[ Page 3331 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Oral Questions

Hospital staff shortage. Mr. Cocke –– 3331

Stay of proceedings in Bellas v. CIPA Industries et. al. Mr. Lea –– 3331

Mr. Lauk –– 3332

Parimutuel tax. Mrs. Wallace –– 3332

Educational television equipment. Mr. Lauk –– 3333

Ministerial Statement

Pre-build portion of Alaska gas pipeline.

Hon. Mr. McClelland –– 3333

Mr. Barrett –– 3333

Routine Proceedings

Committee of Supply; Ministry of Health estimates. (Hon. Mr. Mair).

On vote 114: minister's office –– 3335

Mr. Cocke

Mr. Lea

Ms. Brown

Mr. Hanson

Division on a motion that the committee rise –– 3346

WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 1980

The House met at 2 p.m.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Prayers.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I have two guests in the House today from the great constituency of Vancouver East, the constituency that has 60 percent of its residents as homeowners without mortgage — hard-working people in the province of British Columbia. They are Ms. Lil English and Donna Liberson. I ask the House to welcome them.

HON. MR. ROGERS: Mr. Speaker, Dr. Murray Newman, who actually needs no introduction to members of this House, is here with us today. He is accompanied by Mr. Ralph Shaw. Would members please make them welcome.

MR. HANSON: Today in the members' gallery is a constituent of mine whose mother is here visiting from Ireland, Mr. McKelvey and Mrs. McKelvey. Would the House make them welcome, please.

MR. SEGARTY: Mr. Speaker, in the members' gallery this afternoon is a guest from Castlegar, Nesta Hale. Also in the gallery is the next MLA for Nelson-Creston, Wally Penner, and his wife Dianne. I'd like the House to welcome them.

MR. LEA: Mr. Speaker, in your gallery today is a visitor from Prince Rupert, Phyllis Hankinson. I'd ask everyone to make her welcome.

MS. BROWN: Visiting us from the province of Alberta is the president of the New Democratic Party, Mr. Ray Martin, accompanied by his wife Cheryl Matheson. I wonder if the House would join me in bidding them both welcome.

MR. PASSARELL: There are two guests today from New Aiyansh: Nancy Bansgrove and her son Ashley.

MR. LAUK: I have the honour to introduce to the House my cousin, who is in the Speaker's gallery today, Bernard Morasky. Please make him feel welcome.

Oral Questions

HOSPITAL STAFF SHORTAGE

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, I have a great surprise. I have a question for the Minister of Health, not the Minister of Lands, Parks and Housing (Hon. Mr. Chabot), because he doesn't know how to answer questions.

I brought to the minister's attention that each administrator of the hospitals had authority to shut down the emergency section of a hospital when they can't safely cope with further admissions. Last night St. Paul's emergency ward was so crowded it had to be closed. Vancouver General's emergency ward was in the same state. Mount St. Joseph's emergency ward closes normally at 11 o'clock p.m. Ambulance drivers and supervisors were negotiating to get patients in. A supervisor had to be called to get a stabbing victim into St. Paul's. Cardiac patients were left on stretchers in the hall at VGH.

Mr. Speaker, in view of the events last night, does the minister now admit that there is a crisis in emergency care in Vancouver?

HON. MR. MAIR: No, Mr. Speaker.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Speaker, a few days ago the minister said: "I do not think it is accurate to describe the situation as a crisis."

I ask a supplementary. Part of the cause of the emergency problem in Vancouver is the low priority assigned to the building of the new emergency centre at VGH. Has the minister decided to expedite that completion?

HON. MR. MAIR: My understanding is that the new emergency ward at VGH will open in the spring of 1981, and that it is proceeding at the pace that one could expect — at the appropriate pace. As to the rest of the statements made by the member opposite and the concerns that he has raised, without in any way admitting the truth either of them or of the suggestions behind those statements, Mr. Speaker, I'll be glad to take them as notice, look into the matter, come back to the House and advise.

MR. COCKE: Just to quote the minister, for a second, from the Blues of July 10, 1980: "It is necessary for hospitals to ask ambulance drivers to divert patients to other hospitals for a period of time. This is only done after hospitals in the vicinity have been contacted and alerted to ensure that they are able to provide the service." Last night they were all full. Mr. Speaker, what does the minister propose under those circumstances?

HON. MR. MAIR: Mr. Speaker, I propose to take that question as notice and look into the matter and report back to the House, as I indicated.

STAY OF PROCEEDINGS IN
BELLAS V. CIPA INDUSTRIES ET. AL.

MR. LEA: I have a question to the Attorney-General, Mr. Speaker. A fisherman from the Queen Charlotte Islands, Frederick Charles Bellas, laid charges against CIPA Industries Ltd., formerly known as Queen Charlotte Timber Ltd. The charges were also laid against Jack Biickert of the provincial Forest Service; against Thomas Michael Apsey, the Deputy Minister of Forests; and against Waldo E. Johnson, an employee of the federal government. On June 25 the provincial Crown entered a stay of proceedings in the Queen Charlotte provincial court. Why did the Attorney-General instruct counsel for the Crown to enter a stay of proceedings?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I did not give instructions to regional Crown counsel with respect to the entry of the stay of proceedings; they did so within the authority that they exercise as Crown counsel.

Stay of proceedings was entered in this particular case because the charges were brought under subsection (1) of section 31 of the Fisheries Act, but subsection (2) of section 31 provides a statutory defence, in that the conduct which is brought into question had the approval of the federal minister. That's a statutory defence, and therefore the case could

[ Page 3332 ]

not be successful and it was an appropriate instance for the exercise of the power of stay.

MR. LEA: I have a supplementary question. Reading from the transcript of June 25, Queen Charlotte City, Masset court file, page 3, Mr. Miller, representing the provincial Crown, says: "I need not have specific instructions from the Attorney-General for the stay of proceedings; I can assure Your Honour I have specific instructions from the minister. I don't need to make those available to the public; I don't need those available to anybody. This matter of directing a stay is a matter between myself and Madam Clerk."

Was Mr. Miller telling the truth in that court?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, all I can do is to repeat the response that I gave to the member at the outset. I did not give specific instructions that a stay of proceedings be entered in this particular case. It is the authority of Crown counsel to do so, and it is not a matter that needs to be done in an open court; it is done between Crown counsel and the clerk of the court.

MR. LEA: On a supplementary, Mr. Miller, in court, said that he had specific instructions from the Attorney-General; the Attorney-General says he did not. Can the minister then tell this Legislature what he thinks is going on? Why did Mr. Miller say in the court that he had specific instructions from the minister, when indeed the minister says he did not? Can the minister explain how that would have been?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. Speaker, I can't explain it; but I'll be happy to take the question as notice and ascertain from Mr. Miller precisely what he said and what he intended by his remarks.

MR. LAUK: My supplementary is to the Attorney-General, with respect to that section of the Fisheries Act. Although a statutory defence may appear in the section, that defence was never pleaded by those accused, because the charge did not proceed to trial before a court. A citizen is entitled to initiate prosecution under provincial and federal statutes, and if a justice of the peace accepts that information, even though it is against the Crown, under the law the case should proceed without interference. Is it the policy of the government to deny such justice by instructing counsel in their employ to enter stays of proceedings?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: Counsel who have responsibility for the conduct of the case will exercise the power of stay in the exercise of their proper discretion. I suggest that what the member is telling the House is inappropriate. It is not necessary to wait until the matter has been pleaded. If a statutory defence exists, that is a factor to be taken into account, and a stay would be properly introduced at that time.

MR. LAUK: The facts as stated by the Attorney-General do not accord with the facts of the case. Mr. Evans, on behalf of the prosecutors, the informants, did not agree with regional Crown counsel, who arrived at court uninvited and entered a stay of proceedings. In other words, the lawyer in charge of prosecuting the offence disagreed with the stay of proceedings. In those circumstances, is it the policy of the Attorney-General to instruct regional Crown counsel to act in that manner?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: It is the policy of the Attorney-General to have stays of proceedings entered in all appropriate cases.

MR. LEA: Had the Attorney-General read this transcript prior to my bringing it to the House's attention?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

MR. LEA: When I asked whether the Attorney-General had directed a stay of proceedings, was he aware that in court Mr. Miller had said he did?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

PARIMUTUEL TAX

MRS. WALLACE: My question is also for the Attorney-General. Over a long period of time the horse-racing industry has requested a 2 percent reduction in the parimutuel tax rate. In other jurisdictions where this has been done, the dollar revenue generated has increased for both the industry and the government. Did the Krasnick report on the racing industry recommend this reduction?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: No, Mr. Speaker.

MRS. WALLACE: Instead of doing this, the government has designated part of the tax to go to increasing the B.C. Bred Owners Bonus by 100 percent, although this increase was never requested in any of the racing industry's submissions. Does the Krasnick report recommend this?

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: What the member refers to as the Krasnick report is, in fact, an interim ministerial report undertaken by the Ministry of the Attorney-General and the Ministry of Finance. The recommendations in that report were given very careful consideration. It was my pleasure and that of the Minister of Finance to indicate that we are prepared to give special assistance to the horse-breeding industry in this province by improving the Breeders' Incentive Fund and the B.C. Bred First Settlement Fund. I would have thought that the member, as the principal agricultural critic of the opposition, would have risen in her place to express pleasure at this move rather than to provide more money for the operators of racetracks.

MRS. WALLACE: The Attorney-General seems unnecessarily exercised. I'm not saying what I'm wanting; I am simply asking questions. He represents the government. I am trying to find out whether or not the report recommended it. He has not answered that question. I would ask the Attorney-General if he agrees that doubling the B.C.-bred bonus is giving tax dollars to a select group of thoroughbred owners.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: If I didn't answer the member's question with respect to what was recommended, the answer is yes. Special financial assistance is given to those people in this province who invest their money in the breeding of horses and achieve the standard that will entitle them to be successful on the racetrack.

[ Page 3333 ]

MRS. WALLACE: While the horse-racing industry had asked for the incentive fund to be increased — and I congratulate the government on doing that — I am not aware of any requests from any segment of the racing industry to double the B.C. Bred Owners Bonus. The minister, I understand, has assured me that the Krasnick report did recommend the doubling of the B.C.-bred bonus for owners of B.C.-bred thoroughbreds, which has taken place. I wonder whether or not the minister would undertake to file that report with the Legislature.

HON. MR. WILLIAMS: As I indicated at the outset, it was an interministerial report prepared for government purposes, and will not be tabled in the Legislature.

EDUCATIONAL TELEVISION EQUIPMENT

MR. LAUK: I have a question to a minister who is hopefully less secret about the public's business, the Minister of Education. School District 30 — I realize the minister is new in his job; that's South Cariboo — has been trying to obtain authority from the Ministry of Education to replace its outdated educational television equipment that's using black and white half-inch format at a cost of about $30,000 to $35,000. The equipment the district wants to buy is approved by the Provincial Educational Media Centre. We understand that if the district agreed to purchase the alternate three-quarter-inch equipment at a cost of $60,000, shareable funding would be available. Can the minister advise the House why the government refuses to approve the less costly equipment at $30,000 as a shareable funding item? Why has he refused to do so?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes or no.

HON. MR. SMITH: Even a sunshine minister would have trouble following that question, but I'll take it as notice and report back to the House.

MR. LAUK: A new question to the minister: can the minister tell the House whether it is now the policy of the government to compel local taxpayers to pick up the whole cost on such equipment that would be shareable in the regular way if only the district would agree to purchase the expensive items that the government is forcing them to purchase?

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon; member, I find very little difference between the two questions. The first one has been taken on notice.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: I wish to make a short ministerial statement, Mr. Speaker.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Proceed, hon. member.

PRE-BUILD PORTION OF
ALASKA GAS PIPELINE

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: After the House was given yesterday a motion of urgent importance dealing with the pre-build matter, I was quite surprised that there were no questions on it in today's question period; yesterday it was the most urgent matter facing British Columbia.

I thought that I might just set the record straight for a moment. I don't wish to reflect on any ruling by the Chair or any comments that the Chair has made, but in going through Hansard today I noticed these words in the presentation made yesterday by the member for Rossland-Trail (Mr. D'Arcy): "The B.C. government has made no effort to protect the interests of B.C. by way of making a public declaration of opposition to the pre-build." Then he went on to make further....

Interjection.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Yes, it's a ministerial statement, Mr. Speaker.

I wish to say that opposition was given in public on at least two occasions and probably on many others, and it was there for the opposition and for all other Canadians to see and to read about in their newspapers and press releases if they had taken the opportunity to do their homework. The first such public opposition was made on July 10, 1979, at the export licensing hearings. The second major intervention was made by the province of British Columbia in an oral presentation on March 24, 1980.

MR. BARRETT: On a point of order to clarify this, Mr. Speaker, the minister is responding to a motion that was defeated in this chamber yesterday. He is quoting directly from a motion that was defeated. I want to go on record in pointing out that in discussing that specific subject we are now entering the possibility of a debate in the traditional response to a ministerial statement.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hon. members, the point raised by the Leader of the Opposition is a most valid one. While a ministerial statement permits certain latitude, it does not permit the opening of a debate, particularly on a matter that was decided as late as just yesterday.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: Mr. Speaker, I fully accept that from the Leader of the Opposition and from you. I made mention of one sentence in Hansard, and I will not refer to it again.

My statement refers to the opportunities that British Columbia had, which were questioned in the newspapers yesterday and on other days. The people of British Columbia have a right to know that British Columbia made several interventions in regard to this matter, which has become somewhat of a public controversy.

In a Telex to Minister of Energy Marc Lalonde on July 7, 1980, I said:

I MUST REITERATE AND AMPLIFY MY CONCERNS RELATING TO THE ALASKA HIGHWAY GAS PIPELINE. YOU ARE CLOSE TO MAKING A DECISION ON THE PRE-BUILD SECTION. FOR YOU TO DECIDE TO PROCEED WILL REQUIRE AMENDMENTS TO CONDITION 12 OF THE PIPELINE REGULATIONS.

Later on we go on to say:

I AM CONCERNED THAT EMOTIONS RATHER THAN LOGIC WILL DICTATE THE COURSE OF THE EVENTS. IT IS MY VIEW THAT IF THE PRE-BUILD IS AUTHORIZED IN THE PRESENT SITUATION, THERE WILL BE NO INCENTIVE FOR THE CANADIAN AND U.S. PROPONENTS TO PROCEED FURTHER.

[ Page 3334 ]

The final sentence in that Telex is:

I STRONGLY URGE THAT YOU DO NOT AUTHORIZE PRE-BUILD UNDER THE EXISTING CIRCUMSTANCES.

