[ Page 4813 ]

CONTENTS

Routine Proceedings

Committee of Supply: Ministry of Universities, Science and Communications estimates. (Hon. Mr. McGeer)

On vote 206: ministers office –– 4814

Mrs. Wallace

Mr. Ritchie

Mr. Nicolson

Mr. Lauk

On the amendment to vote 206 –– 4816

Mr. Lauk

Division on the amendment

On vote 207: ministry administration –– 4817

Mr. Lauk

On the amendment to vote 207 –– 4817

Division on the amendment

On vote 208: universities –– 4818

Mr. Davis

Ms. Brown

On vote 211: telecommunications services branch –– 4822

Mr. Lauk

On the amendment to vote 211 –– 4822

Mr. Cocke

Mr. Lea

Division on the amendment

On vote 212: communications system development and regulation branch –– 4823

Mr. Lauk

On the amendment to vote 212 –– 4823

Mr. Lauk

Division on the amendment

On vote 213: building occupancy charges –– 4824

Mr. Lauk

On the amendment to vote 213 –– 4824

Mr. King

Mr. Lea

Mr. Barber

Division on the amendment

On vote 214: computer and consulting charges –– 4827

Mr. Lauk

On the amendment to vote 214 –– 4828

Mr. Nicolson

Mr. Lauk

Division on the amendment

Ministerial Statement

Fire damage to Finance documents. Hon. Mr. Curtis –– 4829

Mr. King –– 4829

FRIDAY, MARCH 27, 1981

The House met at 10 a.m.

Prayers.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, there are some visitors in the gallery this morning: Charlene Gardiner from Vancouver; Luba Lisun, the wife of NDP caucus researcher John McInnis; and a young lady from Vancouver by the name of Connie Barnes — the middle daughter of this hon. member, one of three, she is currently in the profession of fashion modelling.

Before I take my seat I want to say that although this young lady is my daughter, I had some difficulty last night at His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor's state dinner in attempting to introduce her to my colleagues, friends and various guests of His Honour because, as you will see when I have her stand, a man of my years has a great deal of difficulty introducing someone like her without being accused of using her as a cover — although in fact she may be one of his secret admirers. But I can assure you that she is my real daughter. Connie Barnes, would you stand up so that we can take a look.

HON. MRS. McCARTHY: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the House to welcome a friend who is in our gallery today. Jack Brauckmann has done a great deal of work with the Kinsmen Rehabilitation Foundation of British Columbia and has been associated with the Whitecaps. I would ask the House to welcome him.

MR. BARNES: I rise under standing order 35 to request leave to move adjournment of the House to discuss a definite matter of urgent public importance. This concerns the Sweeney Cooperage business.

Mr. Speaker, I should point out that I did extend the honour of seconding my motion, if I get that far, to the Minister of Human Resources (Hon. Mrs, McCarthy), but she was unable to accommodate me at the time. The first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) will second the motion.

Yesterday afternoon I put a question to the Minister of Environment (Hon. Mr. Rogers), who is responsible for B.C. Place. I asked whether he was prepared to order a return to negotiations with Frank Sweeney of Sweeney Cooperage Ltd. The B.C. Place corporation is attempting to deprive Sweeney Cooperage, a family business, of its legally binding lease on the site of its barrel factory in the False Creek area of Vancouver. They are trying to deprive Frank Sweeney of his century-old business. Yesterday the minister would not answer the question. He cited the doctrine of sub judice. He said the matter was before the courts and that he would not make any comment. At the time, as the minister well knows, Sweeney Cooperage had appealed a lower court decision giving the B.C. Place corporation extraordinary and sweeping authority to smash and tear down Frank Sweeney's business. This is a business which has been on the same site for more than 60 years.

While the minister was refusing to answer questions in this House, his agents entered the premises of Sweeney Cooperage and began tearing down the property. They walked in and proceeded to begin demolition.

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Environment was fully aware that an appeal was in progress. He said so yesterday, and I quote from the Blues: "The subject is under appeal before the courts; therefore it is one I do not wish to comment on." There is no question that the minister knew of the appeal. Mr. Sweeney has been denied his day in court, government agents entered his property without regard to due process of law, and the Minister of Environment has violated Frank Sweeney's fundamental right to a fair hearing.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I think that we have the gist of the matter. It appears to the Chair as though we are beginning to debate the matter before leave has been granted. If the hon. member would please send the message to the Chair, we will determine if it is in order.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Speaker, would you indulge me while I read the final half page?

Interjections.

MR. BARNES: I'll read the motion. It's seconded by the first member for Vancouver Centre. It states: "Moved that the assembly adjourn to debate such measures as may be required to prevent the abuse of governmental authority through harassment and destruction of the business premises of Sweeney Cooperage Ltd. of Vancouver, pending final disposition of this matter by the court."

MR. BARRETT: It's big government seizing little peoples property. Shame on them.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. I ask the Leader of the Opposition not to disrupt the House, please.

Interjections.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please, hon. members, the first responsibility of the Chair is to determine whether or not the matter is in order. Urgency is a primary consideration. I will listen to the member immediately following the decision.

MR. LAUK: It's before the decision is made that I wanted to make a submission to Your Honour.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. On what basis does the member seek the floor?

MR. LAUK: To make a submission on the basis of that order, because a certain statement made by the minister....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. That sounds like it should be part of the debate, if the motion is in order. One must determine first of all whether....

MR. LAUK: I'll debate it when you find it in order, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The matter fails under the request to have the business of the House adjourned, in that an opportunity will shortly come for the hon. member to discuss this matter during estimates. The second reason it fails is that in the matter being discussed the facts are in dispute. On those two bases I find the motion out of order.

[ Page 4814 ]

MR. BARNES: On a point of order, I would like you to repeat, if you would, your reasons for suggesting that this is not urgent. I'm concerned that the facility that we're talking about may be gone by the time the estimates come up. Could you indicate whether or not there is any reason to be concerned? I appreciate your ruling and I accept it, as long as the facility remains until the court has dealt with this matter.

MR. BARRETT: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, are you ruling that the motion is out of order?

MR. SPEAKER: That's the ruling.

MR. BARRETT: I challenge your ruling.

Interjections.

MR. BARRETT: Who's going to fight for the little people of this province? Not you — trampling over their rights, taking away their property. Who's next? You of all people! What you said before the election and what you're doing now — seizing people's property.... There isn't anybody safe in this province from this government. Lord knows where you'll stop — on anybody's doorstep. Big government, big power....

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please. Hon. members, I have done a quick review of the provisions under standing orders. This is an opinion of the Chair and not subject to appeal. The member challenges the ruling. The question is: shall the ruling of the Chair be sustained?

Mr. Speaker's ruling sustained on the following division:

YEAS — 28

NAYS — 20

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

Orders of the Day

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

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF
UNIVERSITIES, SCIENCE
AND COMMUNICATIONS

(continued)

On vote 206: minister's office, $147,400.

MRS. WALLACE: In the last hours when we were debating this estimate we listened to some philosophical remarks on a very high plane. My remarks this morning are quite different. I haven't had too much luck previously when I have raised these things with the minister. I thought perhaps I should bring my rabbit's foot and my four-leaf clover and keep my fingers crossed when I ask these things this morning. Anyway, I'm going to proceed with a couple of points I had asked the minister about before and which I'm still very concerned about. They relate to very practical types of research, relative to some of our mainstay industries in this province.

One, of course, is agriculture. Last year the minister advised me that the Science Council didn't discriminate against agriculture, but neither did it give it any money. It's certainly true that the funds available for agriculture have in the past been very limited. I have a lot of concern for the future of agriculture if more research isn't undertaken, because farmers in this province are facing some pretty tough situations relative to waste disposal, the use of chemicals and the high cost of energy. Unless we as government and this minister as the minister responsible for research in this province get into some very positive research that will help resolve these kinds of problems, the agricultural community is going to be in a worse situation than at present.

The other item I want to raise again with this minister and I have raised both these items before — is the matter facing the forest industry relative to the use of wood preservatives. The export of wood is a billion-dollar industry in this province, and that industry would be wiped out if preservatives were not used to keep that wood from being destroyed when it stands in shipment. There is more and more evidence stacking up that indicates there are more and more problems with the use of chlorophenols or chlorophenates that are being used to treat wood. It's my understanding that 75 percent of the research that's being done to look for substitutes is being done by the industry. Very little is being undertaken by government. Something like one four-hundredth of 1 percent of the total value of that export market is actually going into research to look for an alternative. Forintek has been doing a lot of work in this, but it's all been laboratory testing; there is no field testing underway.

I would urge this minister to stand up and assure the House that he will take a long, hard look at making funds available to ensure that there is provision for field testing of alternatives. Kiln drying is very expensive, but some of the other alternatives that have been isolated are not so expensive. If we had field testing in place so we knew they would work, then we would be in a much more secure position if in fact it comes to light — as is becoming more and more evident — that the use of PCP or tetrachlorophenate is harmful to the worker. If we find liver problems down the road because of the use of hydrocarbons, if we find that more and more PCP is getting into our streams, lakes and salt water and if we find this is then affecting our fish and shellfish, I suggest that you're not just looking at the forest industry but at many other industries and, in fact, the welfare of the people

[ Page 4815 ]

of this province. If you come up with some alternative means of protecting that export.... There are two questions — one for Agriculture and one for Forests, Mr. Minister. I've asked you before. We haven't got much in there. I'm asking you this year to really put some dollars into research for the forest industry and for agriculture.

