billion dollars in eight years and got nowhere because suddenly it realized that a lot of the troops coming back from Vietnam were addicted. There is a heroin problem, and if the minister is going to address himself to compulsory treatment, which we on this side are opposed to, there are enough addicts out there who will come forward voluntarily if you have the treatment model that you suggest you are developing.

But in terms of the heroin trafficking, sooner or later we are going to have to sit down and make a judgment in this country, and perhaps in the world, about whether we are going to continue to fight what appears to be a futile fight against drug traffickers. The situation has always got worse; it has never got better. It's something that the minister obviously is not prepared to look at, but down the road we're going to have to face the inevitable about this whole question of drug addiction and look at something which I proposed four or five years ago and still think it has to be looked upon as an option. Sooner or later they are going to wise up to the fact that rather than get into billions of dollars in expenditures, it is going to be one heck of a lot cheaper in a controlled way to give the drug in a controlled way. That's what I'm talking about.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Free heroin!

MR. LEVI: I'm talking about a controlled heroin maintenance programme. Yes, because I'm not prepared to waste billions of dollars of scarce resources fighting an impossible war. I'm not prepared to do that at all. I'm not prepared to see that happen at all. There are too many other things that have to be corrected. But this idiocy of trying to beat something that we can't beat.... If you are going to look at it from the medical position, what we have to do is follow it through logically.

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HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: You'll buy them the heroin.

MR. LEVI: Yes, we will purchase the heroin for them in a controlled situation. I advocated that five years ago, and I still advocate it, because the heroin situation has got worse, not better. That's an option that you've got to look at. That's got to be an option.

MR. DAVIDSON: Mr. Speaker, I sincerely hope at the outset that the hon. second member for Vancouver-Burrard was expressing his own opinion and not that of his party when he was suggesting the supplying of free heroin in this province.

It is totally inconceivable to me that members of this Legislative Assembly and, indeed, any clear-thinking person throughout this province can oppose the present bill before us - the health entry plan. It is attitudes like those exhibited by the opposition that have, for too many years, left us without any new approaches to this very critical area. It would be understandable, Mr. Speaker, if there had been only limited growth in the area of heroin addiction. It would even be deemed reasonable if it were not spreading like cancer throughout our society, but these are not the facts.

There is a growth in heroin abuse that has reached epidemic proportions, and most notably and unfortunately, it is primarily among the young of our nation. By not taking a new approach the only thing that has been accomplished in the last 20 years has been a 500 per cent growth rate in heroin addiction. Our criminal justice system is barely able to cope with the spiralling increases in crime, in apprehension and in judicial disposition and incarceration. The rate of recidivism among addicts is a staggering 90 per cent, and the circle continues to grow. Obviously the answer does not lie in increased enforcement alone. Statistical information clearly indicates that the crime rate has outstripped our ability to enforce the existing laws, particularly in drug-related offences.

The enormous profits of the illegal drug trade have sparked an increased growth in drug-related murders, assaults and violent crime. Our jails are full of individuals caught up in some form or other of drug related offences. Our police are frustrated through dealing with the same individuals committing the same offences, going through the same courts and coming out of the same prisons time after time after time. Clearly, Mr. Speaker, the time has come to take a different approach in dealing with the problem affecting an ever-growing number of people.

The records of the past and, indeed, of the present document with abundant clarity that an enforcement programme alone has not been, and will not be, in itself successful. Something new must be tried. The something new is the health entry plan presently before us.

Mr. Speaker, a great deal has been said about the rights of those who will be dealt with under this programme. But as usual little or nothing has been said about the rights of innocent individuals who have been robbed, assaulted and abused by individuals who are totally without conscience, and whose sole motivation in life is to obtain the next fix at any cost. Anyone who thinks this is a fairy tale is simply not aware of the situation as it really exists.

Nothing has been said about the young girls who are forced into a life of prostitution and offered no way out, or the young men and women who have had a future of promise denied them by their servitude to the heroin habit. These individuals, the young and the innocent, have as much right, if not more, as any long-term crime-oriented narcotic user.

As well, a great deal had been said about the fact that users will be denied the due process of law, and that this Act will issue a police officer with unwarranted and unnecessary powers, and that the courts will be bypassed. These charges are simply not true. For example, the police can only issue a written notice for a suspected narcotic dependent to report for assessment. Apprehension of a suspected user must be by a warrant, only after the person has failed to appear for examination, and then on application by the director of the area co-ordinating centre -not the police.

Insofar as the courts are concerned, Mr. Speaker, very little has been made of the fact that for the first time the courts will be able to refer an individual to the plan as an alternative to other proceedings. This must be one of the key parts of the entire piece of legislation. What a refreshing change from the usual criminal justice circle, which we have become so familiar with throughout North America.

I've also had correspondence from people who felt that innocent persons could be detained under this programme. This is only part of the overall sense of confusion that exists with so many around the method and intent of the programme, and is related simply to non-fact. The reference to the area co-ordinating centres will result in careful assessment, and this will assure that only heroin addicts will be

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accepted within the plan.

Further, this legislation allows for appeal to the court by anyone committed to the programme.

I really wonder how many people debating this bill today have had the opportunity, as I have had, to interview 14-year-old girls addicted to heroin and forced into a life of prostitution to support their habit. I wonder how many members who oppose this bill have had the opportunity, as I have had, to find a young girl or a young man dead in a fleabag hotel, the victim of an overdose; or to see the results of a lifetime of heroin abuse in the form of total human degradation; or have come into contact with the pushers and the pimps who live in the lap of luxury off the avails of human misery; or have sensed the frustration felt by every law enforcement officer who, because of our insufficient laws and our sharpie lawyers, is unable to obtain a conviction for trafficking in narcotics. I want to assure you that those who have experienced this feeling share a hatred for those associated with the narcotics industry, and a contempt for our legislators who refuse to take a real stand and provide meaningful legislation for the benefit of those coming along and entering the mainstream of life.

I could not help but listen to the hon. Liberal leader's remarks early today. I say to him that if the hon. Liberal leader is so concerned with the constitutional aspect of the legislation, then let him get off his prat and get down to Ottawa and put some pressure on the federal party to face up to its reality where it really belongs.

Why do you think our police officers and our police associations have gone on record, as have our police chiefs, in supporting this programme as outlined here today? The reason is simple and should be clear to everyone. What we have done in the past has obviously not worked and will not work. Something new must be tried.

I'm not so naive as to stand here before this assembly and categorically state that the health entry plan is the single answer to the heroin problem, because that would simply not be the case. There is no simple answer. But it would be equally irresponsible if we not at least try the programme which offers so much merit and promise as a new approach in dealing with an age-old disease.

People of this province, of this nation and, indeed, of this continent have been subjected to a growth in organized crime unparalleled in our history. Much of the profit for this operation is derived from the illegal drug trade. The growth rate has been phenomenal because the rate of cure has been so conversely negligible. Now at least there is an opportunity for each and every addict admitted to the plan to rid himself in a medical way of heroin addiction. Meaningful trades and opportunities to learn a skill will be offered in conjunction with this programme and, most importantly, all of this will be done under medical supervision in a climate custom tailored specifically for the drug addict.

As I stated before, I think we would all be very disappointed if we expected this programme to be a magical overnight cure for the drug problem, because it will not. But it may be the beginning of a new era of enlightenment in dealing with a problem which we have heretofore simply sloughed off to our jails. It may be the most successful, innovative approach taken anywhere in coming to grips with the problem of heroin addiction.

The health entry plan certainly merits our support and our every encouragement. I stand behind it 100 per cent in support.

MRS. DAILLY: Mr. Speaker, I remember - and some of you will also remember with me, I think - the first day that the New Democratic Party was elected government and we were sitting in this House.

Interjections.

MRS. DAILLY: I expected a few catcalls on that! I recall the Minister of Economic Development (Hon. Mr. Phillips) , who was sitting over here at that time, standing up and shouting across the floor: "This is a black day for British Columbia." And then I remember the first member for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) , who got up and said: "But, Mr. Speaker, didn't you know black is beautiful?"

I remember, from that moment, thinking about that. And I want to say quite seriously now that I consider this, and I'm very serious about this, my own personal opinion: this is another black day in the history of the B.C. Legislature.

Any government that would bring before this Legislature a bill which denies a group of citizens in this province certain basic civil rights is, in my opinion, a disgrace; and I am ashamed to think that I have to stand and debate such a bill in this House. I could sit down and not take part in it, but I would feel remiss in my duty as a member of this Legislature.