Earlier than that, on July 2, 1980, a Telex was sent to federal Minister of Energy detailing the same kinds of things. I said:

I WOULD REMIND YOU THAT A MATTER OF BRITISH COLUMBIA'S CONDITIONS RELATING TO OUR SIGNING OF A NON-DISCRIMINATORY BILATERAL WITH OTTAWA REMAIN UNRESOLVED.

So again we have asked that the variance of condition 12 of the pipeline agreement be put aside.

On October 11, 1978, a submission was put forward to the National Energy Board by the Attorney-General of the province of British Columbia. I wouldn't bore you with the entire written submission, but it said in part:

"British Columbia does not object to the Pan-Alberta proposal per se. In fact, if we were assured as a province that the total pipeline project would be completed, and on the understanding that the proposal assists that pre-building of a northern pipeline, the province would support it. However, we are concerned that that pre-build would displace British Columbia gas."

In that regard, Mr. Speaker, we put forward a formal intervention to the National Energy Board.

On March 24, 1980, a representative acting for the Ministry of the Attorney-General, Mr. Moseley, who is, I understand, a very prominent west coast Liberal lawyer, put forward an oral presentation for British Columbia in which he said that at that time the province of British Columbia's position remained the same as it was at last year's omnibus hearing with respect to the overall pre-build project. We don't oppose the project providing that at the time it goes ahead there is adequate assurance that the northern portion of the line for the movement of Alaskan gas will ultimately be built and provided also that B.C. gas is not displaced out of its U.S. markets.

It might be interesting to understand what the National Energy Board said in response to British Columbia's many public interventions. I'll find the exact quotes so that I don't run the risk of misleading the House. On page 25 of the National Energy Board's decision it says:

"The board notes the concerns of the Attorney-General of British Columbia with regard to the capacity of the United States' pipelines south of Stanfield, Oregon, but considers the potential transportation problems identified to be beyond the jurisdiction of the board and to be problems more appropriately addressed directly by the parties concerned."

So, Mr. Speaker, on the occasion of reaching some understanding with our sources in Ottawa that the pre-build was about to be approved — and may be approved at the cabinet meeting in Ottawa tomorrow — British Columbia entered into some serious discussions and negotiations with the government of Alberta to achieve ways in which those concerns, which had been put forward publicly in public forums before public national bodies on a number of occasions, could be achieved. It's with that latter regard that we achieved agreement with the province of Alberta that a joint committee would be established, in which, among other things, we will look at ways in which British Columbia's concerns can be put aside and guarantees can be put in place that will assure that British Columbia's resource revenues can be stabilized.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. members. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources was allowed considerable latitude in his statement. I allow the same latitude in response.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, I won't comment too long on the fact that a minister rose to give a ministerial statement and immediately referred to a motion that, had it had the government's support yesterday, would have led to a full-fledged debate rather than a limited response to a minister's statement, so that every member on both sides of the House, including the Premier, could participate in this very important subject.

If I can expect the courtesy of the House in my responsive statement, I'm sure the time will go by much quicker. If people wish to interrupt and yell, let that be a reflection on their own basis in dealing with the motion yesterday.

I want to deal with a number of the statements made by the minister. First of all, as I understand his words the minister has announced in this House that the government of British Columbia has taken the position that it is unequivocally opposed to the pre-build section of a gas pipeline to Alaska as long as there's no guarantee that British Columbia's markets will, not be disturbed. I understand the minister said that.

I find it interesting that neither the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources nor the Premier found it necessary in coming out of a meeting with the Premier of Alberta to state publicly in front of the Premier of Alberta that British Columbia's position is unequivocally opposed to that pre-build unless it's written in contract that there are no intrusions.

I am led to believe that the motivation of the ministerial statement is purely one that the minister has bargained away B.C.'s position for a cheap weekend meeting on the political coat-tails of Peter Lougheed and now the affair has come home to worry the minister.

Interjections.

MR. BARRETT: I find it interesting that the member has reduced himself to personal attacks rather than logic. I find it interesting that the interjections from the government side are most offensive but, nonetheless, I'll press on.

Mr. Speaker, if I may have your undivided attention, it is my opinion and the opinion of the official opposition that the weekend affair between the two governments of British Columbia has cost British Columbia a strong position in protecting its northwest gas markets and will be a detriment to the income of British Columbia.

Mr. Speaker, I am hopeful that, as a consequence of the minister's latter-day conversion to the awareness of the dangers of losing these markets, he will appeal to the federal government to protect him and us from the avarice of the government of Alberta, which is pushing the pre-build line to expand its own markets into the United States. I find it ironic, and worthwhile to note, that the government of British Columbia, which has for the last month been kicking the teeth out of the federal government, is now crawling on its knees to ask the federal government to protect it from its neighbour, Alberta.

The consequences of unthinking, weekend political affairs have endangered British Columbia's position of protecting its markets, endangered the British Columbia Pet-

[ Page 3335 ]

roleum Corporation's position on expanding, and the continued description of the BCPC as a tax-collecting agency opens the avenue for the federal government to bypass the protection of Crown corporations that we have under federal legislation. Mr. Speaker, the debate should have taken place yesterday. It was out of order because of yesterday's motion to raise it today. It has been accepted because of a ministerial statement. Let the record show that it took them 24 hours to understand that they've lost at the political poker table with Alberta, and placed British Columbia in a dangerous position with respect to its important revenues through the British Columbia Petroleum Corporation.

Mr. Speaker, I conclude by saying that, in my opinion, it will be illegal for the federal government to proceed with the pre-build section of the Alaska pipeline without ironclad guarantees and written contracts from the United States that they intend to proceed with the completion of the Alaska pipeline directly to its source of Alaska gas, with a date of completion attached to that. Any other discussion of prebuild is a masquerade. It is not a pre-build, but a sellout, and a sellout of British Columbia's resources and markets. We must stop the federal government from allowing Alberta to beat British Columbia to the course of having its own markets protected.

HON. MR. McCLELLAND: On a point of order, I assume that.... Well, I was going to mention the little meeting that Mr. Barrett had with Mr. Lalonde. But I was wondering, Mr. Speaker, about the long-standing tradition of the House that when a ministerial statement is made, it's generally accepted that the opposition critic has the opportunity to respond. We all wonder why the opposition critic was not allowed to respond to the statement from the minister.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, hon. member. Your point is not a valid point of order.

Orders of the Day

The House in Committee of Supply; Mr. Strachan in the chair.

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF HEALTH

(continued)

On vote 114: minister's office, $165,162.

HON. MR. MAIR: I'd like, if I may, at the outset today to answer one or two queries raised yesterday by the hon. member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke). Of course, this is information provided to me.

The first deals with the question of the Pacifica situation in New Westminster. I understand — I'm instructed — that its location in the YM-YWCA building was always considered to be temporary, and it was always proposed that they have a building of their own. I understand that this training centre will be built by BCBC, specifically for the purposes of alcohol treatment, drug abuse, and as a training centre. I understand that Pacifica is still operated by the Fraser Valley Alcoholism Society.

Yesterday, as well, the hon. member for New Westminster raised with me the question of the annual report of the Alcohol and Drug Commission as tabled in the House and pointed out that he had in his possession a similar document which was somewhat changed from the one that was actually ultimately tabled. I now have learned from my staff that what happened was this: they had printed 4,000 annual reports — that would be the most that they would have printed in any event — and they were not completed in time to table in the Legislature in 1979. At that particular point in time, shortly before the Legislature rose last year, the Schneider case, while not reaching judgment, had reached the end of its argument. I am not clear whether it was by agreement with counsel or just as a matter of policy by the government, but in any event the compulsory aspect of the Heroin Treatment Program was dropped at that point. That would be some time in the late spring of 1979. After the Legislature rose and the Alcohol and Drug Commission considered the report they had printed, they recognized that it certainly overstated the case insofar as the Heroin Treatment Program was concerned because it had in it the compulsory aspect and they amended it accordingly. I understand that about 2,500 of the 4,000 annual reports then printed were taken apart and new pages were inserted. The other 1,500 apparently still remain as they are. I understand also that the total cost of the annual report — that is, of the 4,000 volumes that were printed — was about $1,400. The cost of the changes made, as evidenced in the booklet that the member for New Westminster was kind enough to send me, would have been a very small fraction of that.

MR. COCKE: I am very pleased that the minister can come in today well informed on the subject. I would have been much more pleased if the minister was informed yesterday. The minister knew nothing about it yesterday, he said. The minister followed the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland) into this portfolio. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, who is getting this whole government into trouble in another area now, has got this minister into trouble just by virtue of the fact that he didn't tell him that there were two reports. I suspect that his staff didn't know there were two reports. because had they known at least he would have been informed on the floor of the House. I think it is a shocking situation.

I'm going to deal with Pacifica and I'm going to deal with the alcohol and drug situation in New Westminster in a moment or two. I want to ask the minister a question. How many more reports have been either rewritten or withdrawn? This happened to just fall out of the sky into my hands, but I wonder how many other aspects of this absolutely criminal waste of money in the Alcohol and Drug Commission.... I am specifically charging that it is the Heroin Treatment Program that has been the author of the problem.

I am going to get back to this dating thing. The minister says that the judgment, was not down. Let's note the date of this report. This report is as of March 31, 1979. That is the dating of the report. The McEachern judgment in the Supreme Court of British Columbia came down on October 10, 1979. All the arguments were in, and this department — not under this minister, however — judged that the case would lose. Therefore they took out all the sensitive material from the original report, which incidentally was printed on their own printing press, and substituted therefore the amended report which we received in this House sometime, I believe, in April.

I think the minister had better go back to the former

[ Page 3336 ]

minister and find out just what else has been withheld from him. I suggest that that minister over there had a deal directly with Mr. Hoskin and other people running the Alcohol and Drug Commission. I don't think there was any connection whatsoever with the Ministry of Health. That's why this minister was under-informed and that's why this minister was not properly briefed by his predecessor. I think it is absolutely shocking that he was not briefed properly by his predecessor.

Now let me suggest one other thing. The minister tells the House today that BCBC is building the Pacific Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centre in New Westminster. I've checked with the records in New Westminster — I'm talking now about the land registry — and that land was held by Wolstencroft Realty as recently as less than a month ago; I didn't check it last night, because I didn't think it was necessary. But if BCBC are building it, maybe somebody should tell them, because my understanding and the understanding in our community is that not only is the land held by Wolstencroft, it's being developed by Wolstencroft. It was certainly a situation that I'm given to understand was rather peculiar, in that Mr. Hoskin was dealing directly with that as well.

You see, that's our big problem here: I was rather hoping that the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland) would have continued to be Minister of Health long enough to answer for some of the chaos that he created. It's very unfortunate that I have to deal with this minister who, I suggest, was duped by that minister over there, sold short, not informed, embarrassed — as he continues to embarrass this government.

I just say that somehow or other this Minister of Health we now have discovered that he did not like what he saw around him. When he first became minister he gave Mr. Hoskin a $4,700 increase — incidentally, retroactive to October 1, 1978, for the first part, and 1979 for the second part. That was before he knew that things were in disrepair. I suggest that there was a meeting, and while he still wasn't informed on everything that was going on in that Heroin Treatment Program, he found out enough. He became dismayed to the extent that Mr. Hoskin resigned. Then the minister was quoted as having said: "He's going, he's retiring, and he deserves a rest." I'll bet you, Mr. Chairman, that that minister wishes that the rest had been four or five years earlier; but it was the present Minister of Energy who got us into all the trouble.

So, Mr. Chairman, with that, I just want to ask the minister: has he very carefully checked on the Pacifica land? The fact that the "Y " program — that is, the program at the New Westminster "Y" — had been set up as temporary in the first place, but the fact that it was working well, that there was space there, was obviously overlooked. Has the minister satisfied himself that we should have gone this route? Has the minister satisfied himself that we should have built a new building when there was one there available, a staff there available — his own staff — working within an edifice that was already created and that could have been run relatively inexpensively, when you consider capital cost, amortization of that capital cost, and how you're going to pay for that building plus the program?

Mr. Chairman, as I say, it's unfortunate that we have to deal with this minister. We would have loved to have dealt with the former; but we don't have access to him, so I have to ask the minister these questions. Can the minister tell us whether he is positive about Pacifica?

HON. MR. MAIR: May I bring the Chair's attention to the fact that I'm about to be out of order, if you don't notice that I'm on my feet and recognize me?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The Minister of Health.

HON. MR. MAIR: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Dealing with the last matter first, the Pacifica: no, I have not looked into the matter personally, Mr. Member; I haven't had the opportunity to. You raised it with me yesterday — and I think that you would forgive me for not having that as part of my general knowledge until yesterday — and I have caused inquiries to be made. I gave you the answers that were given to me as a result of those inquiries. As a result of what you have said today, I have asked my deputy to inquire further. We will do so, and I will get back to you as quickly as can.

Dealing with the question of Mr. Hoskin and his increase, once again, Mr. Member, I hope we understand one another. I can only tell you what I am told. I did not personally give anybody a raise — I understand his increase came as a matter of a general increase which was going to a number of order- in-council appointments at that particular time. It was not any particular reward by me as minister. As a matter of fact, I would be very surprised if the fact that he'd had an increase in his salary would have come to my attention as minister. It may have come to my attention as a member of cabinet. But, as the first member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) said yesterday, in view of the fact that the Alcohol and Drug Commission is independent of the Ministry of Health — although that is the ministry to which it is loosely attached — I probably would not have known specifically that Mr. Hoskin was getting that increase. It was certainly not something that I specifically asked for or had anything particularly to do with.

Dealing with the question of the report — to the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) — I think that a little confusion is being caused here, Mr. Member. The only report that is an official report is that which is tabled in the House. That's the one you had yesterday that did not have the tick upon it. There may be other pro forma reports and there may be other reports that have been completed but not distributed, but they do not become reports until they are tabled; I think we all know that. I would just put this to the member: if such a report was made up and not tabled, yet I took a number of copies and distributed them to my friends, I'm sure the member opposite would be the first person to stand up and say that that's quite improper. You are not supposed to distribute something which is holding itself out to be an annual report until and unless it is tabled in the House.

I don't know how the member opposite got a copy of the report that was not tabled, and I don't care. But the fact of the matter is that it was not the official report. It was changed, as I understand it. There were three paragraphs deleted; there was one line deleted in the second paragraph under the heading, "Heroin Treatment Program."

Let's not get ourselves sideways, Mr. Member, on the question of the dates. March 31 — yes, that's the date of the report. The fact of the matter is that it wasn't tabled until some time after that. March 31 is the date to which it goes; that's the ending date. I don't remember when it was tabled.

[ Page 3337 ]

Perhaps the member for New Westminster's memory on this, or his research, is better than mine, but it seems to me that I tabled the report sometime this year. I could be wrong, but I think it was in April of this year that I tabled it. So the date it was tabled is really the key date. The March 31 date is just a date it happens to have on it because that's the end of the fiscal year.