HON. MR. MCGEER: I'd like to deal with both of these questions as well as the subject raised by the member for Central Fraser Valley (Mr. Ritchie) yesterday with respect to agriculture. First, however, let me explain the way we have established in our province the mechanisms of support for science in general, and for these two subjects in particular. For years both the provincial and the federal governments have supported agriculture and forestry research in British Columbia and Canada, as a priority. There are very generous amounts in our budget, in both the Agriculture ministry and the Forests ministry, for research in this budget year. Within the government we've established an organization called the internal research advisory committee — chaired by my deputy, Dr. Bob Stewart — to be certain that the projects that are supported by line departments of the government are equivalent to international-calibre research in their standards. Those grants are awarded both to industry and to universities. So while we accept projects through our Science Council in the forestry and agricultural fields, these ministries themselves make generous and direct grants so that there is an opportunity — I realize Forests estimates have passed — to discuss the details of agriculture research support when those estimates come up. Those funds that we have available go directly to the Science Council for support of research in the general project areas.

We do have the organization Forintek, which was formerly the federal government forest research laboratory. When the federal government withdrew their support, we came in at the provincial level with $1.5 million per year, coming directly from our government, to pick up what the federal government had dropped. That operation, Forintek, is at the same time supposed to be supported by grants from our forest companies.

I see nothing wrong with our forest giants in British Columbia supporting forestry research in a very generous way. After all, they're profiting from the wood resource. Therefore turning some of those profits back into increased technology for their own good and for the good of the province in the future is something that really should take place and, in my view, at a much higher level than has been characteristic of the past. If you take the most rapidly growing and advanced industries in the world today, they will commit more than 10 percent of their gross sales to research. If you get slower growing industries — perhaps the chemical industry — then 3 to 5 percent becomes the rule of thumb. Industries that contribute 1 percent or less of their gross sales to research and development would have to be categorized, by their own definition, as low-technology industries. If the forest industry is unprepared to commit more than 1 percent of its gross sales to research — there are some forest giants in British Columbia that commit practically nothing to research — then by their own definition they are saying that they are low-technology, slow-growth industries. Unfortunately this is the circumstance. We do have one company, MacMillan Bloedel, that puts a reasonable amount of their gross sales into research and development, but I would say that the level of support from all the others is unsatisfactory.

The problem is that when you have industry itself falling down, then, of course, they expect government to do it for them. They say: "Well, we're paying for all of that in our taxes; let somebody else do it." Unfortunately there isn't the same mission-oriented emphasis given to research done in the non-industrial sector. Therefore the kind of practical problem that you referred to, the necessary field testing, does not have the same urgency and impetus as it does if a commercial firm undertakes it. So I really think that we need to put a little more pressure on the forest firms themselves and say: "That's an obligation of your firm because you're in this province and, in a sense, you're renting our crops in order to further your own ends. Don't expect government to do your research job for you." We have provided, through our discovery parks, attractive areas for them to undertake such activities. Specific types of projects, I agree with you, are important priority areas. But what we have done is to set up what we believe is a responsible and worthwhile system for these things to happen. We can only hope that people who are out there, who have to work as well as we do to make it effective, will undertake their responsibilities too.

The member for Fraser Valley West discussed the desirability....

AN HON. MEMBER: Central Fraser Valley.

HON. MR. McGEER: We make so many new seats in the House that people with barnacles on them, like myself, can't ever get it straight.

MR. KEMPF: It doesn't matter. The whole Fraser Valley is Socred!

HON. MR. McGEER: We should have more seats in that wonderful area of British Columbia, the breadbasket, where there are people of good common sense politically.

The member raised a subject which has been one of some disappointment for many years, namely the physical and psychological distance that seems to separate our faculty of agriculture at the University of British Columbia from the working farmers of the province, and the hope that perhaps this bridge might be built if only some of the educational facilities were to exist in the agricultural breadbasket, where people are actually getting their hands dirty making the farms work and therefore would have the opportunity to benefit from whatever theoretical knowledge existed in the agricultural academic community.

I want to heartily support the remarks of the member. It seems to me we can only gain by having more of our academic activities taken into the field. It is not prime agricultural land around the University of British Columbia campus. Those campus lands are far too valuable for other purposes to be committed to agricultural activities. It seems to me that the field activities of the faculty of agriculture should properly be undertaken in the agricultural belts of British Columbia, and nowhere else. We are providing the mechanisms whereby communication can be brought about in the field to whatever institution acts as the mother lode of technological activity, because one can use closed-circuit television now to transmit courses directly into classrooms in the field: the practical laboratories, the testing laboratories. Many of the experimental crops undertaken should be in the real agricultural end of British Columbia, not in the rockpile on the University of British Columbia campus.

[ Page 4816 ]

So I heartily sympathize with the sentiments brought forward by the member, and I can only hope that the university too will see some of its responsibilities in that direction and make the appropriate moves, which I can assure you we in government will strongly support.

MR. RITCHIE: Mr. Chairman, I am extremely delighted to hear the response from our minister. In order to give him further encouragement, let me say, as an agriculturalist and having been in that field in British Columbia for over 20 years, that the agricultural industry has never failed to make a contribution to research. The only problem that I have seen with it over the years is that the money going into it was somehow lost to some extent, and we weren't seeing the full benefits over those years. I have personally been involved in a situation where we did get agreement from one large segment of the industry to have a levy based on sales, which was put forward to the university for research purposes, but again we didn't get the full benefits from it. I'm most anxious to see this taking place, for a number of reasons. One is that I believe that it would be very beneficial to our export markets; I think that it would also offer an opportunity for a two-way program with those countries where we know that we have some tremendous export potential.

Another area of real concern is something that comes very close to me, because we have a son who is most anxious to get into the veterinary field, but he found it very difficult to get placed in a university in order to study veterinary medicine. I believe that the goal of this government should be to develop a university — not necessarily in the Central Fraser Valley, but we will agree that it should be out in that general area — that will specialize in agriculture. I think it would be exciting to possibly consider forestry with it too; they go hand in hand. I can assure the minister that he would have my full support in encouraging the agricultural industry to make a commitment toward such research based on the benefits they derive.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, I would like briefly to give to the minister my impressions of the progress of the David Thompson University Centre in Nelson. I said a couple of years ago when it was set up that the divisions of responsibilities between Selkirk College and David Thompson University were too complicated; I see that they have been simplified and that there is more — well, you can even call it centralization, or better streamlining of responsibilities now being vested with the University of Victoria. The principal, Mr. Dick Williams, is doing a magnificent job in the community, and I would urge that the minister continue to give support. I see improvements taking place. We need not have gone this way, but we are going in the direction that we're going, and I would think that in the future the success of David Thompson lies more and more in turning the entire thing over to the University of Victoria. I would hope that someday in the future — in how many years I wouldn't venture to guess — it might become an autonomous university.

The moves that have been made in the past year have actually gone toward a more simplified and a more workable situation. That is the right direction; that's the direction I called for when DTUC was first set up. In fact, even when we were talking about different models for Notre Dame University, that was the kind of model that I always urged. So I would think that it is very important to the area. It is becoming more and more successful. Some of the programs are very exciting. The community has been brought in. We've seen the various courses in creating writing, the various equipment modifications. After our very emotional beginnings, we are behind this. We're living in the present. We're not fighting old battles. So I'm urging every level of support and that the minister give this his personal attention throughout the coming year.

MR. LAUK: We've had a nice little chat with the minister over the last day and a half. It turned into the royal society for scientific debate yesterday — science versus religion and so on. It's all been joyous. However, the minister does have some responsibilities that we in the opposition want to draw to his attention.

If you look at vote 206, the vote we're presently on, and at the increases that have occurred over last year, you begin to realize that this minister, who used to sit on this side of the House as a Liberal and argue for efficiency in government, who used to argue with governments of the day, who used to argue that the government was spending money that was not its own but belonged to the people.... Yet we see an increase from last year in the minister's office alone of $10,000 and an increase in travel budget of $7,800 for a minister who's about to retire. Where's he going? What's he going to do? There's an increase in his office expenses — it certainly can't be pencil sharpeners — of $1,500. There's a $9,282 increase in the minister's office alone. Without further ado, I move that vote 206 be reduced by $9,282.

On the amendment.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, there you go. It had to surface — fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the NDP. They don't want the ministers in this government to be effective. They don't want new industry in the province. They don't want success for B.C. What they want for B.C. is failure. Why? Because they feel that if the government does badly and the province does badly, then they'll do well politically. It's part of their conspiracy to undermine the effectiveness of this province. No, we've never had constructive proposals from that opposition — only destructive ones. That's why the opposition lost in 1933, 1937, 1941, 1945, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1969, 1975, and in 1979 — fourteen losses.

When did they win in B.C.? Once. Why did they win? Was it because of the NDP? Was it because they had a great leader? It was none of those things. I'll make it again, until it begins to sink in here and into the people of British Columbia. What is that message? The message is that the NDP is bad news. Yes, it was the Pied Piper of Oak Bay, that great socialist G. Scott Wallace, who put the NDP in office. He put them in office by getting for them an opportunity they could not have gotten for themselves. They'd never get a majority of the votes in B.C., because the people have more sense than to put you in office. What happened was that they got the split in the free enterprise vote. The Pied Piper of Oak Bay engineered that for them. As they used to say themselves: "If he didn't exist we'd have to invent him." No, sir, not positive policies to make B.C. better, but to invent a Pied Piper. That's what they hope for for the future. They want B.C. to do badly economically. They want to have a Pied Piper so they can get into office again and turn B.C., as they did before, into a socialist laboratory, a place where they could put the theories

[ Page 4817 ]

of the research group of the B.C. Federation of Labour into practice. If that isn't disaster, I don't know what is disaster.