If there was any doubt in anyone's mind here that this bill has been brought in for sheer political purposes, that was certainly cleared

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up today when after the minister had made his speech and one of the members from the official opposition stated that we intended to vote against this bill, the member for Omineca (Mr. Kempf) called across the floor: "You'll be sorry." Now if anything pointed out more clearly to me and others in this Legislature that this bill has been brought in entirely to cater to what this Social Credit government thinks is a mood out there against heroin addiction.... We all are against heroin addiction. But the point is this government is willing to take away from citizens of this province their basic civil rights just to cater to that mood out there, which they consider is going to win votes for them.

I say: "Shame on this government! And I know that what I'm saying here and what many of our members are saying will not be popular. I know the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) was very quick to jump on the former Minister of Human Resources (Mr. Levi) , when he said in all honesty and sincerity that he did not feel there is any other treatment that will work, except to supply some heroin to the addicts. He will use this; and I can see every member running out on the campaign trail and saying: "Do you know what that NDP said?"

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to belong to a party that has more concern for the basic civil human rights of an individual of this society than it does for votes. That's the difference between that party over there and this party here. It will always be. It is true. I recall the Minister of Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. Chabot) calling across the floor to the member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Levi) just before he sat down: "You're a bleeding heart." Well, may I say that, if concern for civil rights means that you have a bleeding heart, then I'm a bleeding heart also.

We listened to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Mair) doing some fancy footwork with his legal background, trying to vindicate - as a lawyer - that no civil rights were being taken away.

HON. MR. MAIR: Nonsense.

MRS. DAILLY: And I say "nonsense" to you. Then we also have to back up what we feel over here. And I know the minister is well aware that, when you get the president of the B.C. branch of the Canadian Bar Association asking this government not to push this through because of their concern over what you are doing to civil rights, and then that member stands up there and tries to do some fancy footwork about civil rights not being taken away by this bill.... I repeat what he said:

"Any statute which would permit the state to take control of an individual, whether heroin user or not, and require his confinement, whether in a hospital with bars or in a prison with bars, must of necessity only be done in circumstances and within a process that affords that individual complete access to due process of law and fundamental principles of natural justice. To permit a statute to operate other than within those perimeters would be an extremely dangerous precedent, since that system could later be adopted for persons with other problems or, indeed, almost any excess or non-conformity."

Where is this government going to stop? Who is the next group in this province that they're going to act upon to take away their civil rights? How can you trust a government that would move politically on one group of citizens in this society? Who are they going to move on next, if they happen to think that it's going to win them a few more votes for the next election?

Aside from my own personal viewpoint, the major issue in this bill which really bothers me most of all and shocks me is the taking away of civil rights. Also it's been pointed out all afternoon by members on this side that the whole concept of the treatment is not going to work. And, Mr. Speaker, I often think to myself when we hear laughter across the floor during a debate like this, and I wonder what those members who laugh would feel like if they knew that they could be walking down the street and suddenly be picked up and taken and put away without due process of law. I don't think they would be laughing.

HON. MR. MAIR: Rot!

MRS. DAILLY: The minister who just called across the floor "rot" has certainly failed in his remarks today to convince us that it is, and I think he's going to have a lot of trouble. .

Mr. Speaker, the minister is getting exercised and when he gets exercised we always know he's become twitchy, and he is becoming twitchy because he knows that what his government is doing is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I have before me a very interesting letter that was sent to the Leader of the Opposition, and maybe some other members have it. It's sent by a person who worked in Matsqui. The interesting thing about this is - I want to straighten up his credentials first - he's not a member of the New Democratic Party, from

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what I can see. As a matter of fact, he seems to have a certain amount of respect for the Minister of Health. he happens to believe that the minister may be doing this sincerely. But frankly, after listening to remarks across the floor today, I've lost that concept of the reason for bringing in this bill from that government. I still repeat: it is a straight political manoeuvre. This person who worked with the inmates in Matsqui is really concerned because he saw a multi-million dollar centre spending millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money in a compulsory situation which did not work. Naturally he's concerned that this government wants to take the same route, and all he's trying to do is point out to them that it will not work.

He says: "Let's remember that drug addicts are first and foremost human beings and perversity is a very human characteristic displayed at one time or another by all of us." in other words, he is saying that drug addicts who've been put in Matsqui, as soon as they came out with all the fancy treatment, whatever attempts were made, they reverted back to drugs. If you talk to inmates in the prisons today, they're looking at this bill not only with shock that their civil rights are being taken away from them, which will happen, but also with some ridicule, that any government that knows so little about the heroin addict actually thinks that this vague bill, as far as treatment goes, is actually going to help.

The point is too, as has been made earlier, that the market will still be out there, and I think the member for Vancouver-Burrard (Mr. Levi) made this point. Once you create a colony in one area, another new colony will spring up on the streets. The clients may become younger and younger, which is the very thing these people over here seem to think this bill will prevent.

Mr. Speaker, this man who worked at Matsqui also makes a point about well-equipped vocational training shops. We listened to the minister in opening his debate today talk about how they are going to have life skills, et cetera. He says they're always underutilized in these situations - in fact they are in many others - and he found there was a lack of enthusiasm displayed by the trainees which was baffling until one really examined the underlying reasons.

I really resented the remarks made when the last member who took his seat made the point, I think, that heroin addicts were lacking something, maybe in their intelligence, in their ethics and so on. Perhaps from our point of view, yes, Mr. Speaker, but according to this man who worked with them, he found that the majority of heroin addicts were a very bright group of people who did admit that they did have a sickness that could not be controlled. The gentleman who sent this brief examined very carefully some of the major points that have been brought up by the minister in his bill and he posed some interesting questions.

Starting with some of the basic precepts in the bill: first of all, that the programme must be compulsory, because voluntary programmes have been found ineffective. Now the reply of this particular person is, "But so have elaborate compulsory programmes, " which he has been involved in personally.

"Drug addicts will welcome our programme with enthusiasm." Those statements have been made. The question this man asks is: Is that what makes compulsion necessary? ,

"The rights of addicts will not be infringed upon because an addict, not knowing right from wrong, really has no rights." Now I'm not saying the minister said that. I'm not attributing that to you, Mr. Minister, but unfortunately some of this is out there. The point this man makes is: tell that to several thousand reasonably intelligent drug addicts whom he has worked with.

Then he goes on to say: "I do not believe from all my years of work with drug addicts that there is such a thing as a cure for drug addicts. There is no such thing as a cure." We may not want to hear that, but for those people who have been most closely associated with drug addicts and drug addicts themselves, this is what they say. There is no cure. Millions have been spent already on programmes which have been totally ineffective. He goes on to say: "Let's have a little pity for the taxpayer. He's taking a big enough licking right now directly as it is, and yet now it is the intention of this government to impose more burden on him to finance something which is obviously going to be ineffective."

Then he also refers to the whole matter of alcoholism. He says: "Alcoholics Anonymous will not touch a person who does not come to them of his own free will, prepared to give up his addiction to alcohol." We all know the success of Alcoholics Anonymous, but it will not work unless the person comes of his own free will, prepared to give up his addiction to alcohol. There is a reason for this, because they know that if he's not prepared to make this sort of commitment they cannot do a thing for him.

I would like to know how that minister thinks he is going to get that kind of commitment out of people who are forcibly confined.

[ Page 2289 ]

"As it is, they operate with a fair degree of success, certainly more successfully" - he's referring to Alcoholics Anonymous - "than any multimillion-dollar drug addiction programme has ever operated. Heroin and alcohol are two different things. Heroin is a more demanding master but they do have a lot in common."

Then he goes on to say: "It has been well established that the partaking of alcohol frequently breeds aggressiveness and hostility, whereas the partaking of heroin usually breeds passivity and tranquillity. I therefore can see no good reason why we should be moving in this direction that the minister se bound to take."

Mr. Speaker, as I said when I first started speaking on this, I don't profess to be an expert in this whole area of heroin addiction. But I do know that I haven't reached this stage in my political career - and may I say this age that I am now at - without realizing that there is something sadly wrong with any government that would bring before the members of the Legislature a bill that would ask us to vote to take away from any individual in this society any civil rights. In other words, we are dealing with a government that puts the state above the individual. That's the kind of government that we are facing in British Columbia today.

Mr. Speaker, there are many others on this side of the House whom I know have far more effective arguments to give than I have on why this treatment will not work. I simply want to say that I am ashamed to have to stand in this House and even take part in such a debate.

MR. STUPICH: I suppose I'm more concerned about the treatment aspect of it. In talking about the treatment, I find it very hard to talk without considering the facility that is proposed to be used for this so-called treatment. I noticed the hon. member for Delta (Mr. Davidson) saying during the course of his remarks that increased enforcement is not the answer.