My understanding of the sequence of events in the Schneider case is that when the matter had been argued but not decided — there being an interval of some four or five months between the closing of argument and the decision — at that point the government decided that they would not proceed with the compulsory aspect of the Heroin Treatment Program — sometime, and I can find out when, between the day the arguments ended and the day the judgment was handed down. At that point in time, they made a conscious decision not to proceed with that aspect of it, although they proceeded with other parts of it. It was that decision that made the original untabled report inaccurate to the minor degree that it was. It was that fact that gave rise to the changes that were made in that report, so that it now is the report as tabled. I realize that is putting it rather clumsily, but I hope the member opposite understands.

I think that touched all the matters. In any event, on the Pacifica matter, I'm having the questions that were raised by the member today checked out further at this point.

MR. COCKE: I think the minister will likely find that B.C. Buildings Corporation will do the renting. I hope not. One of the reasons this government set up a buildings corporation was so that they could develop their own buildings but amortize them over a longer period of time. The old Socreds were pay-as-you-go, but this government felt that it didn't want to do that. That's fair enough. As a matter of fact, I subscribe to that: a building doesn't have to be paid for the first day, because it's going to be used for many years to come. I really want to report on this particular aspect, because if a local developer in New Westminster is doing this.... When I saw that a non-profit society like the YM-YWCA, who offered the program proper accommodation, mighty good accommodation.... For them to lose it so that a developer can put together a proposition like this would be just a little bit much.

One other thing: the minister indicated that he didn't know anything about the Hoskin increase. He signed it; as Minister of Health he signed the order-in-council.

HON. MR. MAIR: You told me that yesterday. I know that.

MR. COCKE: Oh, but you didn't know you were signing it.

HON. MR. MAIR: No, no. I just don't recall it at this point.

MR. COCKE: I see. I'm going to read it out to you. It amended the former orders-in-council by deleting the words — "$3,171 per month, effective October 1, 1978" and substituting "$3,641 per month, effective October 1, 1979." This was March 4, 1980, so he got a six-month retroactive raise. I think that the minister probably had a little chat with him after that, and wished he'd never signed it. But in any event, he did, so there we are.

HON. MR. MAIR: No, I said I did it as a member of cabinet, not as Minister of Health. I had to sign that. It's in my orders — you know that.

MR. COCKE: You signed it as Minister of Health.

HON. MR. MAIR: Of course I did.

MR. COCKE: Anyway, Mr. Chairman, I hope that when the minister starts delving around in his Cadillac program called the Heroin Treatment Program he really takes a good look at the whole province and what they've done to the morale of drug and alcohol treatment and those who provide that treatment, and what's happened to these other drug and alcohol centres and to those societies assisted by the government, Because we know — and I gave you the figure yesterday — that there were 14,000 people in this province treated for alcohol, and they can't show us any more than 100 treated for a heroin problem. It's a disgrace when we consider the money set aside — $14 million over the last three years, and heaven knows what else — into a program that was absolutely, totally uncalled for. It is a program uncalled for to keep in place at this point.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: No, that Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources (Hon. Mr. McClelland) is trying to get us into the same kind of trouble in energy as he got us into in health care. I'm sorry for the province.

MR. LEA: One of the things that the Minister of Health always appears to do is to try to separate himself — whatever portfolio he's in — from the Social Credit cabinet. We bring in a report and say: "But this isn't the original report that came to the ministry." He says: "Well, it is really; we didn't have time to get it in and all of a sudden here's the report changed. Take my word for it and trust me; that's the way it was."

It really isn't that simple. I'd like to point out to the House that there are many areas in which this government makes the statement suspect. If this was an isolated case then I'd say: "Sure, this minister's never spoofed to us deliberately, that we know of, so why not take him at his word?" But almost immediately, upon their becoming government in 1976 we had another case of this. I want to bring this up just to show you the similarity.

We had a budget delivered in the House by the member for Vancouver–Little Mountain (Hon. Mr. Wolfe), now the Provincial Secretary. We found out later that there was one budget for us and another budget printed for a nice list of other people: two budgets.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, I really must ask you to contain debate within the realms of the administrative actions of the Minister of Health. If we could do that, hon. member, the Chair would appreciate it.

MR. LEA: What I'm doing, Mr. Chairman, is pointing out that this excuse has been used by government before, and therefore this excuse becomes a little bit lacking in credibility. It's this excuse that we're examining.

Also, if we were to look at the statement of the minister

[ Page 3338 ]

and accept it at face value, we have to go back to the minister's own words. When the Heroin Treatment Act was drafted the minister stood up and said: "I am proud. I personally, me the minister, had a hand in drafting the legislation." Yesterday he said he didn't. In 197 8 he said he did, and two years later he says he didn't — another inconsistency. We have the government bringing in one budget, then having another one, printed differently, sent to other places. We have a whole litany of these "oh, we're sorry, we didn't know" sorts of things. We have it from Lettergate, from sending out letters with a forged name on them.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, the Chair cannot allow that discussion. We are canvassing the estimates of the Minister of Health. Please, if all members would remain within the confines of the debate for which this committee has been struck, the Chair would appreciate it.

MR. LEA: Mr. Chairman, I believe that it's allowable to use examples to show the point that you're making. That's all I'm doing. I'm showing examples of why the statement made by the minister is a little suspect. He cannot be that island unto himself; he cannot always come into this House and say: "Please don't confuse the member for Kamloops with the dirty Social Credit. I'm different; I'm a minister who doesn't do that sort of thing. Please don't confuse me with the government I belong to."

Another example of it: the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) says: "What about Hoskin? Did you agree with his wage increase, and the retroactivities?" This minister says: "I didn't have anything to do with it." The member for New Westminster said: "But you signed the order-in-Council." "Yes, but I signed that as a Crown minister." We didn't expect that he signed it as a lawyer, or a car salesman, or a good guy, or a bad guy, or a person who likes to separate himself from his own government. He signed the order-in-Council, but said he didn't have anything to do with it. He said: "But I signed that as a Crown minister." And in the by-play across the House, it's said: "What do you mean, you signed that as a Crown minister?" "Oh," he said, "I signed it as the Minister of Health, not as the minister responsible."

There are too many inconsistencies. On top of that we have the situation that was described to us in question period by the member for New Westminster, who said: "Would you consider it a crisis that people are in the halls waiting to be operated upon and can't get operated upon, and that deals are made between the ambulance drivers trying to get people into the hospitals for stab wounds?" He doesn't consider that a crisis. It might be a good idea, Mr. Chairman, if we could get the minister to stand up and tell us what a crisis is, in his mind — not, of course, as part of the government that he belongs to, but apart from the government he belongs to. He is the minister who doesn't belong to the government.

MR. LAUK: It's a crisis when it affects him directly.

MR. LEA: Well, if it affected him directly it would be a crisis only for him, maybe not for the rest of the people in the province.

MR. LAUK: No, but it would be a relief.

MR. LEA: It might be a relief to the health care industry.

It's incredible that the minister expects us to view him as a separate entity — separate and apart from the government that he belongs to — but he would have us try and do that. He'd like us to forget that there were two budget reports in 1976, the same as there are two reports of the one that was tabled here on the Alcohol and Drug Commission. He'd like us to forget that the Premier jumps out of his car and they say: "Was there a seatbelt?" The Premier says no, and the TV cameras go in and there's the seatbelt. Are we supposed to forget all of those things, Mr. Chairman? Are we supposed to forget the past when dealing with this minister? We don't separate him from that government. As far as we're concerned, this minister is as responsible for what that government did under the former Minister of Health as he is now as a cabinet member. He cannot separate himself. He is now responsible for the Ministry of Health, but as a cabinet member he is responsible also for the actions of that government in terms of health prior to his taking that portfolio. He cannot separate himself. It's not good enough to have a minister that says: "I'm okay. Forget what the rest of them have done. Forget what the government's done. Take my word for it. There's no problem with the report. It's just a little thing. It just didn't get in in time. Here it is, and thank you very much. Aren't I glib?" It's not good enough.

I don't know, Mr. Chairman, when this minister is going to start accepting the responsibility which he swore an oath to do. He swore an oath, both in cabinet as a cabinet member and as the minister responsible for health. So far, all he'd want us to do is believe he's a good guy, that he's still an old Liberal, and that he's not responsible for the actions of the Social Credit coalition that he's a part of. He's not responsible for the Premier not noticing that there was a seatbelt in the car. He's not responsible for Social Credit and all of the letters that went out that were forged. He's not responsible for the 1976 budget which was so similar to the one we're looking at here now, and the Alcohol and Drug Commission report.

There's a pattern. I won't mention one other case, because it's in front of the courts, concerning what the Social Credit did in misrepresenting the facts to the people. But I can't see how we can sit here as the people of British Columbia and have that minister say to us: "Take my word — I'm not part of this government. I signed an order-in-Council, but I didn't sign it as myself. I signed it as a minister of the Crown, so don't hold me responsible. How would I have known about it?" Is the minister expecting us to believe that he is so incapable, so incompetent and so stupid that he cannot remember signing an order-in-council giving a person six months' retroactive wages for $4,700? It's incredible that he expects us to believe that. He can't have it both ways. Either he knows what's going on and he won't tell us, which is unpardonable, or he doesn't have any darned idea what's going on, which is unforgivable. Either way he's guilty of not carrying out his duties as a Crown minister and as the Minister of Health.

Don't try to tell us, Mr. Chairman, that he's not a member of that government, and that he's separate. He's part of it. He's wallowing in it, and he has to accept responsibility, the same as any other minister for the government that he's in.

HON. MR. MAIR: First of all, let me make it clear that I don't in any way dissociate myself from the government at all. I'm very proud to be part of the government. If the government has made errors, then I accept my share of the responsibility for those errors. I don't know that it's for the

[ Page 3339 ]

member for Prince Rupert to decide what is error and what isn't, but in any event errors are made from time to time, some of them serious and some of them not. If they are made by the government then I bear my proportion of the blame and I am very pleased to do so. I wish errors didn't happen but if they do I have no alternative but to accept responsibility. That is part of my job and I am happy to live up to that responsibility.

I would like to deal for a moment with two areas where I have either unwittingly or accidentally misled the House or the members opposite have misunderstood me; I don't think it matters much which. I'd like to talk first of all about the Heroin Treatment Act when it came into the House. I expected that I would be embarrassed in the House in the last few days by my speech on that occasion being repeated to me. I took the time to reread it so I was fully aware of what I said in that speech. When the member for Skeena (Mr. Howard) said yesterday that I had helped draft the legislation, I had, and perhaps wrongly, understood him to mean that I had been in on the entire drafting of the legislation and involved in the actual wording of each section and things of that nature, and in other words had been part of the legislation committee that had drafted it.

In fact what had happened — I think I explained it at the time and am happy to do so now — on the question of the civil liberties and the incarceration of people suspected of drug addiction is that when the matter first came to my attention as a member of cabinet I was very distressed with the wording as it then was and did, indeed, help draft the sections that eventually came to this House, which are very much different than the ones that originally came to me. I am sure the member for Prince Rupert (Mr. Lea) will know that the principal theme of the speech I made at that time was on the issue of civil liberties. I was very concerned that people might think I hadn't cared, in making that speech, about the civil liberties aspect of it, because it was expected, I think, by some members opposite that I would have been against the bill on that ground. In any event, to the extent that I may have misled the members opposite or they misunderstood, I am very sorry.

On the question of the order-in-council raised by the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) today, I don't think that the member for Prince Rupert could have been listening very carefully. The member for New Westminster mentioned the order-in-council to me long before I had made any statement about Judge Bewley's salary. What I said — I think the Blues will bear this out — was to the effect that I don't think that as Minister of Health I addressed myself particularly to the question of Judge Bewley's salary, although as a member of cabinet, no doubt, I did. That's how I signed the order-in-council. In other words it was a routine thing. Judge Bewley did not get an increase because the Minister of Health wanted him to or because I personally in any other capacity wanted him to. He got one as a matter of course and I signed it. If I misled the House or the member for Prince Rupert or anybody else, I am really sorry. I certainly didn't intend to do so but I think it's more likely a misunderstanding.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

I don't know what he means when he says that I would like to forget the past or that I want the public to forget the past. I suppose there are a great many members of the public who would like to forget the past insofar as it involves 1972-75 when those people who are opposite, including the member for Prince Rupert, were in government.

I think that a tempest in a teapot is being created here with respect to the Alcohol and Drug Commission annual report. I wouldn't normally do this, but because so much is made of it I would like to read into the record the changes between the draft — the one the member for New Westminster mentioned yesterday, marked with a tick — and the one that was actually tabled in the House.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MAIR: Be that as it may, I think that the member for New Westminster must understand that the entire draft was not thrown out. Some pages were taken out and some pages substituted, which is quite a different thing. I have already given the explanation that I have been given, which seems reasonable to me as to why that should happen. The changes which were made were as follows: The first three paragraphs of what I will call the draft — just for clarification purposes — were taken out. Those three paragraphs read as follows:

"The most important event in the development of the Heroin Treatment Program was the passage of Bill 18, the Heroin Treatment Act, by the provincial Legislature on June 28, 1978. The act was proclaimed into law on July 27, 1978. The Heroin Treatment Act provides for the confirmation that a person referred to the program is 'in need of treatment for narcotic dependence.' Once this is confirmed it then provides for a period of three years of required treatment. The act provides for procedures to refer to the individual assessment by evaluation panels, committal, treatments and sanctions for failure to comply with the requirements of the act."

In place of that there is another section put in which reads as follows: "The Heroin Treatment Act, Bill 18, was passed by the provincial Legislature...." I don't think I have to read this because this is actually in the tabled copy so it is in the House. That is one change.

The second change is in the second paragraph under "Heroin Treatment Program," and the draft read: "Individuals may enter the program when they come of their own volition, when they are referred by the courts for assessment or when they are given a notice to appear by a police officer." That was changed by deleting 13 words and adding another so that it now reads: "Individuals may enter the program when they come of their own volition or when they are referred by the courts for assessment." Once again this is consistent with the fact that by the time this report was filed the compulsory aspects of the Heroin Treatment Program were no longer being proceeded with by the government.

The next change is under the heading — and I'm referring again to the draft — "Referral by Police." This says as follows:

"Under section 13 of the Heroin Treatment Act a police officer may issue a notice to a person that would require him to attend at an assessment centre. A police officer would have to have reasonable grounds to believe that the person was a narcotic dependent before he could issue such a notice. The person receiving the notice would have 48 hours in which to comply."

[ Page 3340 ]

That was deleted, because the government, as I said, had decided it would not, at least for the time being, proceed with the compulsory aspect.