Yes, they would like our salaries and office expenses reduced to one dollar. They'd like us to camp out there on the front lawn. They don't want us going around recruiting industry for British Columbia. That would be the last thing they would want. Why? Because the people of British Columbia might be successful. That's a terrible thing for the socialists. As Churchill used to say: "It's the creed of envy." Therefore, if the government does well and the people of British Columbia do well, where do the envious go? They go to the NDP, because it's the creed of envy. They're against success, progress and all of the great things that are coming to British Columbia as a result of our policies.

How do they reveal that? They don't reveal it by bringing forth a balanced, alternative budget. No, what they do is bring forth one destructive motion after another. Then they'll go out to the public of British Columbia and try to pretend that they've taken a responsible position in this Legislature, that they've come forward with constructive proposals. No, it's never anything like that. It's all negative, all destructive and all bad for British Columbia, as their policies would be if they were ever government again. I'll tell you this: just as the NDP have lost 14 elections since they were formed in this province, so they will lose 14 more, until they begin to develop policies that are positive and constructive. I reject the amendment, Mr. Chairman.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before I recognize the first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk), I must remind all members that we are presently looking at an amendment to the administrative estimates of the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications. Some latitude was allowed the minister. It seems only reasonable that some latitude also be allowed the reply. But, hon. members, after that I must ask and insist that we return to the amendments that are before us.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, I will stick to the amendment. I respect the rules of this committee as opposed to other members. I'll tell you something: this minister has a nerve to stand up and say what he's just said to this committee. He's got audacity, if I ever saw it. For years, as leader of the Liberal rump group over here, he lost election after election standing on principle. He used to give alternative budgets. He used to try and cut out the fat the way this opposition is attempting to do — to demonstrate to the people of British Columbia that you're overspending. You've lost the old principles you used to have in the Liberal Party. You've lost the sense of sticking to one's guns — no matter if you had political power or not — because it was true, it was right and you believed it. Now you believe in nothing except raw power. That's all you ever believed in, as far as I'm concerned.

Mr. Chairman, they lost the election in 1963, in 1966, in 1969, in 1972 and they disappeared in 1975. We're still here. We'll be here an awful long time after the memory of the Liberal remnant that he used to lead has gone from the memory of the people of British Columbia.

It's not a creed of envy. It's a creed of justice over here. We still stand for it. You've forgotten it because you've raised your travel budget by $7,800. You've raised it off the backs of ordinary people who can't afford to pay those taxes. That's why we move that motion.

Motion negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 18

NAYS — 27

An hon. member requested that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

MR. CHAIRMAN: I must inform the members that when a division is being taken, it is important and vital to the proceedings of this House that members remain perfectly silent and that full attention be paid to the reading of the list. Otherwise, the main purpose for which we are here — and that is the recording of divisions — is in jeopardy. I have to insist that no interruptions will be tolerated at all when a division is being recorded in this House.

Vote 206 approved.

On vote 207: ministry administration. $1,154,371.

MR. LAUK: On the same basis that we have pointed out to this minister the extravagance of a government, which he supports.... It will be noted that in vote 207 there is an increase of almost $5,000 for travel expense for ministry administration, $6,000 in office expenses, $5,000 for furniture and equipment, and $50,000 for advertising. I therefore move that vote 207 be reduced by $66,150.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The amendment is in order.

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 19

NAYS — 27

[ Page 4818 ]

Mr. Lauk requested that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

Vote 207 approved.

On vote 208: universities, $323,865,928.

MR. DAVIS: I know it's rare for anyone on this side to get up and speak at length on the votes of ministers of the Crown so I'll take it easy. I'll also confine my remarks to the financing of universities.

First, however, I'd like to compliment the minister. He always takes a good, hard, positive look at things, he's always upbeat and he's a great salesman for research and development in this province. He should be complimented, particularly because he always takes the long view rather than the short view, and I think this is unique not only in this Legislature but in most public assemblies around the world.

[Mr. Nicolson in the chair.]

The minister's spending on universities is up in 1980-81, but it's slowing down a bit. Last year's increase was in the order of 30 percent; next year's projected increase is 12 percent. It looks as if the Ministry of Universities, Science and Communications — certainly the universities component — won't be growing as fast in the next few years as it did in the late 1970s. It will be covering new ground, for its yearly increase for this coming year is less than our gross provincial product of 15 percent and less than provincial government spending, which is up by roughly 15 percent — the same order of magnitude. In other words, financially the minister is less of an expansionist as far as universities are concerned. He's trimming his ministry's sails a bit, and he is also shifting some of its priorities. I agree with most of these changes, and I'd like to tell you what I mean by that.

The postwar bulge in our student population has passed. It's passed at the elementary school level and at the high school level, and it's passing at the post-secondary level of education as well, so we can expect some declines in the numbers of students attending universities in this province. These numbers should be going down significantly in the 1980s, especially if we focus more on vocational pursuits in this province and less on giving our young people a general education, particularly a post-secondary education in the arts and sciences.

This hasn't always been productive. In this connection let me quote a recent study published by Statistics Canada. It says:

"Thousands of college and university graduates are winding up in jobs unrelated to their studies, prompting widespread regret. The days of education for education's sake are over as far as these students are concerned. Most students want studies directly related to the labour market. They want to study in fields that will help them find a good job with decent wages and a fair level of personal day-to-day satisfaction. Many regret the time that they now believe they wasted at university, and many of them are prepared to go back to school and get on the right track."

Incidentally, this Statistics Canada report is based on a first-ever survey of what happens to students after they graduate with degrees from our universities and colleges. It covers some 30,000 young men and women who graduated in 1976.

This is what they said three or four years after their graduation. This is how they felt. This is their evaluation of our Canadian university programs, especially as they apply to the arts and pure sciences.

Like many government reports, this one, recently issued by Statistics Canada, describes what to many is now the obvious. Many Canadians have been saying for a long time that our education policy-makers, and especially those at the university level, have their heads in the clouds. They assume that everyone wants to be like they are. They want to educate for education's sake, and they can't be bothered unduly with industry and commerce. They don't talk to the people who really know what our economy needs in terms of trained manpower, or what western Canada, in our particular instance, needs, or what Canada as a whole needs. They aim their thoughts, and therefore the thoughts of many of their students, in the direction of new ideas and global breakthroughs, particularly on the scientific front, or rearrangements of existing philosophies, the mere rearrangement of which will give them their own individual place in the sun.

In my view, research and development is all very well, but only a tiny fraction of the population, even in the world's most advanced industrial nations, ends up in scientific laboratories and pilot plants, establishments which have a real and ongoing contribution to make to the health and economic well-being of our people and the world's people. That fraction is at most 2 percent or 3 percent. That is to say, if we had a well-balanced, fully diversified industrial economy here in British Columbia, a maximum 10 percent of our university graduates would end up in a scientific or developmental role in British Columbia. I'm not, of course, including university professors and university laboratories. I'm talking about scientists, engineers and others who are doing scientific work in our pulp and paper industry, our mining industry, our fishing industry, in agriculture, manufacturing, etc., here in this province. The remaining 90 percent of our young people who graduate from university each year have to come down closer to earth. They have to do ordinary things, like balance their books, sell somebody else's products, build houses, or grow things. Many of them would have been better off had they gone to one or more of our vocational colleges. They would have been better off had they taken courses such as those given at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. They would have had a real job, a meaningful job, waiting for them at the end of the line. They would have had a better idea of how other people, especially older people, earn their livelihood. They would have had a better chance to fit into our productivity-oriented society, without the trauma of feeling that their four or five years at a university were for nought.

In my opinion, many of our young people are in one sense overeducated. My son, who was responsible for the recruitment bureau of his year in civil engineering, told me that half of his fellow graduates had a job waiting for them when they got their diploma; in roughly six months' time another 25 percent were employed in engineering pursuits; within 12 months nearly all of the rest of them were employed in related jobs. Contrast this with the record at the B.C. Institute of Technology, which gives a two-year instead of a five-year course in engineering: every last one of its graduates has a job even before they complete their courses. Of course, they are not as highly trained as the engineers graduating from UBC and, hopefully, in the future from Simon Fraser and the University of Victoria. But the employers are

[ Page 4819 ]

lined up at the door; they know they are getting practical people with lots of shop or field experience. They're not getting someone who could put a rocket on the moon, but they're getting an employee who has certain skills which they know they need and which can be put to good use right away. In some ways I like the Ontario system better than our own. Ontario has 11 universities; we have three. That's about right in terms of population, because Ontario's overall population is roughly four times our own. What do they do there? Their regional colleges aren't largely academic — in other words, first and second year university arts and science. Instead of teaching the first two years of university, many of them concentrate on, say, forestry, home economics, agriculture or computer technology. These schools are so good that many young people who have completed their university career and have a degree go to these more specialized colleges later. They go to these practical colleges because they relate much better to the working world in Ontario. Certainly they are more useful than the universities appear to be in terms of gainful employment immediately after graduation. In this connection I'd like to quote something by one educational authority, Dr. D.B. Sutherland, president of Sir Sandford Fleming College in Ontario, who a year ago spoke to the assembled staff of the colleges — I'm talking about the Ontario colleges.