MR. DAVIDSON: Alone.

MR. STUPICH: Yet the legislation includes a proposal - not the legislation itself but the proposal advanced by the Alcohol and Drug Commission - to set up one more enforcement centre, one more containment centre. Indeed, the proposal includes the provision of an eight -foot fence. Now if that isn't enforcement, then I don't know just what it is.

HON. Mr. McCLELLAND: You've got an eight foot fence around your house, probably.

MR. STUPICH: Mr. Speaker, an eight-foot fence around my house wouldn't keep drug addicts out or in and wouldn't prevent the transport of drugs either way across that fence. That's the unfortunate fact of life. The minister said nothing in his remarks that told me that there is anything really different about this treatment programme other than that some attempt is going to be made to stop drugs from being used by drug users. If he could convince me that it would work anywhere, if he could convince me that it could work in a city....

Mr. Speaker, drug containment centres, incarceration centres, have been tried in other cities. One was tried in Matsqui for a number of years. It was abandoned because it wasn't working. Attempts, I believe, have been made to stop drugs from going into Oakalla and being used by the inmates. I believe attempts have been made to stop drugs from getting into the penitentiary and no one, I think, would stand up in the House and say that any of these attempts have met with any measure of success. Both of those institutions are within cities. Now it is proposed to establish yet one more institution in another city and expose that city to the same kind of so-called treatment and drug abuse that has been a feature of every other institution where authorities have tried to stop drugs from getting into institutions where users are waiting to use them. He hasn't said there is anything different about the treatment other than that drugs are going to be kept away from the users. He has not tried to tell us in any way at all how, this treatment programme is going to be any more successful at accomplishing that.

Mr. Speaker, possibly if we were to abandon the argument that the member for Burnaby North used about the civil rights issue and came down to the cries from across the floor that we have to do something....

MR. BARRETT: Anything.

MR. STUPICH: Anything at all. It doesn't matter what, as long as we pretend we're doing something. If we say never mind the civil rights aspect of it, let's deal with the doing something, well then presumably they'd want to put these people somewhere where it wasn't that easy to get at them, somewhere where it wasn't that easy to be served by the people who profit by supplying them with drugs, rather than setting up yet one more institution within the city limits of Nanaimo.

The Alcohol and Drug Commission did say in a letter dated April 26 that they were consi-

[ Page 2290 ]

dering many sites - I believe the wording is ''currently looking at many available facilities." Now possibly if they were to be a little more free with their information, if they were to tell us what some of these other facilities were, possibly one of those facilities might be remote enough that it would not be as easy to pass drugs as it certainly will be in a facility that is as near central population as the Brannan Lake facility. But the minister hasn't told us anything about that.

I've tried unsuccessfully for some six weeks now to find out just what other facilities, were being looked at. I've been met with blank stares. I've been met with people taking questions on notice and never coming back with answers to questions as to just when decisions were made to do such and such. Presumably they're trying to rack their brains or find out just when certain decisions were made. No answers to any of this. No answers as to what kind of programme is going to be used, or if Brannan Lake will be any different to the programmes that have failed in the past. No answers to questions that concern me as the MLA for Nanaimo as to just what is going to happen in that community when we establish within the city of Nanaimo a community of some 160 people who are incarcerated behind an eight-foot fence because they are drug users, and because the authorities are hoping to deny them the use of drugs for a period of time. The recidivism odds, I understand tonight -and I've heard these figures before - are 90 per cent. It's usually higher than that; 90 per cent is a low figure for the recidivism rate, from what I've heard. They hope that's going to change because they're using Brannan Lake rather than a facility somewhere else.

It's a great facility. I recall when that place was first opened many years ago and the president of the old-age pension organization in Nanaimo was out there on a visit along with a group of his comrades, as they call themselves in the old-age pension organization, he said that any youngster who broke out of that facility should be locked up somewhere else because he must be crazy. Nothing but the best was good enough for the most deprived in our community, the people who were presumably contained in that facility. The containment did not work. The kids got out almost....

MR. BARRETT: At will.

MR. STUPICH: At will - that's the phrase I was looking for. As a matter of fact, at will. I can remember them demonstrating to visitors how adept they were at hotlining cars and getting them started - some of them cars it just wasn't supposed to be possible do that with.

AN HON. MEMBER: They learned how to do it in Brannan.

MR. STUPICH: They didn't need cars; after all, they were in a city. Residences were very close. They could break into residences and often did. They stole, did damage, stole cars and trucks, stole boats, all of those things are so close to that facility. Now we're talking about not youngsters, but adults. In spite of what the hon. member for Delta said on this subject, I doubt very much that 14-year-old prostitutes will be locked up in Brannan Lake as a drug treatment centre, but I think adults will be. Those adults, I'm sure, will not be deterred for long by an eight-foot fence. They'll be breaking out into that community.

If the minister had told us something about these other available sites and had told us that one of these sites was going to be unavailable, then possibly withdrawal could be made to be effective, at least for the time of incarceration. I gather the recidivism rate is 90 to 98 per cent. It wouldn't last any longer than the period of incarceration, but at least it's possible that some theoretical situation could be dreamed up at some theoretical location where it might be possible to stop the flow of drugs for a short period at least.

It certainly won't be possible at Brannan Lake.

It is going to accomplish nothing for drug treatment. It is not going to deny the people within that fence access to drugs. It's not going to deny them access to people outside of the fence who want to get in and talk to them. It's not going to deny them the ability to get over the fence and to get out into the community and go beyond that community any time they choose to do so.

What is it going to do, Mr. Speaker? The only thing it will accomplish at all is do a lot of damage to the city of Nanaimo. Putting this place of incarceration within the city limits of the Hub City of Vancouver Island, exposing the residents in the vicinity of that facility, and beyond that, exposing them to the people who will be trafficking with the inmates and exposing them to the inmates who will be breaking out at will and doing their damage in the community can do nothing else other than concentrate some of those activities in the city of Nanaimo in the hope that maybe it will relieve some of the problems in Vancouver, some of the problems in New West-

[ Page 2291 ]

minister, or places like that, in the hope that it can be concentrated in Nanaimo.

Mr. Speaker, it will achieve nothing positive. It may well destroy Nanaimo as a place in which people can now live relatively quietly.

Mr. Speaker, until the minister can tell us that this programme is something new and something different, until the minister can give us some details as to how it differs from previous programmes that have been tried unsuccessfully, until he can tell us how a facility can be built within the limits of the city of Nanaimo where drug flow can be stopped, then certainly I have to oppose this legislation. As MLA for Nanaimo I can do nothing less.

Mr. Speaker, I'm not even dealing with all the other questions - the moral questions of civil rights. I'm not dealing with the will of people who use drugs to change their habit or not to change them. I'm speaking now as the MLA for Nanaimo. I can do nothing less than urge the defeat of this legislation until the government convinces me and convinces the people of British Columbia and the people of Nanaimo that there is something here that can do some good, that the total effect of this programme will not simply be to destroy the community of Nanaimo.

MRS. WALLACE: It would seem that this bill is unfortunately aimed in entirely the wrong direction as far as achieving a solution to the heroin problem that we have in British Columbia, because it is not getting at the cause of the problem. The cause has been pointed out by many speakers on both sides of the House, and that cause is the pusher, the person who is in it for money. This bill does not direct itself in any sense, shape or form towards correcting that cause. Rather, it is going to attempt to treat the victim - and I say "attempt" to treat. The best medical authorities that we have today and the best research that we have today indicate that to this point in time there is no cure for heroin addiction. Those unfortunate people who by their own words will admit that the addiction was stupid in the first instance are nonetheless hooked.

There is no treatment. Instead we are going to take these people, lock them up somewhere and profess to treat them. We are not going to cure them, Mr. Speaker. We may teach them some trades. This brief by the chap who worked at Matsqui has been quoted and requoted. It is an excellent treatise by a person who has worked for some five years as a counsellor with the drug addicts and heroin addicts who were confined in Matsqui. It's first-hand knowledge. His comments indicate that the only interest of the people who were involved in that treatment programme at Matsqui in the courses that were offered was simply to, perhaps....

One example that he pointed out was a case of a person who studied mechanics, the use of tools and torches and so on. Do you know how he used that when he was discharged? He used it in order to go out and illegally strip cars to sell the parts from those cars in order to support his habit, not because he wanted to be a criminal, Mr. Speaker, but because he'could not earn enough from his day-to-day pay as a mechanic to support his habit.