The next change is on the opposite page and it's under the heading "Committal." It reads as follows:

"There are two ways that a person may be committed to the three-year treatment program. Before anyone can be committed, however, it is necessary that the panel be unanimous that the person is in need of treatment for narcotic dependence. If the panel is not unanimous the person must be released. When the panel members are unanimous the report of the panel will be discussed with the individual, and he then has the option of giving his written consent to the three year program. If the person does not consent, then the director of the program must make application to the Supreme Court of British Columbia for a committal. Under the legislation a judge of the supreme court can direct that the person be either committed for three years or released. This decision can be appealed to the appeal court of British Columbia."

That was deleted because the government, as I have said, had already indicated it was not going to go through with the Heroin Treatment Program, at least for the time being, while the court case was on.

There is one other minor amendment on page 5 under the heading "Residential Treatment Centre," which is on page 4 of the tabled report. The date April 1, 1979, was changed to April 14, 1979.

The last change, as far as I've been able to determine — and I don't pretend that I'm the world's greatest proof-reader — is on page 6 of the draft under "Geographic Distribution of Services." There was a line at the bottom of the second paragraph, which said: "An evaluation panel will be appointed for each centre." For the reasons that I've given before, that was deleted. That paragraph appears otherwise intact in the document that was tabled.

Because of those deletions an extra page appeared, and in order that the filed report could be accommodated without reprinting it — so that we could just simply replace pages, so I'm told — a photograph of a pretty young lady looking out the window or looking at something was substituted for the blank space that otherwise would have occurred.

I think that while the member for New Westminster (Mr. Cocke) may criticize whatever a fractional cost of $1,400 is — and I can find out, I suppose, with some greater accuracy what it actually cost to replace those pages and to add the photograph to the 4,000 copies — as a criminal overexpenditure, I rather suspect that it's really a minuscule thing. If Hansard knew the great amount of Latin I did, which is confined to the words I'm now going to use, it would say: De minimis non curat lex — the law does not concern itself with trifles. It seems to me that that, in terms of financial implications, is a trifling matter.

How many reports have been rewritten or withdrawn? I haven't the faintest idea, Mr. Member. I suppose from time to time reports are prepared that are inaccurate, not up to date. Maybe even a government changes, as happened in 1972 and again in 1975, and the new government feels that a different matter should be accentuated or deleted. I don't know, I have no way of knowing. All I can give you is the explanation I have been given and what I have been able to glean with respect to the inconsistencies brought to my attention by the member for New Westminster.

I would like to say one more thing to the member for New Westminster on the question that he raised with me on the YMCA-Pacifica thing. I must say, in light of the information I am now receiving — and I won't have the full information probably until tomorrow, Mr. Member — I'm not satisfied that I have got the full story on that matter. I am now going to do everything I can to get that as quickly as possible for you, so if I don't give you any further information at this point it's only because I'm not satisfied that it's up to date. As soon as it is up to date, which I assume will be by tomorrow, when we meet again, I will give it to you then,

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I'm delighted with the last answer to a question that the minister gave, and that's with respect to Pacifica. I really did want that looked into. I'm informed that there were arbitrary decisions made in that particular situation and I just think it was most unfortunate that it proceeded the way it did — in a rather unusual way.

As far as this aspect is concerned — and I'm going to drop it at this point — I'm not particularly concerned about the cost. I guess the minister knows that they have their own printing press down there. So I suppose that when they're not busy doing something else they can be doing that. The thing that disturbs me is his total lack of knowledge of what was going on out there. I just want the minister to be warned that that most unusual program set up by the former Minister of Health needs some very careful scrutiny by the present Minister of Health. I just want to remind everybody that I've stood in my place in this House each year since the White Paper came out in the first place, stating that the government was on the wrong track. Thank heaven it's now being looked at. Unfortunately it's four and a half years too late.

Having said that, I think there are other members of my caucus who would like to have some words on this particular area, after which we'll be moving on to emergency health services or something along that line.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I would like to say, as the member for New Westminster just said, that it's very, very clear that the new minister was just not fully briefed and not fully informed about the Heroin Treatment Program when he took over his responsibilities as Minister of Health, and I think that this should really cause him some concern. I'm not quite sure how these transfers take place, but surely the ex-Minister of Health, the person who masterminded that horrendous program, the person who was responsible for the wanton spending of millions of dollars on 100 addicts, must have informed the new Minister of Health in some detail about the program. It's very disturbing to find that in the same inconsistent way in which the government relates to the community at large, the cabinet ministers also relate to each other. There isn't any question that the Minister of Health has been duped; he's been tricked. He thought he knew everything that went on in this program, and he obviously doesn't.

Maybe one of the first things he should do, as soon as his estimates are complete, is to have a meeting with the Alcohol and Drug Commission, those people who are still there from the original Heroin Treatment Program. I recognize that now that Bert Hoskin has resigned or was fired or whatever the term is — rewarded and sent to his much-deserved rest, as the minister referred to it when he was terminated — the program is now headless. But there are a number of people still around who were a part of that original fiasco, and there may be — and I would like to suggest to the minister that there are —

[ Page 3341 ]

other reports and other information about that program that he should get, because if not he's going to be continually surprised; every day there is going to be a new surprise coming his way. I don't think it's fair; it's just not fair to the present Minister of Health. I think he's got enough problems as it is without having to be a victim, really, of the previous Minister of Health.

It's interesting that when that program, that debacle, that fiasco, is being debated on the floor of this House, the previous Minister of Health makes it his business not to be around. I don't know how the present Minister of Health feels about the way in which he has been used by his colleague, but I think it's pretty shabby, and he shouldn't tolerate it. Obviously against his will, his arm twisted, he was forced into accepting the Health portfolio. It was not his first choice. It's not a portfolio that he wanted. Then, to have been seduced into accepting it, and then to have found that he was not fully informed, not given all the information that he should have in order to deal with his estimates on the floor of the House, I think is quite unfair to the present Minister of Health, and he should certainly take it up with his colleague at the first opportunity he gets.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to suggest in all humility that at the first opportunity he has he sit down with the remaining members of that program and get as much information out of them as possible — get all the details of what went on during the establishment of that original program — that horrendous, disgraceful fiasco which passed as a heroin treatment program — so that there won't be any more surprises for him. It can't be any fun for the minister to be made to look like a total and complete idiot on the floor of the House simply because he was not informed by his colleagues about the situation that was really taking place.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

The idea, Mr. Chairman, of earmarking $14 million to be spent on the treatment of 100 addicts really takes on criminal proportions when you realize what services went by the board and weren't instituted, weren't designed and didn't come on stream, because the government said there wasn't any money for them. I want to deal specifically with the ways in which the Ministry of Health, by squandering $14 million on this ridiculous program of theirs, really so deprived the young people and adolescents of this province of basic services which they needed that he ended up, really, abusing the Ministry of Human Resources by his action. I want to give a couple of examples of this.

The Ministry of Human Resources is the end of the line in terms of services. When all else fails, when there is nowhere else to go for a young person or an adolescent, they end up as a ward of the government, administered by the Ministry of Human Resources. The Ministry of Human Resources cannot turn anyone away; it's not possible to turn anyone away. That is the last line. What we are finding is that more and more of the young people who are ending up as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources are there because there are no health facilities, no health resources to deal with their particular problem.

At the same time, Mr. Chairman, keep in mind that $14 million was earmarked by this government to be squandered on a totally ridiculous program which they were told over and over again could not and would not work. So what happened is not that $14 million was squandered, but that the lives of a number of young people in this province really were destroyed through lack of services which could have been provided with some of those $14 million. They were sacrificed to the ridiculous program which the previous Minister of Health ramrodded through this House, which finally had to be thrown out by the courts. and which was foisted onto the present Minister of Health, and which, of course, he was not fully informed about.

I have in my possession an analysis which was done on the Interministerial Children's Committee. This analysis was really supposed to look at some of the problems which the Interministerial Children's Committee was having to deal with in terms of services to young people in the province. The two things they dealt with primarily were lack of services and insufficient funds. They talked about the resources for disturbed children. That's one of the number one things that they mentioned. I want to remind you again, Mr. Chairman, as I said before, that these children eventually end up as wards of the province, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Human Resources, not the Ministry of Health. The Ministry of Human Resources bears the brunt for the lack of resources and lack of facilities. Now why the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) tolerates that, I do not know. It could be that she is as disinterested in the Ministry of Human Resources as the Minister of Health is disinterested in the Ministry of Health, and that's the reason why she tolerates this abuse. It is a clear, straightforward case of the Ministry of Health abusing the Ministry of Human Resources. Why the Ministry of Human Resources tolerates this, why the Minister of Human Resources does not insist that the Ministry of Health meet its responsibilities, I do not know. But here is one of the analyses of the lack of resources for disturbed children. And this, Mr. Chairman, if I can again remind you, is an interministerial committee which deals with services to children. Human Resources, Health, Education — everyone — sits on this committee.

HON. MR. MAIR: And the Attorney-General.

MS. BROWN: And the Attorney-General, that's right. They talk about the lack of resources for disturbed children — "a shortage of facilities for severely emotionally disturbed children." It talks about The Maples. It talks about the Fraser Valley. It talks about insufficient interim resources to meet the needs of case referrals such as in the Victoria and other areas. It talks about the non-existence of therapeutic group homes in Prince George and the Cariboo. It talks about the failure to identify long-term containment, or even to develop a place which gives psychological support for young people in the Okanagan. It talks about these things.

Put it in perspective. Mr. Chairman. We're not talking about a government that doesn't have the money. We're talking about a government which made a policy decision to squander $14 million on a totally ridiculous program which could not and would not work, which they were told has never worked anywhere else. However, the decision was made to go ahead and earmark $14 million which we are told, after all is said and done, that in fact dealt with 100 heroin addicts. I don't want to leave the impression that I don't believe that there should be some service for heroin addicts. I believe there should be a resource and some service for heroin addicts. There's no question about that. But when it's done at the cost of developing the kinds of therapeutic resources which the province needs for emotionally disturbed

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children, and when those children end up as wards of the Minister of Human Resources, I'm saying two things are happening. One, the Minister of Health is deliberately and callously abusing the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) because the Ministry of Human Resources is unfortunate enough to have a weak and incompetent minister. Secondly, I am saying that the government, in terms of developing its priorities, is prepared to sacrifice the young people and the adolescents of this province in order to allow a minister to proceed with a totally ridiculous and irresponsible program rather than deal with basic services which are needed for the young people of this province.

There are some therapeutic resources. There is The Maples. And now the minister has made his brilliant announcement about an additional ten beds. What a fiasco! Listen to the kinds of statistics that come out of the Ministry of Education in terms of the young people who need those kinds of services, and then talk about ten beds. Read the kinds of statistics that the Ministry of Human Resources has in its annual report about the emotionally disturbed children in its care, and then stand up in this House and talk about ten beds. The Maples does not now, and ten beds later will still not be able to, meet the very basic need even for the young people in the lower mainland, and The Maples serves the entire province. It doesn't just serve the Burnaby–New Westminster–Vancouver catchment area. Everybody goes to The Maples because that's all there is. To brag about an additional ten beds is a disgrace.

This study offered some solutions. It suggested, for example, that treatment resources need to be developed in Prince Rupert and the Bulkley Valley. It talked about converting Brannan Lake from its present addiction treatment program to a residential facility for disturbed youth. That was one of the recommendations which was made in this report.

HON. MR. MAIR: What's the date of that report?

MS. BROWN: June 12, 1980, was when that recommendation was made.

The main thing is that here we have a Ministry of Health which is not at all meeting any of its responsibilities to adolescents. It says in this report that it is not known how many emergency cases are not referred to The Maples simply because The Maples has a current waiting list. I'm paraphrasing. "The Maples expansion program will only provide a partial solution, and when this expansion is completed in two years it still will not meet the demonstrated need by the population presently in juvenile containment in this province."

You have to realize that Human Resources fails in terms of relating to young people because it has no resources, and it's not supposed to have the kind of health resources which these young people need. When Human Resources fails, those children end up before the courts and they are placed in containment centres. That's what happens. You have a young person with a health problem, an emotional disturbance, a behaviour problem, a psychological problem. They need a resource, and the Ministry of Health totally fails to provide this resource. That young person is then shunted on to the Ministry of Human Resources, which has to accept that young person; it cannot turn that person away. The young person is then placed in a foster home or a group home which is totally and completely inappropriate and does not meet that person's need. Whatever the problem was is exacerbated, the acting out continues, and the Ministry of Human Resources then says: "Aha, the person is now 17, 18, 19. I no longer have to take responsibility." The person is shunted off before the courts and into a containment centre.

Have you any idea what a difference there would be in the budget of the Ministry of Human Resources if the Ministry of Health discharged its responsibility to the number of young people and adolescents in this province in need of psychological and emotional resources? It's an absolutely callous and crass decision on the part of the Ministry of Health not to meet its responsibilities to this segment of the community, knowing full well that that weak Minister of Human Resources is going to end up accepting responsibility for those children, knowing full well that the Ministry of Human Resources will not have appropriate resources to deal with them.

It is impossible to actually think of a way to describe the decisions of that Ministry of Health in pouring that kind of money into meeting the needs of the past Ministry of Health. That's all the Heroin Treatment Program was: an attempt to meet a basic need of the Minister of Health to have some kind of monument to his own stupidity. In exchange for that, the adolescents and the young people in this province were sacrificed. When he totally bungled the thing, he was fired, and it was foisted onto the present Minister of Health. As we are now beginning to find, he was not even fully informed about the extent of the bungling and stupidity that went on in that program while it was in process. He better get his act together and get together with the survivors of that horrendous debacle and get all the information on it prior to phasing it out completely and directing some of the resources towards developing some of the resources which we need for young people in this province.

The report, dated January 22, 1980, goes on to talk about the lack of facilities for multi-handicapped children; but I want to deal with that under another area.

In the Burnaby–New Westminster area some kind of survey was done of the entire lower mainland area. What it pointed out to us was the increasing use of alcohol at almost a crisis rate by young people at a younger and younger age. You know this report, because we corresponded about that. So the Burnaby–New Westminster out-patient clinic came together and they assigned an alcohol counsellor to Burnaby. They recognized the problem, as outlined in this report, that we are dealing with children 13 years of age and younger.

Mr. Chairman, I have been asked to yield to one of my colleagues for five minutes; also to give the Minister of Health a break to think about the terrible dilemma he's in. I yield to the second member for Victoria.

MR. HANSON: I'd like to thank my colleague from Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) for giving me this opportunity. I'm in a bit of a time bind at the moment. I'm on my way to the minister's riding for the United Native Nations conference, which is interested in my language bill — which I hope the minister is going to support when it is called before the House. It is a non-partisan bill. I'm sure all the members will support it.