"The first reason for the colleges' success up to now is that, unlike most of our American counterparts" — he could have said American and British Columbian counterparts — "or indeed the modern secondary school, we do not have to respond to the whole spectrum of human abilities. Our concern is the individual who gets his or her best grasp on reality through the concrete and the practical. Those individuals whose interest is best caught up by learning in its abstract and theoretical forms are the concern of the universities. In terms that are coming to be employed nowadays in educational jargon, we in the colleges are concerned with further education while the universities are concerned with higher education. Most American and many Canadian community colleges try to handle both" — certainly ours in British Columbia do — "to offer terminal vocational programs for one clientele and two-year university transfer programs for the other. The American community colleges" — and again he might have been referring to British Columbia as well — "do not enjoy independence from the American higher educational system. Some 75 percent of their students are enrolled in transfer courses and aspire to enter four-year colleges or universities thereafter. Only about one in three of them succeed."

He goes on to talk about PhDs, unable to find employment after having graduated from universities, then teaching at these colleges and themselves tending to direct young people in the same direction they had initially chosen, and the frustrations that follow therefrom.

To change the subject, the topic of fees is one that bothers me. When I went to UBC, fees paid roughly half of the university's operating costs. The minister mentioned that it was 40 percent when he was there. This figure was down to 15 percent in the 1960s. It's less than 10 percent of operating costs now. Capital costs, incidentally, are over and above operating costs and aren't included in this number. Most people don't appreciate something they get for nothing, or next to nothing. They tend to waste it. They usually take it for granted. They assume that it's theirs as a right, and they're rarely critical of waste or the misuse of funds which, obviously, they often see going on around them. I believe this is one of the real problems at our universities. It shows up in other ways.

One of the reasons given by foreign students for attending Canadian universities is that our fees are low. Certainly our fees in Canada are low. The minister said that our university fees here in British Columbia are the lowest in Canada. That's one of the reasons why foreign students make up roughly 10 percent of the enrolment at Simon Fraser. The figure at UBC and at the University of Victoria is 5 percent. There are roughly 3,000 non-Canadians at universities in this province. At an average cost of around $8,000 a student, this means that the taxpayers' subsidy to foreign students is in the range of $20 million to $30 million a year. I'm talking about foreign students; they call them "visa students" at our universities. I'm not talking about landed immigrants; I'm not talking about students who presumably are going to stay here. I'm talking about young men and women who have come to British Columbia to get an education and go home again.

This is a matter of some interest Canada-wide. A recent study carried out by the Canadian Bureau for International Education found that nine out of ten of these foreign students came from well-to-do homes. One or both of their parents had gone to one or another of our North American universities. Financially, a BA, an MA or a PhD was the best bargain you could get here in Canada; it was certainly a better bargain than you could find anywhere else in the western world. Contrast this with the situation in the United Kingdom today. A foreign student there — certainly a student from outside the Common Market — pays average cost. In our terms, they would pay fees of the order of $8,000 a year. Many American universities charge higher fees for foreign students — even for out-of-state students. Japan certainly does, West Germany does and most of the rest of the world does. Ontario charges differentially higher fees for non-Canadians, Alberta does, Quebec certainly does, but British Columbia is generous. Our taxpayers apparently don't worry too much about a few tens of millions of dollars, and our professional staffs want more students rather than less. They want them to come here from all over the world. After all, isn't this an indication of their excellence and our universities' excellence — of our universities, in effect, having "made it" in the international scheme of things?

I know what the counter-argument is: most of our young people go abroad for advanced degrees; there are more Canadians doing post-graduate work in the United States and western Europe than there are non-Canadian nationals in Canadian universities. That is true on balance. But many of our young people who go abroad stay there. Often they are doing advanced research in such exotic fields as nuclear physics, biochemistry, aeronautics or higher mathematics. In order to be gainfully employed, they have to find work where the work in those fields is — namely, say, in the United States space administration, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, IBM, General Motors or General Electric. They were told here in British Columbia that they could study anything they wanted to. They followed their own inclinations and those of their professors at our universities. They took one degree, then another and then another. They knew more and more, essentially, about less and less. They often ended up in one of

[ Page 4820 ]

the world's leading institutions involving higher learning; certainly higher education and the talents that it brings.

Unfortunately many of these young people have become virtually unemployable at home in British Columbia, certainly in the outlying parts of the province. They'll make a great contribution to the world at large and to the United States in particular. But I find it difficult to balance off our contribution to the greater welfare of mankind in this connection, and the moneys which we are also paying to educate foreign nationals here. Remember, I'm not talking about immigrants who come to stay or foreign students who may stay here anyway. I'm talking about non-Canadians who are here in substantial numbers, especially at B.C. universities.

Moving on to research as such, I must say that I fully support the minister's initiatives, especially in the form of discovery parks at our universities. This is applied science, meaningful science, science put to work to solve problems in B.C. industry, to provide jobs here in British Columbia, to provide greater opportunities for our young people, and to provide greater income for everyone to help pay for the people services which we all need here. I'm all for B.C. Telephone bringing its research and development arm to British Columbia. I'm all for this work being done at a discovery park at Simon Fraser University. This was the kind of thing that got Stanford University going in the 1920s. It's the kind of thing that has developed other research centres, particularly in the United States, but also the successful ones in other parts of the world.

There's no reason why industries of this kind must congregate in southern Ontario. We in the west are coming into our own. In applied fields like resource processing, marine transport and communications, especially in remote areas, we have both a need and an opportunity. Our silviculturalists, oceanographers, mineralogists and meteorologists can make a major contribution not only in improving the productivity of our existing industries but in helping to round out our industrial base in British Columbia and in western Canada.

Industry, in my view, must be a financial partner in these endeavours. I'm all for fifty-fifty funding, for example. I think that the companies individually or collectively should put up half the cost of much of our research and development effort here in B.C. Then that research will have an application. It will be practical. It will provide more jobs here as well. We'll certainly get more for our tax dollar, and the results will be tied more closely to job opportunities in this resource-rich province of ours.

The minister referred to the federal government's contribution to research and development in British Columbia. I note from the first page of the report of the provincial Science Council that the federal government put up somewhat more than 50 percent of the research and development money spent in British Columbia in 1979. Industry was responsible for 30 percent. The universities contributed about 20 percent from their budgets. The B.C. government directly put up only 5 percent; that amount certainly should be increased. I also note that the federal government's contribution to research in our universities has been increased of late. UBC, along with McGill, has been getting a lion's share of the money. It got a quarter of all the funds going to Canadian universities for research and development last year, and there are some 30 of them. That's both an indication of the success of those who are responsible for this research, pleading its importance, and of the excellence of the work done here in this province.

I know I'm running out of time, and I'd like to make a few summary remarks in closing.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

We're spending too many tax dollars on academic subjects taught at our universities. We should focus more on the applied sciences, especially those that have a direct and immediate application in industry in this province. Our fees, especially for foreign students, are too low. We should go flat-out for government-industry jointly funded research projects located on or close to our university campuses.

Frankly, I'd like to see more emphasis on colleges which specialize in certain vocations. The hon. member for Central Fraser Valley (Mr. Ritchie) mentioned agriculture. I'd like to see more money going for on-the-job training; I'd like to see the Minister of Labour (Hon. Mr. Heinrich) getting more funds for that purpose. That is where the real opportunities for advancement for the majority of our young people lie. I'm convinced that many of our young men and women who now go through our traditional university-type courses would also benefit by being streamed into this more meaningful and rewarding way, this route to the real world in which we, as taxpaying adults, also have to make a contribution.

MS. BROWN: Mr. Chairman, I would just like to say briefly that I certainly hope that the comments which we just heard from the last speaker, the member for North Vancouver–Seymour, in support of this section of the estimates, are not supported by the minister responsible for this particular department. His comment that British Columbians who go to other parts of the world to pursue advanced degrees in the specialty educations of law, medicine and engineering or doctorates in science or any of the social studies contribute to mankind rather than to the province, because they do not return to work in the outlying areas of British Columbia, and that this, therefore, somehow detracts from British Columbia — it demeans us in some way — would seem to indicate that he does not consider British Columbians first of all to be a part of what he refers to as mankind. He doesn't see us as part of the global world in which we all live.

As someone who has travelled around the world and has always been proud of the contribution that British Columbians and Canadians have made in other parts of the world, in the same way that I am proud of the contribution that people from other parts of the world make to British Columbia and to Canada, I certainly hope that his recommendation that universities and colleges in British Columbia somehow curtail the number of students from other parts of the world who are studying here and discourage British Columbians from pursuing advanced education in other parts of the world will be ignored by the minister responsible. Those statements certainly indicate a very myopic and flawed philosophy on the part of that particular member.

MR. BARBER: It's selfish.

MS. BROWN: It's very selfish. More than that, it is a failure to recognize the kinds of contribution that we, as people from different parts of the world, make when we travel, study and work in different parts of the world. To say that because British Columbians who study in different parts of the world do not return here to work in the outlying areas is a negative thing and certainly is an indication that that member doesn't even recognize the importance of his own degree, which he got as a Rhodes Scholar and through an opportunity

[ Page 4821 ]

to study in a different part of the world. I am appalled that a Rhodes Scholar would take that kind of attitude. I hope that the minister responsible, who is not a Rhodes Scholar, will ignore that recommendation from that particular member.

HON. MR. McGEER: There's an interesting debate taking place. I can certainly lay out what government policy is in this respect. Government policy is to give the institutions complete autonomy, and that includes the setting of tuition fees at whatever level they deem fit.