That's why we are having the crime and the theft and all the related things that go along with heroin addiction like prostitution and everything we are all so concerned about. It is not something that those people particularly want to be involved in. Unfortunately, they have a habit that they have to support, and the only way they can support it is so expensive that they have to turn to crime.

To take those people off the streets and put them in a centre perhaps for a short and immediate period is going to relieve that crime. But, Mr. Speaker, those people who are pushing heroin and who are making big money are simply going to induct a whole new generation of people into heroin use, and we're going to have a whole new generation of criminals. In the meantime, the ones we have locked up and kept there for I don't know how long - until they somehow convince us they are cured or until their term runs out - are going to be turned back out. Their first move is going to be to see where they can get their first fix of heroin and where they can get the funds to buy that heroin. It is simply going to aggravate the situation. That is over and above and aside from all the civil liberty issues that are involved - the infringement, the circumvention of due process of law, all those things. It is simply a lot of taxpayer dollars down the drain for no real result. It's not getting at the cause.

If we spent the amount of money that we are going to spend on this treatment in enforcing the laws and in cutting down the supply, we might then find that we have people voluntarily coming if they can't get the supply. There is that hope, because it has to be something that comes from within. This has been mentioned by many other people. If there is to be any cure for heroin addiction, it has to come from within. It may certainly be a religious factor that is involved; it may be something very personal that happens to that individual, but they have to really want to be

[ Page 2292 ]

cured. It is like wanting to quit smoking. You have to really want to quit smoking before you are going to be successful; you have to really want to quit drinking before you can stop using alcohol. If you don't really want to, if you don't have that personal commitment, there is no force and no coercion that is going to encourage or help or bring that about. In fact, what it is going to do is put a group of people together who are going to wheel and deal and connive as to how they are going to get around the law, how they are going to get around the regulations, how they are going to turn that very institution into their own kind of place, how they are going to get heroin within that institution.

Those people may be stupid to have started to use heroin and, as I say, they would be the first to admit that, but let's not ever think they are dumb. They are very clever people. It is usually people who are above average intelligence who become involved in these kinds of things. Most of the heroin addicts are above average intelligence. Mr. Speaker, to put those people together in the kind of environment that will be created in the institution that this bill looks forward to establishing will do nothing but encourage them to find ways and means of outdoing their guards, their counsellors and the various people who are on staff there and getting heroin into the institution. It is not going to be a treatment centre at all; it is simply going to be a confinement centre where we bring those people together and hold them for as long as possible.

When they are out, they will not be cured until the time comes - and let's hope it will - that we do find a cure to this addiction. We don't have that cure now. This is a wild experiment that has similarily been tried many times in many jurisdictions - a compulsory, arbitrary, punitive approach to attempt to cure something for which we have no cure. Mr. Speaker, it is not going to resolve the root problem. It is using taxpayers money for a purpose that will not be beneficial and will not help. It would be far better to take those tax dollars and increase the efforts of CLEU and the enforcement of legislation and the enlargement of the police force to enable us to get at the root cause and go further along with controlling the pushers and the traffickers and the people who are in the degrading business in order to make a profit.

That's where the crime is, that's where the problem is centred, and that's where the efforts of this government should be concerned for treatment, rather than trying to treat the pawns in the game. They are only the pawns.

Sure, it is a bad problem that is facing us, but let's get at the cause of it rather than trying to treat the results.

I'm very much opposed to this bill and certainly intend to vote against it.

MR. KING: I rise to state my objections to this particular bill and to indicate my intention to oppose it. I was interested in the dissertation presented to the House by the hon. Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Mair) . I just want to comment on a couple of the rationalizations that the minister used.

He made the statement that a bill like this must have the cleansing of judicial review. Perhaps his particular word "cleansing" was significant. I think there is a very serious taint of impropriety about this bill when it comes to the compulsory incarceration of individuals in this province without the benefit of legal representation and without the benefit of legal and normal judicial review.

I would point out that the onus is reversed in the appeal procedure in this bill. The onus is placed upon the offender - or whatever one wishes to refer to him as - to show that he in fact is not guilty of addiction to heroin. I suggest that is contrary to and in conflict with every normal concept of justice, which the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, as a lawyer, should well know. I forget what the precise Section 1s, but there is no question about the reversing of the onus of responsibility on the accused heroin addict in that particular section.

The minister also made reference 'to the Mental Health Act and suggested we could draw an analogy between the requirements of compulsory incarceration of accused heroin addicts with the compulsory treatment of people suffering from venereal disease and mental illness. That is haw I understood him. Certainly I think that is a case of comparing apples and oranges. Perhaps that term is not the most appropriate one. Really, one is strictly a health proposal in dealing with a health situation. In this particular statute we have an attempt to deal on a two-pronged basis with a health problem and a criminal charge as well. I don't think the two marry very well. In fact, the minister himself, after asserting that heroin addiction was a communicable disease, went on to say that for the "crime" of heroin addiction, these people must be incarcerated and protected from themselves, and society protected from them - a complete conflict in terms.

The things I want to say about this bill are

[ Page 2293 ]

pretty basic. I do not pretend to be any expert or even have very much knowledge about drug addiction or drug addicts and the rehabilitation procedures that may or may not be available to them. It's an area where I've had little or no experience. I don't think it would be prudent for me to comment on those areas, other than to say that I find it very difficult to support any bill on the face of it that is so vague in terms of the stated ?purpose of the statute. There is absolutely no treatment outlined in this particular statute. Whether or not one is an expert or has some reasonable knowledge about rehabilitation programmes for drug addicts, as responsible politicians, before a statute containing these kinds of powers is given approval in this House, surely it is reasonable and responsible to demand that the nature, the precise terms and the precise programmes to offer for the rehabilitation of those people be spelled out in the statute.

Interjection.

MR. KING: Well, you name me another Act, Mr. Minister, that provides for the incarceration of British Columbia citizens without the bene fit of legal counsel. You name me one other statute in this province that now or in the past provides for this kind of unusual smothering of the normal civil and judicial rights of citizens of this province. That's a red-necked approach and that's a redneck concept. And it's a dangerous concept, Mr. Speaker.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Where are they denied counsel here?

MR. KING: They're denied counsel in this particular statute for a period of time after they are arrested by a peace officer.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: A peace officer isn't allowed to arrest anyone in this bill.

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I will have to be a bit more precise. The members across the way apparently haven't read the bill. There is specific provision for a peace officer to order the incarceration of someone suspected of heroin addiction.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Where?

MR. KING: I'll find that, Mr. Minister.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: You will be a long time finding that, because it's not in the bill.

MR. KING: Just hold on, Mr. Speaker, and I will find the particular Section 1 was referring to.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: You had better adjourn until Friday, Mr. Speaker. He's never read the bill; he doesn't know what's in it.

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, I will find the section, anyway. I don't want to be thrown off by gibes from the other side. I will find the section and I will refer to it later.

Let me get on with the bulk of what I wanted to say. There is no plan in this particular statute for the precise nature of the treatment programme proffered by the minister. I think that is necessary. I think it is essential that that be done, when the unusual powers are taken that the minister is taking in this statute - the powers to impose in a compulsory fashion incarceration and treatment on citizens of the province of British Columbia.

My colleagues have commented on the problem of trying to keep drugs out of the new treatment centres. I certainly support the concerns that they have expressed. I think it's generally public knowledge that officials of the current jails and other institutions in the province have never been successful in keeping various kinds of drugs out of these institutions, and I see nothing in this bill that provides for new approaches and that would lead me to believe that the new treatment centres will be any more successful than the prisons in this province.

I wonder why the minister, instead of spending all this money on a new programme, on a modified institution - and, presumably, various other new institutions throughout the province - didn't simply hang a sign on Oakalla or Matsqui and call it a compulsory treatment centre - or, euphemistically, a treatment centre; there are all kinds of drug addicts contained therein now. They are there without the benefit of being able to walk out the door for the term of their sentence; he has them at his disposal. If there is some new treatment programme that is going to magically solve the problem of their addiction, why has it not been tried out and why has it not been successful in the jails? For the life of me, I can't understand why the public of the province of British Columbia are required to come up with about $14 million to achieve something that the minister hasn't been able to explain to the public of the province or this House. he's rationalized, Mr. Speaker, by saying that something has to be done.

[ Page 2294 ]

MR. BARRETT: What's the treatment, Bob?

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, there is no programme spelled out in this particular treatment centre. You know, if it is so magic, why on earth isn't it practised in the current institutions where there is certainly no shortage of drug addicts on which to apply the skills of this miraculous new cure and these miraculous new rehab workers that the minister apparently has come up with. Why isn't it done?