Interjections.

MR. HANSON: I'm going to be very brief. The kind of comments I would like to make to the minister relate specifically to two proposals which I think will benefit health care in

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the province. First of all, the background: there is more and more medical evidence to indicate that a large percentage of disease has an environmental or occupational origin. This is of interest to the Minister of Health, I am sure. It is now suspected that possibly over 60 percent of all cancer has an environmental or job origin. We have a great advantage in Canada in that we have socialized medicine with centralized records; but a person's occupational history is not a part of those records. In other words, when a person is ill and is admitted to hospital, he is asked: "What type of employment do you carry out?" But in routine visits to a physician, throughout the life of an individual, it is not a diagnosis line whether a person is a welder, clerk-steno, pilot or coal miner, etc. The advantage of having that information is self-evident. If we do not know what types of exposure a person has been subjected to during their working life, it is very difficult for that individual to then go to the Workers' Compensation Board and clearly demonstrate the causative relationship between their respiratory problem and their career as a welder, etc.

What I am suggesting, first, is a very simple suggestion: that employment history be incorporated into the medical record in a confidential way with all the safeguards and protections that birth, death and other medical information is protected by, to incorporate the environmental and occupational conditions of a person's life into his medical record. We would save ourselves great difficulties at a later date when a person is trying to demonstrate that causative relationship. That's point number one.

Point number two is that in the province of British Columbia we have three separate agencies collecting information on health: the cancer control agency, the heath surveillance and the record linkages. My suggestion is that we must get those three agencies in a coordinated, integrated way into one health-hazard or health-surveillance registry. That registry would not just be the repository of information on the occurrence of disease but would also note the occurrence of disease, try to anticipate or detect trends, and advise the government on remedial action to correct or protect health in a particular region.

As the minister is aware, I brought to his attention and made public information which indicated that there are high-risk cancer areas in British Columbia: greater Vancouver is a high-risk lung cancer area for men and women. I pointed out three other areas which are in the top 10 percent in terms of risk in the country: ovarian cancer here in greater Victoria; lymph cancer in the Comox-Strathcona census area and also in the central Okanagan. Now I want to point out that the minister made a comment at that time that the information I had brought forward was judged to be statistically insignificant; that was incorrect. More correct is that the three cancer areas, outside of greater Vancouver, were statistically not significant in that they could not be demonstrated by all statistical methods to be proved forever and a day to have that causative relationship.

That sounds very difficult and cumbersome, but what it means is this. We all know that cancer is a great killer in North America, but the emergence or occurrence of a cancer in a particular region in terms of the general population is a relatively major event. If there are only ten occurrences of a certain type of cancer in a census area and the population is 100,000, then statistically that is insignificant; but in terms of the magnitude of the problem and the environmental cause that may be bringing that to be — in other words, pesticides, herbicides, toxic waste, radiation, dust, any other conditions — that epidemiological information must be centralized; it must be brought together so that research can be carried out. Here we are in l980 in British Columbia, and we have no information that will plot the occupational history of a worker or centralize the epidemiological information on disease in one region where there can be testing, scientific research and remedial action.

The future for health care research is not in building more hospitals; it is taking action in the environment and in the workplace to ensure that fewer people are subjected to illness and disease. That is the future; it is an expansion of the preventive area of health into making the workplace and the environment safe so that those toxic substances, dusts, chemical, etc., don’t cause the cancers, rather than building larger and larger cancer centres in the future for people who have contracted the disease.

I hope I have made my point — it’s very brief. Those are just the two main points. I think they would go a long way in the future to making B.C. a healthier place.

HON. MR. MAIR: Mr. Chairman, I was very interested in the remarks of the second member for Victoria. I agree that we've got to find a way to include employment history in the medical records of people whose records are, of course, centrally recorded. I think this is a field that we're perhaps not as far into as we ought to be. I am very grateful to him for the comments he's made, and we will — and I mean it look into his suggestions.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman. I was discussing ways in which the Ministry of Health has been abusing the Ministry of Human Resources, specifically by not developing the kinds of resources needed by young people and adolescents in the province but rather by allowing the $14 million to be earmarked for the Heroin Treatment Program. I started out to speak specifically about the Burnaby area and the problem we're having with the increasing use of alcohol by people of a younger and younger age.

I referred to a survey which was done by the Alcohol and Drug Commission in November 1979, which was an assessment of the need for service to alcohol- and drug-dependent young people in the lower Fraser Valley region. There isn't any question that the minister surely is aware of this report, even though he said that the Alcohol and Drug Commission is independent. I certainly agree with him, but surely he has read this report.

One of the things the report reveals to us is the fact that so many of the alcohol abusers in the lower Fraser Valley are 13 years of age or younger. When we put that into an education context we are talking about kids in elementary school. We are talking about kids in grade 7 and grade 8 and probably even grade 6. This is really frightening, when we think about all the damage alcohol does to the human body, even if one starts drinking at the legal age of 19. Imagine what it is doing to people who start drinking below the age of 13. When they start abusing alcohol below the age of 13 we have a real problem there.

However, as a result of that there was a recognition that one of the things that probably should happen was to attach to the school system an alcohol and drug counsellor. In the Burnaby area we had — certainly in East Burnaby, in Stride Community School in particular — a counsellor two days a week. We were told that this was a pilot project. Fair enough.

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On June 15 the pilot project came to an end and the counsellor was removed.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Mr. Chairman, I want to bring to your attention that the budget, in terms of services to adult alcoholics, is $12 million annually. The budget for young people who abuse alcohol is $250,000. There is something not quite right about earmarking $250,000 for preventive services — we are talking about the kind of services that would keep these young people from becoming alcoholics in the first place. I am not saying that a budget of $12 million for adult services is an outlandish budget, certainly not if you compare it with $14 million to treat 100 drug addicts. If you were using the same criteria for treating alcoholics, the budget earmarked for adult alcoholics would zoom right out of existence. But $250,000 to begin with is just not good enough. That is the first thing.

The counsellor who was attached two days a week to the East Burnaby school system discovered a number of things. He discovered, for example, that most schools are not even aware of the amount of heavy drinking that is going on among the student population. Presumably these young people are not drinking before they go to school in the morning. Again, I want to remind you that we are talking about kids in grades 6, 7 and 8. The referrals that go from school to alcohol counselling are very low because the students hide their dependencies.

It was said, for example, that the young people found it easier to obtain alcohol because it was in their homes. It is not even necessary to use the kind of underground way of purchasing the stuff that they would with other forms of drugs. Alcohol is available. It is in their homes, it is in their friends' homes. It's a socially accepted drug. No one gets upset to the extent that you would, for example, if you noticed a young person using another form of drug. When you see a young person drinking a beer you say: "For Pete's sake, that stuff is not good for you." If you see a young person shooting heroin into his arm you get hysterical, or if you see him smoking a joint or something you get upset about it. But with alcohol most people say: "Well, thank God they are not using some other kind of drug." That is the wrong attitude to take.

The other thing is that it is not as expensive. This is what the counsellor found. It provides a quicker reaction. The most important thing about it is that it's not illegal. There is no law against the use of alcohol by anybody in this province. There is a law against being seen in a beer parlour or being served a drink in a public place if you are below a certain age; but if you drink the drink at home or at your friend's house or whatever, it's not illegal. For those reasons more and more young people at a younger and younger age are turning to alcohol as their drug of escape, and they are abusing it. The counsellor identified this and the whole business of working with these grade 8, 7 and 6 kids. I'm talking about an elementary school and not about the high-school kids. I'm speaking about the 13-year-olds and younger, even though most of the drinking was 15-year-olds and younger. The project came to an end on June 15. That was it.

The community was very upset about the removal of the counsellor. They contacted the alcohol and drug counselling service on Broadway to verbalize this situation and ask that the counsellor not be removed. In my own office a letter was received which was signed by the program director, Walter Moy, of Youth and Family Counselling Services; by Don Jarvis, supervisor of alcohol and drug counselling services, Imperial Street, Burnaby; and Henry Kroeker, program director, alcohol and drug counselling services. The letter said that it wasn't going to be possible to continue due to a staff shortage. It says: "The appointments scheduled" — and he's talking about an alternative way of referring the young people — "was put into effect and will allow clients to receive service in this area and not make undue demands on our current staff shortage."

The reason that the counsellor was removed was not that the pilot project was a failure; it wasn't that the counsellor was not doing a good job; it's not that the community was not benefiting from the presence of the counsellor. It was because of a staff shortage, no money — not enough money to keep enough people on staff so that this particular counsellor was working in the East Burnaby area via the school system and picking up the alcohol abusers at the very first opportunity — at the beginning — while they were still in elementary school and before they really had become a statistic in our community. That was being terminated because of a lack of money.

Everyone got upset about that. The advisory committee to Stride Community School had a meeting and talked about what it would mean to the school if this counsellor was withdrawn. The advisory committee has representatives from just about every community group.

A couple of things evolved. One was that the Human Resources ministry again was going to have to end up picking up these kids, and again was not going to have the resources to deal with them, and again was going to be making inappropriate and unsatisfactory arrangements for dealing with them. Once again, a decision made by the Ministry of Health was going to be abusing another ministry, and again it was the Ministry of Human Resources. Again the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) was silent on the topic.

But I'll tell you, the workers in the Human Resources office in East Burnaby were sufficiently concerned about the decision of the Alcohol and Drug Commission to withdraw that counsellor to say so and to itemize and talk about what was going to happen to these young people as a result of the decision being made. When they needed a counsellor the New Westminster–Burnaby outpatients clinic was going to try and make sufficient arrangements so that when there was a referral a counsellor would be placed at their disposal. That doesn't work. What this drug counsellor did was to work within the school system. The counsellor was there to identify and then to work with the young people. They didn't wait for the school to identify and then to refer, because one of the things that surfaced is that the school does not identify most of these alcohol abusers. Sometimes these young people are sufficiently cunning and clever to keep their dependency hidden even from the schools. That was the reason why the alcohol counsellor was introduced directly into the school system in the first place, to be available two days a week to deal with and work with the young people at that stage.

As was said — and this is a very nice letter that we got: "The development of a Burnaby–New Westminster unit allowed us to decentralize one part-time youth counsellor to you, and we've monitored the service closely, and we agree that it warrants a full-time youth counsellor to work directly and jointly with counsellors and other resources in the agencies." That is what the letter from your own Alcohol and

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Drug Commission stated: having monitored the pilot project the decision has been made that the service warrants a full-time youth counsellor. Even the two days a week was not sufficient.

You have a problem in East Burnaby. The kids really are drinking too much, and they're starting to drink too young. Two days a week is not good enough. What you need in order to nip the problem in the bud, before it becomes a full-blown crisis, is a full-time youth counsellor. But that is not possible. It says, "We will attempt to be responsive to your referrals," and "We will have regular weekly appointments." They are going to bend over backwards and twist and turn and adjust and readjust and do all kinds of things to try to deal with the reality, which is that they have a staff shortage because there isn't any money in the budget to deal with the whole delivery of services to young people who abuse alcohol. A quarter of a million dollars is all that has been earmarked, but $14 million was set aside to work with what turned out to be 100 addicts.

In establishing our priorities as a community and as a society, how do you decide what is more important? How do you decide that it is more important to put $14 million into one program as opposed to $250,000 into the kind of resources needed by our young people? How do you make that kind of decision? What does that say to us about the way this government responds to the needs of young people in this province? The report is here, pages and pages and pages, itemizing the abuse of alcohol and other drugs in one small area, the lower Fraser Valley region, alone. It says there appears to be a wide discrepancy between the need for service and the provision. The report says it on the very front page. There are no residential treatment facilities, no supportive recovery homes, no detoxification facilities, no outpatient counselling services; there is definite dissatisfaction with the overall adequacy of service for alcohol- and drug dependent young people. One-third of the informants they surveyed were 13 years of age and younger. The average age of the people involved was 15 to 17. Drug workers reported that these youngsters often had a problem with alcohol and drugs since their pre-teens. These are our children we are talking about.

Interjection.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, if I can get your attention while the Premier is.... Is it okay to proceed? I just find it unreal that anyone would try to disrupt something like this, but anyway....

They talked about problems with finding living accommodations conducive to therapeutic progress, difficulties in providing out-patient counselling even to those who are physically ill from malnutrition due to poor dietary practices and other side effects of alcohol and drug abuse. It said it is virtually impossible to restore and maintain a good level of health on an out-patient basis because of the lack of environmental control. It goes on and on. As a result of this report, East Burnaby gets one half-time counsellor two days a week; that's all. It was such a great success that Walter Moy, Don Jarvis and Henry Kroeker monitored it and said it warrants a full-time youth counsellor, but due to the staff shortage it is not going to happen.

I will tell you, the Elizabeth Fry Society was upset about that, and they wrote a letter to Don Jarvis saying: "We want to express our concern that the counselling service provided for adolescents will no longer be offered in Burnaby." That letter was dated June 3, 1980, and was signed by Terri Miller, the supervisor of the juvenile residential program, Ann Berry and Joan Sprague. The Ministry of Human Resources — not the minister, who is silent, but the district supervisor for that area, at 7621 Kingsway — wrote: "Dear Mr. Moy: On behalf of the workers of Burnaby East Ministry of Human Resources Office, I would like to express concern over the decision to terminate your local services to Burnaby youth." It's a real crisis. I could tell you a thing or two about the crisis situation of the young people in that particular area. They don't use alcohol just to socialize; there's a real alcohol abuse problem, and all of the contingency things that come with it. The vandalism and delinquency are all there. One counsellor working two days a week was trying to come to grips with that.

The East Burnaby Community Workers group wrote: "Dear Mr. Moy: We of the East Burnaby Community Workers group are very disappointed and concerned that the commission has decided to withdraw the Burnaby alcohol and drug counselling service for youth under 19 years of age. This service, through Mr. Dave Coverdale, has been of great assistance to the individual agencies — the agencies as well as the young people — "because they've been using it on a referral and consulting basis."

The probation officer from Burnaby Juvenile Probation and Family Court Services expressed their concern. A number of these kids end up on all kinds of petty offences, and some serious ones too, so the probation officers also added their voice to that. And on and on it went.

I raised a question in the House, if the minister will remember, on this particular topic. I think the minister, after taking it as notice for a while, brought back a response to the effect that what we were dealing with was some redesign or redistribution — I think that was your response when I raised my concern on.... Oh, there isn't a date on it, but I asked a question in the House about the fact that this counsellor was being withdrawn, and your response was that it was really a redesign in terms of delivery of services. But what the end result of the redesign and restructuring is is that there is no counsellor there now. Once again the Ministry of Human Resources is going to pick up the pieces and not be able to deal with it, and then it goes on to probation and these kids end up in containment centres. Really, with prevention, it could have been avoided.