Mr. Chairman, there is little doubt that the relationship between universities and the marketplace has undergone a dramatic shift in recent years. There is also little doubt that the relationship between fees and costs to government has also undergone a dramatic change. I believe that these changes do place an obligation upon our institutions to reflect upon the role that they play in society and the value of the programs which they offer to their students. I personally believe that students have always had their eye on the marketplace when they went to university — right through time — even if, for them, the marketplace was continuing to remain within the academic system. Those who were taking general courses — not specific courses like engineering or medicine — nevertheless had a preferential place in the marketplace upon graduation. It was always deemed that the maturing affect of the university — the fact that they'd been exposed to the intellectual preserve that the universities have held since the Middle Ages — would somehow benefit them in whatever type of job they sought in society. When education became greatly broadened — democratized in the way that would definitely appeal to the members opposite — this premium disappeared. It became fairly evident that many of those participating in these general programs in these institutions really had little premium in the marketplace, and in some cases were at a disadvantage compared with those who had studied in technical institutes or had taken technical programs at our universities.

I believe that's the situation today. It's one that really needs to be reflected upon by the leaders of the institutions themselves, because I think the public can legitimately ask: "Why is there such heavy emphasis in your institution upon these programs, when we know that there are lineups for others, such as medicine, engineering, many of the courses at BCIT and many of the more valuable skills that are traditionally taught through apprenticeship or at our vocational institutes?" I think those are questions that can fairly be asked and should be answered.

For those who believe strongly in the need to make our cultural heritage more widespread and who believe that the vehicle for doing this is the liberal arts emphasis at many of our institutions, I would recommend that they continue to seek this opportunity all through their lives. This is why at the present time we are encouraging people of any age to take advantage of opportunities that were formerly the preserve of the young, but which can perhaps be more valuable to the mature and even the elderly than to the young, because they go into these programs at a time when their mindset is such that they take maximum advantage of the exposure they've been given.

With respect to the foreign student situation, I believe that our institutions, up to a certain point, should encourage the participation of foreign students on the campus, particularly at the graduate level, because this is where we get the blending of ideas. An institution that catered only to local individuals and only had local professors would be poor indeed compared to its more cosmopolitan counterparts in other areas of the world. An institution, if it is to hold its head high, must have a mix of students from all parts of the world, because they bring with them their background and culture and therefore enrich the education that takes place at an institution away from formal hours of instruction.

As far as our faculty members are concerned, they must be men of the world in every sense, because if they're incapable of taking their undergraduate students to the forefront of knowledge — wherever it might be — then they're unworthy of taking the time of our students when they could be out earning a living in the forests or the mines. If they are to have that special privilege that belongs to those who attend our institutions of higher learning, they should genuinely be institutions of higher learning. Therefore the professors who teach them should be at the forefront of their disciplines, and that can only happen when they're aware of what's going on throughout the world. The mix then for the professors who become the instructors of our undergraduates must come from the exposure they have to foreign graduate students. I'm sure our institutions will continue to encourage up to an acceptable level the mix of people from all parts of the world, so that the programs themselves will be enriched by the presence of these students.

That's quite apart from the other advantages that will accrue to any nation that will take as part of its responsibility the education of the brightest young people from less fortunate nations in the world. British Columbia will get dividends, in my view, many times over in the future by accepting with welcoming arms the outstanding young people, particularly from Third World countries. If we do that job well, as they return to their homelands and become leaders there, they'll be forever grateful to our nation for the contribution that we have made to their careers.

If we feel that we are losing some of our brightest students through the process of exchange when they go abroad and take their careers in other parts of the world, we should remind ourselves that in British Columbia — as a destination point for immigrants and for moves of people from other parts of Canada — we become the beneficiaries of the educational systems of other countries. We are in a sense parasites upon those educational systems. For example, in my field of medicine, where we bring in over 400 doctors a year but graduate less than 100, we are parasites on other areas that have educated those doctors for us; and the ones who take up medical practice in this province seldom remember their obligation to the people who provided that training.

So while we may deny our own bright young people the opportunity to enter into that profession, at the same time we in this province become the parasitic beneficiaries of the generosity of other jurisdictions — and we have been doing that as a tradition since the earliest times. All of our doctors came from outside until we established a medical school, and now only 85 percent of our doctors are from outside. Shame on British Columbia! It is the same with our engineers, our academics, our experts in many of the trades — whether it be heavy engineering, linemen who string our high-tension lines from power developments — and, as the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. King) will be able to say better than I, you can name discipline after discipline in the workplace where the people who have the best jobs are those who have been brought in from outside.

[ Page 4822 ]

We feel no obligation to the places that provided that training and no need ourselves to be able to duplicate that in this province, and even perhaps to return a little bit of that in the future to the places that have been our suppliers all these years. So I believe very much in the sense of obligation that we as a wealthy province must have to return just a little bit of what we've received in the past, and at the same time to play a role, as every advanced area should play, in benefiting the less fortunate parts of the world through education — there are few areas where we can contribute more. Remember as well that among the obligations we carry in the educational system there is an obligation to our own young people, and that obligation is not to deny them skills that are required in our own province because it's easy for us to be parasitic upon other areas.

I say that in the strongest terms to our institutions, which in many cases are unwilling to expand programs, because it would require that they contract redundant ones. I say that to our trade unions and to our management, who too often have signed mutually agreeable contracts and forgotten along the way that in their agreement to those contracts they have denied opportunity to the young people of this province and have acted as parasites on other parts of the world. They should examine their conscience. I hope that in the educational area in all of this province we can be broad-minded and big-hearted.

MS. BROWN: I would just like to express very briefly my thanks to the minister for so completely repudiating the statements of his colleague on that particular issue. I appreciate that.

Vote 208 approved.

Vote 209: metric conversion, $286,335 — approved.

Vote 210: science and technology, $8,260,524 approved.

On vote 211: telecommunications services branch, $22,938,029.

MR. LAUK: We cannot let this vote on the telecommunications services branch pass without some comment about the unreasonable — no, I'd say outrageous — increase in the items on advertising in publications, office furniture and travel expense under this vote. The increase of those three items in vote 211 amounts to a 275 percent increase from last year: a $44,000 increase in advertising in publications alone — as if we didn't know what that was for. What does the government need that kind of money for to advertise itself? It's to try to extricate itself from the bad image that it has had. You know, this government makes a big mistake. They think they can buy their way out of a bad image. One of the reasons that's a mistake is because they think it's a bad image alone. They're walking around the countryside saying to themselves: "We're a good government; it's just that we've got a bad image." But a government that has such a consistently bad image has got to look to itself and ask why. It's because they're not a good government. It's because they're an incompetent and inept government, and from that emerges this bad image that $44,000 is needed to try and recover.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, I must remind you of standing order 61(2), which says: "Speeches in Committee of the Whole House must be strictly relevant to the item or clause under consideration." Vote 211, please.

MR. LAUK: The relevance of these arguments is this. Why would they need an increase of 275 percent for advertising? Why would they need an extra $44,000 this year over last year? They got by on $16,000 last year; now they need $60,000. Who's kidding whom? I move that vote 211 be reduced by $65,720.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The amendment is in order.

On the amendment.

MR. COCKE: I would just like to point out that this is the third amendment in the minister's votes. The last two amendments the minister has ignored. On the first one, however, he got up and gave an argument that had nothing to do with the vote whatsoever. He gave an argument with respect to his dislike of the opposition and gave a political account of what happened. I'm just wondering if in light of the fact that he's taken a $16,000 advertising budget and raised it to over $60,000 maybe he would have for us a word or two of relevance to this particular amendment. These people are wastrels, and I presume this minister, who's leaving, wants to have a nice farewell and build a good image for himself during his lame-duck years, days or months, whatever they might be. We do know that this lame duck minister, who's already announced his retirement, is increasing his advertising budget to the tune of $16,000 to $60,000, and we wonder why.

HON. MR. McGEER: If the members opposite had only asked me why first, there would have been no need for this amendment at all. It's very obvious why this particular budget item is in there. It's because we have so many exciting new programs that have to be told to the people of British Columbia so they'll understand the advantages they are going to have.

For example, we are going to establish in British Columbia an electronic highway that will permit people in the most remote parts of this province to establish for the first time a link with the major information sources not just here in British Columbia but throughout the world. That's what satellite technology is going to make possible for the people in the remote parts of British Columbia. But no, the NDP would prefer to have these people remain in the dark in the bush. They don't want the power developments in British Columbia that will bring them the electricity they require. They don't want the satellite dishes for them up there so they'll be able to use that electricity to link themselves to the communications highways.

MR. LAUK: I have a point of order under the standing order just mentioned by the Chair. This amendment is related to the advertising budget of this branch. The programming information and advertising on the Knowledge Network is a separate budget, and I'd ask the minister to come to order.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The point is well taken.

MR. MACDONALD: On the same point of order, the minister sounds exactly like W.A.C. Bennett.

[ Page 4823 ]

MR. CHAIRMAN: I will advise the hon. second member for Vancouver East that that is not a point of order.

The hon. first member for Vancouver Centre (Mr. Lauk) has brought to the attention of the committee that under standing order 61(2) "speeches in Committee of the Whole House must be strictly relevant to the item or clause under consideration." I thank the member for that observation, and I will advise all members discussing the amendment to vote 211 to remember that standing order.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, nothing could have been more strictly relevant than my speech. They never did understand over there. Let me explain it, because I know you'll grasp it, even if they won't. How would the people know about the Knowledge Network unless they had the satellite dish to receive it? They wouldn't. So there's no point in our having advertising for the Knowledge Network go out through the Knowledge Network, because the people have to have the receiving dish there to get it in the first place. We put it in this part of the budget so they'll know.