Mr. Speaker, I do not accept the minister's proposition that something - anything - has to be done. That sounds to me like a political response to genuine concern out in the community about the drug programme - which everyone has. Every political party, every responsible citizen of this province has to be concerned, from a whole variety of viewpoints, with respect to drug addiction - whether it be heroin, marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes or anything else.

I find it a bit unusual that we have 150,000 alcoholics or thereabouts in the province of British Columbia, based on the information I have received from Alcoholics Anonymous, and a population of around 6,000 heroin addicts, and yet we're required to take this kind of spectacular, unusual and dangerous action with respect to civil liberties directed at heroin addicts. We have 150,000 problem drinkers or alcoholics in this province to which no money is allocated.

Where is the majority of crime? I suggest to you that there is no higher rate of violence and crime than that related to alcoholism. What about the carnage on the highways, through drunken drivers? What about the wife beatings, such as my colleague for Vancouver-Burrard (Ms. Brown) , outlined in this House the other day? These are tragic situations where family life, children's psychological well-being, and the physical and mental health of women who are the wives of drunken spouses are ruined for all time in this province. How do you measure that in terms of cost, Mr. Speaker? I ask where the priority is. It seems that this is a redneck reaction to a serious social problem that exists out there, a very frustrating one, a very problematic and complex problem which society has not been able to deal With effectively and totally anywhere in the western world that I'm familiar with.

The minister says we have to do something -anything. Is that just to assuage the concern of the people who are seeking simplistic solutions to very complex societal problems today? That's what it smacks of in the absence of any coherent' explanation of effective treatment programmes in the statute, I'm afraid I'm obliged to draw that conclusion, Mr. Speaker.

HON. MR. MAIR: You're wrong, as usual.

MR. KING: Well, if I'm judged by that individual, I don't think I'd be very satisfied with being proved right or being judged right by him, because I don't really have the greatest of respect for that gentleman.

The minister was asking me what section provided for a peace officer upon reasonable grounds incarcerating a citizen of this province. Section 13 says: "Where a peace officer believes on reasonable grounds that a person has a dependency on a narcotic, he may give the person a written notice specifying a date and a time not less than 24 hours or more than 48 hours from the time of giving of the notice, at which the person is required to attend and submit to examination at the area co-ordinating centre specified in the notice."

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: You finally got it right.

MR. KING: That sounds like a bit of an unusual power to me.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: To hand him a notice? Oh, ON

MR. KING: The other aspects have been pointed out - that the appeal procedure reverses the burden of the onus on the person accused of being an addict. I don't call that conformity with the normal system of justice -not at all. I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a professional in judicial matters, but you know, if the members disagree with me, surely those brilliant legal minds over there have to be somewhat impressed when the British Columbia Bar Association attacked this bill as an unjust and unnecessary incursion into the legal rights of citizens of this province. Did they disregard that? I say it's shameful.

There are other areas. I think the intrusion into the basic civil and legal rights of citizens of this province is unjustified in this particular statute. I wonder why there has been a delay in appointing a new Human Rights Commission in this province. I wonder if the reason a new Human Rights Commission has not been appointed was simply to await the passage of this bill so there would not be the embarrassment and the difficulty of a Human Rights Commission commenting on this kind of destruction and this kind of trampling of the civil rights of citizens of this province.

You know, it's easy to pick on the heroin addicts. They're a minority group; they're not

[ Page 2295 ]

well regarded by anyone in society; and they're in a perfect position to be made a fall-guy. I can think of other people who have been in that particular category over the years - other groups and other races who have had their rights and their basic freedoms eroded because they happened not to be popular at that point in history. I think of the Japanese people who were uprooted from their homes and had their possessions seized -Canadian citizens of Japanese origin - at the outbreak or shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in the last war.

That's a black mark in the history of this province. It's a mark that prompted the Prime Minister of Canada just last year, I believe it was, to apologize to Japan in a formal way for the treatment that the government of the day in British Columbia had visited upon that group of citizens. At the time they were held in low regard. They had committed no crime; they were industrious citizens. But it was convenient; they were defenceless.

I say to you, Mr. Speaker, that as long as we as legislators and as long as citizens in British Columbia allow the rights of any individual or any group or any race or any religion to be jeopardized and intruded upon because it may be socially fashionable to do so at the time, we are destroying the basic foundation of democratic government and the legal system of justice, the British system of justice, and I think we are unworthy of the title of legislator. Who will it be tomorrow? As long as we tolerate the destruction of anyone's rights today, we jeopardize the rights of everyone tomorrow. Never forget it!

[Mr. Veitch in the chair.]

There are ample examples in the history and developments of this province and this nation that cause us to hang our heads in shame because we have forgotten those basic fundamental principles in the past. I don't want to see it happen again.

I would very much to find a solution to the heroin addition problem; I would like very much to wave a magic wand and see all drugs disappear. Surely any parent with children has to have great dread of the implications of drugs, and I happen to feel very strongly about it. But I certainly don't believe that it warrants the. kind of intrusion, the kind of threat to the civil rights and the basic legal rights of any of our citizens that is contained in this bill. It's dangerous stuff, and it should not be tolerated and it should not be supported by any member of this House.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, let me say that I have some concern for the individual who may be a heroin user. He may be addicted, but he may be productive and enjoying steady Employment. Perhaps he is working somewhere and kicked the habit two years ago, but he is on record, through a conviction in the past. According to this statute, the commission, the agency or a peace officer, if he thinks those are reasonable grounds, can pull that worker in. It can destroy his right to earn a living and maintain and support his family; it can tarnish and destroy his image in the community because he has been incarcerated in a compulsory programme for a treatment that he already mastered on his own at some time previous.

That kind of thing can happen under the statute, as I read it. And I believe it's not the intent of the minister to do that kind of thing, but the danger of walking this path of that kind of compulsory trampling of people's rights carries with it the danger and the propensity to intrude ever further into the rights and the individual freedoms of the people in this province. It can be very destructive rather than benefit anyone; it can be very destructive under certain circumstances. I certainly have great fear in that regard.

Mr. Speaker, the members across the way laugh. I don't know, perhaps that's the extent of that mentality; perhaps this is fine with them. Because the government has presented this bill, they're bound to support it and giggle like hyenas, regardless of the implications. Perhaps they think everything is fine on the farm back in the Shuswap and that's the extent of their obligation here as an MLA.

I suggest to you that every MLA in this House has a responsibility to protect ' the rights of every other citizen in this province and to guard against any statute that would intrude in an unwarranted way on their rights and freedoms, even those who perhaps might be forgiven otherwise for failing to understand, Mr. Speaker. I'm very concerned about the bill. I think the House has assumed that by now, and I'm going to vote against it.

MR. SKELLY: Mr. Speaker, I intend to speak briefly against this legislation from the point of view of someone who has had a little bit of experience in the prison system in the province and experience in dealing with some of the people who will be....

AN HON. MEMBER: Two years less a day?

MR. SKELLY: Just about, otherwise I wouldn't have been in the prison system of the province. I worked in Oakalla as a guard while I was going to university. I went to university

[ Page 2296 ]

during the day and worked there at night, and I thought that was the type of work ethic that the conservatives believed in.

But in spite of the emotional arguments, Mr. Speaker, that have been used in the presentation of this bill, and in spite of the jargon the minister used in introducing the bill when he talked about a new approach and made some descriptions of drug addicts as people who have stopped growing and have limited their world to a narrow drug scene and this kind of thing - in spite of those emotional and jargonistic arguments used by people on the other side - this is really no new approach to heroin addiction and to the treatment of heroin addiction. It has been used in other jurisdictions throughout North America and throughout the world. Matsqui is an example; the hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, is a perfect example. All of those were found to be failures. Oakalla prison farm is the example that I know of and the example that is also a failure for a number of the reasons that this bill itself will probably fail - will most definitely fail.

It was interesting in the speech made by the member for Delta (Mr. Davidson) , where he used all the traditional, emotional, red-neck kind of arguments against heroin addicts when he was talking about bringing kids into the system and how heroin addicts indoctrinate kids into the system. He talked about the 14-year-old prostitute and he said that as a result of all these things he had experienced as a peace officer, all of these things that peace officers come into contact with on a day-to-day basis, he took a strong position in favour of this bill.