I want to refer also, again talking about the abuse of the Ministry of Human Resources by the Ministry of Health, to a letter which was sent to the Premier with a carbon copy to me. It's a very long letter which tells a story of a young man who started drinking at a very early age. His foster parents were so distraught with his drinking problem that they wrote to the Premier. It says: "I am addressing this letter to you in the hope that you will take some note of the problems outlined below, and instruct your Minister of Human Resources and other workers down the ladder to try and deal with this type of problem." It talks about this young man being placed by the Ministry of Human Resources in this home as a foster child because his own parents couldn't deal with his drinking. The letter attacks the Ministry of Human Resources and the social worker. Why? Because there was not a resource available to deal with a drinking adolescent. Now who is responsible for developing that kind of resource? The Ministry of Health. But in northern B.C. — the Houston and Smithers areas — there was not such a resource. So this child ended up as a ward of the Ministry of Human Re-

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sources. The Ministry of Human Resources placed this young man in a foster home. It goes on to say: "On every occasion we have requested assistance from Human Resources we've been informed that there is no program in the province for teenagers with drinking problems, and that the Department of Human Resources has no funds or provisions for foster children with this type of problem."

But Human Resources isn't supposed to. It's the Ministry of Health that is supposed to be responsible for this, but the Ministry of Health knows that when it comes to services to children and young people it does not have to discharge its responsibility, because there is a Ministry of Human Resources which will have to accept it anyway and take all of the blame for it.

The Ministry of Health does nothing. It uses its $14 million on heroin addicts. Not that I don't believe that heroin addicts need to be served; that's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about your priorities and the cold and callous way in which the Ministry of Health continues to abuse the Ministry of Human Resources by simply not providing the kinds of resources and services that young people in this province need, knowing full well that the Ministry of Human Resources, weak as it is, will end up having responsibility for these children and not be able to do anything about it either.

I want to repeat the question. Have you any idea what the budget of the Ministry of Human Resources would be like if it did not have to rush in continually and pick up after the incompetence of the Ministry of Health? It's a total lack of resources. It's a little bit of surface business here and there and cosmetic services here and there. We've got a real health problem in this province with young people — emotionally disturbed, psychologically ill, alcohol abusing and drug abusing young people — and the Ministry of Health is not addressing itself to that problem. It is failing to do so simply because the Ministry of Health knows that in the final analysis it's the Ministry of Human Resources that gets blamed when these children are not served and end up before the courts and in containment centres, and not the Ministry of Health. That's the reason why the Ministry of Health can continue to avoid its responsibility and continue to abuse the Ministry of Human Resources in that way. What we really need in this province is a Minister of Human Resources who can deal with the Minister of Health. That's what we really need. That's what the young people of this province really need.

To continue with the story of Ben, sure enough he ended up at age 17 breaking and entering and going before the courts. Now he has a probation officer and some kind of service is being delivered to him as an adult which wasn't there originally. What the letter says is: "Are you aware, Mr. Premier, that in the Smithers area alone there are approximately 46 teenagers with severe alcohol problems and that the only help available to them is their child-care worker?" This is absolutely ludicrous. What does a child-care worker know about serving a young person who abuses alcohol? Does the Minister of Health know...? Is my time up?

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, I have a number of questions to ask the Minister of Health. However, I believe that my colleague needed an intervening speaker in order that she can proceed with her very provocative and interesting line of questioning.

MS. BROWN: Thank you to my colleague from New Westminster for giving me this time.

The question again that I am dealing with is the way in which the Ministry of Health fails to provide services to young people in the province — young people who are ill, who have health needs — in terms of psychological services, mental health services and alcohol and drug services. These young people are not being served and consequently end up as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again.

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 21

NAYS — 28

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I'm really pleased to see the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy) in the House, because, as I said, I've certainly been speaking on behalf of Human Resources in terms of the way in which the Ministry of Health, by failing to discharge its responsibility and by failing to develop the sorts of resources needed by young people in the province, is creating a burden on Human Resources. More and more of the adolescents and young people are ending up as wards of the community — they're really not wards of the courts or even wards of the ministry, they're wards of all of us — when, in fact, they are where they are simply because Health has not met their requirements in terms of mental health facilities, facilities for emotionally disturbed young people and facilities for young people who abuse alcohol and other forms of drugs.

Mr. Chairman, if I can quote from a national newspaper of May of this year, it talks about girls of 12 and 13, beach rowdies, so drunk that they cannot even stand; it talks about roaming bands of drunken teenagers who've been drinking all day and into the evening too, and creating a nuisance in the West Vancouver area. It says: "It's not good for a community to see girls of 12 and 13 so drunk that they don't even know what they're doing." It talks about the fact — and they're not talking about one or two; they're talking about kids who move in gangs of 50 and 75 — that there are not sufficient facilities developed by the Ministry of Health

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anywhere in the province — not in the lower mainland, not in the interior, not in the northern parts of this province. Nowhere do we have sufficient health facilities to deal with the problem of young people who abuse alcohol.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

I quoted the fact that the budget has earmarked $250,000, as opposed to $12 million set aside for working with adult alcohol abusers, and I don't even think that $12 million is enough, certainly when we put it into the context of $14 million spent on a program to meet the needs of the member for Langley, the past Minister of Health (Hon. Mr. McClelland).

"For Canada's Children: National Agenda for Action," a report which was commissioned for the International Year of the Child in 1979, talks about the fact that more and more studies indicate that increasing numbers of adolescents and young people are using alcohol and tobacco in ever increasing amounts, and the fact that we need to relate ourselves to the harmful effects of alcohol and drug abuse among this particular group of people. No longer do we have to think of an alcoholic as an adult or as an older person; we have a crisis in our society today of alcohol being abused by younger and younger people. The Tonkin child health profile talks about children 15 years of age and younger, and as I said, the study done on behalf of the ministry about alcohol abuse among young people in the lower Fraser Valley talked about children below the age of 13, children in elementary schools who were using and abusing alcohol.

What I have tried say, Mr. Chairman, for the benefit of the Minister of Human Resources, who is here, is that the reality of the situation is that Human Resources is the last line, that it doesn't matter what goes before. Whenever a child does not receive services through any other ministry, and he ends up in some kind of trouble, Human Resources always has to be there to pick up the pieces.

As a direct result of the callous and thoughtless way in which the Ministry of Health has failed to develop mental health facilities and resources in the communities to deal with these young people, Human Resources is having to pick up the pieces and place them in totally inappropriate group or foster home settings until they become adults. Then they reach that magic age where Human Resources is no longer responsible for them, and what we find is that they end up before the courts, and they move onto the care and keeping of the Attorney-General's ministry, through our prisons or whatever.

If the Ministry of Health would re-establish or rearrange its priorities and start making some serious commitments to the health needs and the emotional health needs of the young people of this province, the budget for Human Resources and the kinds of resources that Human Resources has to develop would diminish considerably. So I'm accusing the Ministry of Health of actively abusing the Ministry of Human Resources.

Mr. Chairman, I had a meeting recently with a number of people who work with the young people who are being sexually exploited and sexually abused in the Vancouver area. One of the number one concerns that they have is the absence of sufficient health resources to deal with those children. A number of those children — 40 percent of them — are wards of the Ministry of Human Resources. They have no business being wards of the Ministry of Human Resources, because we are talking about emotionally disturbed children for whom there are no facilities and no services. They end up in the care of the Ministry of Human Resources, which has no facilities and no resources, and should not have it should not be called upon to develop the facilities and resources to deal with those children, because they should be developed by the Ministry of Health. Even now, when they have become a disgrace to the province of B.C. and to the city of Vancouver, the Ministry of Health is still failing to develop the kinds of resources which those young people need,

It's not just mental health facilities, but physiological health facilities too. There is one clinic that is trying to deal with all of those children with the kinds of problems they have through using dirty needles, in terms of their drug abuse — hepatitis; kids with VD: all those other kinds of health facilities. The clinic is not enough.

There is no adequate or sufficient health counselling for those young people. It is ludicrous and ridiculous to expect the Ministry of Human Resources alone, Mr. Chairman, to deal with that problem. It is a problem which a number of ministries should be getting their heads together on and dealing with. That's what the interministerial committee is supposed to be all about. Yet the report from that committee, which I read from earlier in the House, when it starts to itemize the lack of resources for dealing with some of those children, as a group, itemizes over and over again that it is health facilities. mental health facilities, and mental health counselling that are missing. Throughout the entire province, not just in Vancouver the Okanagan, Prince George, Prince Rupert, Smithers. Houston, Terrace — the Ministry of Health consistently fails to meet its responsibilities to the young people of this province.

Even when there is a crisis, as we have with young people from all over the province ending up in Vancouver as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources. ending up being sexually exploited and abused in our cities, we find that the Ministry of Health cannot even deliver in that one area a much-needed resource. Instead. we have the Ministry of Human Resources being expected to carry the whole can, and the Attorney-General is saying Ottawa~s got to change the law. While we're waiting for Ottawa to change the law we have one clinic trying to deal with those young kids, with their hepatitis. their VD, their drug abuse, and everything else.

This is the same ministry that found $14 million to earmark to meet the needs of the previous Minister of Health in terms of his own delusions of grandeur — because that's all that that heroin program was all about. It was his problem in terms of his delusions of grandeur that he really could use a program that has failed everywhere else in the world, he could make it work. So $14 million was sucked out of the health budget, taken away from other areas in health, to design and put into place that fiasco for that delusional previous Minister of Health. We have young people in this province ending up as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources not because they need Human Resources services but because the Minister of Health has failed to develop and design the kind of health resources that they need. It is about time somebody placed the blame where it belongs. It belongs with the Ministry of Health which sloughs off its responsibility because it knows that the Minister of Human Resources will, in silence, accept that kind of abuse. What the Minister of Human Resources should do is stand on her feet and lay the

[ Page 3348 ]

blame squarely where it belongs, on the Minister of Health, who has made an absolutely callous decision in terms of establishing the priorities in his ministry.

The Victoria Times of March 29, in speaking about a ward of the Ministry of Human Resources, a 15-year-old drug user, says: "No Home for a 15-year-old Drug User." The courts tore a strip off the Ministry of Human Resources and the social workers who are being asked to do jobs that should be done by the Ministry of Health. The Minister of Human Resources did not stand up and defend her workers. It is about time that somebody did. It is Health that is supposed to be developing these resources, not Human Resources. Human Resources ends up picking up these kids and trying to develop some kind of placement for them, taking them off the streets when everyone else abandons them, because we have a Minister of Health who didn't want the portfolio, still doesn't want the portfolio and is not doing anything about it. The children of this province are suffering as a result of that. That is a total disgrace.

I have in my possession a letter from the coordinator of health services, employee assistance program, of Mac-Blo to the Minister of Health about his decision to discontinue funding for an alternative drug-dependence program for Vancouver. That is a service to adults. The CJOR radio station had a program called "Street Talk," an incredibly outstanding program, in March 1980. I am not in the habit of saying nice things about CJOR, but really, it talked about the problem we are having with drug abuse among young people. There really is a problem. Even CJOR was sufficiently exercised by the crisis in drug abuse among our young people.

Do you know what we are talking about? We are talking about the future. We are going to turn this nation over to a bunch of drunks. That is what we are going to do if our alcohol-abusing young people grow up to be alcohol-abusing adults. That is what we are ending up doing. So we are talking about our future when we say to the Minister of Health that failing to deal with drug and alcohol abuse among young people is failing to deal with, in the abuse of the future, people who are going to be running this province.

CJOR, when it had its series called "Drug Probe," was very clear about what resources are needed and stated as a priority the kinds of resources that the Ministry of Health has to put into place. Over and over again it talks about acute-care wards for adolescents in immediate crisis to be established immediately in one or more of Vancouver's lower mainland hospitals. This program is only talking about the lower mainland but I don't want to leave the impression with anyone that the drug and alcohol abuse problem of teenagers and young people is a Vancouver and lower mainland problem. It runs throughout this entire province. But it is talking about immediately putting into place acute-care wards.

The minister is going to stand up and tell us about the ten beds which are coming on stream in Burnaby. It is talking about psychiatric wards for adolescents, but that is another story. I am going to deal with the lack of psychiatric facilities for young people at another time. I'm only speaking about drug and alcohol abuse now. In terms of the psychiatric needs of young people and the total, utter and complete failure of that minister to deal with them, it is a whole new topic. It's talking about establishing diagnostic, assessment and therapeutic centres to accommodate numbers of adolescents suffering from drug and drug-related problems on both a live-in and out-patient basis.

The Ministry of Health shouldn't need CJOR to come up with this kind of information. The Minister of Health shouldn't need that. The Ministry of Health has sufficient information, based on its own research and done by its own personnel, to indicate the kinds of resources necessary. The only reason that Health has not discharged its responsibility is because the Ministry of Health knows that the Ministry of Human Resources has to pick up the pieces, that the Ministry of Human Resources has no alternative, that the Ministry of Human Resources, in the final analysis, is responsible for every child in need in this province.

When Health fails, through a callous decision on the part of its minister not to spend the kind of money needed to develop the resources, we end up with children in need. Then that child becomes the responsibility of the Ministry of Human Resources. That's what's happened. So Health continues to abuse Human Resources, and Human Resources says nothing. In the final analysis, it's the young people, the adolescents, who suffer. Do you know what we do, Mr. Chairman? We go out and we build more containment centres. We lock them up until they're old enough to get into real jails and real prisons, and then we lock them up again.

Preventive services — that's what Health is all about. He's not a minister of sickness; he's a Minister of Health. That's what he's supposed to be. Prevention is where it's at, Mr. Chairman; that really is the first line. If you're going to put money into the system, you put it into developing those kinds of counselling services, those kinds of preventive services, those kinds of resources, to ensure that those young people don't end up as wards of the Ministry of Human Resources, that they don't end up before the courts where they are sentenced to containment centres and as adults don't end up either in jail or on welfare because they are alcoholics and cannot function in the system.

Have you any idea what the welfare rolls of this province would be like if we could remove every alcoholic from it, if we could say that there are no alcoholics on welfare? Do you know what an incredible decrease there would be in terms of the recipients? The only ones left would be children and single parents. Really, in most instances what we have are people who cannot function in or cannot deal with our society, who are receiving welfare because of mental, emotional or some kind of drug-abuse problem — alcohol abuse, drug abuse or mental or psychological problems, all of which should be dealt with by Health; none of which is being dealt with by Health.