But there are other things. When we put these programs forward we'll tell the people of British Columbia that the NDP didn't want them to know about it. They don't want the people to know about the successes of the programs. They don't want them to know about the new opportunities that this budget is bringing them because of the sound fiscal policies of Social Credit, because the wealth is there and we can put these budgets forward. No, they'd be against all of those things. I reject the amendment.

MR. LEA: It's amazing that the minister has so little respect for the intelligence of people who live in the hinterland that he feels that once the dish is in place and they're getting the program he has to advertise to tell them they're getting it. I don't quite understand that reasoning. It's amazing to me. Obviously this money is not for that. This money is probably for, oh, a new book — something along those lines. We've seen other books come out of this province, like Politics in Paradise. We're looking forward to the sequel by this minister, Paradise Lost.

HON. MR. McGEER: Actually, the member is correct. I'm advised that most of the money is for a new telephone directory for the government. [Laughter.]

[Mr. Davidson in the chair.]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 18

NAYS — 28

Mr. Lauk requested that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

Vote 211 approved.

On vote 212: communications system development and regulation branch, $2,315,883.

MR. LAUK: I notice that the following items have increased substantially in vote 212. They are, we feel, items that should have been held back in a year in which the government should have been hard-pressed to save the onerous tax increases that are being placed upon the ordinary citizens of the province. Travel expenses is up by $7,000 in this relatively small branch of the ministry; professional and special services is increased by $3,396; office furniture is up, We feel we could cut some fat out of this particular aspect of the budget. We move that vote 212 be reduced by $11,730.

On the amendment.

MR. LAUK: This government has called upon us time and time again to give them constructive suggestions about how not to increase taxes. We've now done so in two ministries. In this ministry the amounts are totalling up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — money that would otherwise not have to be paid by the taxpayers, so the Minister of Finance (Hon. Mr. Curtis) would not bring in this unrealistic budget. It's an oppressive budget and a desperate budget. It gives rise to speculation that this government is accumulating a vast treasure chest with which to fight the next election. Through this amendment we're again suggesting that all hon. members should come to their senses and give the taxpayers a break.

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 19

NAYS — 28

Mr. Barber requested that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

Vote 212 approved.

[ Page 4824 ]

On vote 213: building occupancy charges, $391,000.

MR. LAUK: This is a real sore point, Mr. Chairman. I ask the minister to really concentrate on what he's doing. He's playing a role here with the rest of the government — a government that is just picking the pockets of the people of British Columbia. This vote is for building occupancy charges — that space for the minister's bureaucrats, himself and everybody else in that ministry. Why on earth has it gone up by $234,000, from $157,000 last year to $391,000 this year? Why on earth does that have to occur in a year such as this, when we're expecting the people of the province to pay higher taxes and work is not plentiful for new people in the market for work?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. LAUK: It's not. The percentages of unemployed young people under the age of 25 in this province are staggering. Unemployment is a time bomb for this government, and they know it.

I want to remind this minister of something he said plenty of times over on this side of the House. He said to the government of the day: "It's not your money you're spending. Governments have no money of their own. It's the people's money. It's ordinary working families in this province who are paying that tax money." These tremendous increases of $234,000 for expanded, lavish space so that the mad professor could add more bureaucrats, equipment and whatever else.... The padded leather chair government — that's what it is. The silver ashtrays, the oak-paneled offices, the Indian carpets on the floor, the crystal sherry-set, the china tea-set, the silverware, Chilean and South African wine — it's all bought with the taxpayers' money.

It seems to me the people of this province would like to know how their money is being spent. Well, I'm going to tell them. An extra $234,000 for this minister not to provide telecommunication dishes; not to provide the Knowledge Network to people who need it; not to provide the telecommunication services to outlying districts; not to provide science research grants, university grants and housing for students; not to provide grants for people from Invermere to come to UBC; not to provide these needed services to the people of British Columbia but to provide lavish, extravagant space for the ministry and that minister.

I therefore move that vote 213 be reduced by a sum of $234,000.

On the amendment.

HON. MR. McGEER: Mr. Chairman, the bulk of this vote in this particular year is to permit the consolidation of the Communications ministry, to get under one roof for the first time.

MR. LAUK: What for?

HON. MR. McGEER: Because unfortunately they are virtually camping out in a temporary building and have never had an opportunity to enjoy the kinds of lavish offices that the New Democratic Party built for themselves immediately they took office. I can remember when the press actually bought a tape measure to come in and get the size of the desk of that member over there. They'd never seen anything of this size before in the history of the parliament buildings. I don't know how they got it through the door. The first thing that member did was to order himself a desk, at public expense, that slept three without the drawers being opened. Now every single member has desks. I've got one. I don't know if it would sleep three like that member's does, but it's so large it embarrasses me. We can't get them out of the door.

I can remember every single day in this House, Mr. Chairman, when Bill Hartley, who was the Minister of Public Works in that government, would have to face one more charge of buildings that we had discovered rented by the government and left unoccupied. The first thing they intended doing when they got into office was double the size of the civil service in order to get jobs for the boys. They had to go out and rent office space all over British Columbia for the boys they were going to hire. They never managed to hire them because they didn't have enough money. The public of British Columbia was stuck with empty office buildings all over the province. Day after day it was exposed how the government had spent uselessly.

To have criticism from the NDP over a matter like that is just too much for me. I want to tell the public and the members opposite that this particular vote is to permit the people in this ministry to be under a single roof for the first time. It's not in the kind of lavish accommodation that you provided for yourselves or the empty accommodation you provided for your friends whom you never managed to hire; it's for solid, hard-working civil servants who deserve a decent place to work. If you don't want them to have that, you tell that to the public of British Columbia.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before recognizing the member for Shuswap-Revelstoke (Mr. King), I must again advise that when we stray from the amendment, on one side of the House or the other, we begin to encourage debate on more than the vote which is presently before us. Both the member from the opposition and the minister from the government took liberties in their discussion of vote 213. I would ask that future debate be confined to the building occupancy charges.

MR. KING: I intend to confine my remarks to the scope of the minister's response, because he is the minister responsible for this vote. I support the amendment. What we are dealing with here is a vast acceleration in costs for building occupancy, which we have seen in the previous ministry's debate. For those who don't have access to the book, there is one line in this estimate: $157,000 for building occupancy last year and simply another number in underlined characters for this year, $391,000. There's no explanation or identification of where these buildings might be and no indication that there's a space shortage that all of a sudden occurred this year, which apparently didn't exist last year.

It's interesting that the minister got up and said that this is to accommodate consolidation of his staff. I remind my colleagues and the House that the previous minister's excuse was reorganization. He had a reorganization of his staff underway, which justified the fantastic and profligate increases in spending costs for lavish buildings. Mr. Chairman, I have never seen any government, including previous Social Credit governments, and certainly not the NDP government, impose this kind of punitive, onerous tax burden on the people of the province of British Columbia to pay for this kind of lavish nonsense.

[ Page 4825 ]

We object to sales tax going from 4 to 6 percent, so that single mothers with families are now going to have a very difficult time meeting their monthly budgets, at one and the same time that we see 250-grand increases in lavish kinds of furnishings and occupancy — for whom? The minister hasn't even explained. Shameful!

"A reorganization." What a cute euphemism! The other man whose estimates we have just concluded said, oh, it was reorganization. I wonder what the third excuse is going to be — liquidation? I think that will probably come after the next election. After the voters of this province have an opportunity to weigh the wasteful and insensitive policies of this government, who in a period of high inflation, a period of interest rates skyrocketing and placing homes out of the reach of the taxpayers of British Columbia.... They find that while this government is telling them to hold the line in bargaining — don't overheat the economy, show some restraint and show some moderation — they find here, without explanation, in a single line two hundred and some thousand dollars for an increase in building occupancy charges. The same government, the same gang that were joined by the remnants of the Liberal Party and who used to cry about the size of the public service in British Columbia under the New Democratic Party, is responsible for a growth in the public service of over 30 percent. Some restraint! Some leadership!

If the minister or his colleagues were required to privately fund this kind of extravagance, there would be no way, Mr. Chairman. It is not your money that you're dealing with. It is the people's money. You were the ones that said the government has no money of its own. You extract it from the sweat and the work of the people of this province. There's no free lunch; this opposition is not prepared to extend a free lunch to that gang of wastrels, Mr. Chairman, without moving to reduce that waste and cut the fat out of the irresponsible spending by that minister and his colleagues.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: Mr. Chairman, I would ask leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

HON. MR. VANDER ZALM: On behalf of myself and the second member for Surrey (Mr. Hall) I would like to welcome Mrs. Schram, Mrs. Hryhirchuck, Mrs, Lamont, Mrs. Buller and 20 girl guides from the district of Surrey, who are with us in the gallery. I would ask that they be welcomed to the Legislature and to Victoria today.

MR. BARNES: Mr. Chairman, I would like as well to complete an introduction I started this morning.

Leave granted.

MR. BARNES: I'd like to include the daughter of our research director, Mr. John McInnis. His daughter's name is Catherine. I apologize for having neglected her. She is 11 1/2 months old, and this is her first visit to the Legislature. I would like the record to show that.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Before recognizing the minister I think it is almost appropriate that we refer to our standing orders, section 61(2): "Speeches in Committee of the Whole House must be strictly relevant to the item or clause under consideration." While the Chair has allowed more latitude than our standing orders permit, I must advise all members that that latitude can no longer be extended if we are to accomplish the business that this committee has been instructed to carry out.