Well, the peace officer's jurisdiction over heroin addicts ends where treatment begins. I've seen this happen, Mr. Speaker; I'm speaking from personal experience now. People who were drug addicts or suspected drug addicts were visiting Oakalla and came into the visitors' parking lot. People were waiting there for them from the drug squad of the RGMP or the Vancouver police or whatever, and I've seen people rammed up against the side of the car - this is in your riding, I believe, Mr. Speaker - and they had a fist with handcuffs around that fist driven into their mouth. They knocked all their teeth out on suspicion that they may be carrying drugs in a condom in their mouth - on suspicion. The police officers probably had reasonable and probable grounds that these people were carrying drugs because they had a previous record of heroin dependency. Based on those probable and reasonable grounds they mutilated those people on the suspicion they might be carrying drugs into Oakalla. But that's where the responsibility of those police officers ended.

If, in fact, they found that those people were carrying drugs and they were sentenced to Oakalla prison farm, that's where the treatment was supposed to begin. You lock up a heroin addict in Oakalla, send him on to Matsqui or some place like that, and that's where the treatment was supposed to begin. But the treatment in the east wing of Oakalla was a failure and was recognized as a failure throughout the province, and throughout the land. Treatment in Matsqui - and Matsqui was set up especially for this purpose - was recognized as a failure throughout the country. It is no longer considered a drug treatment centre. It was an absolute failure.

The thing is that once you bring an addict into a treatment centre or a correctional centre or whatever you choose to label it, you're just mixing him with other addicts. You talk about separating them from a drug culture. Well, the place that the drug culture meets is inside a centre like Oakalla or like Matsqui. The prime topic of conversation on the tier in Oakalla or Matsqui or wherever is drugs: when you are going to get out; when you are going to shoot up again; when you are going to be back on the street; when you are going to bring drugs into the institution. As a line guard in a situation like Oakalla, let me talk about some of the experiences of trying to prevent drugs from coming into Oakalla.

I used to work in the remand unit in the west wing in Oakalla, and I worked there for about two years. The kind of things you have to go through, both as an inmate coming into Oakalla, Mr. Speaker, and as a guard working on the line in Oakalla are absolutely demeaning. I have no more sympathy for heroin addicts than anyone else probably, and that's probably as a result of my experience as a guard. Having to admit heroin addicts into the west wing of Oakalla.... They all come in with a little red card indicating that they are addicts or they're suspected drug users. After they have gone through the records office and their records have been pulled and it is indicated on their card that they have used heroin in the past, they are issued with a red card. This is supposed to separate then from the other inmates who aren't drug users.

Immediately they come through the west wing on the "fish parade, " as they call it, they make them strip off all their clothes, bend over, spread their cheeks, and they examine them where the sun don't shine. But, Mr. Speaker, you still can't detect those drugs coming into the institution, and they come in

[ Page 2297 ]

where the sun doesn't shine. How the minister is going to prevent this in any kind of a compulsory treatment centre is absolutely beyond me, unless he's got long fingers and a good supply of rubber gloves - and I don't think he's even going to be able to do it then. There is absolutely no way that any centre of that type can prevent drug trafficking within the centre. Drug addicts aren't going to be attracted to those centres, as Mr. Hoskin has stated, unless there is an availability of drugs within the centre - and there certainly will be. That has been the experience in almost every compulsory detention centre for heroin addicts in every place on the globe. Wherever there is a person with a dependency on heroin or any similar drug, that person is going to satisfy that dependency and set up a system to satisfy that dependency.

Some of the things in this Act that allow for the satisfaction of that dependency are kind of interesting - the very things that the minister doesn't want to permit under this Act are going to be allowed. Once a person comes into the institution he is given a floater -he is given 24 hours' notice. What that basically tells me is that the minister is allowing the suspected person - or the person who the peace officer has reasonable and probable grounds of believing to be addicted to one of these drugs - 24 hours to show up at one of these regional centres. That is like giving him a floater, telling him to leave town and that Alberta is the next point on his Greyhound trip. Get rid of him; send him out of the province; don't try to solve his problem; give him 24 hours and the province can get rid of the problem and foist it off onto someone else like Alberta, like Manitoba, like back east. That's what is really behind that section of the Act. "Here's an opportunity where British Columbia can really dump the problem." But that's not going to happen in all cases. You try to give them a floater first to get rid of the problem; and it's irresponsible to do that. Mr. Speaker, most addicts are, I suppose, like the rest of us.

When our caucus went to Campbell River on a public caucus meeting, we were approached by a person from the John Howard Society, who explained part of the treatment programme that was going on in Campbell River. He talked about 50 people being admitted to their methadone maintenance programme in the Campbell River clinic back in 1972. Between 1972 and 1978 the number of clients of the centre up there had dropped to about 25 or 26. Of those 25, he indicated that 11 were working in full-time jobs, contributing citizens of this province. There are 100,000 people out of work in this province; but half of those people were working and contributing as full-time, tax-paying citizens of the province of British Columbia. They were more than maintaining their families, more than maintaining their methadone habit; they were working and contributing citizens. The other half were not working and were out of work for the same reasons that everyone else in British Columbia is out of work. Some were single parents and with the inadequate day-care provisions that we have under the present government, had to stay home with their children. That's a good thing; I can't criticize that. A lot of them were out of work because they couldn't find jobs; and you can't criticize them for that -that's the government's responsibility.

If all the money that is going to be wasted on this treatment programme were invested in employment opportunities in this province, it would solve problems for those people. The minister is simply going to create additional problems for those people under this Act. So half of the people involved as clients in the Campbell River centre, Mr. Speaker, were contributing full-time, working, tax-paying citizens, and the other half were unemployed for the same reasons that many other people are unemployed throughout the province.

What we are going to do is to tell those people that the methadone maintenance programme is going to be shut down. They either have to go onto this voluntary treatment programme or else they are going to be put in a centre or a peace officer can send them at any time on 24 hours' notice. We're going to interfere with their lives on that kind of basis time after time after time. What happens if a peace officer shows up on the job? Say you have a person on methadone maintenance working at Elk Falls pulp mill, and a peace officer has reasonable and probable grounds -or whatever it says - under section 13 to send him to an area co-ordinating centre. Say he is held in that centre for 72 hours; they take blood tests and they do psychological reports and medical analyses and all this kind of thing. They find out that he is dependent an a certain drug. What is going to happen to him if he has been away from work for something like three days? They're probably going to sack him from his job. Then he is going to be sent to a so-called treatment centre and mix with other people in the addict population.

The minister talked about what kind of treatment was going to go on in these centres. I really couldn't believe the jargon that the minister got involved in. He was talking about therapeutic communities; he was talking about self-actualization; he was talking about all

[ Page 2298 ]

the programmes that were going to be available to these addicts, like acupuncture and megavitamins. The Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) won't even make megavitamins available under the pharmacare programme because he doesn't think they work. It's been attacked by the medical association as virtually useless, but according to the minister, all these things are going to be made available as part of the treatment programme in one of these centres. What is selfactualization anyway?

He talks about these people who are dependent on heroin as having limited their world to the narrow drug scene. What's going to happen to these people when you mix them with a population of 150 other addicts? What are they going to talk about? The same things they talked about on the tier in Oakalla - drugs. "When are we going to get drugs? When are we going to get out and get drugs?" A-11 the people whom they mixed with in the drug scene before are going to be crowded together in one institution of 150 people, and all that is going to be on their minds is: "When are we going to get out and when are we going to be able to get back to heroin?"

I'm not concerned about a lot of those people. We used to have a lot of old-line addicts come into Oakalla and we used to stack them up two deep in the cells on four-right and four-left in the west wing. When they had finished all their games of going through the trial process and going through the appeal process in the south wing, we used to send them off to the pen or to the east wing. They had access to the drugs anyway.

The people I was concerned about were the younger people who came into the institution. There is no provision and no definition under this definition section of who is going to be coming into these institutions and what their ages are going to be. When you build an institution there is a tendency to fill it. It's the unwritten law of traffic that traffic fills the space designed to accommodate it. If you have 10 spaces left over in a 150-bed treatment centre, and you have 10 14-year-old heroin-addicted prostitutes, the tendency is to fill up those beds. So you are going to be mixing different age groups, different dependency groups, different people in the same institution. What you are going to do is level off the addict population so that almost everybody is addicted at the same rate. That's precisely what Oakalla did.

I can remember individual people. Standing here, looking at the minister across the floor, I can picture their faces right today, even though I worked in Oakalla something like 10 or 12 years ago. But I have been to Oakalla since then on visits a number of times. I can picture them as clearly now as I could 10 or 12 years ago when I worked there, watching a kid come into Oakalla. on some of the most insignificant offences you can possibly imagine: theft under $50. Usually that kind of kid would come in and out, and would never even make it to Oakalla in the first place; he'd be released on probation or something. But a kid who came in and maybe didn't have adequate legal protection or maybe his parents didn't want him or maybe the probation officer was busy writing up presentence reports for somebody else - all those kinds of problems result in a younger person entering Oakalla.