I'm not discussing adults. There are a lot of other people who will talk about the needs of the adults. I am dealing specifically with adolescents and young people. When I find that that report, prepared by the minister's department itself, is now telling us that alcoholism is showing up in children under the age of 13, and the ministry is still earmarking only $250,000 to deal with it, and East Burnaby is having a youth counsellor withdrawn from even two days a week because of staff shortages, then somebody's got to bring to the attention of this minister that he's not doing his job. As a result of his unwillingness or inability — whichever one it is, I don't know — a number of people are going to suffer, not just these young people themselves or even their families. Not that alone, but in terms of the end result in cost to us, the loss of the contribution those people can make to us as a community, in terms of the cost to us of locking them up in containment centres, the expense of one-to-one foster homes — which still don't work — in terms of the disgrace of having our

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young people on the streets of Vancouver being sexually exploited and abused, you've got to trace it right back to the beginning. Where do you start? You start with preventive services in Health; that's where you start. And it hasn't been happening.

The Maples can't handle it. Ten more beds won't handle it. It isn't enough, Mr. Chairman. It's not good enough for the Minister of Health to slough it off, because he knows that when he fails to provide a service we end up with a child in care and Human Resources will pick up the pieces. That is just not good enough.

One of the recommendations made by this CJOR program, "Drug Probe," was that the number of area counsellors serving elementary schools should be increased. They are speaking about just Vancouver. They are saying there are 19 counsellors in the Vancouver elementary school system, one counsellor covering five or six schools and about 1,800 students. That is not enough.

In East Burnaby we had two-fifths of a counsellor — two days a week. That's what the East Burnaby elementary schools had. That's the service that we had. The Alcohol and Drug Commission themselves wrote a letter saying: "Having monitored it, it is clear that you need a full-time counsellor; but it's not possible, due to staff shortages." Why? How could you possibly have a staff shortage? How could the government possibly justify not enough money to deal with this — a government that is building sports arenas and bridges and doing research on tunnels? That's not possible. The Minister of Health has got to make some kind of a commitment to deal with the real crisis in terms of the needs of young people in this province.

The Colonist of May 2, 1980, quoted Dr. Stuart Fine, head of child psychiatry at UBC, talking about those great ten beds which the minister announced with such fanfare. Ten beds! Really — that he would have the nerve to even announce ten beds. With the kinds of problems that we're dealing with, the kind of waiting list that The Maples has, the minister announces ten beds. Dr. Stuart Fine said that it's not even a drop in the bucket. He said the B.C. Medical Association's psychiatric section "has been saying for ten years there needs to be an adolescent unit." The unit needs to "admit children aged 12 to 16 from anywhere in the province, who are psychotic, suicidal or showing other psychosomatic disorders." And what do we get? Fanfare and an announcement of ten beds. The Maples already has a waiting list of more than that. They are putting young people into adult psychiatric wards in the existing hospitals because there are no facilities for them. The psychiatric section of the B.C. Medical Association, according to Dr. Fine, has been saying for ten years.... So they get ten beds — one bed a year, I guess.

The Burnaby Times, in talking about this.... The Maples is actually located in Burnaby, but of course it serves people right around the province. It talks about the proposal to add ten acute-care beds and two high-security units for severely disturbed teenagers from around the province being totally inappropriate. It's not even going to start to touch the problem that we have as a result of the lack of facilities in other parts of the province.

The health profile which is put out, called "Child Health Profile" — Dr. Tonkin, I think, is still the person responsible for that — talks about the increase in suicide among young people as a result of the abuse of alcohol and other drugs, and how they are regularly committing suicide and attempting suicide as a result of it. Here it is, volume 4, No. 1, the spring edition: "Horrendous Statistics on B.C.'s Children. Youth to Become Mair's Problem." On and on it goes — clearly a case of the Ministry of Health failing to discharge its responsibilities to the young people of this province.

They are totally inadequate services, whether in the lower mainland, the interior, the north or any part of this province — abusing the Ministry, of Human Resources by deliberately not developing the resources which are needed; knowing that the Ministry of Human Resources has no alternative but to take over the care of those children and to keep them in care until they become adults and they end up, Mr. Chairman, either as part of our prison population or back on welfare again as adults who cannot hold a job, cannot function in our society. It's an absolute and totally callous disregard for the needs of young people in this province. That's what we're getting from a Minister of Health who doesn't like his portfolio, never wanted his portfolio, and is not discharging his responsibilities in his portfolio as adequately as he should.

It's about time that somebody, stated and placed the blame very clearly where it belongs. We're in trouble in this province with our adolescents and with our young people because of having a Minister of Health who has decided, callously and completely, not to discharge his responsibility to our young people.

HON. MR. MAIR: I think I'll mark the member down as doubtful.

It seems quite a while ago that the question was raised, but I'd like to go back to the beginning of the remarks of the member for Burnaby-Edmonds. The first remark she made, according to my, notes, is that I was very badly briefed and didn't have full briefing from the previous minister, and things of that nature. I'd like to make it very clear that if I was not well briefed when I came into this ministry, that was my fault and no one else's. I have the greatest admiration for the previous minister, both as Health minister and in his present portfolio. Everywhere I go, except in this chamber, I hear words of commendation for him. whether in the hospitals or whether among the doctors....

MS. BROWN: Now you're going too far — nobody's going to believe that.

HON. MR. MAIR: ...or the RNABC, or wherever it may be. It may very well be that some members of this House do not agree with what he did in some areas, but I think that the general and unbiased view is that that minister was a very good Health minister who piloted this ministry during some times that were very difficult in terms of financial constraints.

Regardless of that, I want to make it very clear that I was left this fullest possible briefing material. I had an open door into his office to talk to him at any time I wanted, notwithstanding the fact that he was taking over a new and very difficult portfolio himself.

I certainly also had a very cooperative and helpful staff who did everything they could to brief me, not only in terms of material but also in terms of just sitting down and talking over with me the difficulties that I was going to face in a ministry that was very new to me. I did spend a considerable amount of time with the Alcohol and Drug Commission and various members of it, particularly the staff.

One of the points I think must be made is that the things

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that the member for Burnaby-Edmonds raises.... She's a master at raising these questions in a rather inflammatory way, and raising the same, one over and over again; nevertheless, she does make some very good points. That's one of the reasons that we are evaluating the whole program of the Alcohol and Drug Commission. That's why I've got an experienced person like Dr. Bonham in the position that he's in, in order to evaluate it, see where the money should go, see where the effort should go. Let's start from scratch without any preconceived notions, and let's accept the fact that there are a number of difficulties that we're probably not addressing well, and some problems we may even be addressing — if I can use the word — overwell. We may be going too much into some areas that don't require the effort, and leaving others very short.

I am very much aware of teenage drinking, and even pre-teenage drinking, and the problems that that raises. I can remember being laughed at when I was Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs when I banned the "Wonder Wine" from the shelves of British Columbia. People seemed to think it was of no consequence that kids could, on their own, very easily make wine, albeit something less than the type of wine that the first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) and I would like to drink when we go to the Vancouver Club from time to time. The thought that people could make wine like that, and kids could make it. seemed to pass right over the tops of people's heads, and they thought I was being some kind of a prude because I wanted to prevent that.

Before I answer some of the questions directly, point by point, let me just remind the member for Burnaby-Edmonds and the members opposite that it is they who lowered the drinking age from 21 to 19 years.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MAIR: Oh! I'm sorry. I forgot it wasn't you. It was just a guy who looks like you, except he has hair.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MAIR: I'm going to get stabbed in the rear by the Minister of Agriculture (Hon. Mr. Hewitt) for remarks like that.

I would remind the members opposite that it was they who dropped the drinking age from 21 to 19 years. That in itself doesn't sound like too big a deal — what's two years? But when the drinking age was 21 those who were getting away with it — getting into the beer parlours, cocktail lounges and neighbourhood pubs under-age — were the youngsters of 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20, just as lots of us did when the drinking age was 21 and we were much younger. As you lower the legal age you depress the age of the people who can in fact get into these places through false pretences. I'm not suggesting you're going to get 13-year-olds in, but you lower the age where alcohol becomes an accepted thing to do.

I'm not laying the blame for teenage drinking on the NDP or anybody else. I'm simply saying that when we're looking for some of the causes for acceptance of alcohol by teenagers and pre-teeners, you've got to remember that the age at which a person can drink has been lowered and the age of acceptance of alcohol has been lowered as well. This is something I think the member for Burnaby-Edmonds might consider when she's being critical — as very critical she was — of us on this side of the House.

There are a number of facilities which we have going into place. I have a list of them here, and I'm going to go into them. There are a number that we have coming on stream in due course. I don't think that you can measure your progress in areas such as the member opposite raised for the last hour and a half or so in terms of statistics — beds and that sort of thing. I don't think that is the only criterion, by any means, by which you make these judgments. I think that the thing we have to have more of and more quality in is programs, and programs supporting education. Again getting back to what I said a moment ago, this is one of the areas I have of dissatisfaction with the approach the Ministry of Health has taken — one of the areas of dissatisfaction I had when taking over the ministry and one of the areas of dissatisfaction that's given rise to Dr. Bonham's being given the mandate to come back to me without any preconceived notions with a report by the end of July so that we can start again from square one — a zero base, if you wish — and start all over again and see where the problems are, how we should best address them and what vehicle we should do it with.

We have got a number of facilities going up around the province. We have mentioned the ten beds at Vancouver General Hospital. In addition to that, there are 30 beds going in at Royal Columbian Hospital, which admittedly will include some adults, but will be to a large extent for youngsters. That will be available in the fall. I might say we're also expecting a proposal from Kelowna almost immediately. We've had meetings going on in Victoria in the hope that we will have some proposal from there as well in terms of assisting adolescents. The Maples is not ten beds at all; it's 26 beds in the secure unit. That will be opening in 1982. Sure it's overdue; it was overdue in 1975 and 1965. But the fact of the matter is that we're now doing that. In addition, as I said, we have the ten beds at VGH, and we're looking at a program which will be going into effect in the near future, I hope, of five two-bed intensive-care units for adolescents, which will actually go around the province; they'll be mobile.

I think this is something that gives you an indication of where our thinking is and the fact that we are trying to address ourselves to the problems that the member for Burnaby Edmonds has raised. We have planning for interim facilities in Vancouver until The Maples can be built. All of these things, I think, indicate what I say: we are concerned about the problem. I'm very concerned about it. I happen to agree with the member for Burnaby-Edmonds, at least to this extent: we have long underrated the effect of alcohol abuse in our society — we talked about this yesterday — and we have perhaps overrated the effects of other chemical abuses.

We talked yesterday for a while about this, but all of us in this chamber, even those of us who are fairly young — not including me, but including some — can cast their minds back to the time when everything about alcoholism was funny. Our radio programs, television programs, all of our jokes and after-dinner speakers had it as something funny. It was all something we laughed away. We don't laugh about it anymore, and I can assure you the Ministry of Health isn't laughing about it anymore. It's something we take very, very seriously indeed.

The member for Burnaby-Edmonds talked about particular areas where we're short of psychiatrists. Yes, we are. We're short in Prince George, but we now have three going in there, supported by the ministry, and they will look after the needs of both adults and adolescents.

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I must say that when I talk about programs I don't want to pass that off as a word that will cover up all the problems that the member has raised, because I think there are some specific programs which we can look at and are looking at. One in particular, which I had a look at about three or four weeks ago when the House broke for a week, is in St. Paul, Minnesota. They have similar programs, I understand. In a number of states in the United States — in Massachusetts and some others that I forget right now — where, as the member says, they're going into the schools. But they're doing it in a unique way. I want to find out just how costly it is and how effective it is for the cost. What they're doing down there, Madam Member — and I think you might be interested in this — is that instead of going into the school and then immediately identifying everybody who sees them as having the particular problem for which the counsellor is noted.... Instead of identifying the student as being sexually active, having a drinking problem, drugs, or whatever it is, the counsellors go in as a team. They go in as a team which will deal with all problems of youth, not only confined to just alcohol, drugs, unwanted pregnancies or things of that nature, but also problems juveniles have in the marketplace or in looking at their future occupations and so on. In other words, they go in as a team not identified with any particular problem but able to handle all of them. I looked at it from the point of view of reducing unwanted pregnancies. In that particular area St. Paul has had an absolutely remarkable record. They've reduced them something in excess of 50 percent. I believe it's even more than that, and apparently the same elsewhere.

I don't want to suggest to you that that is necessarily the thing that we're going to do here or that we're going to ape it or copy somewhere else. What I am saying is that there are a number of other jurisdictions around North America and the world that are addressing themselves to the very same problems we're addressing ourselves to here. It may be that we're doing it late, but you know things have changed very, very quickly in the last few years in North America and around the world. We talked about this yesterday. The big front-page problems are now going onto the back page, and things that we always thought were kind of funny, like alcohol, are getting on the front pages. I do want you to know that we are very, very concerned about it, and we're taking steps not only to investigate programs but to put pilot projects into place.

Speaking of pilot projects, Mr. Chairman, through you to the member for Burnaby-Edmonds (Ms. Brown) and the members opposite, the program that she spoke of at Stride Community School was one of the pilot project. It was an experimental project. The reason that it shut down in June is that the regular employee working there resigned. This is the word I have and, once again, I can only go on the information that I receive. I'm instructed that this is what happened. I'm also instructed that we have two similar pilot projects going on at this time in New Westminster and Abbotsford. The object is to try to develop an effective treatment model for young people in response to the very serious problems that they have, particularly the ones that the member canvassed for some time.

The object of the exercise, again, in keeping with but not necessarily part of Dr. Bonham's exercise, is to analyze the result of these projects over the next few months and then determine priorities and try to determine whether or not this is the type of service that best meets the needs that the member has brought to my attention. I'm not suggesting that if this project does not meet the needs we'll abandon the problem; I'm just saying that there are many ways of approaching it. This seems to be a pretty intelligent one; it seems to be working well. We're going to examine it, and if it is appropriate — either as is or with amendment — then that's precisely how we're lacing to handle it.

Now, Madam Member, I hope you'll forgive me if I haven't touched to some degree all the things that you talked about, because you canvassed the subject very thoroughly. I'm not going to react to the suggestion that I have been particularly hard on the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs. McCarthy), other than to say that those who know her would be very surprised that anybody in this room, much less anybody as the Minister of Health, could push her around or get her to take some position that she didn't wish to. I can assure you that we have worked very long, hard and well on a number of problems that come into her ministry, mine, Education and the Attorney-General.

One of them, of course — and this indicates the futility of some of the things we do but the necessity to deal with that futility anyway — is Davie Street, This is just one example of the type of thing that you've been talking about, and I think you could have made your speech today about Davie Street as well as about the subject matter you did take, because it's just part and parcel of the same overall problem. It's something that you address yourself to, and you try to bring to it all the resources that you have at your disposal. To suggest that there is a lack of motivation, I think, is unfair. Perhaps we don't take the approach you would take; perhaps if you were on this side of the House — God forbid — and we were on the other side, we'd be criticizing you for the approach you were taking, and that's the way it ought to be. But I do want you to know that there is no lack of motivation on the part of any ministry in this government or the government as a whole to try to come to grips with these very, very serious and ugly problems.