HON. MR. McGEER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman; that's going to be very helpful to keep the discussion down to the essentials of this particular amendment. I want you to know that we never had any questions from the NDP as to the purposes of the funds set forward in this particular vote. No, they knew all about it: not a question asked, just simply saying: "Lavishness, extravagant spending, a free lunch...."

Interjection.

HON. MR. McGEER: Yes. Mr. Chairman, that's what the member for Victoria said. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, we'll be going up to those hard-working civil servants who've been in overcrowded conditions, inconveniently placed, and we'll be telling them what you said about extravagance, about a free lunch, about how money of the taxpayers is being wasted on them. We'll tell them the conditions you stand for as a government, that they should work under.

MS. BROWN: Are you threatening us?

HON. MR. McGEER: I'm not threatening; I'm stating facts. Why shouldn't we let them know that when you were in office you thought nothing of hiring empty halls for your friends, but now you're not going to allow desks and decent occupancy space for the people who are hard-working civil servants; you want to grind them down into the ground. That's what you stand for in this House — saying our hardworking civil servants are having a free lunch. Shame on you over there! We'll tell them what you stand for, and we'll reject your policies right here today on the floor of the House.

MR. LEA: The minister has accused us, when we were in government, of hiring empty halls for our friends. Is he suggesting that they're hiring full halls for their enemies? It doesn't make any sense at all.

[Mr. Strachan in the chair.]

Let's examine what the minister has given as the reason for the increase in the occupancy charges for his ministry. He says: "What we're going to do is consolidate. Therefore we have to spend more money." I take it that some of the facilities within the ministry are not consolidated now, that they're in different locations throughout the province or the community and that it's become burdensome both for communication and because of the cost. We would imagine that if they're going to consolidate, one of the ideas behind consolidating would be to save money. If it's not to save money, then I suggest that those very same civil servants whom the minister was talking about are taxpayers also, and that in this year of heavy increases to them they would be glad to put one more year in where they are as opposed to paying 6 percent when they go to the grocery store and other places.

This minister is talking about consolidating for efficiency, but it's going to cost us almost 150 percent more to get that kind of efficiency. Is that the academic mind in

[ Page 4826 ]

politics at work? For efficiency we're going to consolidate, but I'm sorry, taxpayers, it's going to cost you 150 percent more. The explanation does not make any sense at all. Therefore we suspect — because we do believe that this minister quite often does make sense — that it's a situation that even he can't talk his way out of.

They don't intend to spend the money. Lo and behold, they'll find that BCBC and other people that this government rents from will not actually get the money. It will end up at the end of the year as a nice fat little surplus for the government to try and buy back votes when the election hits. That's what it's all about. Consolidation for efficiency costs are 150 percent more than the previous year. Yet they would ask us to believe that.

I believe that right now the kind of money we're spending, as indicated by last year, probably would house the bodies of the ministry very comfortably for the time being. But what's going to happen, I suspect, is that they need this added space to house the ego of the minister. Maybe looking at it from that point of view, it is the kind of money we're looking at. I suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that if we could buy that minister for what he's worth and sell him for what he thinks he's worth, we could build the Taj Mahal to house all of the civil servants in all the luxury they've never seen before in their lives.

But when we look at the serious remarks made by the minister, that we're going to consolidate in order.... I take it that the consolidation is for efficiency's sake. If it isn't then why consolidate? Leave it the way it is. If we're not going to gain efficiency, then in this year of heavy taxation, leave it the way it is. A consolidation for efficiency, costing the taxpayers of this province $234,000 extra for this current fiscal year, is absolutely ludicrous. Let's hope they don't consolidate all the departments and all of the services in this provinces. If they do, the tax bill will be staggering. The kind of efficiency this government talks about is the kind of efficiency that costs the taxpayers of this province anywhere from a 100 percent increase to a 200 percent increase in every one of the votes that we're talking about.

We believe it's an attempted snow job to try and build up the fat in this budget so they'll end up with a surplus at the end of the year. With every vote that we challenge we prove it through inane, stupid remarks from government that they're actually going to consolidate to save money. But, lo and behold, it's going to cost us 150 percent more. It doesn't make any sense at all. The member for Central Fraser Valley (Mr. Ritchie) knows exactly that that is what the score is. Does it make any sense? No. It's a scam.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. members, perhaps we also might be reminded that courtesy in parliamentary language is always a good feature of committee and the House. If all members could remember that, the committee would function very well with the courtesy generally afforded to all members in the House.

MR. BARBER: The minister hasn't even attempted to make the case that the staff of his ministry has increased by 149 percent. However, he's asking for 149 percent more in order to house the staff, who apparently have not increased by the same proportion. He justifies it on the basis of consolidation. He doesn't tell us how many different buildings they're in; he says that presumably they're going to one building. That one building should cost more than five buildings housing the same number of people makes no sense at all. He can't make the case, we presume, because he has no grounds to make it. He has no evidence; he has no proof. All he has is the usual hyperbole of the former Liberal leader. This is the leader who is often wrong but never in doubt. We see more proof of the aptness of that description than ever before.

This government has the nerve to request another $234,000 a year, an increase of 149 percent over last year, for office space. The minister apparently cannot make the case that his staff has increased by 149 percent and therefore he needs proportionately greater room. He has yet to make the case that he is consolidating three, five or seven buildings into one and that mysteriously requires more floor space.

The committee will know that when governments rent, they rent from only two suppliers: public and private. And when they rent floor space, they rent a certain number of square feet, and they're charged per square foot. Does the minister need a 149 percent greater square footage to house his not-increasing public service?

MR. CHAIRMAN: Excuse me, hon. member. The first member for Victoria has the floor. It is unparliamentary for other members to be discussing or talking or in any way interrupting debate when another member has the floor.

MR. BARBER: Does the minister need 149 percent more floor space in his consolidation? Well, he hasn't made that case. Does he have 149 percent extra staff? Well, he hasn't made that case either. We presume he hasn't made either case because he can't make either case, or at least he certainly couldn't make either case stick.

We do know, though, that he has been fleeced, apparently. Someone has persuaded him that to consolidate he needs 149 percent more money than he did last year. The minister who has never earned a free-enterprise dollar in his life has once again been fleeced.

I was saying that there are only two sources of supply for the government when they obtain office space: public and private. The minister hasn't indicated whether he is moving into a publicly or privately owned building. Let's look at both cases just for a moment. If it's privately owned he's dealing with a private landlord. It happens to be the case in this province that most private landlords are supporters of Social Credit. It happens to be the case that most private landlords who rent commercial space get the maximum dollar they can, especially when they're dealing with an innocent in the ways of these things, like the minister who has never earned a free-enterprise dollar in his life and doesn't know anything about competition. We suspect that he may well have been fleeced by members of his own party, who tend to be the developers and the landlords who rent commercial office space to the government. It wouldn't surprise us at all to discover this, because clearly we're dealing with a naïf whose university office space was always paid for by the taxpayers of British Columbia, and who never knew what it meant to bargain for a lower rate per square foot.

MR. CHAIRMAN: One more time, could I ask all hon. members to refrain from interrupting or in any way causing confusion in the committee. I should also point out to the first member for Victoria (Mr. Barber) and to all members of the committee that personal allusions to any member of the House are unparliamentary. The committee can proceed

[ Page 4827 ]

quite quickly if we maintain relevancy to the amendment and the vote before us. I'm sure the first member for Victoria understands that.

MR. BARBER: I understand it and I appreciate the dilemma, the discomfiture and the sensitivity of the Minister of Universities, Science and Communications, who is now called upon to defend an action of waste by a government whose coalition he entered for politically opportune purposes and whose wastefulness he would never have countenanced were he still a Liberal. Of course he's uncomfortable and angry, and of course he strikes back on whatever flimsy grounds he can find.

Now there's 149 percent more for office space. Is the supplier private or public? Well, if it's private, we suspect the minister has been fleeced — 149 percent more to house the same number of people who are housed currently at 149 percent less tells us that the minister has been fleeced. He's paying too much to the commercial supplier. But if he's paying to a public supplier, there is only one. That is the B.C. Buildings Corporation. However, we have further evidence of incompetence here if it's the B.C. Buildings Corporation that's asking an increase of 149 percent over last year's budget. Why is that? Well, the government of British Columbia owns the B.C. Buildings Corporation. The government is its own landlord and sets the rents. Every time we see a vote in the estimates of a ministry to increase the building occupancy charges, we can only wonder what Socred sleight of hand is going on here where an agency of the Crown, called the B.C. Buildings Corporation, is charging another agency of the Crown — in this case, perhaps the Ministry of Universities, Science and Communications — more money, rent and cost to the taxpayers.

Now in the long run that's a burden to the taxpayers, on one of two counts. It's first of all a burden if they're simply doing that in order to squeeze more money out of the ministries and make the B.C. Buildings Corporation an apparently commercially viable operation. We know why they set up the B.C. Buildings Corporation. We know what was going on there when they did it in the first place, and because we knew about it, we opposed it — as did many, many public servants. By the way, I will campaign in the next election on our record of respect for the public service any day of the week you like. As an MLA for the capital city, I am proud of the respect we paid to the public service when we were in office, and I'm amazed that you would have the nerve to even go to the public service and ask for their votes in the next election because they found you out long ago.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Hon. member, could we return to the amendment, please.