I remember some of these guys, pretty dependent people, sitting down on their haunches at the end of a tier, four right, four left, or down during inside yard on one right or one left in the west wing of Oakalla, ' talking to the addicts, getting involved with the people who are really hooked on heroin. And what bothers me about this legislation, Mr. Speaker, is that what we are going to be doing under this Act is sentencing people without benefit of due process, sentencing people who aren't really dependent on heroin and who haven't really had an experience with that heroin subculture and who aren't really going in that direction. Simply on the recommendation or on reasonable belief of a peace officer that they are addicted to heroin or to a dependent drug, these people will be sent to one of these institutions and incorporated into that kind of drug culture to become addicts.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

What we I re going to be doing with this legislation is creating heroin addicts and multiplying the problem in this province. I've seen it done in places like Oakalla, places where the minister has never had any experience whatsoever, places totally outside his experience. What this minister is involved in is something like the true believer. He believes he's got the true, redneck issue. Everybody hates the heroin addicts. They all have ideas that you should send heroin addicts to desert islands and condemn them to prisons in the far north, to get them all together and maybe let a tidal wave wash over them. Everybody hates heroin addicts. This is the kind of thing that everybody likes to do. Whenever you talk to people on the street about heroin addicts they say: "Lock them up forever; we don't like them." There is no consideration about the different groups within the addict

[ Page 2299 ]

population or the user population.

What you're going to be doing under this legislation is creating new addicts, new problems for British Columbia, new crime problems, new costs for the people of British Columbia, increases in taxes, increases in human suffering and a decrease in human rights in this province. I can picture it almost as clearly today as I could 12 years ago when I worked in Oakalla, the kind of people who are slowly going to be incorporated into that addict group as a result of what the minister is doing under this present legislation.

Mr. Speaker its tragic legislation for this province, and its tragic in view of my experience. While I do understand some of the experience that the member from Delta may have had as a peace officer, its quite a different experience from the point of view of the person who has to hold these people in custody. And Iove been through that, having to watch these people go through the transition from non-drug users or from low-level drug users to full-fledged heroin addicts.

love seen it happen. And yet I've seen people also burned out at the other end of the spectrum, people who were shooting heroin into their eye sockets and people who had their veins cauterized or couldn't use their veins, they were so carved up. I've seen people with basketball inflators - the thing you inflate basketballs with - rubbing them against the bricks at Oakalla and jabbing those into their veins with heroin or with Tuinals or whatever they could jam into their vein. That is what this minister is sentencing people to because as sure as you can put heroin addicts into an institution, that's the kind of thing that is going to happen.

This treatment programme is no treatment programme at all. It is designed to meet a red-neck idea of what we should be doing about heroin addicts. It is doomed to failure. It is going to cost this province millions - not just millions in terms of the programme itself, but its going to cost us millions in terms of the increase in crime which is going to result from this bill. Because certainly its going to drive the price of heroin up and its going to drive the heroin market up.

It's a tragic bill, Mr. Speaker, and I intend to vote against it.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, I certainly would like to associate myself with the comments made by my colleague from Alberni because I think he probably put it much more clearly than any of us who have never had his experience could imagine that it could be. I'm sure that the minister could not have had the experience of the kind of input that the member for Alberni just gave him when lie was drafting this piece of legislation, because anyone who has worked in the system and anyone who has had anything to do with addicts knows that you don't cure addiction by incarcerating people. That is not the way in which it is done.

But the bill makes sense when you put it into some kind of perspective with the rest of the legislation brought down by this govern--ment, because the drug addict is just one other group that this government has found to scapegoat. It operates through scapegoating the various groups in our community. They always respond in a negative way to people. The Minister of Human Resources scapegoats senior citizens, accusing them of ripping off the Pharmacare programme by using ....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. To the present bill.

MS. BROWN: Yes, I'm trying to put it into perspective in terms of the rest of the legislation brought down by this government.

MR. SPEAKER: You cannot debate other bills.

MS. BROWN: I'm not debating another bill.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. member will keep her remarks relevant to the present bill.

MS. BROWN: I will keep my remarks relevant to the present bill. I'm putting this bill into perspective in terms of the kinds of things done by that government to other groups in society.

The scapegoating of the addicts is just one more group that is being attacked by this government, in the same way senior citizens were attacked by the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) ; in the same way doctors have been attacked by this minister when he insists that because of their dishonesty, patients now have to sign a card proving that they went into the doctor's office; in the same way municipalities were attacked by that government when the Premier accused them of being sneaky. This group is being scapegoated in the same way welfare recipients were scapegoated when much more money was spent in setting up fraud squads to look for thieves than in terms of aid to them.

It's another scapegoating piece of legislation. That's all I'm trying to say. It has nothing to do with assisting drug addicts or with wiping out drug addiction. All the information is there that shows that you cannot

[ Page 2300 ]

cure addiction by locking people up, and you don't wipe out the presence of drugs in the community by locking people out. It's another piece of scapegoating legislation, that's all it is. It is another instance of this government reacting in a negative way towards people, because that is the way they always react. It must be really a very sad thing indeed for a group of people to have such a negative sense of their fellow man - if I can use the word that way - to work on the basis that everyone is either out to steal or to rip off the system in some way, or they are basically evil and dishonest and bad and must be punished. This is what it is: punitive legislation in the same way so many of the policies and other pieces of legislation of that government have been punitive.

It doesn't make any sense to discuss this legislation in any other way, except in this particular instance it is a piece of legislation which has been introduced primarily to punish a special group in our society in the same way in which other groups have been punished by this government. The minister refers to this programme as a health entry programme. It has absolutely nothing to do with health whatsoever. It's another misuse of the word - a euphemism to deal with punishment and to deal with scapegoating, in the same way that calling him a Minister of Health is a misnomer. Referring to him as running a Ministry of Health is using a euphemism. in the same way as referring to this bill as being legislation to introduce a health entry programme is a misnomer.

When you talk about health, you talk about assisting people, you talk about helping people. If it's a health-oriented programme, why is it that it's the evaluation panel that decides on the appeals and on the extension of the programme rather than doctors or other health personnel, the person treating the addict? Why is that if it is a health programme? If it's health oriented, why is it that it does not have any support from the medical profession whatsoever? What kind of input came from then in the planning of this programme and in the drafting of this piece of legislation - from any of the health personnel whatsoever? A misnomer again, a misuse of a word - it has nothing to do with health whatsoever. It is not going to cure anybody; it's not even going to treat anybody. It strictly deals with locking people up and punishing people and depriving people of their rights. That has nothing whatsoever to do with health. A-11 of the statistics and all of the information is there that you cannot cure addiction. You don't cure narcotics addiction or any other form of addiction firstly by forcing people to go into a programme against their will, and secondly by simply locking them up.

When the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Hon. Mr. Mair) compares this to the Mental Health Act, that is really stretching it a bit far. Comparing the treatment of narcotics addicts to the kind of way in which people with a mental health problem who can no longer make any decisions for themselves are allowed after they have been examined by medical personnel to be put into a medical institution for medical treatment .... To compare that with this is ludicrous indeed. There is no comparison between the Mental Health Act and this piece of legislation which the minister is trying to foist on us - this scapegoating piece of legislation.

We're not so uncivilized that we would treat mentally ill people in the way in which this Act is going to treat the heroin addicts, Mr. Speaker. So certainly there should be no comparison between that piece of legislation and this piece of legislation. This is punitive and it's scapegoating. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with rehabilitation. It has nothing whatsoever to do with health. It has nothing to do with justice. It has nothing to do with anything but scapegoating and punishing people.

Why is this happening now? This is one of the questions which, when the New Democratic Party caucus met in Campbell River, we were asked by a gentleman from the John Howard Society. Why is it happening now? If we're really serious about addiction and about an addiction which is really taking its toll on the lives of people, on the quality of the lives of people, and on the quality of the life of this province, we'd be addressing ourselves to alcoholism. That's what we would be addressing ourselves to, not to heroin.

If we are going to establish any kind of priorities at all in terms of the damage done to this community by a drug, then we have to start out by addressing ourselves to alcohol and not to heroin. It is certainly not the first drug that we should be dealing with. Why aren't we doing that? Because we're hypocrites, that's why. As a government we are hypocrites, because as far as alcohol is concerned, we're the pushers, we're making the money off of it. So that's the reason we're not addressing ourselves to that fact.

The Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mr. Vander Zalm) is listening very carefully, because he knows the damage that alcoholism does in this province. He sees it every day in terms of the families that are destroyed -

[ Page 2301 ]

young people, old people. The destruction in terms of the labour force.... If the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. Williams) was here, he would give that speech all over again about attacking alcoholism in the workplace. If we are serious about dealing with a narcotic that is really destroying this community, then the millions of dollars that we have to spend should be going into wiping out ' alcoholism, into treating the alcoholics and into preventing young people from going into alcoholism. Instead, we have this hypocritical display of an Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Gardom) running ads saying: "Don't drink and drive." At the same time, the only place in this province where you can buy alcohol is out of a government liquor store. It's ludicrous!

HON. MR. MAIR: Why didn't you shut them down?

MS. BROWN: You're hypocrites. You're hypocritical.

HON. MR. MAIR: You had three and a half years to shut them down. What was the matter with you?

MS. BROWN: If you were pushing heroin, if the government were making money off heroin, we wouldn't have this bill here.

HON. MR. MAIR: You're a hypocrite. You're a two-faced hypocrite. What did you do?

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS. BROWN: That is the only reason that we have this piece of legislation.

[Mr. Speaker rises.]

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. The hon. first member for Vancouver-Burrard will withdraw the word "hypocrite."

[Mr. Speaker resumes his seat.]

MS. BROWN: Sure. I withdraw the word "hypocrite."

MR. SPEAKER: Please proceed.

MS. BROWN: I would like to repeat, Mr. Speaker, that the only reason we are putting money into fighting heroin instead of into fighting alcohol is because the government is in the business of selling alcohol, and the government is not in the business of selling heroin. I'm not going to use the word "hypocrite"

again. I'm just going to say it's indeed a very strange position to take when we all of us agree....

HON. MR. MAIR: What did you do about it, Madam Runge?

MS. BROWN: Okay, but don't deny that that's the reason we have this bill on the floor.

HON. MR. MAIR: What did you do about it?

MS. BROWN: Don't stand up in your place and try to rationalize this bill and compare it to the Mental Health Act. It has nothing to do with mental illness.

HON. MR. MAIR: Madam Runge, what did you do about it?

MS. BROWN: There is no comparison to the Mental Health Act.

HON. MR. MAIR: That's pious claptrap.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Would the hon. Minister for Consumer and Corporate Affairs please try to restrain himself?

HON. MR. MAIR: It is kind of hard.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Speaker, I am trying to continue but it is obvious that the truth is hurting because from the attack which is being launched by the government benches it is absolutely clear that they understand and they feel very badly about what I am saying. So I take it as a good indication. I'm getting through to the consciences.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: He doesn't have to withdraw that, Mr. Speaker. I want that to remain on the record, please. But the fact remains that the minister should stand in his place and state clearly and without equivocation that this is not a health re-entry programme. It has nothing to do with health. We are simply going to pour $17 million into a programme that doesn't work, that he knows will not work, and that has never worked anywhere. It is now the turn of the narcotic addicts in this province to be scapegoated by this government. That is all it is - simply and precisely that. It would be an act of honesty to deal with that, because if the minister stands in his place and tells us that he is doing this because he is concerned about addiction, then he is going to have to explain why he started with heroin

[ Page 2302 ]

rather than the much more serious addiction -that of alcohol. The second serious addiction, the one that we know kills you - with apologies to my colleague from Mackenzie - is tobacco.

No one is addressing themselves to those serious kinds of addictions. The government isn't putting any money into that serious kind of addiction. No, the government is putting its money into this programme which it knows is not going to work. It's very popular out there, I know. You listen to open-line shows. You speak to people going by in the street. Sure, let's crucify the addicts. We would be much further ahead if we tried to save the alcoholic. We would be much further ahead if we did that.

There is another presumption made. I've listened to everybody on both sides of the House speak tonight and they have all referred to the addict as "he." But not all addicts are male. The minister has not taken into account the social costs involved in incarcerating -locking up, putting behind bars - the parent.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: What bars?

MS. BROWN: An eight-foot fence. I withdraw the word "bars." A great eight-foot fence that is going to do what no other programme has been able to do - wipe out addiction.

MR. KEMPF: If you haven't tried it, don't knock it.

MS. BROWN: If I haven't tried an eight-foot fence? I have no intentions of trying an eight-foot fence, Mr. Speaker, despite whatever that member for Omineca wants to suggest.

But in all seriousness, I want to describe to you a scenario, and then I'll read a letter. The scenario has to do with the mother of two small children, who is an addict, and who the peace officers, as outlined under section 13, "has or believes on reasonable grounds that she has a dependency on narcotics, and as a result of which receives a written notice specifying that at a date and time not less than 24 hours hence, she is to present herself, " or, as the minister has here, "attend and submit to examination at the area co-ordinating centre specified in the notice."

What happens to that family unit? Is it really more important, Mr. Speaker, I am asking you, that this mother show up at this co-ordinating unit? Is it more important that she do that because she is suspected of being dependent on narcotics, or is it more important that she continue to carry out her job of parenting which she is doing successfully despite her dependency on narcotics? Which is more important?

Once this Act becomes law it really doesn't make any difference what kind of mother she is. It doesn't make any difference how dependent her children are on her. It doesn't make any difference what is going to happen to those children when she is removed from her role as parent. The only thing that is going to happen when this Act becomes law....

MR. KEMPF: What happens when she gets them on drugs?

MS. BROWN: This is the whole point, Mr. Speaker, of what I am trying to say - this assumption that everybody is basically bad. I mean, what are we going to do with them?

MR. KEMPF: You don't understand at all.

MS. BROWN: I understand, and I understand that not everybody is bad, wicked and evil, Mr. Member for Omineca. I understand that there are mothers who may themselves be dependent on narcotics, who will not give their children a narcotic. I understand in the same way that there are mothers dependent on tobacco who do not approve and will riot allow their children to smoke, and mothers who drink who will not give their children alcohol. I understand that.

In any event, it doesn't really seem to matter %tat I understand, because once this bill becomes law, under section 13, an arbitrary decision is going to be made to intervene, disrupt and destroy that family as a unit. That's what this bill is all about. It really doesn't matter what the social consequences of that Act will be. It makes absolutely no difference what impact removing that parent out of the family is going to have either on the children or on the rest of the members of the family. Section 13, once it becomes law, takes precedence over everything else, over any other kind of responsibilities that a person may have. That is wrong. It is also immoral and it is going to be costly. We're going to pay for that. We're going to pay for it, Mr. Speaker, in social terms as well as in economic terms. This is an Act of stupidity. I'm not accusing any one person of stupidity because it wouldn't have reached this stage unless it had the support of the entire government benches.

Mr. Speaker, I have a couple more comments that I would like to make concerning the whole business of people not having any rights under this piece of legislation and arbitrary deci-

[ Page 2303 ]

sions being made by the peace officer as to whether they have a dependency on narcotics or not and what happens to them. But I'm not convinced that it would make any difference at all if I went on even past the hour to deal with the rest of the notes that I have here. The only thing I want to say, finally, is that I don't understand why the government would spend $17 million attacking the effect of a problem rather than trying to get at the causes of the problem and putting the money at that end of it. It doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: No. Well a lot of things don't make sense to you, but that doesn't mean a thing. If you have $17 million to spend .... If you have 10 cents to spend and you have a headache, you don't necessarily go out and buy yourself a bunch of aspirins. You try to find out why you have the headache. If you're an idiot, you go out and buy yourself a bunch of aspirins and keep taking them without trying to find out what the cause of your headache is. But if you have any sense at all you try to get to the cause of the headache and that's what you deal with.

AN HON. MEMBER: Isn't that what they're doing?

MS. BROWN: That's not what you're doing, because $17 million is going to be spent on the effects of the problem and not one cent on the cause. No research, nothing to find out how, when, where, why. What kind of resources? How can we deal with it in a preventive way? No! Grab the addict, start there, deal with it at that point, Mr. Speaker, despite the fact that if a government were indeed serious about getting at the cause of addiction, or at least were serious about dealing with the problem of addiction, they would put the money in at the front end.

They would start with the causes rather than wait to deal with the end. They would put the money into preventive services, services for children, services to the families, community resources, job creation and education. That's the end you put the money into - into the beginning, into the research, into the finding out, into trying to get some understanding of the reason why - not dealing with the addict at the end, and certainly not dealing with the addict by simply locking the person up. That is not going to either cure the addict or deal with the problem in any effective way. I'm opposed to this bill.

Mr. Barrett moves adjournment of the debate.

Motion approved.

Hon. Mr. McClelland moves adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 11 p.m.