I've taken it upon myself in the last while — and so have the Minister of Human Resources, the Attorney-General (Hon. Mr. Williams) and the Minister of Education (Hon. Mr. Smith) — to travel up and down Davie Street to try to see the problems that exist there. Quite frankly, Madam Member, if you had described those problems to me in this House in your very lucid way and had done it in such a manner that anybody listening would have thought you were exaggerating. you couldn't have come within 10 percent of what really is happening on Davie Street. It's an absolutely appalling problem.

I'm saying to you, Madam Member, please don't come here and say, because the matter hasn't been solved, that there aren't people over here who wish to the devil it was solved; they're doing everything they can to solve it. It's a great frustration: it's one where, as I think we talked about yesterday, you have to be prepared to experiment, be prepared to make mistakes, be prepared to take the wrong approach, because God knows no approach is working now and any approach that you take can't be any worse than what's been happening.

I must say again that this is not part of the Ottawa-bashing we have been talking about in the press lately, although it is hard to imagine any sympathy for them under any circumstances. Here we have a federal government that simply will not address itself to prostitution at all. We have no way of

[ Page 3352 ]

going down and at least getting some of the people off the street or doing something to try to address it in a very practical way because the policemen's hands are tied.

Interjection.

HON. MR. MAIR: I am not suggesting that is the answer, Madam Member. All I am suggesting is that there are a number of ways we can approach this to help make it not so attractive to go down to Davie Street, which seems to be the length and breadth of it now — from Granville Street right down to English Bay. This is the source of much of our trouble. The police are hamstrung. Many of the people who work for my ministry and the Ministry of Human Resources are hamstrung too. But I want you to know that however serious that situation is — God knows nobody could describe it as serious as it really is — this side of the House is very, very concerned indeed and is sparing no effort to try to bring some kind of sensible solutions to bear upon it.

I hope, Madam Member, that in those few remarks I have addressed most of the things you talked about. If I didn't I'm sure you'll remind me of my shortcomings.

MR. COCKE: We had a very enjoyable time here in the House in the last 20 or so minutes. We saw one thing. We saw history being rewritten. If that minister is as reliable with the remainder of the information he gave us as he was when he said it was the NDP who brought the drinking age down to 19, then he is totally unreliable in every count.

I happened to be in this Legislature between the years of 1969 and 1972. I happened to be in the opposition at that time when Leslie Peterson, the then Attorney-General, working on behalf of the now Premier's father, W.A.C. Bennett, brought in that change in the age of majority. They changed it to 19. Then when the rest of Canada brought it down to 18 while we were government, we decided not to by virtue of the very arguments the minister raised here today.

You talk about their Ottawa-bashing; I get tired of listening to NDP-bashing. Every time this government has an opportunity, they stand up in the House — whether it is true, false, or whatever — and suggest that it is the old government that did it.

HON. MR. MAIR: Mr. Chairman, surely before the member opposite gets so exercised, he would give me an opportunity to apologize if I was wrong. If I was wrong, and evidently I am, I apologize. My understanding was it was during your years. It doesn't matter — whatever I said holds true for whatever government brought it down. It was a mistake. To the extent that I may have offended you, Mr. Member, I'm sorry. However, I would think that common manners, would have just given me an opportunity to apologize before you got so exercised. However, the apology stands.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, common manners would indicate to me that the minister should have found out first who actually did it. As a senior public person in this province, he made a charge which goes in Hansard, which could go into the press, etc., and I was exercised. That's the end of the conversation as far as I'm concerned.

I would ask the minister to turn to the deputy minister's vote, under his ministry. There he will find an amount of $1,852,941. That's called "health promotion," or something along that line. I'm asking the minister why he buried that amount.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: I'm looking at the deputy minister's vote 115, as I recall from memory. I don't have my estimates in front of me. It says $1,852,941; it's one of the votes near the end of the line.

The reason I raise this subject is that in my hand I have the "Health Promotion Program Proposed Budget Allocation 1980-81," as recommended by Treasury Board staff to Treasury Board. Here you have a clear outline of promotion and information, nutrition and health education, production centre on occupational health. You'll find all these items under individual votes or under votes in their appropriate places, except promotion and information. Under promotion and information you've lumped two together and buried them under administration. We find in the proposal from the Treasury Board staff an amount of $1,808,854, which is the sum of $1,178,556 plus $630,328. But you see, Mr. Chairman, what we're talking about here is a very highly financed, elaborate video studio and promotion department. The video studio, the production centre alone.... My understanding is that the video studio is somewhere in the $1 million to $2 million bracket in terms of its capital cost. Its financing alone this year — which we will not find in the estimates; that is in a separate amount — is $630,328.

All I ask the minister is: why are you burying it and what have you got to hide in terms of this production centre? I'm not making the charge that that production centre is doing anything other than what it should be doing. I'm saying it's highly financed for the Ministry of Health, because it doesn't even produce the alcohol and drug ads. Just before I get any further I'd like the minister to answer that question, if he will.

HON. MR. MAIR: That particular item, as I understand it, is not buried. It's put where it is because it doesn't only reflect services to the Ministry of Health but to all ministries of government. I don't think that there has been, as yet, a chargeback to other ministries for services that have been rendered to them, because I don't think substantial services have. But the theory is, and the practice will be, that this will be — in addition to money spent in the budget — an income-gathering department as well. So it's in there, to the best of my understanding, for that reason. It's not something that's strictly a Health ministry exercise; it's something for the entire government.

MR. COCKE: Which makes it even more important that that $630,000 for the production centre should have been separated. Instead of that it was buried with the remainder of health promotion. I see no suggestion of the estimated revenues. I would hope there are going to be better answers than that in the future. If the Ministry of Health is selling its services, the last place I would expect to see the funds that are allocated for that service is under the deputy minister's vote, the minister's office — or the administration office, if that is better — and put together with health promotion. That is obviously what has happened. The figures are not identical but no figure that little treasury presents to big treasury is ever identical. I think everyone who has been around government long enough to open one eye knows that.

The First Minister looks quizzical. I'll bet you $50 there hasn't been one suggestion from little treasury to big treasury

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that has gone through without a good deal of argument. In any event, I suggest that this is the kind of thing that makes us suspicious of the way this government behaves. We are concerned that the Ministry of Health doesn't put right there in its vote the amount that goes to keeping that production up. Instead it is put under health promotion generally, and then the Minister of Health says: "But we are going to sell our services," or "We may," or "We something." In any event, it's rather a vague answer.

For the remaining few minutes, I would like to deal with an area of grave concern to all of us. That is the whole question of the emergency health services. The emergency health services in this province, as I said at the outset of this estimate, are understaffed, under-housed and have a morale problem, as do most government departments today. They are understaffed by at least 200 full-time ambulance attendants. I know of cases last night, which I alluded to in a question today about a problem with the emergency services in Vancouver, of ambulance people working 14 hours without a break. There is a case there where one becomes a danger oneself to the service.

To add insult to injury, Mr. Chairman, they are badly housed. I have taken it upon myself in the last short while to develop a file on the housing locations of the emergency health service. It's hard to know where to start. I can take you through Armstrong, Ashcroft, Barriere, Chase, Kamloops — Kamloops dispatch, Kamloops 415 on 12th Street — Merritt.... I'm going to go through and describe some of these places. Penticton, Princeton, Revelstoke, Summerland — that's just one section in that file.

MR. KING: What about Revelstoke?

MR. COCKE: You're not responsible, Mr. Minister-in-Waiting. It won't be a very long wait, Bill. You know it and I know it.

HON. MR. BENNETT: It will be a real long wait.

MR. COCKE: We go into the Kootenays: Trail, Rossland, Grand Forks, Montrose, Castlegar, etc. Anyway, I'm going to go into more detail on those. What I'd like to do now is take you down to Vancouver and describe some of the facilities that we are using to house our ambulance people. I'll do it by more than just word pictures. I'll do it by real pictures which I have of these facilities. Let me give you an idea. The main dispatch centre in Vancouver is at 483 West 16th Avenue in Vancouver. It houses as many as six people at night. What does it have? To begin with, it has no room for expansion. It has no locker or locker room; it has no shower — that is significant.... It has no fire escape. After the last fire, a wooden ladder was supplied. There's only one washroom for male and female staff, and no ventilation. That's their main Vancouver centre. I've got a couple of pictures here. There's no point in showing them to the House, but anybody who is interested can come and have a look at them.

Let's just deal with the shower aspect. They are charged with the responsibility of picking up people with illnesses. Some of those illnesses are serious. Some of those illnesses are communicable. Sometimes they get covered in blood from car accidents, fights or stabbings, such as last night. I think it's absolutely shocking that what used to house two ambulance people at night, because of the increased service required, now houses six in that kind of shocking situation. There's no room for expansion — no locker, no nothing. That's not all.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, if this is funny to the member for Central Fraser Valley (Mr. Ritchie), why doesn't he go back and put those phony records of his to work again on some other press release about some other member of this House who was sick just the same as he was?

I'll take you to 16th Avenue and tell you who is there. Seven days a week there is a paramedic on duty at all times. There are three full-time ambulance workers and from Monday to Friday another ambulance worker, and five vehicles with as many as ten crew members working out of one room. Now you heard me describe the place. If you want to take a look at the picture there, it's really shocking — I've been there — and this is the headquarters for Vancouver.

Mr. Chairman, New Westminster is now building a new place. I'm not blaming the minister entirely, but I'm saying that the minister better get his handle on the minister in charge of the B.C. Buildings Corporation, because either they won't cough up the money or this minister is withholding money from paying rent at BCBC.

In any event, it's a shocking situation. For four years in New Westminster they've been housed in the basement of one of the ambulance attendants — no covered parking, no showers, no storage room, no office. That was a beauty, that one. Because they were in the basement and because the sewers run by at a level that was too high for sewers from that house going down into the normal sewer outlet, they had to put their toilet up on the wall and they had a box underneath it. That's the way we treat our ambulance people — their toilet was halfway up the wall. They're still there, incidentally, but hopefully they're going to move it in the not-too-distant future.

Not so with Cordova Street: there we have three ambulance attendants. We've got lane access only, no covered parking, only one washroom, and there is a female crew member down there. This station is a 12x40 Atco trailer on a gravel lot. There is barely enough room for one crew, but there are three working from there. One bedroom in this trailer was converted to a storage and locker room, but with three vehicles working from there, supplies still had to be put in kitchen cupboards,

This emergency service, Mr. Chairman, was written up in Reader's Digest. Our paramedics service, something that we should be proud of in British Columbia, is a service that's being neglected by this government — a service that better, act a little help and better get it fast.

I won't do the Surrey one at the moment. I would like to do the Richmond one. Seven days a week they have service there with three crews. They haven't got enough electrical outlets to plug in their vehicles. They have no kitchen, no showers. Station quarters flood due to water running off the vehicles. The station is located in a warehouse complex that could be adequate with some renovations, but for the two full-time crews it is totally inadequate. I have pictures of that as well.

I am sure the member for Delta (Mr. Davidson) is worried about Ladner. There are no outlets, no ground-level

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access to vehicles; stations are located in an old house in a residential area. They have full-time staff on. It's the same right across the province.

I understand that at Langley they moved them down to the Westward Ho, a motel — very interesting. At White Rock they have no covered parking and they have a crew working out of a house there all the time — totally inadequate. The second one in New Westminster. at the Royal Columbian Hospital, is up on the third floor of the RCH. No covered parking, not enough outlets for vehicles. The station is ridiculous. It is located on the second floor of the old nurses' residence in the Royal Columbian, which is actually the third floor above the ground. The crew has to take an elevator to the ground, then walk across the lobby and out the back door, a flight of stairs and then approximately 100 feet to the vehicle, which has to be kept locked. This means an approximate response time to the vehicle of five minutes. What you want is a response time to the patient of five minutes or less.

All through the province you have exactly the same problem. Just to give you a couple of examples, up around Ashcroft there is a lack of space, no heat, no electrical outlets, one car, no water, located in a community fireball, many hazardous items stored in the station. building maintenance poor, roof leaks, no crew facilities at all. That's in the Ashcroft area. Up in Chase they have no station, it's manned 24 hours full-time, and up there they have intense frost and zero temperatures. There's intense buildup of heat during the summer, but the car is kept on duty at one member's residence and he supplies power for the vehicle. The car is located at the worker's residence. Kamloops is inadequate; Merritt is inadequate.

We can go over all these records ad nauseam, but what I'm saying is that that emergency service program was set up in mid 1974, and as such had very little time under our government, but it really took off. The first thing we knew, the new government came in, treated it callously, did nothing to really improve the housing, which incidentally had to be put together out of nothing. There was nothing there to begin with. You start from scratch. I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that this government has had over four years to put together at least basically decent housing.

Interjection.

MR. COCKE: If I were that member from Cranbrook up in the Kootenays, I would sure be up here fighting for emergency services in my area. You never hear a peep from those backbenchers. The only time you ever peep is when you're sitting in your chairs harping away. There's been not one word from those backbenchers on this minister's estimates. It's an absolute scandal. For four days we've been dealing with this priority estimate, the salary of the Minister of Health, and we haven't heard one word of either commendation, criticism or advice from the.... The member for Vancouver South (Mr. Hyndman) got up and kicked the blazes out of one of us and he did it in a way that made a fool of himself. He didn't know what he was talking about. There has not been one word to the minister from that bunch. So, Mr. Chairman, I suggest that they go home tonight and get down on their knees and ask for forgiveness for not doing their job in this House for their constituency.

Interjections.

MR. COCKE: Mr. Chairman, the member who said, "We do our job," was the same member who sent a note to his constituents telling them that his job was not to embarrass a minister. Now we know where it's at. Don't embarrass the minister by asking him any questions, but please don't go home and advise your constituents that you've done anything on their behalf down here in Victoria.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, we are on vote 114.

MR. COCKE: On vote 114, Mr. Chairman, they have not done their jobs. They have proven conclusively that the Social Credit Party has absolutely no priority for health care whatsoever. For four days we've waited and for four days they've let their constituents down. Let the world know about it. When we start talking about the unfortunate situation that the emergency services in this province are facing, then we hear sniping from that member for Kootenay (Mr. Segarty) and from the member for North Peace River (Mr. Brummet), who should darned well be ashamed of themselves. They should be doing their work, instead of sitting there doing their sniping at the heels of people who are properly criticizing a government that's doing a rotten job of providing health services in this province.

The House resumed; Mr. Davidson in the chair.

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

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

Hon. Mr. Williams moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 5:58 p.m.