MR. BARBER: I'm speaking on something the minister said, which I know is in order because you didn't disallow him to say it.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The amendment.

MR. BARBER: If it's a public supplier the only public supplier is the B.C. Buildings Corporation, so if the minister says, "Well, unfortunately our landlord increased the rent," what we have to do is identify the landlord. The landlord is the minister and every other member of cabinet. Therefore we're forced to conclude that for three important reasons the amendment should pass because the ministers arguments have failed. He has not demonstrated that he has 149 percent more staff and therefore needs 149 percent more space by way of a budget increase for building occupancy. He has not indicated whether he is going to a private or a public supplier, but he surely could not reply that he has been fleeced by the private suppliers of commercial office space because they're now charging 149 percent more than they did last year to house the same number of people this year. As well, he cannot competently reply that the B.C. Buildings Corporation proposes to raise the total rent from the several separate spaces into one consolidated space because, you see, they are the B.C. Buildings Corporation; they are their own landlord. For him to blame it on a landlord which is itself an agent of the Crown is for him to admit the gross failure of his own policy as well as to indicate thereby the perfectly good reasons why this amendment should pass.

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 19

NAYS — 28

An hon. member requested that leave be asked to record the division in committee in the Journals of the House.

Vote 213 approved.

On vote 214: computer and consulting charges, $122,200.

MR. LAUK: Here's another classic example of waste in government. Last year for computer and consulting charges this ministry was asking that the Committee of Supply grant a sum of $50,000 to defray that expense. This year they've asked for a sum of $122,200. That's an increase of $72,200 at a time when we're told that computer technology is cheaper than it was last year, at a time when we knew that a new ministry such as the one that was starting out last year would have increased computer costs. If this isn’t a phony figure, then the minister should stand up and defend it. I don't see how he could possibly justify an increase of $72,200. That's an increase of 144 percent.

[ Page 4828 ]

I don't think I can say it any better than the senior citizens of British Columbia in their Councillor's Reporter, dated February-March 1981. They said: "Beware of the politicians who claim they will build us a pie in the sky. Remember, it's our dough they'll be using."

I therefore move that vote 214 be reduced by a sum of $72,200.

MR. CHAIRMAN: The motion appears to be in order.

On the amendment.

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, in this particular vote we are being very generous with the government — recognizing that this fairly new ministry is still a growth ministry — and we are allowing a growth in expenditures of 500 percent. Even with this reduction, we are allowing a growth for computer and consulting charges of 500 percent over what was actually spent last year. Last year we came to this Legislature and we authorized this government to spend $50,000. How much have they actually spent in the first ten months of this year, according to the interim report for the fiscal year we're in? They have only, to this point, spent $6,416 out of a $50,000 allocation.

AN HON. MEMBER: Fraud!

MR. NICOLSON: Mr. Chairman, "fraud" would come to one's lips if one were looking for words to describe this type of budgetary allocation.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. I must ask the member to withdraw the term "fraud."

MR. NICOLSON: I withdraw the word "fraud, " Mr. Chairman; it was a subliminal suggestion that somehow found its way to my lips.

Mr. Chairman, if by the end of this year the trend continues and there is a little bit of heavy spending in the last two months, it is likely that there will be $8,000 spent on this item. And we are going to be increasing this to $122,200. This is the greatest increase we've seen to date in these estimates — this is an increase of 1,500 percent. What are they going to do? Put in an Atari computer game in everybody's office, or in the minister's office? Or are we going to have an arcade or something in the minister's office so that they can play Blockade and Space Invaders and Lunar Lander? Mr. Chairman, I will be very serious as to what I think this is for. I think that this is a deliberate padding of the budget. I think it is a deliberate overestimation of expenditure which with its sister companion, underestimation of revenues, serves to dig into the people's pockets in order to try to bribe the people of this province at a future election time. It is most callous, unnecessary and profligate, and cannot be defended. You know in your heart of hearts that you can't defend this.

Mr. Minister, you of all people in this House know that random-access memory, central processing units, mass-storage hard sector discs and floppy discs are all coming down in price. Software construction is coming down in price because we have better compilers than we had last year. Everything is coming down, and at a financial rate things are dropping in half; they are dropping by a factor of 10 only in this past year. The only thing that is going up this year in computers is this minister's estimates. They're phony estimates. Let's save the people of British Columbia some money; let's not take it out of their pockets this year.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Order, please. Again, I must caution members about terms used on the floor of the Legislature, particularly the reference to phony estimates. I must ask the member if he would, in the interests of parliamentary.... The member for Shuswap-Revelstoke on a point of order.

MR. KING: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, I have great respect for the rules of the House. Historically and traditionally in this House when one referred to a document or a government policy the same kinds of references that would not be tolerated in reference to a particular member are an accepted tradition of the House. I think we're attempting to confine debate unduly if we start to protect the integrity of a document that may be called into question. I think there's some confusion as to whether or not a particular member of the House is impugned in any way. That was not my colleague's reference whatsoever.

MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, hon. member. Again, I would caution all members in the use of terminology in debate, particularly when they carry that kind of connotation in a ministerial estimate when that particular minister's estimates are before the House. Granted, it is a thin line, but members are using more latitude than is really intended in these debates.

HON. MR. McGEER: We're on data systems and processing. I think we should try to be as factual as we can in this particular vote.

There are a number of projects in process which have not reached their full development. This probably accounts for the fact that up until the first three-quarters of the year the full expenditure had not been recorded. These projects are the metric index for developing automated retrieval capacity in the metric system, which you've already passed; word processing systems going into certain offices in the ministry; the capital financing system set in place for our universities; we need to develop automated procedures for projecting the debt servicing, so that we can provide accurate estimates to the House; and we're examining the potential for introducing microcomputing capability into the telecommunications system development and regulation areas, which we're taking over.

New projects that will be underway in the next year are to do an inventory of licences maintained by the ministry for a number of government departments; a communications equipment inventory; an inventory of research activities in science and technology; a supplement to the B.C. Tel studies on our long-distance phone billing system for the province, which now runs some $30 million a year; and we're also making up a mailing list of B.C. industries for distribution of metric and standards information. This is what will require the $122,000.

MR. LAUK: Mr. Chairman, we can't allow the minister to get away with that kind of answer to this amendment. All of those were funds already appropriated by this Committee of Supply. He's asking for an increase over and above the items that he has mentioned.

[ Page 4829 ]

This being the last amendment that we're entitled to put forward, I should point out that if all of them were accepted by this committee it would come to a total of $459,082 in one ministry. Can you imagine what that would mean in tax savings? My colleague, the member for Nelson-Creston (Mr. Nicolson) points out that only a portion of this vote was passed. The government is not saving taxpayers' money. They collect that revenue from the people, and they collect it unnecessarily if they don't spend the money. We say that these increases are totally unjustified. We urge all the members of this House to take a warning: the people of your constituencies are being oppressed by this heavy tax burden, and they will remember it come the next election.

Amendment negatived on the following division:

YEAS — 19

NAYS — 26

Mr. Barber requested that leave be asked to record the division in the Journals of the House.

MR. NICOLSON: On a point of order, did the Clerk call the name of the member for North Vancouver–Seymour (Mr. Davis), who is not here?

MR. CHAIRMAN: The correction is noted, hon. member. Thank you for bringing that to our attention. The records are amended accordingly.

Vote 214 approved.

The House resumed; Deputy Speaker in the chair.

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

Divisions in committee ordered to be recorded in the Journals of the House.

FIRE DAMAGE TO FINANCE DOCUMENTS

HON. MR. CURTIS: Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a brief ministerial statement. An electrical fire in room T4, off the tunnel to the legislative buildings, at approximately 6:30 this morning burned or damaged an estimated 4,200 journal vouchers for the 1979-80 fiscal year. This room is the secure storage area for all of the cheque vouchers, journal vouchers and special forms for 1979-80. I observe that approximately one million vouchers are stored in that secure room. We are therefore fortunate that the damage was not more serious. The burned journal vouchers involved transactions of all ministries. However, the office of the comptroller-general has been able to identify the 4,200 audit-control numbers of the vouchers contained in the burned boxes, This means that it will be possible to identify the audit numbers of those journal vouchers which cannot be salvaged and to obtain copies from the files of the ministries concerned. The damaged or burned journal vouchers are now being dried and sorted by the staff of the comptroller- general's office. It appears that the majority of the 4,200 journal vouchers can be or are being salvaged. In summary, it appears that those journal vouchers which cannot be salvaged can be identified and replaced from the files of the appropriate ministries, and therefore that the government's financial records for the 1979-80 fiscal year should be complete, notwithstanding this morning's fire.

Earlier today I notified the office of the auditor-general, and I personally notified the chairman of the public accounts committee concerning this incident.

I want to conclude by expressing appreciation to precinct security officers for their prompt action and to the Victoria fire department for their prompt and efficient response.

MR. KING: I thank the minister for his statement. Naturally, the opposition is gravely concerned over the damage and possible loss of spending vouchers for the year 1979-80. We're appreciative that copies of those vouchers may be obtainable from the various ministries. We point out that the vouchers are crucial to the opposition's role of scrutinizing the government's conduct in previous years. We would ask that all haste be given to ensure that any voucher which the opposition or, in fact, any member of the House may wish to call for would be available during the current session of the Legislature if physically possible.

Hon. Mr. Williams moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

The House adjourned at 1:07 p.m.